|
So here's a movie with a grand total of two female characters. One of them has no real characterization beyond "loves the male lead", the other one fulfils the age old "sexy scientist" stereotype. The fact people can actually argue that Alice Eve stripping to her underwear was some great example of female empowerment or character development is hilarious. If you want to defend this film as pulpy entertainment or a guilty pleasure go ahead, but there's a hilarious level of obtuseness behind the argument that this was an important example of character development. Are people in denial about what a dumb movie this way or something? The emotional beats were almost the exact same as the first film. Spock has to learn to express his emotions appropriately (again). Kirk has to learn how to temper his brashness (again). The plot doesn't make any sense (why would a 300 year old man know anything about weapon design?) and is nothing more than a vehicle for getting the characters from one action scene to the next. This movie was not high art. They didn't show Alice Eve in her underwear because they legitimately thought that was somehow the most effective way to express their character. There just isn't an :eyeroll: big enough for people actually trying to argue that scene was an artistically motived decision. This movie was a brainless rollercoaster ride and nothing more. The reason Alice Eve took off her top was so that the audience could be titilated. If they wanted to establish her as a strong character there would have been a million other ways to do it. They decided to show off her body as fan service to the audience. You're watching shlock folks. Defend it if you want but don't try to pretend its something more than it is.
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2013 00:19
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:11 |
|
|
jivjov posted:Just because you're too distracted being titillated to pick up on character moments doesn't mean that everyone who watched the film is as well. I'm incredulous that you actually think the motive behind that scene was anything other than titillating the audience. It was a very silly summer blockerbuster movie. The buxom young blonde woman shows off her breasts because that's something that a male dominated audience is going to appreciate. quote:And hey, guess what, they did. She got herself transferred on board the Enterprise under a fake name, she defused the torpedo with the cryo tube in it, she stood up to the head of Starfleet who also happened to be her father. Showing her mid-clothes-change doesn't magically invalidate all the other character development she got. It was another facet. That isn't character development, that's cliched action schlock. You're trying to give this movie a way deeper reading than it deserves. The characters all just mechanically act out the roles that are necessary to carry forward the action. There's a small amount of mild characterization regarding father issues and male bonding tossed in for flavour but that's it.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2013 01:09
|
|
|
The amount of flailing going on in this thread is genuinely funny. I can just imagine what some of you guys think the writing process for this movie must have looked like. I'm trying to visualize it now: JJ Abrams is sitting at his desk with his feet propped up, scratching his chin and scribbling ideas on a legal pad. He thinks drat, this movie does not have a single example of a female talking to another female. In fact, woman do nothing of real consequence in this movie. How can I fix that? Abrams thinks for a couple minutes and then Voila! He's got it! I'll have Carlos Marcus strip to her underwear and then frame the shot like a lingerie ad! I get that some of you guys liked the movie and I guess want to defend it on principle or something, but I just cannot fathom how deluded you'd have to be to seriously think that the inclusion of this scene was motivated by anything other than some producer going "Hey Abrams, we need more tits for the trailer!"
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2013 16:57
|
|
|
Danger posted:Art can (and should) be appropriated through divergent or radical readings in opposition to the author's intent. This is basic stuff. I'm not talking about the role that the scene ultimately plays in the movie, I'm talking about what the specific intent of Abram and/or Lindelof (but presumably Abrams) was in including that scene and framing it the way they did. Cingulate posted:If you've been paying attention, I'm on the side that's arguing the scene is sexist. When we're talking about a business venture with millions of dollars of investor money on the line it really is that overt. Summer blockbusters have a checklist of elements that they are supposed to include, and T&A is high on that list. Its possible that Abrams rationalized the sexism of that scene using the same ridiculous excuses that some people in this thread have used, but you're fooling yourself if you think that the scene wasn't a calculated attempt to put as many bodies into theatre seats as possible. This is a summer blockbuster, not high art. When a beautiful woman strips to her bra and panties for no good reason and they prominently display that scene in the trailer it doesn't take rocket science to conclude what the motivations were. Only a hilarious level of wilful blindness could lead someone to ignore the obvious here.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2013 18:06
|
|
|
SuperMechagodzilla posted:It works because Bones is a space-scientist who knows what he's doing. Or they could have just come up with a slightly less stupid plot macguffin than magical space blood.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2013 05:43
|
|
|
