Whedonesque : Comments on 20262 : Seven franchises J.J. Abrams should reboot.

That doesn't even make sense. You reboot something when it gets too big, convoluted, and crufty. Firefly/Serenity was (alas) a long, long, long way from that point when it ended.

jlp | May 11, 07:05 CET

Reboot Joss? Pleease. :-( That may be the worst idea I've ever heard.

Shey | May 11, 07:08 CET

Well, that's a slap in the face.

ThorpeWithoutShrimp | May 11, 07:09 CET

That list is terrible. This guy doesn't understand about the 'Verse at all. He wants Abrams to strip what makes Firefly/Serenity wonderful and different and make it every other "space opera." The only thing on that list I agree with is Wonder Woman. Since Joss isn't going to be able to make the film , J.J. would be an excellent second choice IMHO.

[ edited by TartFuel on 2009-05-11 07:10 ]

TartFuel | May 11, 07:09 CET

I wouldn't want J.J. Abrams to go anywhere near Serenity, even if it was the only way I'd ever see the universe again. It's Joss' and the idea of anyone else taking the reigns is scary. The very idea makes me nauseous, despite how much I enjoyed Star Trek.

kali0712 | May 11, 07:11 CET

Do they not remember the Abrams script for Superman? The one that made Luthor a Kryptonian and was generally kind of dumb?

The One True b!X | May 11, 07:12 CET

And then, of course, there's Star Trek to consider. Yes, it had several nice moments for people who were already Trekkies, but it also had a munchkin sidekick for Scotty, and red matter.

Why is it so destructive? Because it's red. Before red's horrific properties were known, Starfleet actually employed it as a cloth dye, resulting in thousands of dead ensigns when exposed to surges in the surrounding energy field/monster:crewman ratio/air currents.

Mercenary | May 11, 07:24 CET

Star Trek's positives far, far and away outweigh it's couple of missteps. But that still doesn't mean he shouldnow run off and reboot everything else.

The One True b!X | May 11, 07:26 CET

Yesterday I was thinking about which scifi franchise Universal could revive in the wake of Star Trek's success. A reboot of Serenity did cross my mind. But not by Abrams, the man has to sleep. Perhaps a Mr Whedon could do the job?

Simon | May 11, 07:29 CET

Ugh no. I love J.J. Abrams, but no one should be touching Firefly/Serenity except his purpleness.

cfeuille | May 11, 07:31 CET

Maybe JJ Abrams could produce it and Joss Whedon could write and direct it.

mortimer | May 11, 07:53 CET

You know what I really expected on that list? Alien.

alpha5099 | May 11, 08:09 CET

Beastmaster, maybe. I'd like to see a reboot of that.

ef | May 11, 08:10 CET

I liked the new Trek well enough, but while trying to appeal to the masses Abrams dumbed it down more than I thought he should have. Meanwhile Serenity managed to keep a high philosophical meaning and still make a fun movie that didn't expect audiences to be too dumb to understand what was going on.

Abrams is no better than any of the directors mentioned, he is just the current studio golden boy that has proven he can make money. Therefore he gets all the funding so he can make really big expensive movies. If Joss got the kind of Money Abrams got he could probably outdo Abrams every time.

Serenity $39 million budget
Star trek $160 million budget

Anybody can make a good action film if you throw enough money at them. Joss managed to do the same thing for a lot less and still satisfy the hard core sci-fi/philosophy nerd in me.

Jayne's Hat | May 11, 08:12 CET

Anybody can make a good action film if you throw enough money at them.

That's overstating it. Heh. There are plenty of expensive crappy action films.

The One True b!X | May 11, 08:15 CET

Why is it so destructive? Because it's red.

Tell me about it -- didn't red matter feature quite prominently in Alias too?

And yeah, I agree with everyone else here: as much as I enjoyed the new Star Trek film, Abrams just isn't capable of the subtlety needed to pull off something like Firefly.

