I’ve decided to keep Waveland as a pitch for a t.v. mini-series. It has grown too big for it’s own britches, and I’ve weaved such a far-arching story, that I really can’t cut it down.
Well, I could cut it into something very commercial and successful as a film, but I’m not. I want a movie/series that is fulfilling, not just exciting.
So, a year later, and 282 pages later, I finally present to you:
WAVELAND
Tonight I finally finished my screenplay “Waveland,” after working on it solid for slightly less than a year. Page one was written on 5-28-08, and I just wrote the final page tonight. It has been a shitty year between now and then, but I have persevered. Waveland has been a long time coming, and has gone through several different changes over the long time it bounced around in my head. It originally was like the movie “9 to 5,” but with Nazis, and a U-Boat filled with gold. I let my imagination go wild, and the result is the final iteration of Waveland. It is now a sci-fi/horror/comedy, which is one of the hardest scripts to pull off period. In the end I have produced a highly original screenplay, a rarity in today’s world.
Now all I have to do is distill the 250 pages down to 120-160, and break the movie down to its core.
My next project is going to be a high school comedy set in a 1982 Catholic Boarding School, so it should be a lot easier. 
I saw “Hangover” the movie tonight. Not much funny in it. If you’ve seen the previews, you’ve pretty much seen the whole movie sans one or two funny bits. That’s it. The trailer ruined every gag in the movie. Sure, it would have been ‘funnier’ if the gags had not been revealed in the trailer, but as it stands the movie is pretty weak otherwise.
The biggest problem with the movie is that it really doesn’t deliver on the apparent promise of showing you what exactly went on that wild and crazy night, except for a picture montage at the end.
The journey inbetween the point when they wake up with the chicken, baby, tiger, and trashed room really is boring and nonsensical. I see why this movie sold as a pitch. Its a good pitch, and good premise, and “high concept.” I just don’t like the execution of the movie.
Then there are the plot holes.
The baby that hardly ever cries, even though it hasn’t been changed or fed for most of the time its in the movie.
The trashed hotel room. They pretty much annihilate their mega-suite the first night, even apparently set fire to one of the chairs. They even haul one of their beds to the roof. They even bring a chicken and a Tiger into the room. Sure, if your the Prince of Persia, you can get away with such things. But security is not going to let four drunk dudes bring a Tiger into the casino, or the hotel. Not going to happen. Oh, and you can’t “smuggle” a Tiger into your room either. Besides, the group was apparently to wasted at that point anyway to care. At the end of the movie the four guys drive out of vegas like there’s no problem. I can assure you that all of the damage to the Mega-Suite would easily exceed the amount of money that they won at the Craps table ($80,000).
Oh, and especially in a post 9/11 world, nobody just walks on top of the room of a luxury hotel without alerting security unless they’re a ninja.
The stolen cop car. If a cop car was stolen in Las Vegas it would not stay stolen for very long. Its 2009 people. A gag like stealing a cop car would have worked in 1999, 1989, 1979. Not anymore. Everything has a built in GPS, and besides, the Vegas Police have HELICOPTERS
Mike Tyson’s house. So four drunk guys manage to break into Mike Tyson’s mansion, and the alarm system does not go off, and no cops show up, AND our band of (drunk) merry men are able to steal a tiger?
Then there is the casting problem.
Zack G. and Ed Helms are okay in their roles, but the other two guys? Don’t even remember their names. In a movie like this you always want to cast FUNNY PEOPLE, not regular actors. Funny people can play a straight man, and make him funny. Regular actors (today’s actors) can’t. The movie would have been 10x better if Bob Odenkirk and David Cross had been cast to fill the “straight guy” roles. Heck, Tim Heidecker and Eric Weirheim would have been relatively perfect to round out the cast. Instead they cast two good looking no-name actors that had no comedy experience.
“Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, where you think you’re going?” LOL
I just finally completed Waveland. Well, technically it is the first draft, and I have a LOT of stuff to cut. BUT it is complete!
Complete with the:
FADE OUT
and
The End
Yea!
EnHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Neil
Well, Vagueland crossed the 200 page mark tonight! Yea! I am finally reaching the end! Double Yea! I wrote 45 pages in just this past week, fun stuff!
Of course a good 100 pages is going to have to be cut, to pare it down to appropriate screenplay length, which is going to suck, but necessary. Vagueland would be better as a t.v. series and movie combination, but the odds of that happening are beyond calculation.
Still contemplating what do write next? Should I write my catholic boarding school comedy, or the straight up horror movie?
It is hard to believe that it has almost been TWENTY years since “Army of Darkness” came out, but we are fast approaching the twentieth anniversary in 2012. AOD is most likely Sam Raimi’s best movie ever, but I am amazed at how few in the the general public have seen it. AOD was billed as “Evil Dead 3,” but in fairness it was totally different from the previous two Evil Deads. Most of the “Deadheads,” the hardcore Evil Dead fans that I know, HATED AOD, and I understand why. Well, the real reason is that it is not “Evil Dead 3.” By the time AOD rolled around, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell figured that they had already done the horror bit, and wanted to have some fun. The result is AOD being much more of a slapstick comedy than a horror film. Truth be told, there is very little “horror” in AOD, and I am still amazed that it got an “R” rating. In fact, the MPAA wanted to give AOD an “X” rating on the original cut! Turns out that the MPAA did not like that black ichor shot out of the “pit zombie” in the original cut, but they had no problem with blood, or a fountain of blood for that matter.
Anyhoo….
Flash forward to 2009, and Sam Raimi is a now a hot shit movie director (and deservedly so). As a reward for the Spiderman films making seven trillion dollars, he was given the opportunity to go back to his roots, and that’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting a virtual remake of Army of Darkness.
The movie barely squeaks by with a PG-13 rating, because although most of the gross out scenes are a step above “Double Dare” on Nickelodeon, there are some pretty gross scenes sprinkled in for good measure.
Here’s my problems with the movie.
First: The movie violates the “unwritten rules of screenwriting,” which are: A) Don’t kill, or mutilate, or harm children. B) Don’t kill, or mutilate, or harm animals.
At the start of the movie a kid is brought to a mystic woman/exorcist by his parents. The kid stole a gypsy’s watch/necklace and even though he tried to give it back, the gypsy literally -damned the child to hell-. The kid gets beat up by a spirit and then then the floor opens up and the kid is dragged to hell, where he will burn for all eternity.
I have never been a fan of mysticism. In fiction, I can understand and deal with a system laid down by God, or Gods, with lesser spirits doing the bidding of the God or Gods. With the occult and mysticism there is a kind of chaos that most of the time makes no sense.
If a gypsy with worn clothes and a funny accent can literally -murder someone AND damn them to hell for all eternity with just a few words- then don’t you think that the gypsies would be the most powerful people on the planet?
In the movie the gypsy in question is turned down for an extension of her soon to be foreclosed house, which is an oxymoron, who ever heard of gypsies settling down and getting 30 year mortgages? The gypsy begs the loan officer for an extension, who freaks out and calls security. For this the gypsy woman then -damns the loan officer to burn in hell for all eternity-
We are then treated with some very goofy scenes of the shadows/facecloths/cakes/flies/pans becoming alive and attacking poor Alison Lohman.
The loan officer then goes to a psychic who tells her that she has to offer a sacrifice to appease the evil spirit. So she kills her new kitten (offscreen).
Of course this does not work.
The loan officer then goes to make peace the the gypsy, who, of course is now dead.
Long story short, the loan officer then has to go to the mystic woman/exorcist from the beginning of the movie. During the seance there is a literal reenactment of the first “witch scene” in AOD. You know, “You shall never get the necronomicon, we shall feast upon your Soullllllllls!”
The psychic then tells the loan officer that all she has to to is give the accursed item (in this case, a button-an eeevil button) to someone else, and the curse will then leave her alone and drag some other poor sap to hell.
Of course most people would be loathe to murder someone even if failure to do so meant their own death, but in this case she would be murdering someone AND sending them to hell for all eternity, so she and the psychic figure out that all they had to do is simply re-gift the curse back to the gypsy by gifting her the accursed item .
