PT Should Disney reboot/re-edit the Prequels eventually?

I do not care whatsoever. There are many great movies that did only marginally well.

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My ten year old likes Han Solo shooting Greedo. As far as I can tell, he doesn't care for kiddie sentiment.

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First, if Trek continuity is TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT and all ten films. Then these new films are still part of that as they take place after ENT in the time line. They even made an ENT reference in the first film.

Second, they have tried to make Trek that is set before TOS and maintain continuity, that was ENT. And it failed big time and got cancelled. The first two seasons was hampered by them always using "the magic reset button". They met the Borg and the Ferengi but as they were supposed to be unknown later, "magic reset button." In the later seasons they got better with the Xhindi (sp) plot but by then it was too late and the damage had been done.
So I don't blame them for trying to make Trek that wasn't chained to this massive continuity.
I would even say it took some nerve to make a big change and NOT undo it later.

Third, to me, the decline of Star Trek began with Voy. DS9 was taking risks and challenging some old ideals and did things Trek hadn't done before. Some if which got a lot of criticism as it didn't paint humans in the future as perfect. With Voy I got more and more a sense that Trek had become Trek Inc, the status quo would be kept, nothing much would be changed, you will always know what you got. Things would happen and then "magic reset button" and things would be as before.

Fourth and finally, I am a Trek fan and I like the new films, they aren't the best, that would be ST2 and 6 but they are far from the worst, that would be ST 5 and 7, with 9 nor far behind.
The first film suffers from a bad and under developed villain and Kirk has little if any character growth. The second, it's big flaw, at least to me, is that they try too hard to make TWoK again. It was the same trap Nemesis fell into.
If they had skipped Kirk going to sleep for a few minutes and kept Admiral Marcus as the sole villain, I think it would have made for a better film. But there are several good and interesting ideas in the film. How does a peaceful society react when faced with a devastating attack and loss? When they have hostile and aggressive neighbors?
They might want to become a little like them, have more weapons and stronger ships. And if the public won't agree to this, they'll do it anyway but in secret. This is stuff that Trek has explored in the past, DS9 introduced section 31, which is mentioned in the second film. You also had an admiral staging what looked to be a Dominion attack in order to gain more power and make the Federation stronger (in his eyes). In TNG you had parts of Star Fleet command thinking that the treaty with the Romulans forbidding cloaking tech for the Federation is a crippling mistake and they try make their own cloak. In TNG, after the first Borg attack you see hints that Star Fleet has become a bit more militarized.

Also in the new films, the issue of loyalty is brought up. Loyalty to your friends and obeying orders. At what point is following orders wrong? Kirk and Spock trade places when it comes to this. In the beginning Kirk violates orders to save his friends and same friend reports him and Kirk looses his ship. Then Kirk is given and order to kill the criminal they are after and now Spock objects to those orders. Scotty actually resigns rather than follow orders.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Sure, but I think you are missing the point. Tampering and tinkering within the established ST universe is a completely different thing, even if controversial, to rebooting the entire thing from scratch. At best it was done out of grossly unimaginative laziness and at worst it's a cynical box office cash grab. Unfortunately it seems to be a combination of the 2. Whether or not the new ST is good or which old ST is bad is beside the point.

And I loved Enterprise and enjoyed Nemesis.

 

Anakin's fall works much better when you look at it as something that spans the course of all three films and comes as a result of every single action, rather than just the isolated events of RotS. His fall isn't just a moment, it's a string of events, and the culmination of those events that occurs in RotS wouldn't have been possible without the details from the prior films feeding into them. Together all three films tell a more cohesive version of that fall than any single film would have.

 

The point is that JJ's Trek films are still within Trek continuity, they made a number of big changes yes but that doesn't make it a total reboot.
And I don't think old Trek was all bad and the new films are great, there is some old Trek that is way better than the new films but also a lot that is much worse.

And I don't think it was either laziness or BO that motivated the choices the creative people made.