MattK | May 11, 08:19 CET

No. Just, no.

nyrk | May 11, 08:36 CET

I think Abrams is great but to try and reboot Firefly or Serenity, only a few years after it ended, just seems weird to me. I think Star Trek was different because it had branched off into so many different spin-offs and movies with many creative minds all giving their different perspectives on the verse. Whereas, that’s not Joss style so it wouldn’t feel the same to reboot a Joss show.. Without Joss.

vampmogs | May 11, 08:48 CET

b!X, I quite enjoyed the new Trek - I saw it with my family for Mother's Day, itself a clue as to our predispositions towards any Trekkish endeavor, and I agree with your assessment of its relative merits. That having been said, introducing something like red matter without even a smidgen of explanatory theoretical physics (read: 'technobabble') was a weird decision for a continuation of the franchise, and the reaction-shot crunchy munchkin seemed such an avoidable mistake.

I have to admit, though - Zachary Quinto can raise his eyebrow (even if it seems to be the wrong one) with the best of them.

Mercenary | May 11, 08:56 CET

Ok, I've had my daily dose of blasphemy.

[ edited by ShanshuBugaboo on 2009-05-11 09:27 ]

ShanshuBugaboo | May 11, 09:01 CET

Don't even think about it, J.J.

Let Down | May 11, 09:05 CET

Someone is a massive JJ fan I think...

SmileTime | May 11, 09:16 CET

What?? Ooh my giddy aunt.

The Do That Girl | May 11, 10:23 CET

This is an awful artical, because most people who actualy know anything about film and TV know that Joss is a far better writer. From reading most of the reviews of Serenity when it came out about 90% of them gave Serenity 4 to 5 stars. The only reason this film is getting more headlines then Serenity is because its Star Trek, it might be a good film but it is getting the same sort of reviews as Serenity.

Gota luv that Buffy | May 11, 10:36 CET

Agh. Please, no.

ceo | May 11, 11:07 CET

Um, unpopular opinion maybe, but I felt that both Alias and Lost needed a reboot within one season.

Ildeth | May 11, 11:08 CET

Reading that made me wanna puke.

xerox | May 11, 11:30 CET

The only person I trust Firefly/Serenity with besides Joss is Tim Minear.

Pretty_Hate_Machine | May 11, 11:31 CET

Maybe JJ Abrams could produce it and Joss Whedon could write and direct it.

Exactly, mortimer. That'd be the best of both worlds, and would get JJ's cross-over pop-culture cred and draw in Joss' dedicated fandom.

Unfortunately, things like this never happen :)

GVH | May 11, 11:36 CET

As much as I love JJ Abrams's "Star Trek," NOBODY should do Joss's work except Joss.

Nebula1400 | May 11, 11:49 CET

Forget the offense everyone has of saying someone else should reboot Joss's work...this author has no idea what a reboot is!

How do you "reboot" True Lies? A standalone movie that was fairly successful?

How do you "reboot" a TV Show that, while it did manage to spawn a motion picture, only ran 15 episodes?

Speed? Didn't realize it was such a franchise. The first movie was a sort of cult hit, the second was terrible. That's it. Reboot a movie and its sequel?

Superman? Already been rebooted! Fail tag applies here.

I think Hollywood is getting "reboot" crazy, and they should put down their "reboot crack pipe" for a few years...

recoil | May 11, 12:26 CET

That was just wrong. Abrams has never had a show, in my opinion, that he he did not ruin by screwing with it too much. And Joss has never had a show that he ruined.

Dana5140 | May 11, 12:40 CET

I think that JJ Abrams is better at writing Pilots. he can't keep a show going, but the Lost/Alias/felicity Pilots were great.

He makes a better first impression than Joss, which is why his movies are more successful... plus the whole having lots of money to make and promote his movies helps as well.

mortimer | May 11, 12:55 CET

The point of hiring JJ Abrams, is to make it mass market commercial, no matter how much he destroys the original material. So knowledge of the 'verse won't be hindrance for him.