Then we are treated to another virtual reenactment of the graveyard scene from AOD.
Of course, everything is fine until the end of the movie where it is revealed that (whoops) she actually gave the gypsy corpse a quarter, not a button and hell opens up and drags her down.
Once again, yes, I do realize that it is a slapstick-esque comedy, but I just could not get over the gypsy being able to murder people and send them to hell, especially over trivial shit like a stolen necklace.
The audience was let down, as the film was marketed as a horror movie. I heard a lot of “that movie was stupid,” and “that movie sucked” comments as I left the theater.
So far this summer movie season has been 0 for 3, lets hope that “Up” breaks this losing streak.
P.S. Ash’s Car from Evil Dead/AOD makes an appearance as the gypsy’s car, complete with handicapped tags.
I must start off with saying that the first two Terminator movies are some of my most favorite movies of all time. Terminator 2 is still the greatest action movie of all time, bar none. Terminator 3 was alright, but I was not expecting much out of it because James Cameron was not involved with it. I was actually having some higher hopes for this movie, even with McG as director. Unfortunately, like Star Trek, it was written by some of the worst writers in Hollywood. The two writers who wrote such hits as “The Net,” and “Catwoman” and amazingly Terminator 3, also wrote this crapfest. I still don’t understand how these two writers got the gig for T:S, as Hollywood generally goes with the flavor of the month.
Anyhoo, onto the story, or lack thereof.
Okay, in Terminator 3 we left our hero, John Connnor inside the 1980’s cold war bunker, waiting it out for judgement day. In T:S we jump forward to 2018. John Connor is not the leader of resistance. In his place is Rickter from Total Recall.
John Connor is essentially a Sergeant in the resistance; a secondary character in his own movie.
Lets start with the problems.
Prologue: A death row prisoner named Marcus is given a “second chance” do help someone by donating his body to science. He takes the “deal.” Unfortunately for him, he donated his body unwittingly to Cyberdyne systems. What happens to him over the next 15 years is never explained, but from the trailers we all know that he’s a cyborg/hybrid terminator.
1. Flash forward to 2018, John connor attacks a skynet relay base. A literal hole in the ground. In the base is the Cyborg Terminator (c.t.). apparently sleeping on a slab. The base is some sort of lab experiment involving humans. Communications is lost with the humans on the topside. The guy in charge (not John) sends John to go “check it out.” Of course John gets up top and everyone is dead (no blood though). There is a hunter-killer ship making its “escape.” John being the smart, leader of humanity that he is, decides to follow the hunter-killer ship with a 1980’s tech helicopter with no weapons. While following the hunter-killer ship, Skynet NUKES its own base. Of course John’s chopper is just lightly knocked out of the sky by the nuclear shockwave, and John escapes to fight another day.
2. The C.T. then emerges out of the NUKED HOLE unscathed, covered in mud, and then wanders to L.A. While in L.A. he meets up Kyle Reese, and his mute, ambiguous, cute kid/friend who can sense when Terminators are close. Kyle tells the C.T. the whole “judgment day” spiel, and the two become fast friends. The C.T. manages to fix a 1988 Jeep with some spare parts and the trio are now on there way to somewhere. Where they got gas is another question. Remember gas only is good for about three years, and that’s with fuel stabilizers and optimal conditions.
The trio stop at an utterly bombed out gas station and get ambushed by some “friendly” humans. While arguing about nothing, THIS
Sneaks up on the group and starts “harvesting people.” Of course once the harvester makes it’s grand appearance, then it proceeds to sound like a freight train and a foghorn. A couple of dumbasses try to escape in their raggedy-ass vehicles, which the harvester ANNIHILATES with a Plasma Blast. Of course, this does not stop more dumbasses to try to escape in their vehicles, which also get instantly blown up by the harvester.
