PT Anyone else afraid Disney is going to pretend the prequels don't exist?

You're right. The "hostile takeover" was just disgruntled man-children running their mouths off for more than a decade solid, finally perhaps convincing Lucas to sell to Disney and be done with it.

Abrams is a hack. Lord, he's a hack. Of course, not really, really. He's a smart, professional, hard-working artist. But, to me, he's also a damn hack.

And you know why? I could give you a thousand reasons, but I'll simply give you one: flags in "Star Trek". The man has urinated all over Gene Roddenberry's legacy and then laughed himself silly all the way to the bank.

I'm a pessimistic-optimist, so I like the idea of a "suck it and see" attitude, but I don't easily adopt it in practice. It would only be faintly more absurd to me if they'd announced Michael Bay as the new director.

They've so played to the angry choir with this one. Just get someone that's all bells and whistles with no depth or sophistication -- that the hoi ruddy polloi want in the driving seat -- and that should placate the mob, right?

I'd rather Lucas have kept telling the mob to eat cake.

 

I don't doubt that he's the one at least partly responsible for this growing clusterfrack. Maybe he figured it was better to try and do it while he was alive than accept an inevitable series of events after he was dead. Maybe Disney will honor the stipulations, and maybe they won't-- it certainly wouldn't be the first time they've railroaded somebody.

 

The sad thing is that a good portion of the movies and series that were done before Abrams came to Trek were effectively pissing over Roddenberry's legacy, too. He had little say over any of the movies after The Motion Picture disappointed at the box office-- he particularly didn't like the turn to militarism than Wrath of Khan represented. And as fun as I think that movie is, I'd have rather seen more movies like TMP or at the very least more films that properly represented Roddenberry's vision, and not because I'm a fan of Roddenberry, but because I value the authority of an author, rather than a corporation.

 

Well, fine. Informed Star Trek fans know that Roddenberry basically got kicked upstairs after Paramount blamed him for the production woes of TMP. But even the films that followed had a lot of the "Star Trek" spirit in them, especially thanks to the actors, who had an authentic chemistry and played their parts with aplomb. Until Abrams, big-screen Trek may have been a little loud and dumb, but it wasn't lame-brain. It was still beautiful, elegant, human, and distinguished by certain grace notes. Now, it's an awful canopy of noise and idiocy wrapped up in a thin wafer of empty corporate razzmatazz. Slick, but soulless; witty, but not refined. And it's like the scripts have been run through a shredder first, then reassembled as if to make the least possible sense before Abrams splurges in MTV cutting and lens flare.

The press release alone, for "Into Darkness", is so hyperbolic and pock-mocked with cliches that it defies comprehension: "When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organisation has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew." This is the same sort of dreary, overblown, dime-store nonsense that defined the first film: one unearned, violent, deafening, thuggish, foul excuse for a plot development after another.

Even the worst offering before Abrams -- it's a toss-up between "Insurrection" and "Nemesis" to me -- had at least some meat to go with all that gravy.

But hey, this is the guy that'll be directing the next Star Wars film ... and there's nothing any of us can do about it. It's time for a new generation to discover misogyny, racism, militarism, bar brawling, emotional blackmail, badly-done action sequences, television aesthetics, and staggering plot illogic anew.

 

I'm no Trekkie, but my exposure to the original series is considerable enough to know that The Motionless Picture was the deviation, and not the The Wrath of Khan. Roddenberry's "vision" must have shifted tremendously in the 70s, if he was content to siphon all the joy and adventure and spiky human dynamics out of the story in favor of producing some half-assed 2001/Solaris monstrosity. (Yes, I detest TMP, almost as much as Abrams's brainless, cynical reboot.)

Would I be a hypocrite, in extolling Paramount for pushing Roddenberry to the periphery while bristling at the thought of a Star Wars venture without George Lucas at the helm?

 

Star Trek was and Star Wars is badly in need of some sparkle. We already had racism, militarism, badly done action sequences, television aesthetics, and a staggeringly illogical plot in GL's version of the Star Wars, so I say bring on the bar brawling! Let's get some Scoundrels ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Scoundrels )style storytelling going on and add some "razzmatazz" to this series. I don't think I'm alone when I say, enough of this overwrought space jesus/force germs garbage. Bring on (back) the snappy dialog, adventure, and sense of fun... You know, the way Star Wars used to be before GL's ego got in the way.

