The most sickening word in the English Language
 

Reimagining. God help us all.
I'm not usually one to complain about TV show and movies - I'm usually just glad to have them around. Buffy Series 7 crap? Better than nothing in my book. Enterprise hated? I'll take it anyway. New look Doctor Who not going down well with some? I can live with it.
But.
One thing I can not, can not stand, is this bloody trend of 'rebooting' or 'reimagining' shows/movies.
Like Casino Royle. they...'Reset' Bond. They reset it??? I'm surprised Flemming hasn't returned to feast on the brains of who ever came up with that idea.
It seems they want to Re-imagen Trek. I've no idea quite what they mean, but I'm guessing it will be sod the old story, make up a new one! I do not like this. This is a bad path.
I swear I shall call forth the Ghost (Or Katra) of Gene himself to smite those in charge, if this does happen.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/vie...cle/46176.html
Here's the article. For the record - while I've never heard of them before... I say now... I do not like ' Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci'.

I would have said "morning".

I would have said a bunch of romance-related stuff, all of it very bitter and none of it very interesting.

I'm not remotely excited about Trek XI, and this doesn't help. Trek doesn't need to be rebooted or reimagined -- look at the success of neo-Doctor Who, which made a clean start without ignoring anything that came before. And if Paramount was serious about giving Trek a break, they need to give it a longer one. I'm as big a Trek fan as you'll ever find, but even I don't think we need more so soon.

I would be much happier if someone who's worked on Trek before were involved in this. The "new blood" thing was never a particularly good point, but the last thing Trek needs is nothing but rookies working on it.

Sorry, Casino Royale and Battlestar Galactica are two very clear examples in my mind where the so-called reimagining equals or trumps the original.

I am a fairly huge Original Series Trek fan who adores about 98% of its televised material and finds the relationship between overall quality and movie sequel number an inverse relationship. Yet this talk about trying to embody Roddenberry's optimistic spirit is good enough for me. It sounds like the heart is in the right place, and I would go as far to say that I'm looking forward to the next film. First time in ages.

We're talking about a huge film with huge actors that will potentially draw a huge audience, so long advertising and word of mouth are positive. That is a good thing. That is exactly what the franchise needs to resurface. Could it be done without a reimagining/reboot? Perhaps. But I can't blame the producers and writers for wanting to de-bog themselves from the hundreds of hours of material that I bet less than 10% of their target audience will have any real familiarity with. These reimaginings are the in-thing right now, yes. But the two successes I mentioned earlier prove that it can work and work well. A critically acclaimed sci-fi drama and a movie that's 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes? Have fun arguing with that.

It can work. It might not. But passing it off because it's a reimagining? Foolish.

Least we remember they tried to do this with Enterprise and it failed miserably? (even though it was ultimatly a good show) I frankly ain't looking forward to Kick and Spocks academy days. *Sigh* I want a future movie. 29th Century, Damnit!

Absolutely Right™.

If I'm going to write something off, it will be because of what it actually is, not because of what it might be, and certainly not because some people are tossing around a particular word. (Didn't we already see quite enough of that nonsense with Enterprise and "prequel" alone?)

Besides, getting all in a froth over "reimagining" is silly. Sickening? The word itself is already woefully obsolete, having been replaced with "re-imaging" more than a year ago.

Dunno, maybe the old word confused too many people.

Or something.

As for Star Trek XI, I'm thinking that waiting at least until a few things are nailed down a bit more securely than they are at present -- story, cast, stuff like that -- is probably not a bad thing. There'll still be plenty of time to get excited later.

I think you'll find that it's actually 'custard'.





Ugh, now I feel horribly queasy.