Now C.T. has had enough and decides to ram the harvester with an 18 wheeler of gasoline. (where did they get gasoline tanker from? Does Exxon still make deliveries to blown up gas stations after the apocalypse. Remember gas only lasts 3 years). Of course the ensuing fireball engulfs the entire west coast, but the C.T. and pals escape. Then the unexpected happens! The harvester appears through the burning fireball unscathed! The harvester now is unable to hit the massive tow truck the C.T. and pals are escaping in, even though it could pick off a Ford Pinto at 500 yards easy just in the last shot. Anyway, the harvester deploys two motorbike/terminators from it’s kneecaps (!) which chase the tow truck. The tow truck ends up on a bridge over a massive canyon with a Hunter-Killer hovering right over the bridge. The HK shoots a missile at point blank range, but misses and hits the bridge which seems unaffected. Somehow one of the terminator bikes ends up in the engine of the HK. The terminator bike was attached to the hoist and chain/wire of the tow truck, which is drug over the edge of the canyon. As Kyle reese and the cute kids are falling to their death, under them appears the harvester which perfectly catches them and puts them in a holding pen onboard a massive HK ship. The C.T. manages to jump aboard the HK ship and then fights the harvester which takes the C.T. and SMASHES him on the hull of the ship with full force, which should have killed him, or at least really f-ed him up. The C.T. falls overboard and into the water/canyon.
3. In the meantime, the humans have “figured out” that the machines are controlled by a “hidden” carrier wave. The humans figure out that they can literally turn the machines off, but only if the signal is maintained. Okay, look, I’m no computer expert, but you would think that a massive computer intelligence could come up with a Ultra-unbreakable encryption for the most important aspect of the whole collective. If the humans could easily break a code an gain control over the machines, then don’t you think the machines would have recognized such a weakness. In our current time we have some pretty advanced forms of crypto, such as quantum cryptography , so by 2018, I think things would have advanced significantly more on that front.
4. The C.T. crawls out of the canyon and manages to find a downed fighter pilot who is smokin’ hot and has perfect teeth. 
Yes, they are even whiter in the movie, so apparently the dental plan for the resistance is pretty good. Anyhoo, the hot chick takes the C.T. back to her base. He gets blown up by magnetic mines that only affect machines. The humans quickly realize that the C.T. ain’t human.
5. The Hot Chick feels sorry for the C.T and helps him escape. During the ensuing chase. John Connor’s chopper gets shot down, and the C.T. saves him, which can apparently SWIM, even though he is 90% metal and weighs a ton. John still not convinced threatens to shoot the C.T. in his EXPOSED HUMAN HEART (great design there Cyberdyne), and the C.T. was like “Then totally do it, bitch, I’m ready to die.” This convinces John Connor that the C.T. is a good guy. John sends the C.T. back to Skynet, and gives him a phone to call him when he has infiltrates Skynet and deactivated the security defenses so John (by himself) can go and save Kyle Reese.
6. The human resistance decides that they are just going to bomb Skynet, and the human prisoners, and Kyle Reese be damned. John Connor then gets on the radio and TELLS EVERYONE LISTENING to not attack Skynet tomorrow, or that they will be worst than the machines. IT WORKS! Of course thanks to the tactical genius of John Connor, Skynet now knows that it is going to be attacked the next day, but this apparently part of Skynet’s master plan anyway. This then leads me to ask A) Where did the humans get Nukes/Bombs/Whatever, and why don’t they use them if Skynet is centralized and can be destroyed. The whole “turn the machines” off temporarily thing is then a useless subplot.