I still can't get over the raw stupidity of having Khan be an expert weapon and starship designer. He was like two hundred years old but when they find him Star Fleet just assumes that he will be great at making weapons, which he apparently is. There were a lot of other increidbly stupid sequences in this movie - the part where Scotty sneaks his shuttle craft into the shuttle bay of a heavily guarded ultra secret warship also stands out - but the fact that the script writers were too lazy to think of a better reason for Khan to be there in the first place really says something about the priorities of the writers. Maybe if the movie had a more interesting character development instead of having literally the same emotional plot arc as the first movie (villain seeking revenge for his people, Kirk learning about leadership and maturity, Spock learning the importance of emotions) then it would have been easier to tolerate how blatantly stupid the actual plot was.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2013 17:26
|
|
|
Tubgirl Cosplay posted:IDK I thought the idea of a totally peaceful culture having to learn how to make war from some soldier from ages they thought they'd left behind was a pretty good one, it just didn't sit well with, again, guns and bombs being loving everywhere in the Federation. If there had been any attempt to actually portray the Federation as peaceful or utopian then maybe that would have worked. However Abrams has so little respect for his audience's intelligence - or maybe he just doesn't give a poo poo about trying to imagine what the future would look like - so in every particular he seems to try and make the world of the Federation appear almost identical to contemporary earth society. That's actually another of my big complaints. There's no attempt to actually portray the future in these movies. On the rare occasions when we actually see what regular Federation society looks like the film's creators have gone out of their way to make it as familiar and banal as possible. It really just reinforces the fact that this movie is Mission Impossible in space rather than being an actual science fiction film about futuristic technologies or societies. BiggestOrangeTree posted:Oh god this part. You would think that one of those dozen shuttles would have noticed that someone is joining their formation as they approach their secret spaceship factory. Or you know, dozens of IFF checks, automatic scans that would show a suspicious crew of one and nothing on board that they're waiting for... Yeah I'd been getting increasingly irritated at the movie but I think that was the point when I realized I wasn't going to enjoy the film very much. It made it abundantly clear that the script was just a vehicle for getting from one action scene to the next. I suppose you could argue that this movie was supposed to be about character and emotion, but in that case they could have gone outside their comfort zone a bit more and introduced new character arcs for the main cast rather than just recycling the ones from the last movie.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2013 18:00
|
|
|
Hbomberguy posted:I JUST realised the scene where Spock wails on Khan is a direct parallel with, and might actually be shot in the same way as, the scene in the first one where he steamrolls one of the kids who taunted him. Pretty neat, it suits the emotional aspect of Spock well. Looking back I don't think I'm giving Into Darkness as much of the credit as it deserves. I really ought to rewatch it, but it comes off to me now as a pretty fun ride, and that's all it needed to be. There are dozens of movies every year that are just a 'fun ride', would it really have been so much to ask for a script that wasn't incredibly stupid? I mean the cast and director were both pretty good and nobody is expecting a really slow moving boring movie like Star Trek 1 but Into Darkness just had such an awful script and boring, repetitive story where the emotional arcs of the last movie were basically just recycled. The first movie was a 'fun ride' that didn't make a lot of sense but which set up the characters and universe well enough and put things in place for the next movie. This movie completely dropped the ball. It was sad to watch all that talent and energy being wasted on a movie that had about as much thought put into its script as a Theme Park ride.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2013 00:48
|
|
|
DFu4ever posted:Counterpoint: The script wasn't stupid at all. Some random script highlights: --magical space blood that can apparently cure any organism (its a good thing the doctors randomly decided to inject a tribble they had lying around with this dude's blood so that they could conveniently discover this highly convenient plot point) --hand held space cell phones that are capable of instantaneous faster than light communication --Somebody sneaking their space shuttle into the cargo bay of a top secret military starship. And then you don't hear anything from him again until you find out he magically infiltrated and took control of the Star Ship's engineering bay. --200 Year Old man who for some reason can build vastly better spaceships than contemporary scientists --Villain's plot involves storing people in missiles --Character arcs have the exact same emotional beats as the previous film. Spock must learn to trust his emotions... again... Kirk must learn to control his anger, be mature and get over the death of his father figure... again... Ahura exists purely to be worried about Spock... again --Political tensions alluded to with Klingons and then just kind of dropped as the script moves on even though the actions of the main characters clearly should have triggered a war. The script writers have such contempt for their audience I don't even think they bothered to throw in a line explaining why slaughtering Klingon's on their home planet didn't start a war... if they did "explain" it and I missed it, then they still just hand waved it away in a single line. --Massively fails the Bechdel test --Now the third or fourth Star Trek franchise movie in a row that is just about angry space man getting revenge. That poo poo is getting dull. It was a horribly written movie. Each event that happens only does so to propel you toward the next action scene. It was basically Mission Impossible in space with absolutely no attempt made to craft an interesting or intelligent story. They desperately need new script writers for this franchise. The director and actors are fine and the special effects are great but the storyline and the characterizations were just abysmal.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2013 22:04
