fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2776 ]

[ SECRET POST #2776 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2776 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 085 secrets from Secret Submission Post #397.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Aw, y'all always make me really sad when the reboot movies come up because while I love TOS and have seen every episode millions of times and most of the movies in the theater when they premiered and read every TOS tie-in novel through like 1997, I really liked the reboot movies. Both of them. And I am a die-hard TOS fan.

I won't lie, despite how much I criticize them, there is something weirdly compelling about them. They have energy and are fun action movies.

But…

They just come off like bad fan fiction a lot of times. Which is kind of what they are and it has all the staples:

-OOC characters check
-Plot Holes up the wazoo check
-Bringing back popular characters (*cough*Khan*cough*) when it makes no sense check
-Poorly built up romance check
-Killing off parents for angst check
-Sexual wish fulfillment (Yeah! Threesome with cat twins!) check
-Cheap references to famous canon moments that add nothing (looking at Wrath of Khan) check

And I really enjoy fanfic, even some of the more poorly written ones. But I wouldn't want most fan fiction to be canon -- especially not the bad ones (which I feel the reboots are).

I think the difference for me is that I don't see them as OOC.

Because it's an alternate universe, I am totally okay with characterizations not jiving 100% with the original iterations. In fact, that's part of the joy of the reboot for me. You have ostensibly the same characters and some of the same scenarios, but those characters are subtly different and the scenarios don't play out the same way.

Also, I love TOS because of the cat lady alien with three boobies, not despite it, so I'm not bothered by threesomes with cat lady twins. LOL

I'm talking about HUGE character changes though. To the point where they throw out the meat of what made the character the character.

Like, in TOS, Kirk scolded a crewmember for being bigoted towards Spock. While in the reboots he's calling Spock "Pointy" "Robot" and "Pointy-Eared Bastard." Or in TOS, Kirk regularly defended his female crew members and, for example, in Mudd's Women, didn't fall under the "charms" of the ladies. While in the reboots, he's breaking his neck trying to stare at all the women and peeps on Carol and Uhura.

Or there's Spock who, in TOS, had a major part of his character be his shame for his emotions -- to the point where he felt ashamed over mere friendship and couldn't tell his mom he loved her. Yet, in the reboots, he's perfectly okay with having a romantic relationship with his student. Or when he's an asshole and brings up George Kirk's death at Kirk's trial while TOS Spock wouldn't have done something so cruel.

Or McCoy -- we never laughs and rarely smiles but is instead completely curmudgeon all the time. And I think Karl Urban does a great job, but Bones is never given the same levity.

Or there's Uhura -- sweet, chill, Uhura -- who calls Kirk a "hick who only has sex with farm animals" when I can't imagine TOS Uhura ever saying something like that. Even if Kirk was being obnoxious.

And, if you're going to have the characters act radically different, at least try to EXPLAIN why they are acting so differently. The only person who has a plausible explanation is Kirk because his dad died.

But I don't for a second buy that Spock got over his emotional repression and shame because of the Kelvin's destruction.

And the threesome with the cat lady twins bothered me because well…they're TWINS…which means they're related…which is just…kind of gross to me.

For me, it's not so much that the destruction of the Kelvin is a direct line to Spock having different characterization. But who was on the Kelvin who may have interacted with him or his parents, perhaps even in subtle ways, that affected his thinking or personality. Maybe even someone he would have served with at the start of his Starfleet career. What did the Kelvin discover, what aspects of their mission that never happened might have informed Spock or his parents in some way? His character changes were the most fascinating for me. I love seeing the other side of the coin. Instead of having a Spock who is so entrenched (at first at least) in that shame you mention, we've got one who is willing to embrace the human part of himself much earlier.

I think I see TOS McCoy very differently from you. He's a very funny guy; it's deadpan, but it's funny.

I think this is just YMMV stuff. Because for me, what I would have really intensely disliked is a group of young actors trying to be *exactly like* their original iterations. They would invariably have failed, and it would have been extremely annoying.

I'm also one of those people who hates note-for-note song covers, though. I believe if you're going to cover a song, you oughta do something different with it. If that makes sense.

But NONE of that is addressed in the film. There's no suggestion ever made that Spock's parents may have known someone on the Kelvin or that Spock spent time on Earth and gained a different perspective.

Instead, the audience is just supposed to buy that a crucial and central part of Spock's character is suddenly gone because…REASONS!