7. OMG, it turns out the carrier wave signal thing was a rouse! It’s a trap!
8. Skynet blows up the dumbass human resistance leaders. So that leaves C.T. and John to take out Skynet.
9. Back at Skynet, the C.T. just walks right into Skynet, as the machines recognize him as one of their own. While inside the core of Skynet, the C.T. “jacks into the Matrix” and then gets knocked out. He wakes up and all of the damage previously done to him is fixed, and he then starts talking with Skynet. I am going to quote Harry Knowles here: “Ok – so then – through the most painfully excruciating sequence of the film – when Marcus is in Skynet and is trying to access the files on where Kyle Reese is… suddenly McG “nukes the fridge” by giving SkyNet a face. SkyNet is Helena Bonham Carter – the chemo lady that visits Marcus when he was on Death Row to get him to sign his body over to Cyberdyne. And through this really long and grotesque hand-holding monologue catching the painfully slow-witted Marcus up on what’s going on… well, it’s bad! Really bad! I’m talking, you want to look away from the screen cuz it’s fucking embarrassingly awful bad.” Skynet, as it turns out, thought out this whole master plan of having the C.T. befriend John Connor and then bring John Connor back to Skynet to kill him, but the bonus is that through sheer luck, they also capture Kyle Reese (John’s Father) at the same time to further lure John to his doom, not paying attention to the fact that once they had Kyle Reese in their power, all they had to do is kill him instantly and that would have been the end of the movie.
DR. EVIL
Scott, I want you to meet Daddy’s
nemesis, Austin Powers.
SCOTT EVIL
Why are you feeding him? Why don’t
you just kill him?
DR. EVIL
In due time.
SCOTT EVIL
But what if he escapes? Why don’t
you just shoot him? What are you
waiting for?
DR. EVIL
I have a better idea. I’m going to
put him in an easily-escapable
situation involving an overly-
elaborate and exotic death.
SCOTT EVIL
Why don’t you just shoot him now?
Here, I’ll get a gun. We’ll just
shoot him. Bang! Dead. Done.
DR. EVIL
One more peep out of you and you’re
grounded. Let’s begin.
A PRIVATE ARMY SOLDIER grabs Austin and Vanessa. Dr. Evil
hits a button. One whole wall slides out to reveal a tank.
10. John frees the prisoners, which escape to where I don’t know, since the whole building is nothing but killer robots. Well, at least you’d think the evil robot headquarters would have a shit-load of killer robots, but strangely, there is only one lone T800. In the ensuing chaos John finally finds what he thinks is Kyle Reese’s cell, but lo and behold it is AHNOLD HIMSELF, the T800 who steps out of the cell and knocks the living shit out of John.
I’m talking about knocking him so hard that he flies across the room and smashes into objects with severe force. Of course John gets up after each hit like its no big deal. Then a T600 gets in the way of the T800 killing John (the T-600 hits John in the shoulder with a F’ing MINI GUN, and he just shrugs it off), so the T800 RIPS THE T600 IN HALF. This makes absolutely no sense. John then shoots at the slowly advancing T800 with a grenade launcher that apparently does variable damage with each shot. John then blows a whole in the wall and jumps down into a T800 factory. Of course the pursuing T800 does not jump down. The elevator starts to come down and opens, no terminator, WTF? Of course the T800 then steps out of the assembly line of the other mysteriously inactive T800s to attack!!!
(note, not my upload, found it on youtube.)
The C.T. shows up and save John temporarily. That is until the T800 “remembers” that the C.T.’s HEART IS EXPOSED. The T800 PUNCHES THE C.T. IN THE HEART, and the C.T. is TERMINATED.
11. Of course the T800 continues its attack on John, and convienently steps in front of a vat of molten metal, which John blows up. The molten metal falls and consumes the T800. Of course it does not die, but stands up and walks slowly to menace John. John then shoots a pipe of liquid nitrogen which freezes the metal and hardens it. Of course it is still not dead, and starts to break free from its metal immuration, but is finally stopped as the metal fully cools.
13. John rigs the nuclear fuel cells to blow with a remote detonator.
14. John decides that he is going to revive the C.T. by ZAPPING HIM IN HIS DESTROYED HUMAN HEART WITH 1,000,000 volts. Of course it works, and the C.T. gets up like nothing happened. Then the T800 stabs John THROUGH the chest (still not sure exactly where he is stabbed) with a pipe, and then the C.T. knocks the head off the T800.
15. John and the C.T. escape Skynet which apparently forgot to reactivate its own defenses that the C.T. had previously disabled. Apparently this was all part of skynet’s cunning plan.
16. John blows up Skynet like while the chopper is just barely away, even though he knows that there is going to be a nuclear explosion.
