Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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PreferredPenne said:
To me it sounds more like "Use your respirators, lads!"
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I'm not sure it matters much anyway because, idiot that I am, I realized upon rereading that quote that Scotty clearly swears in the very next movie ("Where's the damn antimatter inducer?").
 
Locomotive Derangement said:
They already did a movie where they handed the Star Trek franchise to an edgy rebel. Its called Wrath of Khan.

Amongst all the other fucked up stuff in that movie, Nicholas Meyer wanted Spock's death scene with that final shot of Kirk slumped against the glass to be the last fucking shot of the movie. He also wanted the makeup on Spock's face to be even more gruesome and gory with blue-green blood leaking all over the place, and essentially both Nimoy and the producers shut him down and told him that was just too much. Bear in mind this is already a movie with a horrorific scene of a parasite burrowing into people's ears as they scream in agony, the bridge of the Enterprise gets showered in what looks like dangerous pyrotechnics, the villain hangs a bunch of innocent scientists up like the Predator after he cuts their throats (confirmed by dialogue), a guy violently committing suicide using the loudest and most threatening phaser design in Star Trek history, said parasite burrowing out of another person's head with a big gout of blood, and the villain gets half his face blown off. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, one more: "He stayed at his post, while the trainees all ran!" Its also the only movie I can think of where Scotty swears (If you listen closely during the attack sequence, you can hear "Use your respirators god damnit!")
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Interesting because I heard that the death of Scotty's nephew WAS going to be the death of Spock, they were going to kill him off that early. But apparently Spock's death got leaked so they moved it to later in the movie or made it more impactful or something. (SFDebris points out that if you watch the movie, Spock does very little after that scene and most of it could have been done by any character.)

Locomotive Derangement said:
This is a little complicated but if you go through the commentary Meyer did on the movie he alludes to the the fact that he had a lot of more controversial ideas in the script that didn't made it into the movie or were modified on the fly and the actors and producers began to realize what they had on their hands. Even the famous "He's not really dead, as long as we remember him." was sort of added at the last minute by Meyer's testimony. The script went through constant rewrites and Meyer apparently wrote the final version of it in less than a month. While Meyer at the beginning wanted to end the movie on the shot of Kirk slumped over and hopeless, by his later admission he says he changed that when it became clear the cast started believeing in what they were working on.
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No offense - but that just sounds like normal script development & brainstorming where you bring up any and every idea you can and then whittle out the ones that don't work or refine the ones that have potential.

If you want a comparison, I would say just look at Star Trek 09 & "into dark." Both of those play very much like first draft scripts where the director and/or writer were never told "no" or "work on that a bit more." Don't even get me started on The Last Jedi. How well did those turn out?

I know people love the idea of the brilliant auteur who creates magic, but the simple fact is that nobody is so brilliant they write something perfect the first time. EVERY first draft needs editing.
 
Flexo said:
No offense - but that just sounds like normal script development & brainstorming where you bring up any and every idea you can and then whittle out the ones that don't work or refine the ones that have potential.

If you want a comparison, I would say just look at Star Trek 09 & "into dark." Both of those play very much like first draft scripts where the director and/or writer were never told "no" or "work on that a bit more." Don't even get me started on The Last Jedi. How well did those turn out?

I know people love the idea of the brilliant auteur who creates magic, but the simple fact is that nobody is so brilliant they write something perfect the first time. EVERY first draft needs editing.
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Its apparently different in this case since the script needed to be modified so exstensively on the fly that Meyer had to do an uncredited rewrite shortly before production began. Personally I take the stance that the development of the film was messy and nobody had any idea what the hell to do after a movie as weird as The Motion Picture.

Also regarding Spock's death being in the middle of the film as originally planned, that's pretty much nothing more than a long standing fan theory. Though a rather compelling one; it could be both the reason for the sudden script rewrites and possibly the reason why Meyer wanted a darker ending as kind of a middle finger to the overzealous fans who freaked out when word of Spock's death was leaked. Going into the movie, the cast and producers figured the franchise was just gonna get worse from here on out, so I can easily imagine people being onboard with Meyer's cynical take until they started having second thoughts.
 