NO no no.
It's the idea I don't like. It's like when a political party say's 'Hey! We're gonna cut tax! And have no scandals! And everything is gonna be rosy!'
You sigh. Because, hey maybe you've become disillusioned or whatever, but you know it isn't going to happen.
It's the same will this I feel. I know the idea that is going thru the minds of these 'producers'. They're gonna try and restart the trek, by changing everything it is. These people really do stupid things like this. Remember the Coke 'incident'? Plus they're gonna do it with a movie. Movies can be dodgy ground anyway. They need to appeal to a wide audience so can't be too Sci-Fi or in-depth.
BSG was different. the old one really hadn't been on that long anyways. And also, the new one is pretty...well good.
Bond? Oh. Well. I can't stand it. It's an action movie, for me. Just another action movie. They took Q and Money Penny...and the things I really love about bond away.
I don't know. I really, really hope I'm wrong about it. I so do, but I just feel...bad about this. I read the article and got a sick feeling in my stomach. I really hope it's me just being foolish, but I really don't think this is going to end well.

I would say about 75% of one's enjoyment of any given show/movie/book/whatever is expectation. Expecting crap yields crap, expecting greatness yields greatness. Probably something like 1 in 4 movies breaks the mold and offers something truly unexpected, one way or the other. At most 1 in 4.

And really, when you think about it, expectations are exactly what has damned the Trek franchise since... maybe the Voyager premiere? People expect one tone out of a show and get something entirely different. With Enterprise, the producers were damned no matter what. Any fan with a little bit of background with the franchise has expectations about what preceded TOS. How the hell do you satisfy that? You can try to deliver somehow, but you'll never please everyone regardless of quality.

There's just so much in the way of background details and miscellaneus trivia that continuity errors are inevitable unless the entire staff is made up of uber nerds. And such an arrangement, I predict, would hardly satisfy those looking for cleverly plotted/characterised fiction.

They've already tried the "ride it out and say its the same continuity even with a few minor mistakes here and there" approach. This has essentially led to OCD storytelling where there is too much focus on concept and not enough on story or tone or characterisation. And ratings/box office have declined.

So why not do a reboot? Abrams has repeatedly talked about how frakin excited he is to be writing a new story in the spirit of the original series. That sounds damn refreshing to me -- a focus on tone. Making sure the heart is in the right place, and not getting too anal retentive about messy details. Add to that the casting rumors (Damon, Brody, and Sinese), and we've got a tone-oriented approach with some major acting talent. One Oscar winner and two nominees? Sweet.

I really don't understand what there is to complain about here. I realize that, by definition, a fandom has taken all sorts of effort to absorb events and details of what has come before. But that doesn't stop a Star Trek fan from enjoying Firefly, does it? And why not? Both are seperate universes based on entirely different rules and with absolutely no overlap in continuities. So why can't one enjoy both a franchise and its reimagining where exactly the same rules apply?

Trek, as we know it, has seen 30 seasons of television and 10 feature length films. These will not suddenly pop out of existence when the aptly titled Star Trek hits theatres next Christmas. Is it really such a tragedy that the largest(?) continuity in sci-fi history will never grow any more gi-huge-ic? You can still watch the old ones. Nobody has erased them from the timeline.

Why can't people just let go of their expectations and take the new film at face value? If it sucks, it sucks. But that hinges on the strength of the story and characters. Not whether or not it can be fully integrated into an existing continuity.

Apologies for spelling errors in my rant. I'm in a weird state of mind where any word more than six letters in length looks woefully incorrect.

I've already done my rant on where Bond is going, so I'll move on to reimagining and Trek.

Reimagining. I've seen this a lot in the comics lately. Ultimate Marvel, All-Star DC, Elseworlds, What Ifs, and all that. Nice idea, but they've yet to do it right. Not yet. Ever. I don't get that much enjoyment from it, mainly because they HAVEN'T GOTTEN IT RIGHT! I'm continually amazed at how fast they can break their record of "this time we're doing it right." A much fuller rant is available for the e-mail. I'm all for reimagining if they do it right, but they haven't, and I think they can't.

Reimagining and Trek are incompatible. They need to realize that. One reason that Enterprise failed (the main reason, in fact) is that although maybe they never "technically" violated prior canon (a chancy proposition in and of itself, but moving on), but they did violate what we thought canon was. Think about it, they marketed TAS products for years yet never substantiated the captaincy of Robert April or the launching of 1701 in 2245 or the Spock backstory from Yesteryear. For decades legions of Trek scholars wrote about Trek in a way that either supported each other or acted in a way that would never conflict with everything else. It is possible. It is. I know it. You CAN write a movie about the early days of the Trek chronology with absolutely no need for reimagining. Ain't gonna happen, though, but it IS possible.

