Bad 21st century movies you want to be rewritten.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

JJ-Trek is a prime example (so is the sequel trilogy). Trek '09 is full of blatantly dumb ideas that are mostly executed really well. So a person's tolerance for Trek '09 ends up depending on just how willing they are to just "go along for the ride." Terminator is similar in that it reached a natural narrative endpoint and turned it into a dead-end as they keep trying to force a story out of the same decades-old embers. The surprising thing would be if one of those actually turned out good.

Is this based on the idea that potent allegory and themes of aging are requisite to Star Trek not being considered a shitty escapist piece?

No, the problem is that a mostly untrained, reckless, selfish cadet being made a first officer, making himself an acting captain, and then becoming a commissioned captain before graduating from Academy, all while disobeying orders left and right and acting against the established parameters of accepted Starfleet behavior, is an intrinsically dumb idea. It's also a serious misunderstanding of Kirk's characters. Then there are other narrative shortcuts (like the crazy way transporters work) that, while not quite as important, really make it hard to take seriously.

But as I said, the execution helped Trek '09 a lot. If you just take the premise, there's no way I would expect to enjoy the movie as much as I ended up enjoying it. I'm one of the ones that thinks Beyond was a good movie as well (Into Darkness not so much).

I also think doing a reboot in and of itself risks starting you off on the wrong foot and invites a whole branch of fan criticism that can't be applied to original works.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

JJ-Trek is a prime example (so is the sequel trilogy). Trek '09 is full of blatantly dumb ideas that are mostly executed really well. So a person's tolerance for Trek '09 ends up depending on just how willing they are to just "go along for the ride." Terminator is similar in that it reached a natural narrative endpoint and turned it into a dead-end as they keep trying to force a story out of the same decades-old embers. The surprising thing would be if one of those actually turned out good.

Is this based on the idea that potent allegory and themes of aging are requisite to Star Trek not being considered a shitty escapist piece?

No, the problem is that a mostly untrained, reckless, selfish cadet being made a first officer, making himself an acting captain, and then becoming a commissioned captain before graduating from Academy, all while disobeying orders left and right and acting against the established parameters of accepted Starfleet behavior, is an intrinsically dumb idea. It's also a serious misunderstanding of Kirk's characters. Then there are other narrative shortcuts (like the crazy way transporters work) that, while not quite as important, really make it hard to take seriously.

Well Pike knew Kirk very well by this point, so making Kirk a provisionary lieutenant commander doesn't seem out of hand.

Taking down Nero personally is understandable grounds for making someone Captain, though I might agree that it undermines the Enterprise as the flagship. Either way though, it's not as if Kirk didn't go to the Academy, they were well aware of his merit by that point and he was all but graduated due to a technicality.

Overall I would call it ambitious. Kinda works for and against Abrams imo.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Well Pike knew Kirk very well by this point, so making Kirk a provisionary lieutenant commander doesn't seem out of hand.

Taking down Nero personally is understandable grounds for making someone Captain, though I might agree that it undermines the Enterprise as the flagship. Either way though, it's not as if Kirk didn't go to the Academy, they were well aware of his merit by that point and he was all but graduated due to a technicality.

Overall I would call it ambitious. Kinda works for and against Abrams imo.

I should qualify my criticism by saying that I think the idea is a strong one thematically- I like the idea of Kirk changing with the death of his father and being forced into action before he's ready, despite possessing the same talents as Shatner's Kirk. But I still gotta disagree on the specifics on the plot.

Say we transpose the plot to current day Earth (or a few years in the past or future since the navy's USS Enterprise is decommissioned). The captain of the Enterprise convinces a promising, but troubled, young man to enter the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and checks in on him from time to time. While there, the cadet shows his talent, but is constantly getting into trouble, cheating, etc. Then, the Russians do something bad! Cadets are rushed into service, and the captain of the Enterprise bypasses the entire chain of command to make his favorite cadet his XO. The reckless student disobeys various orders, but he and his ship manage to save the day. The cadet is instantly made captain of one of the most prestigious ships in the US Navy.

That's plausible enough action movie material about halfway through, then it takes a big leap into the absurd. And that's looking at one ship in a country of three-hundred odd million, not the flagship of an organization representing dozens of worlds.

One caveat is that Star Trek has a pretty decent amount of stuff that would never work in the real world, and suspension of disbelief has always been required to derive value from its overarching messages. And of course people have different levels of tolerance for those things. To me, the concept should have been reworked.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That's plausible enough action movie material about halfway through, then it takes a big leap into the absurd. And that's looking at one ship in a country of three-hundred odd million, not the flagship of an organization representing dozens of worlds.

Salient perspective given with movie analogy.

It's probably production limitation, but the quaint adventures of the captain and his senior crew has always seemed a bit small for such vessels.

I read on Quora someone asked if the captain is routinely called down to engineering to check out a problem. The naval answer given was that the captain is heavily tied up in duties. The engineer who finds the problem will tell his co who tells his co, and it's like a chain of 5 people until the captain considers looking at it.

Obviously a lot of questions on quora are a bit misguided. Not to mention a lot of the time when people ask about the authenticity of something on TV or movie, there is a need to remind civil plebs that it's a show and not real, so you shouldn't just think that that's how real life works. I hate those kind of answers. It's just as bad as theories that say everything was fake.

[Mecha82]

Star Trek 09 is good for what it is. Alternative universe take on TOS. Hate that it gets seems to be mostly about people disliking Mr. Abrams and his work. IMO it's same with Star Wars sequel trilogy. Maybe that's why I have easier time than they have liking both Star Trek 09 and Star Wars sequel trilogy since I have nothing against him and his work. Into the Darkness in other hand is whole another matter.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Star Trek 09 is good for what it is. Alternative universe take on TOS. Hate that it gets seems to be mostly about people disliking Mr. Abrams and his work. IMO it's same with Star Wars sequel trilogy. Maybe that's why I have easier time than they have liking both Star Trek 09 and Star Wars sequel trilogy since I have nothing against him and his work. Into the Darkness in other hand is whole another matter.

Generally his style is too on rails for me. I was really glad with what he did for Mission: Impossible after the John Woo movie, but really I think I take to Michael Bay's pacing better than Abrams.

[JoeThree]

The DCEU, as a whole.

And make sure to NOT re-hire Ezra Miller.

[King Green]

All of Disney's live action films off of the animated works.

And possibly a re-master of the Blade series except for Blade 2.

[ProfessorDetective]

All of Disney's live action films off of the animated works.

I agree, except for Maleficent (which actually did some interesting things with its source material) and Aladin (which actually got very close to matching its source). The rest can go.