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Old 03-12-2007, 06:20 PM
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ijdgaf ijdgaf is offline
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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.
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