They had a franchise that was by most considered dead and buried. The last Trek film flopped and the last Trek series got cancelled after four seasons when all three previous series had seven seasons. ENT showed that doing a series set before TOS and still be chained to all that continuity was not a recipe for success. Going back to Kirk and Spock, which were and are very popular characters, that makes sense and probably BO influenced that choice. Could they have made a Trek film set after Nemesis with all new characters? Sure but the odds of that working would be very slim.
A DS9 movie, unlikely.
So Kirk and Spock and they managed to get Nimoy to agree to come back, had they not, I think it is possible that the first film might not have gotten made. So they made a do-over, not a complete reboot.

The choice to change so much could easily have backfired because this is a Trek film and a big chunk of the potential audience would be Trek fans. And pissing them off could lead to the film flopping.
And constantly having to worry about decades of continuity can easily hamstring writers, which I think ENT showed.
So they made a gamble and it worked very well, the 2009 film has the highest domestic gross of all Trek film, even when adjusting for inflation.

As for Nemesis, I think it is ok, it suffers from a villain that seem to sabotage his own plans, Stewart wanting to be an action star and a director who didn't much like Trek and who couldn't even remember LeVar Burton's first name, instead calling him "Lawerne" and thinking that his character was an alien.

ENT? It has some ok to good episodes but a number of terrible ones, like "Bounty" (with a horny T'Pol), "A night in sickbay" and "Dear Doctor" (where the captain and doctor commit genocide).
A lot of season one and two episodes rely on Archer not doing the sensible thing because then they would be 15 minutes long. As I said, the show managed to find itself later on and had an interesting story arc with the Xindi. But by then it was too late. And the final episode wasn't very good either and had a pretty contrived crossover with Riker.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

You're interesting to read often Samuel but I have to disagree with some of your Trek stances. I, having been a serious Trek fan since mid-TNG (discovered it in 1990 I think) think that TNG and DS9 are the best series and IV and IX being the best films. Likewise I strongly disagree Trek was dead and buried or the ENT died because it was attempting to be tied to 45 years of history. For me, it died because the quality was low and the characters pretty unsympathetic. I only really liked Shran. Which is kinda funny because I can't stand the actor on DS9.

The new films which completely distort the timeline and events I happily ignore as Trek '09 was poor and dull. I like learning about differences.

 

That connection to the TOS universe is flimsy and sooo cynical. It was literally the easiest/laziest way possible for them to reboot while pretending that they cared about the Trek fan base. It was written, directed and produced by ppl who didn't even hide their lack of enthusiasm (to be polite) for the almost half a century of ST that had come before them - and that really showed in the movies.

edit: When I invest myself into a fictional universe like ST and SW, it's very different than liking this or that movie or characters. I enjoy the entire universe - with all it's triumphs, flaws and warts. My continued engagement with such universes depends less on the specific success or failure of any given installment, but rather how that installment adds to and fits into the greater fictional universe that I love to learn about and watch.

edit2: If something like the ST (or SW) universe has run it's course (financial success wise). Perhaps it's time to just let it be.

 

You mean the second had an eensy-weensy, teeny-weeny (yellow polka dot bikini) bit more depth than the first? Sure -- that flies.

It's not like the first, in my opinion, set a particularly high bar, or anything. In fact, the new set of films (in my eyes), had a heck of a lot of catching up to do.

Yet it's mostly more of the same. Sorry, but in my view, the Starfleet crew are still behaving like a bunch of frat clowns in the second movie, and the film again throws contrived plotting at a viewer, over and over. And it's just as crudely shot and jammed together as the first movie.

Take the scene of Kirk communicating with Scotty in a bar. Guy goes to drink his sorrows in a bar cliché (not like the first movie didn't wear that one out). And somehow, very conveniently, Scotty still has his Starfleet communicator -- after resigning. Then Kirk is attempting to verbally pass on some numbers, to a person who's been drinking, in a loud, and frankly, distracting setting. Scotty even makes a mistake and asks for one of the numbers again, and Kirk corrects him, but never checks he got the numbers down properly. You'd think the scene might have been written slightly less jokily, given just how important those co-ordinates were meant to be. Kirk only has his rear end saved because Scotty follows through and saves the day at the last second; lucky he got them right. Lucky he also knew what on Earth those numbers actually meant; and that no-one else was listening in (NSA, Section 31, or equivalents of). In fact, Scotty abruptly hangs up the call, barking at Kirk down the device, leaving Kirk in the dark as to whether he was going to help him or not -- again, he'd resigned; and because, in his own words, Kirk "made" him do it. And then there's the small matter of Scotty somehow breaking into a top-secret facility. Well, I say "breaking in", but he magically flew there with no resistance, and infiltrated a black-ops military facility without even using a fake code or anything.