Locomotive Derangement said:
Its apparently different in this case since the script needed to be modified so exstensively on the fly that Meyer had to do an uncredited rewrite shortly before production began. Personally I take the stance that the development of the film was messy and nobody had any idea what the hell to do after a movie as weird as The Motion Picture.
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From all the "making of" stories I've listened to from SFDebris, GoodBadFlicks, and some RedLetterMedia... I can't think of a movie that film development WASN'T messy. That was the point I was trying to get at: it's not exceptional, it's the rule. A perfectly smooth production which never ran into troubles is... possibly mythical but maybe there is a movie out there with that history. (that's why increasingly I find the making of more entertaining than the movie)

Locomotive Derangement said:
Also regarding Spock's death being in the middle of the film as originally planned, that's pretty much nothing more than a long standing fan theory. Though a rather compelling one; it could be both the reason for the sudden script rewrites and possibly the reason why Meyer wanted a darker ending as kind of a middle finger to the overzealous fans who freaked out when word of Spock's death was leaked. Going into the movie, the cast and producers figured the franchise was just gonna get worse from here on out, so I can easily imagine people being onboard with Meyer's cynical take until they started having second thoughts.
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Looks like we're both half right and half wrong.

www.cbr.com

Did Fan Outcry Alter Spock's Death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?

In the latest Movie Legends Revealed, discover whether Spock's death was moved to the end of the film in a response to fan outcry.
www.cbr.com www.cbr.com
An early version of the script DID leak and fans WERE irritated at Spock's early death, but that did not change Sowards' draft.​
​
Sowards' friend, Robert J. Ellsberg, described Sowards' method (Sowards passed away in 2007)...​
​
Again showing it to Leonard Nimoy, again getting his approval. And in the next draft, it was moved a little further still. And then moved back some more. All the while, Leonard Nimoy was always shown the script, really liked the death scene, but was now especially enjoying the new Spock material, and what Jack was doing with the character. What Jack had intended to do all along.

And then, finally, Jack Sowards had pushed the death scene all the way to the end of the movie.
​
By this time, Leonoard Nimoy absolutely loved everything Jack Sowards had written, loved the script, loved the character, and was there to play Mr. Spock — for the entire film. Right up to his death scene.
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​
 
Flexo said:
From all the "making of" stories I've listened to from SFDebris, GoodBadFlicks, and some RedLetterMedia... I can't think of a movie that film development WASN'T messy. That was the point I was trying to get at: it's not exceptional, it's the rule. A perfectly smooth production which never ran into troubles is... possibly mythical but maybe there is a movie out there with that history. (that's why increasingly I find the making of more entertaining than the movie)
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Production is usually a horrible nightmare for any movie but they tend to at least have the script sorted out first. Sometimes, anyway.
Come to think of it a lot of major blockbusters that have sucked in the past twenty years had set-in-stone scripts that were finished and ready to go before production started. The Star Wars Prequels being the most infamous. I've noticed other movie classics that went through exstensive rewrites like The Thing also tended to have a higher quality, so maybe taking time out to rethink the script before production starts is the key to a better movie.

Flexo said:
Looks like we're both half right and half wrong.

www.cbr.com

Did Fan Outcry Alter Spock's Death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?

In the latest Movie Legends Revealed, discover whether Spock's death was moved to the end of the film in a response to fan outcry.
www.cbr.com www.cbr.com
An early version of the script DID leak and fans WERE irritated at Spock's early death, but that did not change Sowards' draft.​
​
Sowards' friend, Robert J. Ellsberg, described Sowards' method (Sowards passed away in 2007)...​
​
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Wow, that's a pretty recent article too. I suppose the information in it is nothing new but its impressive to me that people are still talking about this movie after so long.
 
TaimuRadiu said:
Slight powerlevel but my SO had a bit of a melty when I told him that it's canon that the Vulcanians were monitoring Earth before WW3 and did nothing
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Wouldn't that just be a Prime Directive type thing? Unlike Kirk and his crew, they just actually obeyed their own version of it.

Locomotive Derangement said:
Wow, that's a pretty recent article too. I suppose the information in it is nothing new but its impressive to me that people are still talking about this movie after so long.
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It's still undeniably the best, looking at it as an actual work of art or even just a movie.
 
AnOminous said:
Wouldn't that just be a Prime Directive type thing? Unlike Kirk and his crew, they just actually obeyed their own version of it.



It's still undeniably the best, looking at it as an actual work of art or even just a movie.
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Vulcans aren't honest by any means, plus it's canon there was one who stayed on Earth from the 1950s on
 
Been watching some of those SciFi Special Edition versions with the filler to pad them to an hour and a half, somebody put a bunch on archive.org.
They're neat. Little trivia bits, Shatner hosting, good variation for The One That Was Easiest To Pirate.
 