|
|
|
Lord Krangdar posted:A lot of these are only problems if you expect Star Trek to be totally serious, consistent, and realistic. Star Trek has never been totally serious, consistent, or realistic. I don't care about Star Trek being realistic or even consistent, I'd just like a Star Trek movie that is actually a Science Fiction movie rather than a really dumb and poorly scripted action movie / theme park ride. quote:Starfleet scientists didn't have as much experience making weapons because the Federation was ostensibly a peaceful organization. That is a pretty dumb explanation though. We're talking about a 200 year gap. I don't care how brilliant a commander Napoleon was, if he suddenly popped into the modern day he wouldn't have much to say about how we design aircraft carriers or missiles. I also don't see how Khan's "aggressiveness" or whatever would have allowed him to create a ship that can attack people in Warp or that only requires a single person to command it. I think the real explanation for this is that they simultaneously wanted to awkwardly cram as many Star Trek references into the plot as possible (hence Khan's inclusion in the first place) while also deploying the boring and over played trope of the "giant spikey black ship of death that is way more technologically advanced than the hero's ship". And because the script writers were lazy they decided to save time by just making the ship something Khan had 'invented' for some reason, even though it makes absolutely no sense. quote:Kirk had to admit he had no idea what the right course of action was, and then do it anyway. That's a big deal for the guy who wouldn't even except the academy's test on no-win situations as a no-win situation. Great, but like I said the emotional beats of this script were pretty much the same ones as the other Star Trek reboot, which were already very similar to the one's in the last Next Gen Film. Its almost as though the script writers have no courage or originality... quote:The Klingon attitudes toward war, death, and honor are totally different than humans. Those Klingons' families could avenge them, sending an entire army would be dishonorable. What an incredibly lame cop out. And as somebody else has pointed out the whole first part of the movie revolved around the idea that the Enterprise needs to shoot missiles at the Klingon homeworld without being detected, because otherwise a war could break out. Then the very second that this idea becomes inconvenient for the script it is simply dropped and never addressed again. I guess when somebody is this forgiving of the movie you can justify any of the dumb plot points like Scotty somehow sneaking his shuttle into the shuttle bay of the Federation's super starship (and then somehow taking control of said ship) or how Khan's blood is so super magical that it can revive a tribble or why McCoy even bothered to inject Khan's blood into a dead Tribble in the first place. I'm not a particularly big Star Trek fan to begin with and I thought that the original reboot did a pretty good job of restarting the franchise but I would have liked to see a movie this time around that didn't seem to have absolutely no regard for the intelligence of the audience.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2013 21:02
|
|
|
Lord Krangdar posted:The beginning of your post says that but then the rest of your post says otherwise. What makes the film "dumb and poorly scripted" besides a failure to be serious (tonally and stylistically), realistic, and consistent? You mention lack of originality, sure, but still most of your complaints are about exactly those things. I say that the movie is poorly scripted because it repeatedly has the characters performing actions that don't make any sense within the context of the fictional universe. Based on what has been established just within the Into Darkness movie it makes no sense that Scotty would be able to sneak his transport shuttle into the cargo bay of a top secret military ship. Likewise when, early in the movie, we're told that firing missiles at the Klingon home world might cause a war, only to later have this plot point entirely ignored despite the Enterprise crew killing numerous Klingon's on their own home world, that is an example of poor scripting. Similarly when Khan has all these bizarre and abilities like being able to design the perfect star ship, the perfect missile, and when his blood can magically heal any organism of any disease including radiation poisoning, this really comes off as a lazy decision by script writers who didn't really care about making a plot driven movie. They just wanted to make it as easy and convenient as possible to jump from one action sequence to the next. quote:You don't like my explanations because you want something from them that they cannot provide. My explanations there are my interpretations of what the film is telling us or implying about how this fictional world works. Whether the real world works that way (it doesn't) is beside the point. I don't care how you think real Klingons would act, because there are no real Klingons. Ok but there's a basic rule in storytelling called "Chekov's gun". When you make a big point out of the fact that action X (violating Klingon territorial sovereignty) will lead to consequence Y (a war) then its really lame to have the characters perform action X only to have... nothing happen. I'm not saying that it had to be a war, it could have been some totally unpredictable end result, but it should have been addressed. The failure to deal with that plot point after it had been raised early in the film is why I would say this film was poorly scripted. I think