Yet, when it comes to the prequels, just a simple scene between a queen and a robot is a big issue, and "obviously" reeks of contrivance. And we're told over and over again that "nothing" in any of the movies "makes any sense at all". Where, in comparison, is the rancorous disapproval for the Abrams' Trek films? Why are we not hearing endless belligerent polemics about how much THEY suck, how much THEY dick with established lore, how much THEY simplify and insult a viewer's intelligence, how much THEY shrink the universe, how many sins of convenience THEY unashamedly engage in, how much petulance and idiocy THEIR characters frequently display or tolerate? I'm not talking about piecemeal, scattershot criticism. I'm talking about endless deprecation, prolonged assaults on minor scenes and plot points, people getting hung up over single lines of dialogue. It just isn't there. And yet, in my opinion, it SHOULD be, if people are being consistent and claim to care about coherency, depth, imagination, and subtlety, and wish to avoid having their intelligence abused.

Also, what you threw out there is very basic, and very cherry-picked. It doesn't (in my view) extirpate the film's other problems; even on those very plot points. Spock, for instance, may be the voice of reason to begin with, but he ends up thrashing Khan at the end in order to incapacitate him, so that they can use his "super" blood and save Kirk -- talk about a degraded view of ethics. "Yeah, let me just beat this person to a pulp to make myself feel better, and let's pretend, because this also saves Kirk, I haven't just violated every principle I stand for." (The polar opposite of the PT's story climax; where the aggression of characters like Mace and Anakin costs them and their world dearly). What happens to Khan after that, by the way? Kirk's giving an august (hackneyed) speech, while Khan is being sealed from the light, shut up inside a darkened warehouse. Like one of Indiana Jones' treasures. Dead? In a coma? On life support? "Into Darkness", indeed.

 

I agree that TNG and DS9 are the best series, TOS is good too but it was made in a different era so that makes it a bit hard to compare. I also agree that other factors played a part in Trek going down. I talked a bit about the feeling I got that Trek was now Trek Inc. That the shows and films could not stray too far outside the comfort zone and if they did then the magic reset button was pushed and the status quo was maintained.
My main argument with ENT was in relation to all that continuity. Several times on ENT they were limited in what they could do because they could not mess with previous continuity. So trying to make a new ST film that was enslaved to all that could wind up not working that well.

It is sort of like what was done with the latest X Men film, continuity had become messy so this latest film more less wiped the slate clean and now they can move on. I found the film to be good and I didn't mind this.

As for Trek "dying", Nemesis bombed in 2002 and in 2005 ENT, after the ratings had dropped over season 1 and 2 and 3/4 did not have that big drops but the ratings didn't recover either, the show was cancelled. Of the people I know or comments that I read, people felt that Trek was too tired, had gotten stale and unimaginative and it was for the best for there to be a break. Trek had been on the air constantly since 1987 and often there were two Trek shows on the air. Plus five films.

I didn't stop liking Trek but I did not care much for either Voy or ENT and only watched them occasionally. But I didn't think there would be any new Trek for a while. But now there is and while the new films has got problems I am glad that they exist and would not want them undone. Same with Star Wars, I think the PT has got some problems but I am glad they exist and would not want them undone. Which is why I said earlier that Disney should leave the PT alone.

