"Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon"--Montgomery Scott, reacting to seeing the USS Excelsior in Star Trek IIIYes, folks, this is J.J. Abrams' version of the starship Enterprise, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.
I respect Mr. Abrams' work. I think "Lost" is one of the best shows ever. But I have a feeling this thing is going to be the biggest bomb since the Genesis Device took out the Mutara Nebula.
What is not being understood here is that you don't mess with your base. This is too radical a change for Star Trek fans, and just as John McCain had to reverse many of his positions to get the religious right to support his candidacy, Abrams should have asked for a more faithul recreation for his movie. He is going to enrage half the Star Trek fans in the world with an unfaithful design. The vast majority of people seeing this movie aren't going to care about what the Enterprise looks like and that's okay for the short term, but potential hardcore repeat viewers are not going to go back to the theaters to see it. And that's where $300 million grosses come from.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope this movie grosses a zillion dollars and they make a ton of sequels. But after seeing this design, I have no faith that it's going to happen. They should have gone with this one, designed by a fan:
2 comments:
Alright. Since I seem to have the solemn duty of countering some of your points, I'll weigh in on this one. Every single franchise that has been rehashed, whether it be Superman, Star Wars, or Star Trek, has changed fundamentals and caused uproar. There is no way they were going to make this movie with the way the original Enterprise looked. Why you ask? Because it looks like it cost $1.99 on clearance at a Kmart. Nobody in today's society is going to believe that a spaceship is realistic when it looks like the original Enterprise. I know, I know, it is a classic and everyone recognizes it, but nobody outside of the Star Trek faithful is going to appreciate it. I imagine the goal was to make the movie for more than just the Trekkies.
That being said, I don't think this movie will do well; not because of the way the Enterprise looks, but because interest in the Star Trek world has waned considerably since (I think) TNG ended. I couldn't stand to watch DS9 or Voyager, they just weren't what Star Trek was supposed to be--what made it interesting in the first place--"where no(man)one has gone before". I know Voyager went new places, but their purpose was purely to get home, not exploration. I think you know this, but I have never really cared for TOS, yet I think TNG has some of the best writing ever produced on television. That's not to say that TOS was badly written; to me it just was executed so badly visually that it took away from the story. What a difference in 18 years, huh? Of course I know this is probably generational (and yes, you're a baby boomer...by 26 days); I just thought I would present a counterpoint to you.
How about the picture on the bottom though? It doesn't look like it came from K-Mart and is far more faithful.
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