I have a great many options on reimagining, the folly of reimagining Trek, the reason why Enterprise bombed, and all that, but lets stick to the article.

I. "Star Trek"? That's it? Are you kidding me? What do you do with the second movie? "Star Trek 2"? Come on.
2. If they're outright reimagining Trek, then it ain't Trek. Star Trek is our universe. It needs people from what DC calls Earth-1, what Marvel calls Earth 616, what Sliders calls Earth Prime, or what have you.
3. Star Trek has never been about action as the primary driving force. Even the war years of DS9 were never about the battles, it was the motivation for the battles, the aftermath of the battles, the way people were changed by the battles, and so on. You don't need score after score of starships blowing up to accomplish that.
4. "Reimagining" and "100% true to the fanbase" are mutually exclusive. They're losing right from the start. "100% true" needs no "reimagining."

Infinite Improbability:
You're my guy in this matter. I defer to you.
To be honest, I feel tired. I feel abit of a let down, cos...I just really don't think it's gonna go well.

That tends to be one of the most depressing experiences in life these days, I've discovered. That feeling of being tied to a tree on a hill. You can see the trains driving toward each other on the same track at top speed. You know that they're going to collide. You know that the hill obscures their view of each other, so they're gonna be totally ignorant, then the engineers are gonna have five seconds of blinding terror before both go up in a huge fireball of shrapnel. Star Trek XI is going to be like that. You know it, I know it. Lets just hope that they FINALLY learn their lesson.

Hmm...

Suddenly, I'm wondering why doom-and-gloom fandom still gets to me after all these years.

But thats it! I'm not a doomy fan guy. I love everything about the shows I watch! I could sit and watch static if they called it Star Trek and still give it a 6/10. Loved Enterprise, and still do. Like new directions. Like new ideas. Go new ideas!
It's just... the way they were saying things in that interview... It just sounds to me more an attempt to make Trek profitable again. Big names, Action...all of which I can handle... but I just don't think it will be done well...
ominously
I feel a dark power rising...

Really though. Not just hating something because it's new or being changed. But feel like I've heard this kinda thing before. Like with Enterprise. ( I did like it). They were all positive about it before hand. Now, they say...oh yeah, maybe it wasn't a good idea... didn't think it through yaddda yadda.

hhhmmmm

That's just the point. Having "marketability" be the primary point of Trek has always failed. Always. Okay, fine, not always. Trek IV worked well as an attempt to widen the viewer base, but you've all heard about the exception that proves the rule.

Trek is about Trek. It always has been, it always should be. Turning Trek into LOTR or Star Wars or whatever just can't work. If you stick a starship named Enterprise into a Star Wars/LOTR/Harry Potter/whatever plot, you don't get Trek, you get a starship named Enterprise in a Star Wars/LOTR/Harry Potter/whatever plot.

These examples are completely absurd. Are you really expecting a plot with elves and/or wizards?

Sorry, but if Paramount wants to bring back Trek and have it stick around for any half-considerable length of time, they need to be focused on profitability. They need to be thinking about how to expand the fanbase. Otherwise, just what the hell is the point? They can't limp on forever you know. The dwindling ratings of Enterprise proved that.

Just be glad that movie-goers these days are less likely to be distracted by pretty explosions or balls-to-the-wall action. They actually tend to favor good, entertaining stories. And I hate to bring back old examples, but Batman Begins and Casino Royale are case and point, respectively.

Oh heavens...!
Batman Begins I'll give you - that was rather deep (Too deep if you ask me).
But Royale? That was an action movie. Bond is deep. Royale was not. It was just another american action movie.

...you're kidding, right? The most unflattering thing that can be said about Royale is that it's not exactly a "classical" Bond movie, but I've never heard anyone compare it to the others and have it come out as the bad one. In most everyone's eyes, Royale was a big damn improvement. It's not even just a good Bond movie, it's a really good movie, period.