17. Everyone gets back to base, and it turns out John’s heart just won’t make it. So the C.T. offers his heart (aww) to John. John takes it, even though the T800 had cockpunched it so hard that it killed the C.T. The OPEN HEART surgery is performed OUTSIDE in the open air desert.
The End. Sigh.
Oh, and SPOILER ALERT! I just saved you $10 bucks, and time that would be better spent just buying T2 on DVD, or importing the Japanese Blu-Ray/HD DVD.
I must prelude my rant with the fact that I am a Trekkie. I’ve seen all of the episodes of all of the series, bought the technical manuals, played the various Star Trek board games and video games over the years, and generally been a nerd. I’ve never reached the point of learning Klingon, but I did make a Star Wars Fanfilm.
With all that said, I still went into the new Star Trek movie with high hopes. The trailers look great, and I saw how this movie would revive the ailing Star Trek franchise.
However…
The movie is a glossy piece of crap, with a lens flare.
If you have not seen the movie and want an honest opinion read on, but be warned, spoilers ahead.
Let me first say that the new Star Trek movie is a rip of the last Star Trek movie, “Nemesis.” The plot is very similar, though slightly different, and both involve the Romulans.
In “Nemesis” there is some strange plot of the Romulans creating a Captain Picard clone, and then abandoning him on some mining planet. The Picard clone then befriends his fellow slave mine workers and creates a super ship that rivals anything the Federation has. Then the Picard clone attempts to take over the Romulan empire and tries to destroy Earth with a “Radiation Device” that would annihilate all life on Earth.
Okay, with the new “Trek” we have a pissed off Romulan miner (from the future) who blames Spock for the destruction of Romulas because THEIR STAR WENT SUPERNOVA and Spock was just a few seconds too late from stopping the Supenova with something called “Red Matter.” Let me clarify, Spock had nothing to do with the star going Supernova, he was simply trying to help, and just got there too late.
Well, the only survivor of the entire Romulan empire was this miner Romulan named “Nero.” Nero, despite the fact that he was a self proclaimed “simple miner” manages to build a literal death star and that’s where the movie derails.
After (future) Spock managed to stop the Supernova by turning it into a Black Hole(!) both Nero’s ship and Spock’s ship get dragged back through time, creating an alternate reality.
Nero captures Spock and Spock’s “red matter” and then sets out on his diabolical plan to destroy Vulcan to punish Spock from being late. Nero uses a “laser drill” to drill to the center of Vulcan and then injects the core of the planet with the Red Matter, creating a black hole.
Now skipping a bunch of the movie:
Back on the Enterprise, Spock kicks Kirk off the ship and sends him to an “ice world,” where Kirk is chased by some “Ice Beast.” Kirk retreats to a cave where he just so happens to bump into Future Spock! Future Spock tells kirk that Nero marooned him on the ice world so he could see the destruction of Vulcan and be helpless. Future Spock and Kirk go to the Federation Outpost where they find Scotty. Future Spock gives Scotty the formulas to be able to beam back to the Enterprise, which is moving at Warp Speed countless light years away from the ice world. Kirk and Scotty beam aboard the Enterprise and Kirk manages to take over the ship by forcing Spock to have an emotional breakdown.
Nero arrives at Earth and starts to drill into the earth’s core. The heroes manage to show up and save the day, but in the process, create A BLACK HOLE right next to EARTH and the Enterprise is getting sucked into it! What do our heroes do? They eject the warp core (anti-matter) into the black hole, and the black hole explodes into harmless blue energy which does not (a) fry Earth and everyone on Earth, and (b) pushes the Enterprise safely away.
Things I hated about the movie:
1. PRODUCTION DESIGN. This movie had some of the worst production design I have seen. The designer mixed steampunk with sleek futuristic design and the result is horrible. Sure, the bridge and hallways look great, but it was difficult to tell where the characters were when they were in other parts of the ship. The engine room was M.I.A. as it looked like the rest of the ship, which looked like the innards of an oil refinery.
2. FORK LIFTS. Yes ladies and gentlemen, in the 23rd century when we have the ability to beam solid matter from one place to another, apparently we will still use fork lifts to load up cargo. Not robots, walkers, or anything else.
