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Post by Falconer on Jan 1, 2011 13:43:23 GMT -5
This is getting off-topic, but, who cares? If you buy the Star Wars Trilogy DVD sets that are currently available, it comes with both the Special Editions and the original theatrical versions (2 discs for each movie). I have been watching the original trilogy, original version only, on DVD legally since 2006 (and illegally before that via laserdisc transfers). Still, while I personally would only ever watch the originals, I’m not that religious about it to the point where I would say that someone who has only seen the Special Editions has never really seen Star Wars.As for the Prequel Trilogy, well, it’s objectively such a pile of horseshit that any anecdotal fans of it will surely always be in the minority. Ever-more-so as the effects become dated! |
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Post by aramis on Jan 1, 2011 18:37:43 GMT -5
If it has the crawl text, and doesn't have the scene with Luke staring skyward with the macrobinocs, it's not actually the original theatrical release.
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Post by Falconer on Jan 2, 2011 1:51:28 GMT -5
Just rewatched The Doomsday Machine today. Great story, great pace, and an excellent score done specifically for the episode puts it in the exclusive “as-good-as-a-movie” category for me. Now if a truly top-notch team with adequate funding remastered it, it would really be a timeless classic.
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 2, 2011 7:56:01 GMT -5
Just rewatched The Doomsday Machine today. Great story, great pace, and an excellent score done specifically for the episode puts it in the exclusive “as-good-as-a-movie” category for me. Now if a truly top-notch team with adequate funding remastered it, it would really be a timeless classic. Oh, that's one of my all-time favorite episodes! I wish they had better effects back then. Imagine if TOS had been made at TNG quality! |
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 2, 2011 8:04:08 GMT -5
If you buy the Star Wars Trilogy DVD sets that are currently available, it comes with both the Special Editions and the original theatrical versions (2 discs for each movie). I'll confess that I wasn't aware that the original editions were for sale at all anymore. I thought that King George had hidden them all away in a vault somewhere and only released his special versions! If it has the crawl text, and doesn't have the scene with Luke staring skyward with the macrobinocs, it's not actually the original theatrical release. Well, close enough for me. I seem to remember Luke and the macrobinoculars, but the version I saw in the 1970's had the crawl text. |
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Post by slortar on Jan 2, 2011 23:19:04 GMT -5
Just rewatched The Doomsday Machine today. Great story, great pace, and an excellent score done specifically for the episode puts it in the exclusive “as-good-as-a-movie” category for me. Now if a truly top-notch team with adequate funding remastered it, it would really be a timeless classic. That would be great. One of the things that always blows me away about going back to watching TOS was just how well written and acted the show was. Sure, it had a few bombs, but for every bad or mediocre episode, there were 3 or 4 great ones. |
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 3, 2011 21:11:24 GMT -5
Agreed. And after 40+ years, when you look at the scripts they still have meaninful and significant messages which are quite relevant in today's world. Issues of race and gender, society, technology. Not just scifi but good stories with good messages.
TOS was just so far ahead of it's time....
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Post by putraack on Jan 14, 2011 17:14:31 GMT -5
I received the TOS Season One DVD set for Christmas, so I can introduce it to my sons at a leisurely pace. (Son #1 got to see all of TAS when I borrowed the set from the library, and he was home sick for days.) I'm looking forward to showing them off.
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Post by Falconer on Jan 15, 2011 11:08:25 GMT -5
Sweet. Owning TOS on disc is a very useful thing for a Star Trek fan!
By the way, does anyone have the Blu-ray set(s)? I heard even if you watch it without remastered effects, even if you watch it on a standard definition TV (is that even possible?), the quality is much improved on the Blu-ray discs.
I still have my 4:3 CRT TV... I don't know how I would even watch Star Trek on a widescreen. I guess I would prefer to have the top and bottom cropped a bit. I hate stretched and I don't like black bars on the sides either. What do you do?
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Post by aramis on Jan 15, 2011 18:58:47 GMT -5
Yes, you can run video out to a standard def TV on some Blue-ray players. My sony can do component out. (I'm using the 5-lead HD component out instead, because my TV is an early HDTV... pre-HDMI.) I don't have much standard def on disk, and I don't mind stretched nor black bars. If it has the crawl text, and doesn't have the scene with Luke staring skyward with the macrobinocs, it's not actually the original theatrical release. Well, close enough for me. I seem to remember Luke and the macrobinoculars, but the version I saw in the 1970's had the crawl text. They changed the release copy about 2-4 weeks in to first run. Trimmed a few scenes, added the crawl text. Just when they switched the reels depended upon where you were. |
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 16, 2011 8:42:49 GMT -5
I don't know how I would even watch Star Trek on a widescreen. I guess I would prefer to have the top and bottom cropped a bit. I hate stretched and I don't like black bars on the sides either. Our old DVD player used to have a "zoom" button. If you zoomed in, a widescreen DVD would look just like the regular view so I would always buy widescreen DVDs with the idea that I could just zoom it and have the best of both worlds. Our new one doesn't appear to do this, however.  |
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Post by gorillaspawn on Feb 11, 2011 16:31:03 GMT -5
I really disliked the new Star Trek movie, in special and perhaps anal and nerdy ways only fans of something can dislike something. I don't object to rebooting the franchise, I just feel like the way they went about it was so immature and playing to low standards that I wasn't able to suspend disbelief when I watched it. I realize this is partly because I am not the audience they were aiming for (alas I find myself saying that about too many things these days).