Just think; Mischa Barton as Inara, Zac Efron as Mal, Shia LaBeouf as Wash, Jamie Bell as Jayne, Beyoncé Knowles as Zoë, Megan Fox as River, Rupert Grint as Simon and Gregory Hines as Book.

In the first movie the Serenity gets sucked through a blackhole back to the battle of Serenity valley and the crew manages to win the war for the Browncoats.

Hunted | May 11, 13:44 CET

I'm not really sure why this author wants JJ Abrams to reboot more stuff. So he did one movie - that doesn't mean that his entire career is going to be made on reboots. I mean, I'm sure he's still got plenty of ideas for new shows/movies...

gchucky | May 11, 14:18 CET

The list, it burnsss ussss...

Craig Oxbrow | May 11, 14:23 CET

I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie yet, but I have heard excellent things about it. That makes two franchises in which he has made great contributions (Mission Impossible III was, in my opinion, the best of the MI movies), so it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that he might get called in work on another franchise.

The most interesting thing I got out of this, though, was the author's comparision of how Joss works vs how JJ does:

Where [Joss's] approach generally takes a big idea and makes it small and intimate – therefore connecting only with a narrow audience – Abrams' tactic is the opposite, expanding small and specific ideas to mythic, and ultimately universal proportions.

JMaloney | May 11, 14:59 CET

Just think; Mischa Barton as Inara, Zac Efron as Mal, Shia LaBeouf as Wash, Jamie Bell as Jayne, Beyoncé Knowles as Zoë, Megan Fox as River, Rupert Grint as Simon and Gregory Hines as Book.

Shouldn't Zac play Simon? At least then we'd know that it would be somewhat true to Joss' vision. ;)

JMaloney | May 11, 15:01 CET

I think J.J. Abrams is pretty great, but first of all, Firefly doesn't need a REBOOT, it needs a continuation. And second, why would we NEED to reboot Back to the Future? It's a completed story and one that is still relevant to us. Maybe in 2015, a remake would be feasible, but not now.

Radaar | May 11, 15:24 CET

I think Bruce Willis Should play Mal

mortimer | May 11, 15:26 CET

mortimer said it. Abrams is better suited to writing the occasional pilot episode (and then leaving the series alone -- worked for Lost (IMO), less so for Alias), and being a producer without responsibilities as writer or director.

And I guess I need to see Star Trek anyway. If Abrams has indeed "ruined" the franchise, this might actually be watchable. :-)

Kaneda | May 11, 15:41 CET

I feel icky inside just reading that list.

didifallasleep | May 11, 15:46 CET

Zac Efron as Mal

Zac Efron was already Simon.

Nebula1400 | May 11, 16:08 CET

mortimer, your point about JJ producing is good, especially if he stay far away of the creative decisions. I even don't bother of him get more credit for things that he didnn't did, since he really din't.
And as a curiosity, here the Giles dubber voice is the same of Bruce Willis.

Brasilian Chaos Man | May 11, 16:16 CET

LOST has basically no Abrams involvement so if you for some reason dislike it you can't blame Abrams. Alias, FWIW, basically did reboot itself regularly; it's part of what I liked about it.

The One True b!X | May 11, 16:22 CET

On the other hand, the best seasons of Alias (1 and 2) were when JJ was most heavily involved. LOST is almost entirely the work of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse -- JJ's pilot was stunning, though.

JMaloney | May 11, 16:37 CET

The only thing Abrams does better than Joss is marketing. He's pretty brilliant at that. Otherwise I find Abrams watchable and fun, but he doesn't cut nearly as deep.

zoinkers | May 11, 16:40 CET

JJ is a fantastic director, so if Joss wrote and produced whilst JJ directed and produced I'm sure whatever they'd create would have mass, mass appeal!

Explosions and intricate storylines, tied together with a complex characters and flying cars. Who wouldn't love it?

