That being said, I am glad to see Simon wants to knuckle down and make this a damned good film, and while "damned good film" is subjective, that they're putting in the effort says more to me about their dedication to making something worth seeing, than anything else.
I'm not sure there's been a "dumbing down" of cinema. One, for mainstream audiences, I'm not really sure it was ever that smart. Two, there's no shortage of intelligent, thoughtful, mature, issue-oriented, emotionally complex films out there. Yes, studios are oriented toward making megabucks with spectacular blockbusters, but this only expands the audience. But that doesn't take away from other, more grown-up fare. Here's Peter Travers' (of Rolling Stone) top 10 movies of 2014: 1. Boyhood 2. Birdman 3. Foxcatcher 4. Selma 5. Gone Girl 6. Whiplash 7. The Grand Budapest Hotel 8. Unbroken 9. Under the Skin 10. Interstellar These movies--which all got a lot of attention and did good (in some cases great) box office--are not what you'd call dumb, immature, unsophisticated, etc. (Full disclosure: I've only seen 6/10, but all were well-reviewed.) Even the spectacle Interstellar was much more than just a sci-fi adventure. Even the comic book films of today are transcending their source material, giving real depth to the characters and often making a strong commentary about modern life. I hope they find a way to make a billion dollar-grossing Star Trek, but they probably won't be writing off things like The Avengers as dumb...
Brannon Braga and Ron Moore were convinced (and still are today) that "Generations" was a great movie.............
Not true, listen to the commentary track on the Generations DVD, there's a lot of apologizing, and "what were we thinking?", in there.
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/19/simon-pegg-criticises-dumbing-down-of-cinema After almost 50 years, how can the nimrods & fools in charge of Trek *still* not understand it's appeal? *Too* Star Trek-y? My argument would be that the current incarnation isn't Trek-y enough. Now we have the co-author of the next Trek script openly displaying contempt for the genre. It's "dumbed-down," it's "childish," it's an indication of an "infantilized" society. This from a man who's made his name in genre fare, including escapist franchises like Mission Impossible and Trek. Did nobody tell this guy that even Nimoy eventually moved past his "I am not Spock" phase? PR disaster, core Trek fans not already alienated by nu-Trek will now abandon ship after being insulted by this pretentious twat. Seems to me kids have been going to the movies for almost a century to be entertained with escapist fare - Batman & Buck Rogers serials, Sinbad, the old Universal Studios horror flicks, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ray Harryhousen stuff, King Kong, Godzilla, westerns with cowboys vs. indians, etc. Those are the movies that fired the imaginations of young people, not The French Connection. Oh, and the advent of the modern era summer blockbuster spectacle is widely accepted to be Jaws in 1975, not Star Wars (although SW did take it to a whole new level). And Jaws was hardly an action spectacle. And what's with this instruction he got from the studio to make the script "more inclusive?" So does that mean Orci's script read like fan-fic? Was he trying to work the Guardian of Forever into the story? If you were going to work the Guardian into the proceedings, you would have done that in the first flick rather than have Spock go through the convoluted process of using red matter to create black holes. Perhaps they thought we need more space battles to entire Joe Six-pack to buy a ticket? That should make Dayton happy. They bring in the Fast & Furious director to take the action up a notch? Will we be getting cameos from Vin Diesel & Michelle Rodriguez? Is there anyone who really believes that a Trek flick, no matter how well made, can do Avengers money? Is Paramount really thinking there's a version of Trek that makes 1 billion worldwide? I'm not seeing it.
Moved and merged Flashlight's Red Room thread with the existing thread where the topic is already being discussed. I didn't want to just close his thread because he brings up good points in the post.
Your rant has merit, but I think you completely missed the point of what Pegg was saying, since he agrees with you.
@Federal Farmer, you disagree. What do you consider the thought behind Rodenberry's explicit statement that it was a Western in space?
I don't disagree with that point, I disagree that there hasn't been hard scifi in Trek and the claim that that's not what Trek is.