 

I'm not a Trekkie either, but from what I can gather Roddenberry's vision was always fairly compromised on the original series, something that's pretty clear just from how many times they had to shoot a new pilot episode that the suits thought more viewers would be attracted to. Apparently his incredibly idiosynchratic utopian vision of a future humanity evolved from all its petty conflict kept rubbing producers and writers the wrong way, who couldn't understand the extremes to which he wanted to see his vision of the future portrayed, and it kept being watered down to the point that you had a cowboy like Captain Kirk embodying a lot of the machismo and agression that Roddenberry seemed to be trying to avoid in the first place. The course that The Next Generation eventually took is more representative of the vision he had from the start, and it's interesting that The Motion Picture was largely based on a proposed series that Roddenberry was trying to push in the 70's, much of whose material would eventually be recycled in the later show in the 80's.

Anyway. It's arguable that Roddenberry's vision in the 60's, left unchecked, would've been too strange, pacifistic and unemotional for most audiences to get, and that you needed a tamer version just to reach viewers with how ground breaking the original show was on any number of levels (I personally don't care for the program at all, but it was worth it for the Kirk/Uhura kiss alone). Perhaps a more Next Generation style program would've done well in the 60's, and perhaps viewers needed to gradually get used to the show for years. And with the movies you have a whole other industrial can of worms being opened that'd be too much for him to contain. But it's always bothered me that the most popular elments of Trek have tended to be the ones that were the most compromised, the most watered down, just from a standpoint of respecting the integrity of an artist's original vision.

 

I dont think Disney will have any choice but to ignore the prequels because... Well, the characters from episodes I, II, III are all dead... Yoda is dead, Qui Gon is dead, Mace is dead, Anakin/Darth is dead, Obi Wan is dead, Boba Fett is dead, Jabba the Hutt is dead, Palpatine is dead, Queen Armadillo is dead and let's hope to Christ that Jar Jar is also dead!
So I dont see how they will be able to reference much in the way of anything that happened in the prequels... They will have their own vision of the Starwars universe and things that happened in the prequel stories would bear no relevance to the events that happen after RotJ
The only person i can think of who survived is Chewbacca... And i bet he doesnt give a fudge toffee about the prequels either

 

Jar Jar will be carbon frozen and be the hero of the New Republic!

 

I would like one of the new films to consist entirely of Jar Jar being cloned continuously and being hurled into the Sarlaac pit for the whole movie whilst the ORIGINAL ewok celebration music at the end of Jedi plays on a continuous loop

 

Why not? If TPM can gross a billion, anything can.

 

Well I do not fully agree. I think that Gene's vision for Star Trek changed between TOS in the 60's and TMP and TNG in the 70's and early 80's.
Compare for ex "The Omega Glory", that Gene wrote himself, with first season TNG and imagine if that show, with it's naked patriotism, would have fitted there.
Also you have ep like "Balance of Terror" which Gene co-wrote that features battles and a fair amount of bigotry from one Star Fleet officer.
TOS showed a Star Fleet that was a navy, that had officer with different ranks and had ships with lots of quite powerfull weapons.
So it was fairly militaristic back then.

Yes first season TNG was perhaps the season where Gene had the most influence and yes they used some elements from the never made "Phase two" series. But to me, first season TNG is the weakest of the whole of TNG. In TOS you had some argument and conflict between the Star Fleet people, there were some bigotry and sexism. In short humans weren't perfect but they were striving towards noble goal but not always succeding.
First seaon TNG sometimes had "perfect" humans that bragged about how much more "evolved" they were over all others and how they were so "perfect" that they didn't have headaches anymore. Picard could be very condesending and stuck up at times. In later season he got much better and more at ease and a warmer person.

I have lots of respect for Gene and his creation but I also have to be honest and to me, some of his ideas did not make for good and engaging drama. To Gene there could be no conflict between the crew on the Enterprise and so all conflcit had to be external and we got the Ferengi. Not a very good enemy. Also he said that future humans never grieve or mourn, they instantly accept death as natural and move on. Even small children will not shed a single tear when their mothers die.
TNG hit it's stride in season three and got better and better and by then Gene's influence had decreased. Season seven was a bit weak as it seemed that they were running out of ideas but it ened well.

TMP, while having some interesting ideas and some good characters fails for one main reason, the effects killed the movie. By that I mean that there were so many effects that they take over and almost kill the story. You have an almost five minutes sequence of flying around the new Enterprise, no dialogue. Long, long, long sequence of just the ship flying through space. This overuse of effects, to me, killed the pace of the film and it is no suprise that some call it "The Motionless Picture."