Jayme | May 11, 17:05 CET

I assume this article is written to create discussion...because I can't possibly take it seriously when the author suggests a "reboot" of Firefly and Star Wars?? (Really?)

So why not re-make Close Encounters (or 2001: A Space Odyssey) while we're at it? I'm sure Shia LaBeouf would be much better than Richard Dreyfus...

The only thing this article does is make me ask; What has happened to the entertainment business in this era of pandering?

For example, we already saw what a Star Wars franchise re-boot looks like; Greedo shoots first and the Ewoks sing a better song. And in terms of the actual new content, we get Jar Jar Binks. Lets not forget the most anticipated portion of the story, Darth Vader's origin story. In a sudden change of heart, Anakin betrayed his mentor and brothers in arms, turning his back on his very way of life, to became the antitheses of everything he holds dear, Darth Vader. It left me cold and disappointed.

As Peter David once discussed at length, George Lucas lost his faith from the time of Return of the Jedi to Phantom Menace. Instead of The Force being a mystical energy that helped you find your way, a core metaphysical concept of good and evil reduced to a simple scientific explanation, "oh its some microscopic being called Midicloriens." Bah. Take away the heart and soul and the movie may gross millions at the box office but you'll still have a soul-less, heartless shell of something much greater.

alexreager | May 11, 17:09 CET

After the travesty of the "new" Star Trek, I wouldn't let Abrams within a million light-years of the 'verse.

MalContent | May 11, 17:10 CET

MalContent, I agree.

Why reboot Star Trek? It was perfect as it was. And from my perspective, the main reason is not so that we can breath new life into an old dog, but so that we can feature hot young actors like Zachary Quinto and make money. It is sort of a no lose proposition. The folks who really committed to Star Trek are 40 years older now and not likely going to go see someone screw up good memories from their youth; the younger folk will happily go because (1) it is a sci fi flick, (2) they want to see how people play with characters that they know from DVD viewing, and (3) you get to see folk like Zachary Quinto. Plus, (4) they can mkae overt what the oringal Star Trek never could, like an interracial kiss. I hate this kind of reboot.

Dana5140 | May 11, 17:46 CET

Sorry, but I really committed to Star Trek. I grew up with the original as the only show my parents would wheel the TV cart into the dining room during dinner for. And I loved the new movie. It was the happiest I'd been to be in an actual movie theater in a long time.

[ edited by The One True b!X on 2009-05-11 17:53 ]

The One True b!X | May 11, 17:52 CET

Why reboot Star Trek?

Any questions of this type(see Bond, Batman etc) can be answered by this relevant section (04:24-04:40) of this video.

Simon | May 11, 18:38 CET

Yay, Yahtzee! :)

zeitgeist | May 11, 19:09 CET

TOTb- I would love to see the demographics on who is seeing the reboot. My completely unsupported guess is, people younger than me.

Dana5140 | May 11, 19:15 CET

You don't reboot Star Wars. Not the original trilogy. There are a lot of things you can do with Star Wars, but recasting the original is not one of them. You're not going to find a young Mark Hammell or Harrison Ford. The acting in that movie was amazing.

As for making Firefly mainstream, that kind of made me laugh. Gorram popular crowd trying to tell us how to run our verse. This is the sort of thing revolutions are fought over.

xMadxScientistx | May 11, 19:24 CET

The demographics of the audience I saw Star Trek with at 8PM on Thursday were: All over the map. Not that this means anything, being a single showing, but there you go. Heh.

[ edited by The One True b!X on 2009-05-11 19:28 ]

The One True b!X | May 11, 19:27 CET

Name: QuoterGal
Age: 53
Background: Watched 1st airing of Star Trek: TOS in 1966 at age 11. Loved it. Made everyone in family watch it. Wouldn't shut up about it. Discovered (via helpful school classmates) that this made me something called a "geek."
The new Star Trek movie: Loved it. Loved it. (Of course there were some hokey things - thus making it completely in keeping with the original hokey-but-beloved series.) It was a delightful continuation & homage, and it was the 1st Star Trek movie since "The Wrath of Khan" that I enjoyed.
Conclusions: 1) Many of us are probably going to disagree that this reboot was terrible. 2) Defining fan "commitment" or "true fandom" is fairly pointless.

