Lotus Fleet Forums

This just came out and is buzzing all over the fanweb of both franchises:



http://starwars.com/news/star-wars-is-b ... e-vii.html


Yes you read right; JJ Abrams, who gave us the Star Trek reboot in 2009 and this summer's follow-up, has been confirmed as the coproducer and director of Star Wars Episode VII, with the benediction of George Lucas himself no less.

With his avowed long-time passion for this sci-fi universe over the one he had been lately entrusted with, does this means that he will jump ship?

Some might hope not; others (like me) might dare now breathe a long sigh of relief and hope that he does. It is well known that he but reluctantly took late the helm of the second Trek movie and his 2-films contract will end after this one. Great producers and true Trek fans like Seth McFarlane have been in line to take over and truly revive Star Trek, allegedly back on the small screen with a new series in continuation with the prime (some like me saying the only true) Trek universe.

Let's keep an eye on this then

For sure...though as a Star Wars fan as well I'm a little frightened for that franchise...though I suppose he can't screw with it as much as Lucas himself has(Hayden Christianson anyone?)

I would love to see a Joss Whedon, or a Seth Mcfarlane get involved with Star Trek. I've found most of Whedon's work to be exceptional, and Seth Mcfarlane I think has the capacity for sure.

And good riddance too!

Now hopefully after May... onto someone more competent and preferably a fantastic new Star Trek series! 

Seth McFarlane has actually said multiple times he would love to do a Star Trek series.  Funny thing to because he is a die hard fan and a great science fiction writer.  The only problem he says is that he would have to end Family Guy and there are a lot of people not willing to let him do that.

Star Wars would be harder for him to ruin that Star Trek.  Star Wars even has accepted 'grey' Jedi in it now. There isnt much more he can do to it.

I kinda feel like were living in an age of movies that people will look back at like we do the B movie disasers of the pa1st.  Cheesy schocky awful movies that are remembered for how terrable they are and how amazing they ever were made.

Like Night of the Leapus:  http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2011/10/big-picture-night-of-lepus.html

Sorripto wrote:Seth McFarlane has actually said multiple times he would love to do a Star Trek series.  Funny thing to because he is a die hard fan and a great science fiction writer.  The only problem he says is that he would have to end Family Guy and there are a lot of people not willing to let him do that.

I thought I heard that Family Guy was ended. In fact, I read an interview were he was asked pointedly that, since Family Guy was over, and if he had the choice of anything in the world to work on next, he instantly answered: Star Trek.

As for your comment, Hera; I quite agree. I remember how ST TMP was first acclaimed as a fantastic Star Trek film when it came out; and nowadays, many calls it the most boring of them all (to which I strongly disagree...). Some movies do benefit from fan adulation regardless of actual quality (there are lots of SW prequel fans out there). I do beleive the same will happen with Abrams' Star Trek movies; in 10 years, people will look back at them and wonder how such a bad Star Wars-Star Trek rip-off (yes he managed to rip-off both franchises in one movie!)  could ever have been made under the name Star Trek, let alone acclaimed by anyone.

Personally, I rank Star Trek 2009 among such pearls as Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Room. I can already hear the Guy With The Glasses stomping with impatience at getting his teeth on these movie disasters.

On the other hand, he might do a pretty good Star Wars movie; at least, he is a true fan of Star Wars... as his pseudo-Star Trek clearly rubbed in our faces.

You know I never heard of the guy with glassess till I stumbled across him in a moviebob post today?  amusing you mention him too

I think the best review of Star Trek JJ did is that i would be a passable Sci Fi if it wasnt labeled Star Trek.  Not awful but not great.  But adding the Star Trek brand to it actually dragged it down since it broke so many additional 'rules' to the setting.

People love Transformers movies - proof lots of AWFUL film fans out there.  You wanna do a boomie shapeshifting robot movie make 'Robopeople from Mars' or something.  Dont use an existing franchise

Hera wrote:
I think the best review of Star Trek JJ did is that i would be a passable Sci Fi if it wasnt labeled Star Trek.  Not awful but not great.  But adding the Star Trek brand to it actually dragged it down since it broke so many additional 'rules' to the setting.

Not even that. With high-school bad photography (lense flares), abysmal scenario (the quantity of coincidences in this story is staggering and crude scripting to force things to happen a certain way regardless of logic)  utterly ridiculous villain (a miner from the future goes to the past with a supership and waits 25 years to destroy the planet of the guy who risked his own life and against orders to save his homeworld), cutting and editing blunders (the Kelvin captain goes down in the turbolift... to the shuttlebay which is on top of the ship) and scaling errors (ENT shuttlebay anyone?) the like of which was last seen in King Kong (the 1933 one...),  this movie is bad enough as a movie...

But when you go into the sci-fi aspect, it gets even worse; high school drop-out understanding of science (flying through a black hole...), absurd future engineering (a baywindow on starship bridges, boilers and pipes as in a WWII freighter ship engine room, drilling and mining from orbit...), utter confusion between time travel and dimensional travel, magical "red matter" as a main plot device (which works inconsistently to boot), impossibly fast warp travel (16 ly in minutes)... Even as a sci-fi movie (which is often used as an excuse to give some leeway to mediocre movies) it fails in a most epic way.

With Star Wars, Abrams will avoid all that, simply because the Star Wars saga is NOT a Sci-Fi saga at all; it is a Samurai saga, just set in the setting and trappings of Sci-Fi; all the concepts (like the Force = Ki), ideas (a young country boy learning to become a warrior to save a princess kidnapped by an evil Lord corrpupted by an Evil Emperor-Sorceror, not knowing she is his sister and the Lord his father), the main tech (lightsaber=katana), the characters (Jedi = Samurai, Sith = Ronin), everything is the same as in a classic Japanese Kurosawa movie (of which Lucas told explicitely that he is a fan of and took his inspiration from). There is no scientific question, no projection of our societies into the future, no study of human behavior in out-of -this world situations, no pondering of our nature and that of life, technology etc no look back at our current world from a far away perspective, no "what if". In other words, no Sci Fi at all. Only the looks of it.

Star Wars is let's have fun with space monsters, zap guns and zooming spaceships, heroes and villains with cool futuristic-looking gadgets clashing for the simple idea of good vs evil, in the same style as those exciting samurai flicks of old.

Abrams then can certainly make a fun, exciting Star Wars movie.

Given that the only reason I'm excited for the new ST movie is that Benedict Cumberbatch (the titular character from Sherlock) is in it, you probably know my opinion on him leaving.  As for Star Wars, I still have the same thing I had from the first announcements: cautious optimism.  Disney's done well with the Marvel films so far, so this could work.  And I would absolutely LOVE for Joss Whedon to work on ST.  If you think about it, it's got all the right ingredients for him.  An ensemble cast that we all know, a fleshed-out world with a decidedly grey morality, nigh-universal embracement of atheism (though he has portrayed Christian characters positively), and a huge FX budget.  It's perfect for him.  As for Seth McFarlane, I'm gonna come under the minority and say I don't like that idea.  I never liked Family Guy, and all his other shows and movies have the same crass (not to mention biased) humor.  His type of humor is just not suited for ST, and I don't think it would work.  But if I'm wrong, I won't mind.  What I really want is to get rid of Orci & Kurtzman.  The fact that they wrote Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen should be warning enough.

Disney has had very little to do with the Marvel films from my understanding.  Its Marvel's big project to work on and make succeed.  After the drama with Pixar Id think they would know not to mess with people who know what their doing.