In closing, if the following ST films had been more liked TMP then there is a good chance that there would not have been more than 1-2 more.
Same thing with TNG, if Gene had retained controll then I think that that show would not have lasted beyond season 2 or maybe 3.
And that would likely have been the end of Star Trek.
Certainly not all of the Star Trek that we got after Gene was great or even good, some was quite bad. But some of ST best films and shows were those that Gene had little to do with. Star Trek 2 and 6, TNG's "Best of Both Worlds", "Tapestry", some of Deep Space Nine.
The worst ST film, to me, is ST V because it treats many of the franchises regulars in a frankly insulting manner and it's story makes no sense and is filled with holes and logical disconnects.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

If the prequels are ignored, then that's Disney's own poor choice. But first, let's address what it means to be "ignored:"
Since the prequels aren't directly related to the sequels, the connections won't be as strong; that much can be assumed. But contradicting the sequels, now that's where it could be a problem. Still, if they did that, it would only be bad continuity; if they went that route, they should have just rebooted it.

But I have faith nonetheless. I won't imagine I-III will be constantly mentioned, but some elements might be brought up.

 

If by afraid, you mean hoping, then yes.

 

I just hope that they screen all scripts/stories for plot holes/inconsistencies. We've struggled though 6 films over a 27 year period (1977-2005) with huge holes/inconsistencies in the plot adding another 3 (5 if you include stand alones) it's a big ask to align it all. Perhaps they should also include elements from the 2 ewok films, droids and ewoks cartoon series alongside the clone wars one....just to add to the potential confusion.

 

I'm actually a big fan of Abrams' Star Trek but I'm also a fan of all Star Trek across the board in all of the series. One thing that you can do with Star Trek, maybe even moreso than Star Wars, is work outside the conventions of the series. Because if you look at all of Star Trek altogether and don't toss any of it aside, there's an incredibly broad spectrum of different types of Star Trek stories. Abrams' is more of a chase-action flick, which does have precedent of any of the series trying a story along those lines. One thing it's guilty of is blowing up the old continuity, despite the press interviews saying that "oh, wait, it's an alternate reality, the original Star Trek is still there right beside it." But nobody was doing anything with the old continuity anyway, I'm cool if they blew it up. And since they're in a different version of Star Trek, all of Abrams' stylistic quirks work because this is his interpretation of the universe. But Star Trek, if anything, is multi-adapative to any genre. And it's literally probably one of the first big movie & TV media franchises that did a reboot that still kept it within the confines of the old series, as opposed to every other reboot ever that said "This is a reboot, the other movies didn't happen." Which makes Star Trek a unique sequel, prequel, reboot, and remake all at once. Seprebootmake!

 

They could at least nuke the Midichlorian concept. Otherwise no, the PT shouldn't be contradicted.

 

Couldn't agree more. I like to think that during the temple takeover in RotS the section of the archives labelled 'Midichlorians' was mysteriously destroyed.

 

because of course they don't have sophisticated microscopes to "rediscover them"

 

No amount of revisionism and/or record destruction is going to erase people's memories. Parents can always tell their kids what the government won't.

 

I don't know. Just the thought of Luke saying midi chlorians and talking about them fills me with dread.

 

Luke's Padawan; Luke Sir, I heard someone mention midichlorians, I was wondering what are midichlorians?

Luke: Midichlorians was a word invented by a controversial Jedi who freed my Father by tampering with his slave masters chance cube, instead of leaving it to the WILL of the force..anyway to cut a looong story short, he invented the word because Anakin, my father misheard Yoda talking about mini-chlorine bottles for his secret party pool that no one was supposed to know about, so Qui-Gon (always thinking on his feet) made up some hash brown story about cells in your blood

Padawan: but what about those midichlorian testing machines?

Luke: a fun little app game for the holo-pc, now go and practice your training

 

Going the opposite way on this thoery:
They could find Kamino again, isolate Midichlorians, and clone them. Pure force in a bottle!! It'd be like RedBull for non-force users. This would help establish a New Jedi Order so much quicker too, as potentialy everyone could join it.

 

Good then, that Luke Skywalker doesn't know anything about midichlorians.

 

I would accept a mention of Midichlorians if it was an instance wherein they tested a padawan with a high level of force sensitivity, and the results show that they have a low MC count.

In turn, debunking the theory as an old-age explaination for the existence of the Force, possibly as a way for the Jedi to justify their powers to a society which, at the best of times, still felt uncomfortable around force-users... Thus, restoring the beauty and mystery of the force's presence!

Truthfully, I wouldn't be completely destroyed if MCs were present, life goes on... I suppose... *sigh*