QuoterGal | May 11, 19:29 CET

Some people juggle geese. Some don't.

m'cookies actual | May 11, 19:37 CET

I was going to make a Steve Martin-esque reference to cat juggling but what really got me was the 705,000 responses my query found in .19 seconds. So I put quotes on the phrase and came back with almost 11,000 "cat juggling" hits. Holy shit.

They've got cat juggling pictures of kids, grown-ups, celebs and even the Pope. So I got a little off topic there but m'cookies actual, I've decided there's just no way to juggle a goose. However, swans are no problem and should be juggled all the time.

alexreager | May 11, 20:04 CET

I don't get it. Swans are even meaner than geese. I have some experience with being chased by both species.

Sounds like it's time to make a trip to the bootleg store to get the Star Trek movie. If I'm lucky, it will be in English all the way through. Unlike Watchmen.

dreamlogic | May 11, 20:21 CET

Demos on the movie actually skewed quite a bit older than expected. I can't wait to see it. :)

TamaraC | May 11, 20:41 CET

This time next year everyone's going to be talking about which horror franchises Goddard/Whedon should reboot.

Sunfire | May 11, 20:46 CET

I've always been a Star Trek fan and I loved the movie. It was loads of fun & very satisfying. As a matter of fact, when we left the theater (matinee), my husband made a comment about how you could tell this was the "old geeks" time to see the movie b/c the people in line for the next showing skewed much more towards our age than our teenage daughter's. [And a my-ageish woman in line asked me where I got my CSTS t-shirt :)]

But much as I enjoyed the movie, it certainly wasn't Serenity. Star Trek was fun and funny and exciting and touching. Serenity is those things, but also disturbing, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking. I prefer Joss & JJ do their own things.

jcs | May 11, 22:17 CET

Oh dear gods, NO.

I can't say I know loads of Star Trek, I only watched it when it was shown on Tv here (though now I totally wanna see more of the Original series and stuff. Have one of the old movies, 3rd one. It's fun.) and such, but I've always enjoyed it and such and I LOVED the new movie. It was so much fun.

I actually kinda saw it twice (the comic book shop I frequent had a screening thing last month and then I kinda saw it again this Saturday). But then I also saw the New Bond movie twice. XD Though I only paid to see it once, first time was with my Dad. XD

Though man that red stuff soooo reminded me of Alias. They had that red huge ball in ses. 1 and stuff. XD So that was a bit Alias flashbacky. XD But over all nice.

And did I get it wrong or what because I thought JJ only directed it and stuff. It's not like he wrote it or anything. That was like Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.

Sorry, I'll stop babbling. XD

druzilla | May 11, 23:45 CET

I loved the new Star Trek. However, I hope J.J. moves back to some original work. I imagine rebooting over and over would start to feel like tracing within the lines, and honestly, how long does that last for...

silent knight | May 12, 00:17 CET

Yeah, the Firefly comment is pretty ridiculous. As is the Wonder Woman suggestion--particularly the comment about "fanboys and the women who love them."

Seriously? I mean, seriously? I am beyond tired of the stereotype that all geeks are male. I'm as geeky as the next person, thank you, and I'm a woman.

(And no, I don't live in my mom's basement either. She doesn't have a basement.)

erendis | May 12, 01:51 CET

Keep Abrams the hell away from my Joss!

