Caltrops - Star Trek: A Final Unity





	[quote name="Mischief Maker"][quote name="<A HREF="http://confusedmatthew.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=1517&start=0" TARGET="new">Mischief Maker</A>"]Subj: But the fact of the matter is, you DON'T get it! Other people are already covering what the movie actually is about so all I'll say is this: Star Trek TMP was trying desperately to be 2001 and failed. sfdebris correctly pegged it as being about nothing. Just because you see some similarities between this movie and TMP does not mean they're the same. You've been watching too many B movies, you've automatically got your hackles up when watching good ones.[/quote] [quote name="HappyHamlet"]I don't know who you're talking to, but just because someone doesn't like a movie means he just watches crap all the time. There are such things as opinions, after all. And the other way around too: someone who constantly watches "good" movies can very well have a good opinion about a "bad" movie.[/quote] There needs to be some kind of Godwin's 2nd law about people saying "everyone is entitled to an opinion!" as a last ditch defense against losing an argument. If Confused Matthew said, "I don't like 2001" and I, the savage Kubrickite, responded, "You don't get it," then yes, I would be guilty of not respecting other people's right to an opinion. Instead he made the statement of fact, "2001 is about nothing" then went on to say that the dawn of man and its subsequent space age mirror scene are unnecessary filler. I'm not saying he does not have the right to hate 2001, lord knows it's no "Moulin Rouge," I'm saying he's incorrect and the fact is that the meaning of the scenes, and really the whole movie, went over his head. It's not 2001: Dave and Hal's wacky adventure. As for the crappy movie comment, you don't have to be sherlock holmes to figure out that CM watches lots of them because, oh, he has an entire website devoted to reviewing crappy movies down to the finest detail. I draw the inference that he came into this movie prepared to hate it because he used the same language describing this movie that sfdebris used to describe Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Star Trek had long stretches devoid of dialogue, too, but unlike 2001, those scenes were pure padding whose meaning was simply, "check out the special effects we went way over budget to produce. Look at them, you bastards, you have no idea how much effort it took to squeeze this money out of the studio execs! Look at it!!!" My bet, CM started watching 2001 fresh from sfebris' review, saw long scenes devoid of dialogue, and jumped to the conclusion that they were the same kind of filler. And I don't mean to shock anyone, but if you think one minute and forty seconds of establishing landscape shots were too much to take in 2001, stay the hell away from "the shining" because that movie starts with TWO MINUTES AND FIFTY SECONDS of landscape shots until we FINALLY see the damn hotel! And then the next scene is a JOB INTERVIEW! Boring! HELLOOOOOO? We've been watching this movie for almost five minutes now, could somebody please explain what this shining thing is supposed to be??? [quote name="Shredininja"]please explain what this movie is about as i've never made it though it without sleeping[/quote] I [i]know[/i], like, a director totally follows the rule "show, don't tell" for TWO ENTIRE SCENES. Why couldn't we have a voiceover explaining to us that "the hominid ancestors were in pretty desperate straits fighting petty battles with neighboring tribes," followed by, "but then, by the mysterious unknowable influence of the monolith (that big black stone thingy) one of the hominids learned the concept of weapons." Then when the ape throws the bone into the sky and we switch to the future, an arrow points to the orbital nuclear missile platform and blinks "WEAPON" with a little "ding" sound. Followed by a scene of the space stewardesses dancing on the ceiling with Lionel Richie singing, "look how far the weapon has taken us, and contrast how comfortable life in in the space age compared to the desperate straits of our ancient ancestors!" but then their cartoon animal sidekicks chide them that they're still fighting with the Russians just like the ancient hominids fought with rival tribes. And when the guy touches the monolith on the moon and that loud ringing starts playing over their speakers, couldn't one of the dudes should have said, "Where is this loud noise coming from?" and another respond, "That monolith, (the big black stone thingy) is emitting radio waves that are being picked up by our communication equipment!" and another could say, "But why would it do that?" and the monolith would respond, "I'm directing the beam toward Jupiter to indicate that you humans should go there, dumbass." And finally one of the dudes says, "Whew! I'm glad you explained what was going on right away instead of ending this scene on an ambiguous note, creating a mystery to be explained later!" I mean, oh my god, this director expects us to piece together events from scenes without dialogue? What a lousy moviemaker. Anyone who says we missed the point is just a rabid fanboy, like Trekkies. I'm going to call them Kubrikkers to pre-emptively discredit any response.[/quote]