PreferredPenne said:
Anybody remember this Flash animation from around 2000 or so?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-1P3G7C-AjU
There were five episodes, plus an animation of the "Star Trekkin" song.

Naturally it doesn't hold up as well, but I liked it at the time.
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Holy shit, Stone Trek. I really dismissed it when I first saw it at the time but i've come to appreciate it in later years.


Their angelfire page spoofs a bunch of Star Trek episode premises, and also links to other ideas that seemed to be either jokes or concepts. The SeaTrek idea was pretty cool actually.
 
Locomotive Derangement said:
This is a little complicated but if you go through the commentary Meyer did on the movie he alludes to the the fact that he had a lot of more controversial ideas in the script that didn't made it into the movie or were modified on the fly and the actors and producers began to realize what they had on their hands. Even the famous "He's not really dead, as long as we remember him." was sort of added at the last minute by Meyer's testimony. The script went through constant rewrites and Meyer apparently wrote the final version of it in less than a month. While Meyer at the beginning wanted to end the movie on the shot of Kirk slumped over and hopeless, by his later admission he says he changed that when it became clear the cast started believeing in what they were working on.

He did really hate the idea of literally bringing Spock back though, and he mentions in the commentary that while he was willing to come back to the franchise, he refused to have anything to do with the movie where they bring Spock back. True to his word he came back for both Voyage Home and Undiscovered Country.

The makeup thing might be a rumor brought on by that famous production photo of him next to Ricardo Montalban, but if I recall correctly it was something Meyer thought he could get away with because the blood was going to be green and not red. I'll see if I can dig something more concrete up later, but that's the gist of it. Either way I implore you to check out the Director's Cut version that has Meyer's commentary over it. There are actually two sets of commentary, one in text as subtitles and another with him just talking, and they actually differ quite substantially sometimes. The text commentary was made first I think.
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I have the Blu Ray Directors cut version of the movie and I listened again to the commentary (the text commentary was from Mike Okuda) and the only thing I got out of it other than what I've already stated was Meyer did offhandedly mention that "they kept shooting down my more extreme ideas". So It's possible, I suppose, that Meyer originally wanted the movie to end with Kirk, in the engine room, slumped over, staring blankly next to the corpse of Spock, fade to credits. But jeez, if you wanted to absolutely destroy a franchise...that would be the way to do it.
 
Yeah, wise choice not ending it on Kirk slumped over right after Spock died.

The ending we got is pretty beautiful and while we're all still sad from losing Spock, there is a sense of hope from it, and Kirk saying that he feels young is great.

My guess is that Meyer was working with people that still understood Star Trek and knew when to say no and guide things in the right direction. Compare that to Star Trek today, and I doubt anybody involved understands Star Trek much at all.
 
RumblyTumbly said:
Yeah, wise choice not ending it on Kirk slumped over right after Spock died.

The ending we got is pretty beautiful and while we're all still sad from losing Spock, there is a sense of hope from it, and Kirk saying that he feels young is great.

My guess is that Meyer was working with people that still understood Star Trek and knew when to say no and guide things in the right direction. Compare that to Star Trek today, and I doubt anybody involved understands Star Trek much at all.
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It also wasn't the current SJW fashion to just say "hey let's just shit all over the original material and destroy it because lol neckbeards mad."
 
My parents saw Wrath of Khan at the theater and said it was incredibly impactful. That and First Contact are the only ones they really liked, for good reason; First Contact is both a good action film and Star Trek film (fite me irl... in minecraft)

I'll also pass on what my dad said about Undiscovered Country, great film that it actually is: "So, the Federation and the Klingons reduce their forces... what about the Romulans?"

While I'm powerlevelling about my parents they both watched and loved Star Trek when it first aired and were badly confused as to why it was canceled, since everyone they knew were watching it too. (Answer: the network hated Gene Roddenberry, for good reason, he was a real dickhead)
 
TaimuRadiu said:
While I'm powerlevelling about my parents they both watched and loved Star Trek when it first aired and were badly confused as to why it was canceled, since everyone they knew were watching it too. (Answer: the network hated Gene Roddenberry, for good reason, he was a real dickhead)
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Roddenberry left (mostly) because they hated him, but then the last season blew, and that's why they cancelled it. They should have just swallowed their egos and let Roddenberry be an asshole.
 
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