Spock's shame for his emotions is centrally tied to the bullying and discrimination he experienced growing up on Vulcan -- both of which are the only things about him we're shown before the romance is revealed. He shuts down his emotions and is ashamed because he's desperately trying to be the "perfect" Vulcan to prove those who disparaged him wrong. He's overcompensating and it took DECADES for him in TOS to address this. To make such a huge change to his character in the reboots and not address WHY it happened is, to me, OOC and it is not honoring what the character of Spock means.

And, to be honest, it just feels like they put the romance in for cheap shock value. Which is why there's no real buildup to it at all.

I'm not asking that the young actors be exactly the same -- I'm asking that they stay true to the characters and, when they diverge, for there to be a reason WHY.

Having Kirk insult Spock over his heritage when he's explicitly shown not to tolerate bigotry in TOS pisses me off, especially.

You can do something different, but it has to make sense and be true to the original as well.

Otherwise, why reboot the work in the first place? Why not just make up completely new characters in a completely new setting?

I completely agree with you that I'd like for those reasons to be articulated more clearly. I really, really love what fandom has done in exploring how the roads have forked.

I'm sorry you weren't able to enjoy the movies. :(

I'm glad you liked them. I'm not saying your reasons for liking it are illegitimate or anything.

It's just that these things about the characters are really important to me and I'm not against changing them up, but I feel the writers needed to spend a lot more time fleshing them out and developing them for it to work.

But I do agree with you that I love what the fandom has done in exploring the differences and meanings. The aftermath of Vulcan's destruction was terribly handled in canon (in my opinion) but there's a ton of great fan fictions that address it.

Oh no. I didn't take it that way at all. :)

And I think that you're making some legitimate points. There should have been more fleshing out of a lot of things and reasons given for divergence.

da
I'm also one of those people who hates note-for-note song covers, though. I believe if you're going to cover a song, you oughta do something different with it. If that makes sense.
I don't dislike the reboot movies because they're not exactly the same as the original (I also hate note-for-note covers), but because Abrams' own take of the characters is pretty much making them angry, reckless, and unlikable. And he does do the note-for-note thing. The audience is just supposed to buy that Kirk and Spock are best friends, solely because they were best friends in the original series. Abrams did nothing to build their friendship up.
I enjoy the reboot movies. But the only compliment you can give them is that they're fun. There's nothing else to them. So I get why fans hate them.

I think I see the evolution of their friendship a little differently. They weren't friends in the first movie but respect each other by the end. I don't think they're friends in the beginning of the second movie, but I think Kirk wants to be, and I think that by the movie's end, they are. It doesn't feel like there's no build-up to me because there's been a passage of time between the first movie and the second.

But again, YMMV. :)

I agree there is a buildup of their friendship, but Abrams basically copies iconic Kirk and Spock friendship moments from the original canon (the 'dying in the engine room' scene comes to mind), and expects them to hold similar emotional weight? It's just bad writing on his part.

Ironically, I found that doing this kind of ramped up the "Spirkishness" of the reboots WAY more quickly.

Because I kept thinking, WHY is Spock so emotionally affected? And the answer I came up with was that it's because he's realized he's in love with Kirk at the moment that Kirk is dying.

Which TOTALLY ISN'T what the director/writers were going for, but that's how it comes off to me.

This is pretty much what I thought too.

With added headcanon that the mind meld from Spock!Prime showed Kirk the epic love of Kirk/Spock in the original verse and so colored his perception/expectation for his relationship with Spock in the AU.

You have a point. ;) But see, 'reading between the lines' and personal interpretation is required to give that scene its due emotional levity.

And maybe that's the difference in how we viewed the movie. Because even on the first watch, I've got in the back of mind that even though we don't know them, there are reasons why the characterization is different and etc. I think I'm reading between the lines for a lot of it.