people who enjoyed the movie are simply willing to overlook the bad scripting because they enjoyed the acting, the action sequences or other elements of the work. quote:So no, in real life a dude from 200 years ago would probably not be particularly useful for designing modern weapons, and the same goes for your other complaints there. Your intelligence is not being insulted by the inclusion of stuff like that, but rather you're being trusted to understand the difference between fiction and reality. An intelligent viewer should be able to understand that not every plot point or aspect in a fictional world is trying to tell us, the audience, that's how the real world actually works- that would be dumb. When Star Trek establishes that the Federation represents the pinnacle of man's technological advancement and then violates that by having a dude from the pre-Warp era inventing ships that are not only comparable but in fact vastly superior in every way to the Federation's star ships then that destroys any internal consistency or suspension of disbelief that the movie franchise had. When its established that a ship is super technologically advanced and is a highly guarded secret, only to have a character sneak on board in the most blatant and ridiculous way possible, then that destroys the internal consistency and coherence of the movie. Obviously movies can and do take huge amounts of artistic license when portraying a fictional setting, but what bothered me about this movie was that everything that happened seemed to happen purely in the service of moving everything along at a super fast pace. It was like a big magic trick where Abram's tries to dazzle your attention with flashy action sequences so that you won't stop and think about how the character's actions make very little sense even within the context of the fictional universe Abram's has created. Now I'll admit that if I hadn't also hated the actual plot of the film then I guess that maybe this stuff would have bothered me less. But the plot also seems to me to indicate how poorly scripted this film was. Why is it that every single Star Trek movie, going back to the last Next Gen movie, now has to be the same stale and boring revenge melodrama? The whole "dude with a super powerful ship and a personal vendetta takes away something the hero valued, causing the hero to also want revenge, and leading to an important character sacrificing themselves" has now been done three times in a row. I get why they used that story during the first movie because they had a lot of work to do establishing the characters and setting up the universe and bringing in new audience members. But the fact they cared so little about the plot that they basically just repeated this story for the sequel really speaks to a lack of originality or bravery. This second film was a real opportunity to expand the themes of the franchise or to return to the more light hearted exploration themes of the original series. Or hell, even if they had just gone with the geopolitical themes that were raised at the start of the film and done a movie about a Federation conflict with the Klingons... that would have been so much more interested than a literal repeat of the previous film's plot.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2013 00:53
|
|
|
I think Abrhams was a fine director for the reboot of Star Trek as a more fast paced action oriented franchise. I mean at least he understands some of the basics of film such as giving characters emotional motivations, trying to have some kind of arc to the film, etc. All you have to do is look at the Star Wars prequels to get a sense of how a big budget science fiction movie can gently caress those things up. The problem with this movie was the script. There was an emotional core to the movie (though, as I've complained repeatedly, it was basically the same emotional arc for all the characters as the first movie, which really speaks to the limitations of the movie, especially given that its like the third or fourth Star Trek movie in a row that is basically just aping the emotional beats of Wrath of Khan) but the actual plot was just an excuse to move the characters from one scene to the next. I really wish they would have done a more plot driven film or maybe something about the Enterprise beginning its 5 year mission and exploring some new area of space. The fact that they made another over the top revenge plot movie seems really cynical, not to mention being incredibly dull.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2014 17:50
|
|
|
Abrams definitely provides emotional motivations for his characters in both Star Trek films. They may not be particularly deep or nuanced but its ridiculous to claim they aren't there. Like I said, watch a genuinely awful movie like The Phantom Menace if you want to see an example of a movie that legitimately lacks any emotional connection. In both films Kirk has to deal with father issues, immaturity, inability to play by the rules, etc. Spock has trouble expressing his emotions despite being filled with rage and sadness, Ahura.... well actually Ahura doesn't have much character or ac beyond being inexplicably in love with Spock, who is such a complete rear end in a top hat that its never clear why anyone likes him. These are pretty simplistic emotions for a movie to be dealing with and I would have liked it if they'd gone deeper (or better yet tried something new), but its not really accurate to say they aren't pleasant at all. I really think the problem with STID is the lack of originality and the general stupidity of the plot itself.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
