Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies :: Re: What would a good Star Trek movie look like, anyway?

[quote name="Tansin A. Darcos (TDARCOS)"]<i>Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.</i> Change the movie to where it was two men on sailing ships during the 18th or 19th century in the middle of the ocean, and it still works as a good story on the conflict between two warriors locked in battle where only one who can survive, and with limited exceptions (mostly the sci-fi stuff) you could do most of it in almost the same fashion. Make it a 20th or 21st century film where they're on fast warships and Khan has a nuclear weapon, and the other ship's special high-speed water tractor is not working, and they can't get out of blast range without it, and it would also work. And it would be just fiction, nothing science fiction about it. Star Trek II falls into that very unique class of works of a sequel that was better than the original. This is an extremely tiny class of work, most movies or books never come close to meeting or beating their predecessor work(s) in terms of story, plot or delivery/ And since then the Star Trek franchies hasn't really risen up to the level of the first film although the intervening series have worked fairly well with the exception of the execrable prequel series <i>Enterprise</i> with Scott Bakula stale from doing all those <i>Quantum Leap</i>s, and the alternate universe Kirk and Spock film showing them from when they were very young, like that Terminator movie showing a much younger Reese together with an older John Connor, and portraying the latter as the asshole we knew and loved as a kid. The best science fiction works work first as <i>stories</i>, with the science fiction as a gimmick added on to enhance the story. The original 1969 <i>Andromeda Strain</i> and the subsequent movie work first as stories, and the wierest thing about it is that almost everything they did in the film that was basically impossible then has become possible now, 40 years later. [/quote]