New Star Trek Renegades Trailer

[Collector]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvVS_5jYgJE

[MusicallyInspired]

Oooooooo

[Collector]

Looks like it has pretty high production values. Another thing that caught my eye is that in a number of the Star Trek movies some of the characters come off as almost caricatures of the the ones they played in the series. Tuvok comes off as very Tuvok.

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Dat edge

[Intendant S]

Yeah. I'm so glad to be a backer of that project. I loved the scene they shared.

[Troels Pleimert]

Nemesis ruined Trek for me. Insurrection mauled me badly, but Nemesis had me in therapy for months. I'm very wary of new Trek.

[MusicallyInspired]

Didn't like Insurrection, but I really liked Nemesis.

 

If it helps this isn't Berman Trek.

[Collector]

I'm with Troels on this. I didn't care that much about Insurrection, but I really detested Nemesis. I think the movies in general don't hold up as well as the series.

[Intendant S]

I hated Nemesis. Insurrection I could handle, but I'm not a fan myself. The last really good Trek film was First Contact.

[pcj]

Renegades doesn't look like Trek, if anything it sounds like Nemesis. Acting is a little overboard and writing could use a ton of work. Makeup is good but that doesn't make it Star Trek.

 

 

I hated Nemesis. Insurrection I could handle, but I'm not a fan myself. The last really good Trek film was First Contact.

 

Insurrection is basically an extended episode of TNG so I usually let it slide. First Contact is definitely good.

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Funnily enough, I saw Nemesis only a few days ago. It really is mind-bogglingly lame. Whenever I see Tom Hardy in a movie (which is rarely, because I make it a point to not watch movies featuring Tom Hardy), I want to scream "Fuck you, Shinzon! You killed Star Trek, you asshole!" How that guy ever had anything resembling a carreer after this film is a mystery.

 

Oh yeah, and then there's this whole Data issue... You'd think that it'd be hard to come up with a lamer death than Kirk having a bridge dropped onto him, but somehow Nemesis' writers succeeded. Chapeau! :y:

 

Insurrection is complete dreck, but it's not nearly as bad as Nemesis (which in turn is nowhere near as bad as the '09 reboot). Hell, even Frakes seems to hate it from the bottom of his heart.

 

I have to admit though that Generations is starting to grow on me. Braga (watch any of his better TNG episodes, and you'll notice the guy writes Twilight Zone episodes in disguise) & Moore get points for pulling one of the most epic trolls in history, by turning what was supposed to be the ultimate fanboy nerdgasm into a film about two old guys who are unhappy with the choices they made in life. Plus, Generations has Caligula play the bad guy (always a big plus, no matter how shitty the film. This is important to remember, because Caligula plays in a lot of shitty films, including the aptly shitty Caligula). On the downside: bridge dropping, although that also could be interpreted as a part of the big Braga/Moore master plan of subverting fanboy fantasies.

 

So much for my unsolicited opinions on TNG at the movies. Have a nice day! :)

 

edit: Oh, by the way: Happy 1000th post, pcj!

[MusicallyInspired]

Heh interesting. I would have thought Nemesis would have gotten a little more love than Insurrection. I'm fairly open-minded and enjoy all kinds of Trek. I don't mind it when it deviates from Roddenberry's original vision. There are pros and cons to all Treks. I thought the story was pretty good and the acting great. Definitely was more engaging to me than Insurrection. I don't know. I just thought it was well done.

 

I do think First Contact, while good, is overrated and deviated more from TNG than any other movie.

[Fronzel Neekburm]

There are pros and cons to all Treks.

I can't agree with that assessment, as it would imply that there are cons to "The Wrath Of Khan". Surely, you don't mean to imply that, do you? :angry:

 

I agree with you that Nemesis has a good story - well, the story as such isn‘t very good either, but the basic idea for the story (under different circumstances, you might have grown up to become your own worst nightmare) definitely is. The main reason for Nemesis getting more hate would be [aside from randomly killing off the most beloved character of the series and handling it in a way that doesn‘t affect you -or even the crew themselves- in any way whatsoever, while haphazardly introducing some escape hatch character that nobody gives a flying fuck about - you brought up the word "engaging", which is excellent because that's basically the complete opposite word of how I would describe how Data's death was handled] that while Nemesis does have its few good qualities, the bad parts are just so horrendously and offensively bad, that you can‘t help but intensely dislike the film. Insurrection on the other hand is just one big bog of boredom. It‘s pretty bad, but it never gets offensively bad. But it also never gets good either.

 

Personally, I don‘t consider myself much of a Roddenberry purist either. I mean, the guy basically had total creative control of "The Motion Picture“ and that one might well be the worst Trek film apart from Nemesis. The only redeeming qualities are excellent visual effects, some of which still look marvellous today, and Goldsmith‘s majestic score.

 

I do think First Contact, while good, is overrated and deviated more from TNG than any other movie.