Honestly, if you wanna talk about how messed up remakes are, how about I Spy, Charlie's Angels or Starksy & Hutch? You know, remakes that were actually bad? Instead, you're railing on those few remakes where pretty much everyone thinks that they came out well ahead of the old version.

Gatac

I think you missed my point.
I didn't say Royale was bad. I'm saying it wasn't Bond. I'm not a huge Bond fan but I did go to see it with a couple of big fans. After they just sighed and said that it wasn't bond anymore. It was (Their word) an american action movie.
Batman Begins, I've been told, is just what the fans wanted. That said, I'm really not sure if I would be happy seeing another guy play Kirk and redoing the begining of Trek.

It's not so much remakes that are bad, I'm thinking of. More one's that missing the point of the show itself.

But seriously, guys, you need to stop thinking this is some sort of attack or moan or something. It's just a worry I have. I like Trek. I love Trek. I just worry what they're gonna do with it.

I'm just amused by the assertion that Bond is deep, but Casino Royale was just another action movie. Bond deep? Casino Royale had more characterisation than the other twenty movies put together. You've got real drama, real motivations, real pathos. The other movies, and I do love them to death, had... gadgets? Half naked chicks? There's definitely a charm there, but I'd hardly call it "deep".

Just another action movie? No, I think most of the previous Bond movies were generic action movies. This one actually had some substance. To each his own I guess, but arguing against a 94% fresh rating is even crazier than arguing against a 33% approval rating.

Batman Begins? Huh. And there was I thinking that BB was the most criminal waste of talent ever to be commited to film by a Hollywood studio. Just goes to show what I know. :rolleyes:

"Focused on profitability" and "expanding the fanbase" are mutually exclusive. "Focused on profitability" means selling the most tickets NOW. It means releasing cheaper (and hence more sellable) DVDs NOW. It means all sorts of things. "Expanding the fanbase" means having people associate more with the idea of "Star Trek" than Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise. It means having everybody care about the characters. It means having people believe in Roddenberry's vision again. And in this instance they'd actually make more money IN THE LONG RUN.

Oh, and I liked Batman Begins. Unlike some other Batman movies, I daresay that there was the lowest ratio of wasted screentime to real screentime ever for a Batman movie. The number of loose ends was minimal, especially for a Batman movie.

Huh? That's not even a half truth. Hasn't the poor box office demonstrated by the crappier entries in the latest comic book movie trend shown that the public isn't really that interested in rehash after rehash? Or what about the decreasing viability of Adam Sandler/ Rob Schneider comedy vehicles? People are sick of crap films, and they don't really shell out the bucks for them anymore. Exceptions? Sure. But whatever the hell you're talking about would get you flunked out of Marketing 101 faster than something humorously, metaphorically rapid.

How is that now? What does that mean?

Everything I've read indicates the newest movie will be a character piece. Specifically, a Kirk and Spock vehicle.

Again, Abrams has talked all about how geeked out he is about bringing said vision to life again.

They will.

PHJ, I am thankful your insane Batman cinematic opinions are vastly outnumbered by counteropinions by critics and box-office contributors alike. Bring on The Dark Knight.

Oh my, this parachute is a backpack!

Kudos for reference-spotters. I fold as far as this conversation is concerned. Defeat conceded.

Oh, I see. Just because I wear a collander on my head and sometimes talk to myself, I'm insane, is that it? :P

I like what I like, and Batman Begins failed spectacularly in this regard, regardless of what every critic and his mother says.

Actually, they only ignored the bits which made the old series worth watching - like decent writing, dialogue and/or direction.

And if you've seen what the future holds with series 3, even you would vomit.

@Burt: Now you know how I feel towards Russell Touchwood Davies.