I didn't say there hasn't been, just that it's not the main emphasis of Trek. Look at the various episodes, what percentage would you say were sci-fi stories rather than simply stories set in a futuristic space faring society? I'd say probably no more than 20%.
The main emphasis of Trek is exploration and discovery. Yes, a lot of episodes revolved around a monster of the week, but there's also a good amount of episodes that revolve around hard scifi as well. I'm also including Data and his ambitions to understand humanity, Spick's evolution as a Vulcan, the Federation's interactions with Klingons and so on. Perhaps hard scifi is not the correct term, but it's more than pew, pew, bang, bang, explosions. I think Pegg was attempting to give the fans of Trek something of more substance and the studio excecs want more pew, pew, bang, bang, explosion. There can be a balance or mixture of the two. TWOK is a good example as well as TUC. There are other examples as well. I used to think that TMP was boring and I hated it, but now I feel it is a really good representation of the core of Trek. I doubt it would fly well with modern audiences, but you could use that template and mix it with say Trek 09 and really have an excellent movie. A little bit of adventure and a little bit of exploration and discovery and a little bit of hard scifi. Most of the episodes I consider great are ones like Taste of Armageddon where there's not a lot of action, but a sense of mystery and a bit of exploration of humanity and morals. If you took that and combined it with one of the more action oriented episodes like say the send half of the Best of Both Workds or something like that, you can get a really good Trrk movie that fits the requirements of Paramount. Unfortunately it looks like Pegg is telling us that Oaramount wants the Trek equivalent of Tranformers.
I actually kind of agree with Pegg. Really, Trek at its best could be any other show if you took the sci-fi elements away. I saw some people saying that Master and Commander was the best Star Trek movie they ever saw, for example. So really the idea would be to make a good movie first, and then to add the Star Trek elements later and still make it fit, although the important part becomes the "make it fit." So, changing an idea or concept to fit the characters and universe rather than changing the characters and universe to fit the idea or concept - DS9 vs BSG as an example.
First you'd have to define what Star Trek-y is. The philosophy-for-toddlers of TNG? The moral ambiguity that much of DS9 is? The cheese that is ENT? The double cheese that is TOS? Or the light hearted action adventure that VOY was supposed to be but mostly failed? Because the Avengers movies have been mentioned here. Marvel totally understands what audiences want to see (me included). The perfect mix of comedy, action and a very human component. Now JJTrek was on a very good way to accomplish that too but it lacks the guiding hand of a. a master plan and b. a Kevin Feige type mastermind. Unlike Marvel and Disney with WARS they don't seem totally committed to it. Both franchises offer a relentless stream of tightly integrated, high quality content spread out over several types of media. The odd Trek movie every five years with nothing in between cannot compete with that. Pegg is right insofar as Paramount will have to choose. What do they want? The aging fans of TOS? Or a younger generation that didn't grow up on Kirk and Spock? Also, they need a plan. As for BEYOND... why not. Too many Trek movies follow the formula of goodies vs. baddies. Some exploration and sense of wonder wouldn't hurt.
If you've been paying attention, you'll note that doing a heist or thriller and slapping "Star Trek" on it is what they've done from the very start. Science fiction is about setting and plot elements, it isn't, in and of itself, the story. As for a western element, anything space-based as tended to take that as a parallel, including Trek, as it's the most similar in tone - alien lands (imagine the first Europeans to come across desert mesas), strange cultures(injuns!) who may be friend or foe, new dangers, new opportunities, far from your own laws and social mores but trying to retain a semblance of your own. It's not called the final frontier for nothing.
As for the Marvel movies being dumb, hmmm, yeah they're not cerebral tour de forces, but they not pure popcorn flicks either. How many movies that made as much as The Winter Soldier actively questions the role between freedoms and security, and how the latter can be co-opted for dark deeds? Even AoU did two takes on Frankenstein, with Ultron and Vision representing different outcomes of humanity meddling with artificial life, rather than the usual riff of siding with one (usually Meddle Ye Not!) Marvel provides plenty to chew on, but dresses it very well.