TawnyJayne | May 12, 02:55 CET

WHATEVER! Stay far away from Firefly- JJ

marymary | May 12, 03:51 CET

I don't want to sound mean, I'm an Alias fan, but that was probably the last thing JJ Abrams did that mattered to me. I don't know why he keeps getting credit for Lost and Fringe when it's pretty clear that it's Damon Lindelof/Carlton Cuse and Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman whose doing all the showrunning.

jtmtzrwj | May 12, 05:35 CET

Promoters/advertisers and many column writers latch onto the JJ Abrams-credit thing because he was the original creator of many of these properties, or a co-creator, but still often the driving force behind getting it made, pitching, and making the pilots damn good. And it's an easy sell. Many times the taglines aren't lies, such as "From the creator of Lost!" But a whole lotta people out there assume that everything that came after is associated with his name.

I wasn't enough of a fan of Felicity to follow its fandom online and keep track of how involved Abrams stayed with that. Anyone here know ? All I know is I liked the first season or two of that series, continued to enjoy it for parts of Seasons 3 and 4, and felt that Season 4 ended very well (although the show maybe suffered from pandering to 'shippers a bit throughout, possibly). If a show I like has a quality beginning and ending, I can sometimes live with an iffy middle (unless the thing is like 10 seasons long) and come out the other side saying I liked it overall, recommending it even.

I didn't see more than the first half of the first season of Alias (didn't give up on it, just didn't have time. Have eyed that cool series box set many times, especially when Amazon knocks it down to $99 and I think the Disney Movie Club has it even lower at the moment). How involved did Abrams stay with that ? Drew Goddard got to take the reigns for a while, didn't he ? I remember when I heard that, toward the end of the show's life, and that the girl from The Inside was added to the cast, I wanted to put it on my must-watch list eventually.

Kris | May 12, 09:38 CET

No, no, no, no, no. Keep Abrams away from Firefly. Away away away away away. And far far far away from Buffy and Angel, in case that's ever an issue. And Speed, for that matter.

Away.

I like the comment about Abrams (and his writing staff) making a good pilot, because I liked the first hour of the Star Trek movie, and the character introductions, quite well. But for the rest of it, I didn't really like much of the actual plot, felt that most characters acted stupidly (and many without reason), disliked the way the movie pushed genocide in apparently just to give a reason for Spock to show emotion. Most of all: I hated the way the reboot essentially destroys the entire Trek canon up until this point, effectively erasing four series and ten films (somewhat ironically, Enterprise remains unaffected by Nero and Spock's time-jumping) and then bringing in Leonard Nimoy to tell Kirk that he and Spock will get along and inventing Scotty's genius for him, acting as a kind of Vulcan Ex Machina to make characters more like their counterparts. Talk about having your cake and eating it too: this deprives us of both the possibility of connecting this story to the story that's been going on for years, and the pleasure of the characters finding their own path--which essentially saps the two most interesting elements of a prequel/reboot, for me. What insight, exactly, is it that Kirk is a womanizing daredevil because of his father's death, when the Kirk we've known for forty years had a loving father, and still turned out that way?

I'm glad that many liked it, but it didn't feel like it had enough heart. And at times it didn't feel like it had any head.

Now let's just make sure that Abrams stays away from Joss's toys. Please, please, please.

WilliamTheB | May 12, 09:58 CET

I won't get into whether the new Trek film had enough heart and head, WilliamTheB, but it seemed implied to me that the film still can possibly fit within the canon of the entire franchise if you want it to because they didn't change the past in a way that would erase/alter what happened from The Original Series to Voyager. Older Spock still existed, he didn't fade away or anything. Didn't they pretty much outright say in the film, Leonard Nimoy's Spock say, that an alternate timeline/reality had been created ? Time Travel works funny in Trek, it's not like how it's currently working in a self-fulfilling prophecy/loop on Lost [I could be proven wrong on that if the characters do manage to change anything, but it doesn't look likely]. If memory serves, Trek is kinda inconsistent about what traveling to the past results in, it seems to be a bit different depending on the needs of the story, no ? But from what I remember from The Next Generation and Enterprise, generally they either manage to hit the reset button on the damage done, an alternate reality is created, or the time travel that happened was always meant to happen and always did happen. I know it's different this time with Vulcan being destroyed, Kirk's father not living, nor Spock's mother, and who knows what else being changed, but it may just be the alternate branching timeline from that point forward, not erasing the Shatner version.