As for political parties and their promises, see also: Hilaire Belloc's famous poem:

"That Accurs'd Power that stands on Privilege
And goes with Women and Champagne and Bridge
Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign
(Which goes with Women, and Bridge, and Champagne)"

@others:

Focusing on profit means selling out the ideals and the core of the programme, and leaving the empty husk, adding in ephemeral crap that makes you want to puke, and shoving it in front of the chav unwashed masses who will lap it up because it's got shiny SFX and so much sap it's drowning the cast, coupled with celebrity writers who have no idea what they're doing with the show. You can't play to the fans and go solely for profit. You can balance both, or crash the show in five years at the outside when people get bored with it. And that applies universally.

Oh, and as a closing comment, the Great Gatsby is dreadful, and only mindblowing in how stupendously dull it is to read.

According to that logic, The Chronicles of Riddick would have dominated the box office and ushered in a cinematic revolution.

It certainly sold out in terms of the property's core ideals. Pitch Black was a horror movie with decent but not overwhelming effects. A cult classic. The Chronicles of Riddick attempted to be Lord of the Rings in space. Huge, ambitious special effects. Designed to bring in new fans to the Riddick franchise by toning down the violence and making a gargantuan, hollow space epic with little in the way of involved plot and much in the way of over-the-top action and suspension of belief.

Instead, the movie crashed and burned at the box office. The planned trilogy was shelved, and nobody gives a damn about Riddick or the Necromongers or whatever the hell they were trying to push with that film.

One can take a pessimistic look and determine that the public only cares about pretty effects and absurdly epic action and doesn't give two spits about character, drama, or atmosphere. But from what I can tell, the trends have been the other way around lately. Huge, beautiful dumb movies like The Chronicles of Riddick have tanked, while character/actor-focused ventures with intimate drama like Casino Royale have set new records.

Edit: Then again, seeing as you loathe The Great Gatsby, I assume such inticracies as mood and tone (not to mention profoundly difficult-to-pull-off narrative techniques) don't really mean too much to you anyway.

In the cinema, perhaps. I was referring more specifically to TV.
Thank you for your bitchy, and quite pointless comment. I can see exactly why intellectual debate has flourished as it has around here.

The Great Gatsby is written in a style which can only be described as monumentally bland. The characters are two-dimensional and soulless. The dialogue is empty. It lacks anything to draw you in. All you are reading is a plot synopsis of someone's rather boring life. Mood and tone do matter to me, and that is precisely why I hate this book - it's overrated trash that has almost none of either.

Forgive me, I forgot to factor in taste. Unfortunately it seems we both have.

(Most of) the characters of The Great Gatsby are purposefully 2D and intentionally hollow. It's sort of a scathing critique of the Paris Hiltons and Lindsey Lohans of the 1920s (I hope Fitzgerald forgives me for that comparison).

I found the novel endlessly captivating and atmospheric, as have numerous critics for the better part of a century.

To each his own. Art will always be subjective. And self-proclaimed critics who attempt to slam said art will always be bitchy.

Just swinging past to say that A. Yes, they made me read Gatsby and B. I'll admit "thought-provoking," but "captivating?" Ummm....

So I saw Casino Royale for the first time a few days ago...

Ugh.

What, precisely, is your problem with Casino Royale?

Gatac

Are you sure you want to open those floodgates?

Well, to tiptoe into the water:

I miss Q and the gadgets.
I hated James Blondie's indifference on the "shaken versus stirred" thing.
I got lost in the construction area chase. Why was he chasing that guy?
James Bond almost dies because a WIRE GOT LOSE? What's up with that?
He actually told someone else about the secret tells he observed? That's just plain idiotic.
M actually sent an agent that she doesn't trust into the field just because he's the best poker player at MI6? Er, yeah...

I just noticed that no one bothered to refute, support, or disparage my argument. Odd.

Ha! Now you've jinxed it.

* I actually miss Q, too. But Desmond's dead, I didn't like Cleese doing it, and really, I think we should let that one go.

* Well, a habit has to start somewhere, doesn't it? According to the book, he gets to insist on the whole "Shaken not Stirred" thing precisely to prevent future poisonings.