Personally, I have a soft spot for that one. Saw it in the theatre back in '96 and I'd still say that this was the most fun I've ever had watching a movie in the theatre. Putting down the nostalgia goggles I'd also have to agree that it might have deviated too much from what TNG stood for. Not sure if I'd call it overrated, though. It's certainly not underrated.

[MusicallyInspired]

Interesting. I disagree about the handling of Data's death. I was definitely moved. I thought it built up nicely to it throughout the film as well. With his continued illumination of what humanity is all about, offering Picard advice on his humanity, and then ultimately performing the most human act he has ever done: sacrificing himself for his friend. Sure he SAID he would do it many times before, but he actually ended up doing it this time. And that following the previous conversations they had, all that went unsaid in that last moment made it extremely meaningful and powerful to me.

 

It didn't feel like it was just some android that blew up, it felt like losing a human. A member of your family. It felt like that to me, anyway. The epilogue was fantastic as well, with still leaving a glimmer of hope at the very end that even though Data was gone and would never return, part of him survived and existed in somebody else, a perfect metaphor for humanity when we lose someone we love. At least until Star Trek Online revived Data through B4, but I like that too.

 

And it's not necessarily that I think each and every film all has pros and cons. Kahn would be the pro while Frontier would be the con, for instance. But even Frontier has pros. Fantastic score, for one. Probably the best in the series. I don't think any of the films are a resounding con and I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find something wrong with Kahn, however small, as I haven't seen it in a while.

[Fronzel Neekburm]

part of him survived and existed in somebody else, a perfect metaphor for humanity when we lose someone we love

 

I never thought about it this way, but yeah, that's a pretty cool way to interpret the ending.

 

Maybe I'm just jaded and cynical, but most of the scenes you brought up (especially the ending with escape hatch starting to sing) just felt sappy to me.

 

But even Frontier has pros.

Full disclosure: As a kid I LOVED Final Frontier. Even now I'd say it's nowhere near the worst Trek film.

 

I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find something wrong with Kahn, however small, as I haven't seen it in a while.

Then you should definitely watch it again! Can't never get enough of that beautiful film! Two cons I could get come up with off the top of my head:

- It has spawned a "Director‘s Edition“ on DVD that adds a bunch of superfluous shit. Theatrical Cut 4 da win!

- For whatever reason, the on-set audio sounds sounds like it was recorded on a phonograph cylinder

Other than that, TWOK is so good I‘m inclined to go into full on hipster-mode and claim that they ruined Star Trek by bringing that pointy-eared bastard back! ;)

[pcj]

Kahn would be the pro while Frontier would be the con, for instance.

[MusicallyInspired]

Oh I'm no stranger to the awesomeness of Kahn. Great movie. I have all the special and director's editions of all the Star Trek movies on 2-disc DVD (the gray cases). I've binge-watched them all and all their special features over the course of a couple weeks one time. But that was a while ago and we tend to only remember the good of something, unless it was a truly terrible film. I'd have to watch it again to remember the bad.

 

Not really a biggie, but they DID infer that Chekov was present during the events of Space Seed when in fact he wasn't even on the show yet.

[Collector]

Personally, I don‘t consider myself much of a Roddenberry purist either. I mean, the guy basically had total creative control of "The Motion Picture“ and that one might well be the worst Trek film apart from Nemesis. The only redeeming qualities are excellent visual effects, some of which still look marvellous today, and Goldsmith‘s majestic score.

One of the things that they wanted to do with The Motion Picture was to do something completely new from what they had done in the series. However, the idea of encountering an old probe that had been transformed into something more than what it was already done in The Changeling.

 

I don't ask for Roddenberry to be the final arbiter of all things Trek, but I think it is important to stay close to his original intent of Star Trek. There is a reason that the franchise has lasted for nearly a half century. It has been based on stories and ideas that assume that the viewer is not your average moron. It often explored ideas about the human condition that were impossible to explorer in more conventional means. While Science Fiction, the technology was derived from extrapolating from what we know rather than just pure fancy, which is often a failing of your average "Sci Fi".

 

While action sequences were no stranger to Star Trek, they were not all that common and not used gratuitously. If all you want from a "Sci Fi" show or movie is a bunch of brainless action, there are plenty of other ones out there. Adding it to Trek destroys what has made it so enduring. This is why Abrams fails so miserably with his "reboot". Either he is an idiot or doesn't give a flying f*ck. He has turned it into empty mind candy for idiots that get bored if they have to be bothered with an idea or they don't get to see a chase scene, explosion or a fight every five minutes.

[MusicallyInspired]

See, I don't agree it HAS to be about deeper stories. Wrath of Kahn certainly wasn't very thought-provoking. Neither was First Contact. Yet both are revered by fans as the ultimate Trek movies. Motion Picture and Final Frontier were as deep as they come and both are reviled by many.

 

I'm sorry, I just think most people's hate on Abrams' Trek is based on the fact that he's a newcomer, he's a well-known and successful director (so automatically he "doesn't get it"), and that it had lens flares.