Here's my take on it C&Ped from my movie review:

Of course, the biggest throwback to the original series is Kirk’s death scene. I honestly would have paid full price for a two hour loop of that handful of minutes because it hits every single emotional and intellectual kink I have ever had for those two characters. I love that the scene used lines of original dialogue without going overboard with it (although I think I totally could have done without Spock screaming Khan’s name LOL). I love that their roles were inverted. I love Kirk’s admission of fear, their hands pressed together with the glass between them, Spock getting choked up. OMG I AM MAKING MYSELF CRY TYPING THIS BECAUSE IT WAS PRETTY MUCH A PERFECT SCENE! That moment feels like the culmination of the disciplinary hearing scene at the beginning of the first movie—the one where Spock can so nonchalantly lecture Kirk about choosing between terrible options and accepting death and facing fear because he’s never been in that situation himself. It remains an intellectual exercise for him at that point. As Kirk is dying, Spock has to actually grapple with what it means to lose a friend, to be completely impotent, to be filled with righteous indignation and a driving need for justice. Conversely, Kirk is put in the same position as his father; he has to sacrifice himself in order to save his crew (his family, his friends). This is the Kobayashi Maru without a computer hack. This is Kirk’s realization that a captain sometimes only has really shitty options to choose from. Luck runs out; the stars don’t always align. Sometimes somebody has to die, and Kirk would so much rather the sacrifice be his than anyone else’s. SERIOUSLY, I NEED A TISSUE BADLY OMG!

For me, outside of the Khan scream, it did resonate emotionally and not just because of the call-back to TOS. It felt like character growth for both of them.

Also, I like the idea that even though this is an AU, some things still have to happen, like places where the threads of fate still interweave in the same way even though the big picture of the tapestry has changed.

Anyways, not saying you're wrong, Nonny. Most of my friends also really hated this movie LOL and I think there are valid criticisms to be made of the movies.

The Spirk factor was actually one thing I did like because, well, it's always nice to see characters stop being at each other's throats when they're supposed to be friends. I thought the scene worked as well (minus the Khan scream) but it was just HORRIDLY undercut by how blatantly obvious it was that Kirk wasn't going to stay dead. The tribble telegraphed the ending so that, while I agree with a lot of what you wrote, the impact just wasn't there nearly as much because I could already see what was coming.

The "a captain cannot cheat death" line would have meant so much more if we didn't know that Kirk was going to do exactly that in ten minutes. Once again, the rules don't apply to him.

I think I'm okay with that because it's a call-back to the original canon for me. I mean, Spock puts his consciousness in McCoy and gets to be reborn! I think cheating death is kinda par for the course in the franchise. Except for Jadzia Dax, which I find to be a criminal exception.

/bitter bitter bitter Jadzia stan rage

That's cool. :)

See, I don't mind that they brought Kirk back (I can't really hold it against them considering the same thing was done with Spock). I just wish they had been more…subtle about it, you know? After Vulcan's destruction, there was a real potential that people would believe Kirk might actually kick the bucket and it would have tremendously increased the emotional resonance of that scene.

I get that they didn't want his revival to come across as an asspull, but I think they overshot and just made it way, way too obvious.

(no subject)

lunabee34 - 2014-08-10 02:09 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-08-10 02:15 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

lunabee34 - 2014-08-10 02:21 (UTC) - Expand

DA

I agree with you. Other than the KHAAAAAAN scream which totally took me out of the scene, I really liked it for all the reasons you've mentioned.

Ok, I do see where you're coming from. I guess for me the 'hand touching through the glass' just did not hold the same emotional levity as it did in Khan, and because it's pretty much the same scene copied, I couldn't help compare the two when I watched it(selling it short for me in STID). And I don't even ship Kirk and Spock!
To me, the reboot movies just felt so shallow, and personal 'between the lines' readings of characters actions are required to make it less so - and honestly, I can't be bothered.
Of course, you're allowed to like the reboot movies and be a TOS fan. I just think there are very legit reasons why a lot of TOS fans hate them.

And I get why it doesn't work for a lot of people. :)

I think the reboot movies are slicker and faster paced and rely on knowledge of the original series and the expectation that your emotions from the original series will carry over into the reboot.

I think that TOS benefits from having several seasons of TV show plus six movies plus cameos in other franchises to develop its characters and that the reboot movie is probably going to look thin and superficial next to those decades of history no matter what it did. However, I completely agree that more character motivation/development would have been a good thing.

Also, thank you and the other nonnies for actually really hashing this out with me. It's nice to get a good meaty convo going. :)

For me the biggest problem with the film was that it had the elements of TWOK without the emotional buildup that film had. We knew why Khan hated Kirk so much and what he was so bent on revenge. Kirk's midlife crisis worked given that he was approaching midlife. Spock's death at the end of II was the end of a 15 plus year friendship instead of a few years of friendship we saw in Nu Trek.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only