One thing I did like that I didn't think I would was the actor why played Spock. I knew him from the TV series Heroes, and that character is so different from Spock that I didn't think it would work for me. I actually felt he did a great job, and I can buy the idea that he might take a different track of emotional evolution in the new timeline under the circumstances. On the other hand I hated having the actors they chose for Scotty and Sulu. I felt like it was a Saturday Night Live casting call or something, like a spoof of Star Trek. Harold and Kumar visit the distant future. I like the guy who played Scotty in other roles, but I just didn't think his personality worked for Scotty.
But the biggest part that ruined it for me was the way they handled Kirk. That character as portrayed in the movie had no redeeming qualities. He wasn't just brash, he was immature and entitled. He demonstrated behavior that in any of the other movies or TV episodes, regardless of TOS, Next Gen, or so on would have been a character used to show the folly of insubordination. Instead, they make him captain as a reward for acting like a jackass. It just made no sense to me. His character was boneheaded, had no respect for authority, and was stubborn not in an admirable way but in a way that sort of makes you scrunch down in your seat because you feel a little embarrassed for him. This isn't the Kirk we know from TOS, this is just somebody who needs a solid bitchslapping. You see, to make this whole "bad attitude" thing work the character has to actually be right about something. He acts brash but is actually right even when authority won't give him the chance to show it. It wasn't like that at all in the movie. Kirk was just a jerk. Granted, Spock's action of stranding him on a planet isn't consistent with Starfleet....ok, we have a prisoner. Let's see, we could put him in the brig or leave him to die on a barren world. Hey! I know what we'll do! Please.
Then of course there is old Spock. In any other movie or TV episode, messing with the timeline is a Bad Thing. Entire episodes are devoted to righting it at nearly any cost. Instead, we have a major timeline alteration, and entire planet being destroyed killing most Vulcans, and everyone shrugs their shoulders and says awww well, have a good time making a new future!
Uh, no.
This reboot could have been done well, but IMO it wasn't.
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Post by Falconer on Feb 11, 2011 16:43:50 GMT -5
I agree, Dan, there were too many logical inconsistencies (which is fine in an action movie but not a sci-fi movie, so you know where this franchise has gone...), and I really didn’t care for the portrayal of Kirk. I’m happy that it has made Star Trek popular again, but I fear it has done so at the cost of becoming something too different from Star Trek. I really wish it would go back to television.
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Post by aramis on Feb 11, 2011 18:39:41 GMT -5
As I've said before, it's a good movie, but bad trek.
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Post by gorillaspawn on Feb 12, 2011 0:54:24 GMT -5
I agree, Dan, there were too many logical inconsistencies (which is fine in an action movie but not a sci-fi movie, so you know where this franchise has gone...), and I really didn’t care for the portrayal of Kirk. I’m happy that it has made Star Trek popular again, but I fear it has done so at the cost of becoming something too different from Star Trek. I really wish it would go back to television. I agree. I actually watch and enjoy the various spinoff TV series for what they are, so I'm not a TOS fundamentalist even though it is my favorite version. I'm really struggling to express exactly what bothered me about the portrayal of Kirk. I just can't seem to put in words. It was an appeal to a younger audience I guess. A sort of "instant gratification" audience maybe. In the movie there was no evidence that "authority" was in the wrong, if that makes sense, which is an important component if you want to make a rebellious character "work". Kirk was rebellious for no other reason than the sake of it, or a bad attitude. He wasn't a sympathetic character. I watched his attitude and actions and felt like he was a spoiled brat, not a hero waiting to be born. I suppose they were relying on what we "should think" Kirk is (because of the TV and movie background) without actually bothering to build that into the movie character. Sort of lazy writing and directing. I don't know, I guess I'm rambling. The rank of Captain should be hard won, and presumably was by Kirk originally. That brash Ensign was honed into a sly Captain. That's what i mean by an audience expecting instant gratification. The message is that you just have to be bull-headed and pushy and you can get what you want. You want high rank? No problem! Just elbow your way around! Didn't work for me. You know what would have been kind of awesome? A new TV series instead. Maybe we see Kirk work his way up from an Ensign. Or at the very least a TV series could have introduced the premise of the rebooted universe in a longer and more organic way rather than how it was rushed in the movie. I see no way for the movie to work unless something had happened to kill time travel so no one could ever fix it. That would be a way to build in a reason no one bothered. Or maybe some even occurred to create this alternate universe--then there is nothing to fix since it is simply an alternate existence. Or am I being irrational? Ha! Fandom strikes! As for the movie making Trek more popular...is it? I haven't really kept up since the movie turned me off so much. Are they planning a another movie? |
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