So it does allow the film to be considered canon, if you want it to, but it's also easy to ignore (well, aside from it being where canon Spock ends up and apparently the Romulan homeworld is destroyed and the race decimated in the original Trek timeline/reality). It allows the reboot of the franchise to strike out on its own while still respecting, as best it can with an all-new cast, what came before.

Kris | May 12, 10:22 CET

One thing though: Abrams et al. are at least aware they were treading dangerous territory in making this reboot thing. I mean, there's a scene of a kid driving a classic car off a cliff. Now there's a metaphor.

WilliamTheB | May 12, 10:27 CET

Kris, I did think about that. It is possible, and I also thought that it's even conceivable that Spock and Nero travelled into an alternate universe when they went back in time through the black hole, so that the Shatner version is really unchanged. My take on the "alternate reality" line itself is more so that reality has been altered, but not "an alternate reality" created, if that makes sense--or, rather, that Nero and Spock travelled back through time created an alternate reality, but destroyed the original one. The way Trek has generally handled a situation like this before is by...yeah, pressing the reset button; in a few cases, there is a relatively minor change that occurs that allows the timeline to be mostly unaffected (i.e. in one episode of Deep Space Nine, Sisko went back in time and took on the role of a famous 21st century activist who was accidentally killed as a result of Sisko, so that the future more or less turned out all right). Obviously that can't happen here, because of, yeah, Vulcan being destroyed. But you're right that maybe this movie doesn't invalidate all previous Trek, and maybe it's not fair for me to hold that against it--although I'm kind of thinking that that was the intention.

I think it might just be that I don't like the alternate reality concept much. Change the villain (and, Eric Bana's charms aside, I found Nero very bland), find some other way to bring Nimoy into the story in some capacity without appealing to this stuff, and it should be possible to make a story that covers most of the same ground as this one while allowing us to look at the canonical Trek in a new light. I mean, most of the character stuff wouldn't really be changed by having it happen in the canonical story. As I suggested before, I would have found a story that examined and explained our James Kirk, the Shatner Kirk, in a new light, to be much more interesting than one that mostly relates to the death of his father, which explicitly is not a trait of the Kirk that future Spock knows. (So how does he know that he and Spock would get along?) I honestly would have been bothered less if they modified nonessential parts of the canon to fit their story--Kirk not knowing his father isn't a bad shorthand for his traits within the series, and since George Kirk was never, to my recollection, all that important, it seems like an okay tradeoff, not much different from Joss tweaking the nature of Simon and River's escape in Serenity.

WilliamTheB | May 12, 10:40 CET

I'm ~21.8 years old, grew up with both classic Trek and TNG, and later followed up with about 5.5 seasons of DS9, intermittent episodes of Voyager, and even a few enterprising episodes of the other attempted reboot of the franchise. While I nitpick the details of the movie, I also own two different fan-authored books, written specifically to nitpick Star Trek, and to do so is a time-honored tradition among the truly fervent - an initiation rite, if you will.

I liked it.

Also, do we need to be employing invisitext to such a great extent? I'd like to be considerate, but this way I feel like ninjas are creeping up on me through the comments field.

Mercenary | May 12, 11:14 CET

Don't wanna risk spoiling anyone for anything, I'd hate if they did it to me. And everything within my invisitext refers to the time travel/time alteration, which I had no clue was going to be in the movie before going to see it, I had avoided trailers and spoilers so well. To even hint at it would be like spoiling an episode of the TV show's plot (or any TV show's) before everyone else had sat down to watch it.

There's no such thing as too much invisitext when it's warranted, I say, heh.

Kris | May 13, 08:25 CET

heh, you said it, Kris. :)

WilliamTheB | May 14, 19:51 CET

May 11 2009