I don't think it's reasonable to say that Star Trek has always been a western or a thriller in space and that this is no change. The context of the comment is that it will be produced as such in opposition to that which is "Star Trek-y" in an effort to appeal to a larger base of people who are turned off by that. "Star Trek-y" doesn't imply hard science fiction, but it does imply some exploration of ideas and it implies a certain optimism about the future of human beings. Abrams movies have all but jettisoned that entirely, and this is evidence that we're heading even further down that road. Call me elitist if you wish but a cash cow that can earn $1 billion from attracting the lowest common denominator - who want disposable action, stupid comedy and cheap thrills - is not what I'm interested in. That which is worth seeing is often controversial, edgy or difficult - necessarily excluding itself from the big money.
You, like I, have no control over the outcome. And trying to control the outcome leads you down the primrose path of turning into Dayton. Let's say your worst case scenario nightmare comes true. Oh well, then the last episode of "real Trek", was the DS9 finale. Welcome to my world where the last Transformers movie was in 1986.
You of course have every right to complain until your typing fingers bleed. I'm just stating my point of view on it.
I get the impression that Peg would have rather made a "Star Trek-y" (in the reputation of being something deeper that TOS rightly or wrongly enjoys) movie that was provocative and deep but Paramount had already decided against that and has told him to make something less interesting than he would have liked and maybe he's venting a bit of frustration with that. Anyway, the idea of doing some other sort of story and dressing it up as Trek is not new. It's no secret that "Balance of Terror" was "The Enemy Below" dressed up in Trek outfits. As long as the "dressing up" is an authentic Star Trek suit and not a cheap knock-off, that tactic can work fine.
People like Pegg and Whedon need to learn to stop whining. Here's the classy way to handle it. Eat the shit sandwich, and just take it, and take it, and take it, and take it..... ...and then hack the studio, and make it look like North Korea. Then, your enemies are destroyed, and you come out smelling like a rose.
Whatever! All I know is, I can't wait for the next AwesomeTrek™ movie to be released. Watching the geeks freak out because it doesn't fit their very narrow and specific vision of "Star Trek" is at least half the entertainment for me!
Ok, so new reports sound as if this is what Pegg said after they took the script away from him. That makes more sense, and sucks.
Public comments like Pegg's are really unwise if he still has a stake in the script. I imagine he's out as a screenwriter.
I saw an interesting idea out there on the internet. What if Idris Elba (who is reportedly the primary antagontist for Star Trek Beyond) is actually playing Benjamin Lafayette Sisko?! Remember Sisko was last seen in the Celestial Temple. What if being in the Temple somehow protected Sisko from the changing timeline and he somehow survives in the Abrams Trek universe. What if the shock of having his entire history and timeline wiped out caused him to lose his mind? We know he came close to losing it a few times on the show. Maybe an insane Sisko emerges from the Celestial Temple and tries to re-create his timeline at any cost, like Annorax from Voyager. And nuKirk and crew have to stop him. And what if Sisko is still the Emissary of the nuBajorans? And he decides to lead some religious jihad against the Federation? This will never happen of course. Most people wouldn't have the slightest clue who Sisko is. But its still fun to think about. And it would be awesome if Sisko somehow brought the original timeline back. Plus, we would get to see Sisko face off against Kirk! And a conflicted Sisko would make for an interesting antagonist.
Why not just bring back Avery Brooks if it were him? I hate the fact that these days in Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, or whatever else that's an existing franchise, whenever someone is cast it must be an existing character. Ohhh, Elba is black! So it must be Daystrom, M'Benga, Sisko or a Klingon! Ohhh, John Boyega is black, so it must be Lando's son! Ohh, Maise Williams is a woman so she must be River Song or The Rani! Gets boring after a while. Why can't a character just be new?