I think its just a poorly written script that was created to strip the franchise down to its most profitable elements. Terrorist conspiracies, revenge stories and exploding cities are popular right now so those elements got thrown in. Khan was shoehorned in because of nostalgia and also because they thought he'd give the plot a bit more gravity than it'd otherwise have. Alice Eve was there for T and A. The rest of the script was basically just an engine to get from one action scene to the next. Kirk and Spock are enemies when the script needs an intense scene, they are friends when the script needs an emotional scene, Spock is a psychopathic punching machine when the script needs an action scene, etc. There are movies out there where it makes sense to dig into the subtext of the character's actions in the way that some goons in this thread are doing. But this movie aint one of those movies. It was an incredibly dumb summer blockbuster film, and the one thing they didn't really bother to include when putting together this movie was a script that was in any way original or had even an even passingly good story.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2014 22:06
|
|
|
Corek posted:Also T&A hasn't never been a profitable element to Star Trek, except maybe some Enterprise episodes (I'll never see them). I don't think they cast Jeri Ryan in Voyager for her acting ability.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2014 01:32
|
|
|
There's nothing wrong with interpreting films but its kind of funny how all the emphasis here is placed on reading the artistic or literary significance of movies rather than recognizing them as puerile money making exercises. If you want to understand why there are big spikey black ships or why every recent Star Trek is basically the same tired revenge melodrama over and over again then the best explanation is that these plot elements are intended to be profitable. Developing an elaborate explanation of why the spikey black death ship is actually a brilliant and subversive new reading on previous franchise instalments is pretty silly. Of course the films aren't entirely devoid of subtext but the idea that major plot points or props were designed to convey an artistic message rather than as part of a calculated effort to put asses into seats is implausible.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2014 17:16
|
|
|
Lord Krangdar posted:I think you need to re-read the last page of this thread, because you pretty much just started back at square one of the exact same argument all over again. I don't think I'm missing anything. It just seems to me as though there's too much emphasis being placed on interpeting these movies as intelligent commentary crafted with the intention to criticize or otherwise comment upon other works of fiction or philosophical ideals. This post is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about : SuperMechagodzilla posted:
Now I would agree that these movies are darker than the 1990s version of Star Trek but the idea that these movies were intentioanlly made darker and more cynical by Abrams as a way to commenting on the fake optimism of the earlier iterations of the franchise seems rather implausible to me. The more likely explanation, and the one that doesn't seem to get much play in this thread, is that 'dark' and edgy movies are a cultural fad right now, thanks in part to our societal obsession with terrorism and with our lovely economy, and in part because other movies that took a dark and edgy tone were massively successful and thus helped to start a trend. I think that rather than fixating on the 'messages' conveyed by the 'author' of a movie (which really doesn't have any single author) it is more fruitful to look at how the movie, as a capitalist enterprise, is constructed out of various cliches and cultural trends. So while some other posters here might look at the underwear scene and ask "what did Abrams intend to tell us about her character with this scene?" I'd be inclined to see it as a fairly straightforward example of a summer blockbuster using T&A to try and make more money. Obviously both types of criticism have their uses but around here it seems like nobody really wants to make the latter kind of analysis. Everyone is going on and on about the 'meaning' of the film, when the meaning if clear: to make as much money as possible by using dumb cliches, special effects and a lot of nostalgia.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2014 20:31
|
|
|
At this point I think I'd be impressed if they just managed to not make the next movie another boring revenge plot. Bonus points if the movie passes the Bechdel test. And ideally they won't have another moment where a 200 year old man is a brilliant scientist or where somebody sneaks a shuttle craft into the cargo bay of a top secret state of the art military spaceship. I'm not gonna hold my breath for the last one though. Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Yeah, because the Federation isn't real. No, I'm not making a flip "nothing is real and therefore doesn't matter" remark, I mean that Starfleet and the Federation were not (and arguably still are not) firmly defined at all beyond being that organization where Our Heroes come from. They were background dressing meant to serve the needs of the immediate story, not to build a firmly self-consistent setting. In one episode they might be a pacifist organization willing to relocate its colonists (at no expense to them, to any planet they choose, or even to a not-yet-discovered planet of their specification that the Federation will send Starfleet out to find) in order to end a war whose deaths were measured in thousands. In another episode they might be willing to give a starship captain the authority to charge into the Neutral Zone and launch a preemptive attack against a suspected secret Romulan base which has a high likelihood of precipitating a war which would devastate both interstellar civilizations. I dunno man. If we adopt this common sense point of view then what would the film school drop outs and wanna be critical theorists jerk off about? computer parts posted:What do you think Star Trek is about then? Roughly speaking it's about 1) making money, 2) telling an entertaining story and 3) meditating on political or philosophcial topics (though really, most of the time I feel like 3 is mostly window dressing intended to enhance objectives 1 and 2).