 

Sure it's not the same Trek, but that doesn't make it bad. It was a well made flick and I really enjoyed it. Just because the focus is on (good) action storytelling right now doesn't mean deep sci-fi is dying. It doesn't deserve as much hate as it gets when you judge it on its own merits. But too many people look at Star Trek as untouchably sacred. I just don't think it's worth the time and energy to hate it for that.

[Fronzel Neekburm]

I‘m on the same page with Collector regarding his assessment of post-Abrams-Trek When I say that Nemesis is the worst Trek film, that‘s not taking the "reboot" (God, I hate that industry buzzword some corporate asshole came up with to sugarcoat the word remake) into account.

Even as action films I find them aesthetically displeasing and juvenile. Lens flares aside, they look like someone ate a box of fruit loops and puked them onto the cellulloid. And why does it have to be that dumb?

In fact, one of the reasons I reassessed Generations was because I watched "Into Darkness" recently and found it to be extremely fanboyish. I mean, the Abrams Treks feel like really bad, juvenile fan-fiction. Generations - while being pretty bad in its own right - feels like the exact opposite of the Abrams movies. (Surprisingly enough, I did enjoy Into Darkness quite a bit. It was nothing to write home about, but at least they tried. It was a definite improvement over the endless painful barrage of stupid that was '09.)

The story of TWOK might not seem overly deep or anything, but there certainly is at least some level of sophistication to the writing and the whole thing is delivered with such larger-than-life gusto. It might not seem very thought-provoking on the surface, but it certainly is a story that stays with you.

Motion Picture, on the other hand, pretends to be deep, when in reality, it‘s basically a glorified re-telling of "The Changeling". I don‘t even think that TMP managed to add any additional layers or managed to unearth some deeper meaning that wasn‘t already there in the TOS episode. The whole premise of the movie seems to rest on the idea that a race of highly evolved machine beings are incapable of rubbing some dirt off a NASA probe. The writing itself is easily some of the worst in the entire series. Kirk is an insufferable douche for most of the film. There‘s this painfully obvious attempt at trying to generate suspense by throwing numbers at the viewer: "The cloud is definitely a power field of some kind. It measures - OMG! - over 2 AUs in diameter!" or "Twelfth-power energy field" - "Twelfth-power!" Sorry, but that‘s just hogwash and the film is full of this sort of borderline self-parody. I remember somebody (Shatner?) saying that they didn‘t have a finished script when they started filming, but were confident that they had enough talented people on board that somebody just had to come up with something great at some point. But that never happened, so they just filmed whatever they saw fit to film that day and this approach shows in the movie.

While raising some interesting questions on a very superficial level, "Final Frontier“'s level of sophistication basically begins and ends at Kirk asking „If god is really almighty, can he create a stone that‘s too heavy for him to lift?“

If I had to give an example of what I‘d consider genuinely deep Star Trek, I‘d pick episodes like TOS' "Charlie X" and "Arena" (Yes, I find the lizard dude episode way smarter than TMP), TNG‘s "The Drumhead" and "The Offspring" or DS9‚s "Duet" and "Hard Time".

And if those shouldn‘t do the trick, there‘s always the original "RoboCop" if you‘re looking for a good fix of cerebral sci-fi.



Good lord, sorry for the endless ramblings! Speaking of Star Trek I just go on and on and on and on never letting anyone else have a word until I start foaming at the mouth and fall over backwards,,, AAaaahhhh!

[Collector]

No, I don't think ST always has to be deep. The Trouble with Tribbles is certainly not that thought provoking, but was was still driven by the narrative and very entertaining. Not all stories have to be dramatic or serious, but still the narrative is part of what made Trek so enduring. As to Abrams, I don't dismiss him because he is a newbie, but he is still a clueless git when it comes to understanding what made it work. Let him go ruin some other franchise. Let's see how he makes Star Wars "more exciting."

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Let him go ruin some other franchise.

 

(...although I'm not sure exactly how Abrams could possibly come up with something that's even worse than Episode III)

[MusicallyInspired]

Wow. We must have vastly different tastes because I thought Ep3 was the best of the prequels.

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Wow. We must have vastly different tastes because I thought Ep3 was the best of the prequels.

Could be. I enjoyed Ep I and II for what they were, trashy fun. I had higher hopes for Ep III, especially considering the high praise it got upon release (with many people calling it a return to form). It turned out to be just plain trash that had every last bit of fun surgically removed.

There is, for example, this whole killing children business. Call me uptight, but when you kill a child, that basically makes you irredeemable scum in my book. When Luke says "I feel the good in you, the conflict." in "Return of the Jedi", it now makes me want to answer "Nah, man! The guy‘s a childkiller. Let him rot!“ It‘s out of character even for Vader. It would‘ve been more suitable if the emperor had killed the children, while Anakin is standing idly by. That also would‘ve tied in nicely to the scene of the emperor torturing Luke at the end of "Return“. But what do I know...