@Big_Benn_Klingon

I disagree, using TOS characters for a new film makes sense as they are the most well known and well liked. But if nothing could be changed then they would have very little room to tell any kind of story so I understand why they did what they did. I didn't expect it and was actually a bit surprised when the magic reset button wasn't pushed at the end of the film. As for the enthusiasm of the people making it, again I don't agree. They got Nimoy to play Spock again after he had said no to other such projects.
The director of Nemesis didn't care about Trek and several of the actors got angry at that. Given the flop of Nemesis, the odds for this new Trek film would not be all that good. The film could easily bomb and this could hurt their careers. Likewise making such a drastic do over could also create a lot of bad blood from a significant portion of their intended audience. Why could also hurt the BO.

That is your choice but I don't automatically enjoy everything from any particular franchise or series.
I really liked the first Highlander film but view two and three as awful and bad respectively and have not bothered with the other films. I liked the TV series but only watched it sporadically.
I have seen all Batman films but I think Batman forever and Batman and Robin are pretty bad.
I am a Bond fan but is really dislike "Tomorrow never dies" and "Die another day" wasn't very good either.
Same with Star Trek and Star Wars, ST 5 and 7 I find to be the worst Trek films and the SW Holiday Special is really terrible. Sometimes so bad it is good but most often just plain bad.

In closing, I have simply given my opinion and I think that there are some interesting and good ideas in the new Trek films and I don't think they as God awful as others here.

Bye.
The Guarding Dark

 

And how do you know what the people in question were thinking? Did they say these things in interviews? Did they write them down somewhere? Do you have a magic mind-reading device? Or are you just making it all up?

Good thing they didn't reboot the entire thing from scratch but instead maintained continuity with the established ST universe, then.

Don't forget the all-important timely Social Commentary that was always so praised when TOS or the other shows did it.

Yeah, it really showed, didn't it? Like when they used design elements of the Kelvin which looked just like the TOS films, or when they covered incidents from Spock's past as related in Yesteryear and Journey to Babel, or when they cited the Gorn, or when they referred to Spock being a Fed ambassador as seen in Unification, or when they mentioned Archer, or when they included a model of the NX-01, or when they alluded to STVI's Praxis, or when they alluded to Rura Penthe, or when they included the Vulcan ship from First Contact, or when they maintained Khan's Eugenics Wars backstory timeframe despite the fact that it's been inconsistent with actual history for several decades, or when they let their enthusiasm for a certain film in that half a century of ST bleed so heavily into STID that people felt compelled to call it a remake...

 

This is waaay more ST debate than I have any interest getting into. The forum wars regarding this subject within ST fandom are pointless and have damaged that fandom worse than the PT/OT wars have for SW fandom. The reboot (and it is a reboot, regardless if Robert Orci skimmed through Memory Alpha for 10mins to jot down a few token references) was totally unnecessary. That said, it exists and im not quite sure what TOS universe fans are hoping to achieve by fighting against it. They need to move on and focus on what they love. And some have and there has been some really great TOS universe fan-made stuff like this:

 

Wow, no posts in 2 years?

 

Did you ****ing just revive this salty thread for no reason???

Are you insane????

 

Sorry!

 

"YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!"

 

I don't intend to keep this thread alive but I'm just gonna say



I'd much rather have a remake of the OT with today's technology, made by Lucas than see a remake of the PT done by Disney.

 

Sorry to keep a thread that should have been left dead going, but with (above)'s argument, you may as well remake all of the films, as everything is ultimately based on the O.T. (or Star Wars at the least). The P.T. is based on the O.T. (trying to explain its characters and how its setting was arrived at); if you remake the films that the P.T. was based on, then there is no argument against re-doing everything.

 

No way, Disney should keep their mitts off the 6 original films. They can reedit the ST as much as they please, but not the original 6.

 

No.

 

No, there is nothing wrong with the PT overall. Those that don't like it should just ignore it…but instead they spend all their damn time promoting their hatred of them. They should just watch the OT and quit bitching about films that are over a decade old now.

BTW…all films have flaws including the OT and TFA...I just choose to not make a big deal out of the flaws and instead enjoy the films.

 

Exactly.

 

the Gungans and Naboo already being friends would ruin the message George Lucas was trying to give.

 

No offense but I think you created a lot more problems than there were (there are very few to begin with).