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2015 02:17
|
|
|
I see that after the Guardians of the Galaxy rip off trailer upset people they released a new trailer with some pop Freudian poo poo about Kirk's father issues and some minimalist piano music to reassure us that this will be another violent space fantasy movie, presumably about a villain seeking revenge and about Kirk learning the responsibilities of command. Perhaps Spock will even learn that he needs to balance emotion and reason.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2016 17:47
|
|
|
multijoe posted:Whatever your feelings about Into Darkness may be, that Starfleet dug up Hitler and put him in charge of the CIA is the point Is there a popular film franchise from the last decade for which this isn't the default CineD analysis?
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2016 20:30
|
|
|
It's not an implausible analysis of the film it's just that it's like the ur-cliche in Hollywood right now. James Bond, Batman, The Avengers, Star Wars, Transformers, etc. all get interpreted as having that message. And as always the "message" comes across as incoherent because the film still ultimately doubles down on action film cliches about the need for a hyper masculine strong man to bludgeon the enemy to death. At what point do we conclude that this obsession with clandestinism and conspiracism and moral grey areas isn't really the "message" of these movies so much as it is a generic grimdark aesthetic that is being used by hack writers to simulate profundity.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2016 22:58
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Ah, so when you hear "message" you're interpreting that as "this is the intention of the creators". Before you jet off to wikipedia to brush up on The Death of the Author would you try reading these comments in context? multijoe is explicitly referring to the intentions of the creators, in particular the screen writer. I'm interpreting "message" in exactly the way a conventional user of English would in this context. There are of course other ways to analyze a film but in this context we're explicitly talking about what the creator's "point" was when they chose to make the villains part of Star Fleet's CIA equivalent. That having been said, let's say we engage the film on the terms you're setting out. The fact that the aesthetics of the film communicate a vague but pervasive distrust of state institutions, especially those of the security state and military industrial complex, just isn't that noteworthy when practically every blockbuster franchise has been drawing at that well for several decades now. It's not incorrect to point out that the film is doing this but saying it's "the point" of the film seems like an exaggeration to me - especially since the film ends in the same generic way that all these films do, with the heroes using violence to cleanse the corrupt institutions. Not to be pedantic, but the point of the film was to make money by pulling in the largest possible audience. The dark conspiratorial tone of the script is more a reflection of what the producers thought would draw the audience in. I realize that this isn't a direct contradiction of anything that anyone else has said but it might change what parts of the films analysis' one is inclined to emphasize if you view the film as primarily being more similar to the marketing of a Happy Meal rather than the writing of a novel.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2016 00:44
|
|
|
Sir Kodiak posted:Well, yeah, that's precisely the issue with what you're saying. Like, yeah, it's a common message, because filmmakers keep reproducing that message. Yeah, it's built to make money, and it's a message that makes money because audiences respond to it. The millionth painting of a bowl of fruit, painted to be sold cheaply to hang in motels, is still a painting of a bowl of fruit. Even if we care about intent, the screenwriters, directors, etc. may be comfortable with derivative, predictable messages, but they're not so stupid that they literally don't even understand what they're saying. I think the creators of this film understood perfectly well what they were saying when they made Khan a rogue Starfleet agent. I just dispute that this, or anything else about the plot, was really the "point" of the film. All I'm really saying is that we should maybe de-emphasize plot and focus more on marketing when analyzing films like Star Trek Ino Darkness. This isn't really an argument about facts, it's an argument about what kind of perspective you choose to adopt when analyzing those facts. computer parts posted:So you're assuming every time someone says "This film says x" they mean "the creators of the film intended x". That's literally the opposite of what I said, do you not know what the word "context" means?
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2016 06:30
|
|
|
Sir Kodiak posted:Can you clarify what you mean by this? Are you talking about how the film itself is made to be appealing, or do you really mean we should place, say, the trailers as having higher primacy than the film itself when figuring out what the point of the film is? There is a tendency to talk about the political interpretations of the film to the exclusion of all other ways of analyzing how a film gets made. Of course it's valid and important to talk about what a film says politically but there are other ways to think about how a film is constructed. In the context of a film like Into Darkness what really strikes me isn't the cliched message about the Federation's corrupt Deep State. I'm more interested in the way the film feels like it's plot elements and characters were assembled and fabricated into a final product in an almost industrial process.I feel as though starting with that perspective changes the way you think about the film and de-emphasizes the significance of the plot itself. Sure this is a film about Space Hitler being put in charge of the CIA, but is that really particularly noteworthy or significant in analyzing the film? What about viewing the film's elements as marketing ploys designed to attract and retain an audience?