3. NO ROBOTS. This is a general complaint against trek as a whole. You would think that with 23rd century technology they could at least have some cool robots fixing things, building things, lifting things.
4. THE MUSIC. Go back and watch Star Trek II. One thing you will immediately notice is that (OMG) it has real music! Music that gets your blood pumping during the battle scenes between Khan and Kirk. The music in this new ST movie is utterly boring, and they committed the unpardonable sin of not having the opening music to Star Trek at the start of the movie; not even a variation on the original theme.
5. THE ACTING. One thing when watching this new Star Trek, you quickly realize is that even ham fisted William Shatner is light years better than his modern replacement. This is more of a complaint of Hollywood as a whole. This younger generation of twenty somethings has never had to endure anything harder than deciding which hot pocket they were going to eat next. All other earlier generations have had to endure some form of terrible war, plague, famine, going without, depression, etc. Harry Lime’s speech from “The Third Man sums it up: “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce - the cuckoo clock!” Tough times build character, something which both the current younger generations lack.
5. LENS FLARE. Much has been said about use of lens flare in the movie, and I must say it was a very stupid choice by the director. By using lens flares constantly it actually ruins the shots. Its hard to see what the hell is going on in some shots because there are freakin’ Christmas lights blinding the frame in just about every scene.
6. THE SPECIAL EFFECTS. Industrial Light and Magic has always been the modern savior of movie magic. If it was not for ILM, Hollywood may have very well have gone under many years ago. Why? Because ILM has done the special effects for 90% of the biggest blockbusters of all time. Unfortunately, ILM’s effects now all look the same; they all look glossy and fake. Once again, watch Star Trek 2 on Blu-Ray and then compare it to the new Star Trek. Sure, its a slower pace, but the scenes look REAL and have weight to them.
7. TOO MUCH LIKE STAR WARS. The opening battle was more like Star Wars (new Star Wars, not old Star Wars), than Star Trek. Gone are the long, trailing beams of the previous iterations of the Phaser. Now the Phaser is more “pew, pew!” Even the handguns are “pew, pew” now.
8. SOUND DESIGN. Speaking of Star Wars, if you thought you heard some sound effects that sounded similar to Star Wars in the new Star Trek movie, you were not hearing things. Ben Burtt, the best sound designer EVER, did the sound effects for the new Trek. Unfortunately, he phoned in his work on this movie, and it shows. Go watch the Asteroid battle scene from Attack of the Clones, and you’ll notice a lot of similarities.
9. ASIANS AND INDIANS need not apply. Once again, more of a jab of Trek as a whole, I have always found it odd that since the Asian and Indian populations are the most numerous on Earth, that the Federation would be composed mainly of white/black people and aliens. I’m not talking about the main cast, as you can’t change those core roles, but the supporting cast could have used a few more Asians and Indians. On that note, the woman with the saucer plate eyes who delivers Kirk looked absolutely absurd.
Overall, its not a bad movie, but that’s the very problem with today’s Hollywood. They are putting out shitty movies that aren’t totally bad, but have good special effects, and good action scenes and the general public does not care one way or the other.
Star Trek did $33 million in the first day, so there will be a sequel(s).
UPDATED 5-24
The writers of the new “Star Trek” stated recently the following at a QandA.
