Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies





	[quote name="FABIO"][quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"][quote name="laudablepuss"]Did I mention that Scotty brought a burn victim to the bridge? All the way from engineering? I did? Okay nevermind, I have plenty more. Speaking of shit you can't believe the director didn't reshoot, how about the guy who blinked his eyes closed after he was dead, right before Khan says "I will avenge yoooou"? Pretty embarassing. Or the prop in engineering that was killing Spock with radiation not being secured to the floor? Hey, why don't they have robots or something to do dangerous stuff like that anyway? Have I won yet? Should I continue? (Warning: I'm not sure I can. :( )[/quote] Here is the thing, though - and yeah, Wrath of Khan had some silly parts. (The burn victim that Scotty brought forth was -- IIRC -- supposed to be his nephew or something. It's not mentioned in the movie, I don't think. There is no logical reason to bring him to the bridge and if Meyer cuts the scene explaining who the hell he is in relation to Mr. Scott, it's dumb to have him anywhere on the ship later.) (Especially since -- this is a whole other thread -- but Trek NEEDS and has always needed some younger actors when they were doing the TV shows, so that there can be one guy in his athletic prime when they get around to doing the movies. First Contact got around that with Lt. Hawk, but they should have had Wheaton shooting people in the face in 9 and 10. Wheaton definitely should have had Riker's fight at the end of Nemesis, which was possibly the most unbelievable part of the entire movie. But again, that is a whole other thread.) So while you are correct that Wrath of Khan had some pure cheese, it works better than Nemesis because every single character in the movie in WoK is iconic. And I don't just mean the minor characters like Scotty and Chekov, who will be a part of our culture in the same way we associate Thor and Loki with the Norse - Wrath of Khan worked because they got lucky with the original series, in that Ricardo Montalban: 1) Played a guy in <i>Space Seed</i> that was absolutely a match for Kirk AND Spock 2) Became a huge star in his own right 3) Was in the public consciousness because of Fantasy Island 4) Didn't let himself go 5) Was available for WoK I would say that Nemesis would have had a chance of working, had anyone bothered to develop an antagonist for Picard and Data in the 7 years of TNG. Q doesn't count, because he can "do anything." The Borg, by their nature, don't lend themselves to a single charismatic cult of personality like Montalban. There was also that girl archaeologist, who doesn't get the nod because she's a girl, which really just leaves Professor Moriarty and Lore. Moriarty's out, because the guys in charge of Trek at the end probably had no idea where he came from. Lore would have been the best choice... but hey, Spiner didn't want to do Data any more. Nemesis would have been a thousand times better if a CGI Lore was the villain. People would have been quoting that movie as much as they quote Wrath of Khan, because Spiner could make anything sound devious, clever and cruel when he was "being" Lore. Instead, for Nemesis, we get some tool who never appeared in the original show. And I am not even saying he's a bad actor, he was fine with what he had to work with - but Christ, ever since the scene where Kirk got his bifocals, an underlying theme of Star Trek is that it's okay to grow old. Nobody was going to buy Picard being in danger from some kid, even if he was his own clone. Again, not that the guys in charge of Trek at the end had any appreciation for the themes of Trek movies #2-#6. I am not going to say that the emotional reaction resonating from our culture, the 60s, the 70s, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Montalban makes any sense. Who doesn't hate either the 60s or 70s? But the three best Trek films (WoK, TUC and FC) tap into antagonists that were fleshed out in the shows. The worst, like #5, simply make up some dude we know nothing about. As we are sitting there being told things in the first act of a movie we are expected to go OMG, instead of previously having been <i>shown</i> things in the TV series. And to no surprise, the random Hollywood screenwriter writing a shitty Trek movie is inferior to the shared North American mythology of the Star Trek TV shows. (And, of course, all of it is ultimately irrelevant because the highest grossing Trek film was the one about the dolphins.) the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey![/quote] Wrath of Kahn took Moby Dick and (mostly) made it fit believably into its world. Nemesis took Wrath of Kahn without the faintest idea of what it was really about, filled it with bullshit, made the first quarter of the movie have nothing to do with the plot, and made the solution to every obstacle "let's turn Patrick Stewart into an action star." There's tons of smaller retarded elements of Nemesis (the Romulans handed leadership and doomsday weapon over to their slaves who hold an undying hatred for them? Finding the cloaked enemy ship through telepathic rape link? Ships moving that fast would actually survive being rammed? The ship is so damaged that every last weapon is disabled, <i>except</i> for the super doomsday weapon that takes up the majority of the ship's structure?), but that's basically it. If the Nemesis team were to go back and make Wrath of Kahn, all cat and mouse would be replaced with a 60 year old Kirk beaming aboard to fistfight the entire enemy crew while Spock made calculations in the air lock so he could <i>throw</i> Genesis back into Kahn's ship.[/quote]