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2016 07:29
|
|
|
multijoe posted:I wouldn't really call my summarising of the plot an analysis and I don't really know why you took it as such, even less why you extrapolated it as being the default CineD line. Saying that "X is the point of the film" is an analysis of the film. And I called it the default CineD line because I see it used constantly. Star Trek, the Star Wars Prequels, the Avengers, Transformers, etc. Probably somewhere on there's forums there is a SuperMechaGodzilla post where he argues that Immortan Joe is the real hero of Mad Max. I guess I just have different tastes and interests than you though because I think it's far more interesting to view films as products and to discuss the process through which those products are created. I don't think that involves any more speculation than the preferred CineD habit of focusing on what "the film says". Honestly I think that entire approach is rather trite and repetitive and leads to goons making basically the same analysis of one movie after another. I think it's a lot more interesting to discuss why plot elements that are very similar to the one's in Star Trek Into Darkness recur again and again. I'm much more interested in what the Producers are thinking than what the script writers or even director are thinking. Sir Kodiak posted:Yeah, I think you're just going to run into the issue that we have very little visibility into the actual decision-making processes of the corporations making these products. Whereas analysis of the film as it stands on its own can be done exclusively using public information – the film itself and the surrounding bodies of real-world information and related art that film draws on – most of the time, anything more complex than "well, yes, the film was made to make money," comes across as more a just-so story than an actual analysis. I don't think it's any more speculative to discuss the film as a business enterprise rather than an a piece of art (and even that is a bit of a false dichotomy). Really I'm just arguing for a slightly change in perspective. We may not have as much information as would be ideal to discuss marketing instincts but quite often people discuss script and direction in these films without even acknowledging the commercial aspect of film making. Ideally there would be at least some acknowledgement of the fact that the film's artistic vision is specifically sculpted and tailored to appeal to a mass audience, and when discussing why certain artistic decisions were made it's necessary to at least speculate or discuss what the commercial instincts of the creators were. Also, when goons focus on analyzing only the plot as presented in the film they start to reach really absurd and unintentionally hilarious conclusions. I remember more than one person trying to argue that when the blonde scientist woman strips down to her underwear and gets sexually harassed by Kirk this is supposed to somehow be about empowering her character, as opposed to, you know, providing a titty shot that can be put into the trailer. As for the example of Roberto Orci being a 9/11 truther, that's a helpful way of understanding why he wrote the script that he wrote. However, it still leaves open the question of why this is the script the producers and director wanted him to write or why it's the one that they used for the filming. As it turns out the creators were pretty explicit about this: one of the fan reactions to Star Trek 09 was that they wanted to see more "contemporary issues" explored. That leads us back to this analysis of why audiences are so eager to see contemporary issues being featured in what is sometimes misunderstood as an "escapist" genre. Talking about that feedback loop between film and audience, that process through which a capitalist enterprise simulates artistic profundity and mines contemporary politics for plot beats, is a more interesting analytical framework than merely speculating about the film's "message". Again, this isn't so much a disagreement with anything others have said as it is a plea to entertain other ways of thinking about or analysing film. Specifically, analysing films in ways that de-centre the script and the artistic aspects of the process and that focus on the commercial side of things. lizardman posted:I guess this is as good a time as any for me to mention that looking back it's pretty darn evident to me the marketing concept for STID was "make this The Dark Knight only with Star Trek instead of Batman". I also got a very strong "Dark Knight" vibe from the film and it's marketing. The upcoming sequel, especially in the original trailer that got such a terrible reaction, felt like more of a Guardians Ripoff, which in some ways is even sadder, since it means the franchise is now ripping off films that are themselves just rip offs of earlier Star Trek films. It's like taking a picture of a picture of a picture. computer parts posted:The only real similarity to TDK is "they catch the bad guy midway through but then he gets released somehow", except the context is completely different in ST:ID. This is exactly the kind of trap I was warning about. You're focusing too much on the actual plot elements as presented in the script and ignoring how the themes, marketing and grimdark atmosphere are piggybacking on the huge popularity and success of The Dark Knight.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2016 17:48
|
|
|