Highlights of Orci & Kurtzman May 18-20 Q&A
* Open to TNG character in sequel (if done ‘organically’)
* 10,000 surviving Vulcans does NOT count off-worlders
* Vulcan’s red sky (was) seasonal
* SpockPrime will adhere to a ‘Temporal Prime Directive’ to minimize introducing future tech into new timeline
* Enterprise being built at Riverside Iowa Shipyard to ‘commemorate the sacrifice’ of George Kirk
* New timeline still bound to canon events that took place in the prime timeline (like Botany Bay, V’Ger, etc)
* Spock Prime’s viewing of the destruction of Vulcan was cinematic license and ‘impressionistic’ and could have involved a telescope or other device
* No ‘canon’ explanation for what Nero and crew were doing for 25 years between Kirk’s birth and arrival of Spock Prime, open to ‘fan fiction’
* The Admiral Archer mentioned by Scotty is the same Jonathan Archer from Enterprise (and Enterprise is part of new timeline)
* The attack on the Narada put Winona Kirk into labor preventing Kirk from being born in Iowa (as in the Prime timeline)
* Inconsistencies between film and “Countdown” can be explained that the comic is not canon
* Keenser was in Starfleet while on Delta Vega, just like Scotty
* Paramount expected to make the script available (checking on this)
* Kid on road (’Johnny’) was “originally meant to be” Kirk’s brother George Jr. and “still could be”
* There’s money, or some kind of credit system in this universe
* The second ‘lightning storm’ referred to in the film was created when SpockPrime’s jellyfish arrived back in time
* Bridge viewscreen changed to window/HUD to justify the bridge’s placement atop the ship instead of in a more secure location
* Damon Lindelof contributed ‘a lot’ to the story of Star Trek
* Lindelof will be ‘breaking the story’ with Bob and Alex on sequel, Bob and Alex will write final screenplay
* Survivors and telemetry from Narada attack on Kelvin exposed Federation to Romulans (explaining why Kirk knows about Romulans and so film does not violate canon of “Balance of Terror”)
* Although ‘Prime’ is used to distinguigh Nimoy’s Spock, the team have no name for the new timeline
* Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha was an ‘invaluable resource’
* New Stardates work by taking the year (as in 2233), with the month and day expressed as a decimal point from .1 to .365 (as in the 365 days of the year)
Okay, their biggest lie was, ” * New timeline still bound to canon events that took place in the prime timeline (like Botany Bay, V’Ger, etc) ” Okay, that’s just bullshit. Vulcan wasn’t destroyed, and the Klingons weren’t decimated either in the “old” “prime” series. This changes the WHOLE SERIES.
In the new Trek movie, both the Federation and the Klingons took heavy losses fighting Nero, leaving the Romulans unscathed. This would have created a power vacuum that the War-Hungry Romulans would have easily seized upon.
Essentially, there is the very distinct possibility that the Klingons and the Federation would then form an alliance to fight the Romulans.
Khan cannot take place because the original episode depended on the enterprise being in that exact place and time to stumble upon the Botany Bay.
Star Trek 3 cannot take place, as well as any of the episodes Spock was in, in the Next Generation Series, when he was trying to broker peace between the Vulcans and Romulans.
Because of this new Trek movie, the whole Star Trek Universe would have changed. Think of it in a different light. Think WWII. Lets say that the Japanese sat out World War II, and the USA and Russia took heavy losses, and there was no A-Bomb. With Germany defeated, and USA and Russia weak, then the Japanese launched massive attacks on Europe and the U.K. Sure the Japanese might not have been able to take over the world, but they certainly could have defeated at least one of the Allies, and guaranteed strife for decades. This is the current Star Trek Universe. No time for leisurely searching outer space for new life and new civilizations, not with the Romulans on the offense.
Of course, Future “Prime” Spock does give the Federation an incredible advantage, in that he does know the future, and more specifically future technology. That’s one thing that really irks me about the new movie. “Prime” Spock is now the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ASSET IN THE GALAXY. Even though his knowledge of the future is now sketchy due to the changing timelines, he still retains the knowledge of future tech, and KNOWS HOW TO BUILD IT.
Spock won’t be like “B minus Time Traveller” lol
Of course the writers will ignore this gaping hole, even though the Romulans/Klingons would be doing anything possible in order to kidnap Spock.
I’ve decided to enter Vagueland in a t.v. pilot competition at www.scriptpimp.com Everyone is looking for an esoteric hardcore sci-fi/comedy/horror/period piece t.v. pilot these days. Its a sure win!
I’m still writing Waveland as the movie script and Vagueland, as the t.v. script. Same property different takes. The script and my ideas are easier to spread out over a series than to compress into one movie, but I can do it!
Enjoy.
VAGUELAND—->vaguelandtvpilot1