* Because he's the terrorist Le Chiffre hired to blow up the airliner. When Bond took him down, he had to hire the other guy, but Bond was able to foil that by knowing a part of the plan Le Chiffre had prepared (the code to get past the security door). That ruins Le Chiffre's investment plan, and THAT kicks off the casino plot.

It's actually fairly straightforward if you pay attention to the scene before the chase, where Bond sees our parcour master receive the SMS with the password / code.

* Shit happens. I actually liked that touch - made it seem more like real gear and not the flawless gadgets we've become used to.

* He's confident that it won't come bite him in the ass. Only it does, once more establishing the central theme of the movie: Bond has to work to get things done. He's almost there on the "cool hyper-competence", but not quite. No more cakewalks.

* If M didn't trust Bond, she'd have him wash out. She's certainly not 100% behind him, but no matter the tongue-lashing she gives Bond about the chase, it's clear that it's more about the situation itself getting out of control than Bond's actions. He's merely the most convenient target for her anger, but really, MI6 screwed that one up with support personnel lacking in stealth and manpower. There wouldn't have been a chase if they'd sent more people to take the guy down.

M's complaints, though - that's like shouting at your cats for scratching your couch. It's what they do, to a certain extent. Bond had to catch parcour guy. He wanted to do it stealthy, the guy got spooked, Bond had to improvise and his first thought was to the mission, not the exposure.

As I said above in the chase scene, Bond does score one for the home team in getting the password - the way he does it isn't smooth, but it works. Bond in Casino Royale is much more about powering his way through obstacles, and that's exactly the refinement M wants to give him. That's where he'll grow. As for the poker playing, that's what we call a mission-critical skill. It's absolutely imperative that the agent they send can hold his own against Le Chiffre - you don't send your second-best man for that. The misgivings and reservations M still has don't detract from the fact that Bond is a damn good field agent by any measure, and it's silly to bench him for a screw-up that isn't even, strictly speaking, his fault.

Anything else?

Gatac

Good job. I might have simply replied to all with a different philosophy. Simply put, Casino Royale is a character piece (with a few huge action set pieces thrown in for good measure, sure). You can nitpick it if you want with your Trek-refined nerd ray. But you're sort of missing the point in the process. It's about watching the humble, flawed beginnings of a character. Somebody who's basically an archetype in the first twenty movies is actually given motivations and realistic direction to allow him to become (more or less) the character we all know and love.

Hey, you can't slam Cleese. He only got one shot at doing a "real" Q. The first time he was R, still getting his bearings. In Die Another Day he was great, or at least as great as someone other than Desmond could do.

Q: You should be able to shoot through that in a couple of hours.
Bond: Only took a few seconds, Q.
Q: I wish I could make you Vanish.

My point is just that there HAS to be another poker player at MI6. Maybe only 90% of Bond's talent, but one who's better qualified and more trustworthy.

As for the defribulator pack, it was too complicated to trust to anyone who needs the thing to use. What, they can't just have a removable backing to reveal adhesive to stick the WHOLE THING onto your chest. Whap the Big Red Button (TM) and zap away.

I'm all for incompetancies as a 00 agent licensed to kill, but the tell thing should be part of the beginning course. Don't reveal secrets about your enemies to anyone other than direct superiors while a mission is underway. He could just say "I know his tell" and move on. What, Leitner wouldn't have trusted him to leave at that?

I can slam Cleese all I want. It's our national sport!

*cough* Really, though. Don't like him as Q.

Better qualified? I shudder to think of the man at MI6 who's got more raw competence than 007. I don't think the "James Bond is a maverick, but he gets results, and that's why he does all the important stuff" theme is new to the movies.

Seeing how I don't know the intricacies of defibrillator construction, I'm perfectly fine pretending that the wires and pads are there for a reason.

Aw, come on. Does James Bond ever *not* brag? It was either that or a bad Poker-related pun/quip. Also, I'm relatively certain that the producers thought the concept of a "tell" might need more exposition. Now that I look at the scene, I could've done without it, but I didn't even notice until you mentioned it. So, eh.

Gatac

Really?
Ok.
Just don't don't mention the war.