computer parts posted:I'm ignoring the marketing because I legitimately can't remember it. As for the other two, you're welcome to explain how the themes are similar but there's very little "grimdark" in the atmosphere. It a film about how the government is secretly maneuvering itself into a major war with a rival enemy power, the inciting incident of the plot is a rogue government agent committing multiple acts of terrorism, the primary motivation for both the protagonists and the antagonist is to get revenge, and the film's climax is a recreation of September 11th. The fact that you'd even dispute that this is a dark film only emphasizes how hilariously over the top grimdark the average blockbuster has become since the early 2000s. I'd even go so far as to say that the final messages of the films are more similar than you let one here. When Kirk tells us at the end of the film that "There will always be those who mean to do us harm. To stop them, we risk awakening the same evil within ourselves" he's not that far off from the themes of The Dark Knight, or the recent Captain America films, or a million other similar films. That fascination with the thin line dividing heroes from villains, and that persistent fear that our desire for vengeance is somehow generating further acts of terror, seems to be one of the most common and resonant themes within modern Hollywood. Sir Kodiak posted:Your example is a good one for how limited this type of discussion often is in practice. Like, there's a million ways to incorporate a titty shot, and they went with a particular one. The next step is to examine how that particular one works in the context of the movie. I don't think anyone denies that attractive people in revealing clothing are included to drive up ticket sales. What people aren't willing to do, that you implicitly seem to be asking for, is to just stop there. Think about your 9/11 comment in reverse. Sure, addressing contemporary issues may have been a studio mandate, leading to Roberto Orci addressing the contemporary issue he's particularly devoted to. But if we accept that, you have to accept that a desire for a titty shot, even if it's a top-down mandate, was then processed by artists into a work of art. The studio may have mandated contemporary issues be addressed, but they probably didn't mandate a dramatization of 9/11 trutherism. Actually this is part of what I find so interesting. From interviews it's clear that there was a desire to create a Star Trek film that somehow addressed contemporary concerns and anxieties. I believe the creators are fairly explicit about this: they intentionally set out to make a Star Trek film about the War on Terror. We also know that these scripts aren't written before hand -- they are constantly being worked and reworked based on what the director and producers and even the actors want. So in fact the decision to make a Star Trek film about 9/11 being an inside job isn't something we can just chalk up to the particular quirks of the script writer. Even if he injected that particular message, he was only able to do so because that's exactly the kind of message the film's producers and director were interested in. quote:You're presenting these as a contrast – "supposed to somehow be about empowering her character, as opposed to, you know, providing a titty shot that can be put into the trailer" – rather than things that work in combination. If you want to make an argument that her disrobing was about more than just fulfilling a quota of "stuff our trailer needs" then go ahead. I don't find it very plausible or compelling to argue that this was equally a commercial and artistic decision. quote:You ask for people to "entertain other ways of thinking about or analysing film." Well, if you think that's a compelling way to think about things, I think lots of people here would be happy to be entertained by you providing us with an interesting reading that incorporated that. Where you will be poorly received is if you try to use it to shut down discussion. Because this sort of analysis does already happen in this forum. It's happening right now in the Star Wars thread regarding possibly Disney-mandated reshoots for Rogue One to bring the tone more in line with The Force Awakens. It happens in regards to how studios mandates influences the Marvel and DC films. It's not like we ignore the commercial aspects, we just don't stop there. Well, it's inevitable people are going to argue about what the motivations behind a particular decision were or (to use a less author centered frame-work) why it is that particular themes or characters or plots seem to be used again and again by film makers. I don't think that arguing for one interpretation over another is the same thing as trying to "shut down discussion". I also think that not all interpretations are equal and that it's inevitable that people are going to call each other out on what seem to be particularly poor arguments, such as the example I've already given of goons who think that a woman undressing for the audience should be seen first and foremost as an example of her "empowerment".
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2016 21:44
|
|
|
Star Trek characters actually caring about high culture stuff like classical music or theater, and Star Trek characters actually inconveniencing themselves because they held strong philosophical ideals, wasn't always executed that well but at least it was more interesting than creating yet another banal sci-fi action franchise. I'll admit I recently checked out some old Next Gen episodes and they're basically unwatchable now but at least they were trying. Abrams Star Trek doesn't have any real connection to that old 20th century tradition of speculative, forward looking science fiction. It's just Mission Impossible in space, which is (or ought to be) boring as gently caress for anyone old enough to have graduated High School.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2016 22:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:11 |
|
|
I don't have a particularly deep investment in the Star Trek franchise. I was never a huge fan and when I revisit the old stuff I am mostly struck by how corny and dumb it all is. I just think that if there is one thing that actually made the Star Trek franchise stand out at all it was those moments when it did aim to be a bit more cerebral and philosophical. If you are going to bother to remake or update the series I'd rather see a new variation on those themes. Sure, do something new with them, but don't completely ditch the one part of Star Trek that actually makes it distinctive. I'm reasonably confident that these films will never leave a cultural mark comparable to the originals because TOS or Next Gen were at least distinctive and striving to do something slightly unusual. The new ones are so derivative that they are barely distinguishable from Force Awakens or Guardians of the Galaxy or any of those other dull action sci-fi films of the last few years.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2016 22:11
|
|