Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
But those looked like two men FIGHTING...

If you say so.

Are you saying a gorn can be a man?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
And the action was star trek action. IT wasnt highly cherographed fist fights. And yes, alot of original Trek had fist fights, But those looked like two men FIGHTING, not doing flurry of blows monk style. They looked like what two men who where trying to kill eachother, looked like, clumsy and low blows.

Hard to tell who the red shirts were through those tinted glasses, though, I suspect...


The fights in the original series looked every bit as choreographed... Just not as professionally.

They looked like normal people who were not highly trained and conditioned fighters fighting each other, as opposed to 10+ minute long crouching tiger martial art fests which are completely unbelievable for a normal person to be able to do. IE, they looked realistic. Even trained soldiers and knights in the middle ages or swashbuckling bravos in the renaissance didn't have ten minute duels with each other outside of training for war. Fights are very quick and usually one side takes the other down quickly. Its also very exhausting and normal people and even above average shaped people cannot keep up that tempo very long. There's a reason professional fighters train for hours every day for months on end to fight a 10 minute fight(or 30ish seconds with Rhonda) and that's without weapons.

 insaniak wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
And the action was star trek action. IT wasnt highly cherographed fist fights. And yes, alot of original Trek had fist fights, But those looked like two men FIGHTING, not doing flurry of blows monk style. They looked like what two men who where trying to kill eachother, looked like, clumsy and low blows.

Hard to tell who the red shirts were through those tinted glasses, though, I suspect...


The fights in the original series looked every bit as choreographed... Just not as professionally.

Yeah, the fights in TOS tended to look like barroom brawls because the stuntmen of the era did a lot of their work on westerns. It wasn't because of some undying devotion to "realistic" hand-to-hand combat, LOL.

But that's kind of what real world fighting is when not in a prepared environment. Its a slugfest. When was the last time you went to a bar and saw "everybody was Kung-fu fighting and it was fast as lightning?" I have seen and have been involved in bar fights (almost unavoidable in some of the more interesting places in the world) and even with some combatants trained, they still tended to be slugfests. Seen a few knees thrown, a knife once(who got disarmed after a single attempt at a slice), even seen a pool queue used as a weapon. But I guarantee the fighting I saw by trained soldiers are more realistic and look like old school Star Trek than the over done, over choreographed, Mortal Combat fighting we have seen in modern movies. That was one of the high points of old star trek, yeah you had the science part that you could justify by calling it sci-fi, but at least the human parts were fairly accurate and real.

Sure, the double-handed hammer, "karate chops" to the side of the neck, and swinging from door frames are all staples of your typical barroom fight.

SO MUCH selective memory going on in this thread.

True, but the point remains, action in Star Trek isn't supposed to be hyper choreographed fight scenes. It is supposed to be forgettable. Star Trek isn't about the action.

Your logic here seems to be that because TOS was, Star Trek is and the modern films should be.

The fight scenes were the way they were because A) that was the style of the era, B) it had the aggressive shooting schedule that comes with a TV show, and C) they had a shoestring budget.

None of these things are true with the recent films. Should they also ditch the modern special effects too?

Well now that you mention it..

I thought TOS was a western in space?

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Almost all of the Trek movies are about action. The TV shows are more about exploration and Treking.

This feels exactly like the Star Wars thread's Action Movie vs Adventure Movie tangent. The complaints are the same. The subtle(?) distinction being made and lost is the same. I happen to agree with the complainers, to no one's surprise. Star Trek was adventure, where the action developed from the story. Abrams Trek is action, where the story serves the action. The difference is pretty clear to me even if not to others, kind of like the difference between Diet Coke and Coke. And just like Diet Coke vs Coke, one side of the action/adventure dichotomy only tastes delicious until your hindbrain has had time to warn you it's actually cancer of the soul.


Honestly, SWTFA has made me much more hopeful for STB--it's pretty clear now that Abrams is the hack responsible for all the worst aspects of Into Darkness, and now he's gone.

Honestly the awful writing duo Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman is probably the more likely culprit for the flaws of Into Darkness.

Well I am have been a fan of Peg since Shaun of the Dead, I have faith he will finally do justice in writing a modern ST. Although I think I heard him mention he had to go through 7 scripts before the studio gave the thumbs up because they didn't like the direction towards older ST he was trying to push it in. To me it sounds like he is an old fan and was trying to take it away from the action/effects fest JJ was taking it.

Col. Dash wrote:
True, but the point remains, action in Star Trek isn't supposed to be hyper choreographed fight scenes. It is supposed to be forgettable. Star Trek isn't about the action.

Well, clearly the people currently behind developing the franchise in the modern era disagree with you...

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
I thought TOS was a western in space?

It was and thats how it was pitched. Wagon Train in Space.

 Peregrine wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Almost all of the Trek movies are about action. The TV shows are more about exploration and Treking.

Maybe the newer ones were, but the original series was not.

ST1: very little action. It's called Star Trek: The Motionless Picture for a good reason.

ST2: there's action and space battles but they don't dominate the movie. And there's quite a bit of thought behind the action, with the consequences of Kirk's past catching up with him.

ST3: like the previous movie, there's action but it's far from a constant thing and exists to support the story/theme elements.

ST4: it's a comedy movie. Very little action, and quite a bit of "save the planet" preaching.

ST5: again, very little action, and a plot that is almost entirely focused on exploration.

ST6: this is the closest we get to a straightforward "end the cold war" action movie, and it still manages to consider the themes of the old generation moving on and how enemies can become allies.

So no, the Star Trek movies were not just about action.

I was thinking of I and IV which definately lack action. Also, they are terrible. Also, I was including the TNG ones which once again are mostly action.

 Cheesecat wrote:
Honestly the awful writing duo Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman is probably the more likely culprit for the flaws of Into Darkness.

I used to think so. I still believe they bear a lot of the responsibility. But after TFA, I am more convinced that Abrams is the kind of director who just keeps sending a script back for changes until he finally gets something he can understand is happy with. Then he starts cutting out the parts he feels aren't important...

There were moments of true brilliance in TFA's script, but they were smothered by the relentless bulletpoints Abrams mistakes for plot and character development. If he weren't surrounded by such capable people, with such a strong cast and the firm guidance of Disney, Abrams would have failed just as hard as prequel Lucas. Into Darkness lacked some of those elements, which is why it had so few saving graces. Now that he's gone, the Star Trek talent pool has almost certainly raised in quality.

The reality is that nothing anyone made was going to please everyone, especially not in long running franchises like the Stars shows/films. People build up so many ideas into their heads about these stories and the characters to the point that what they see has no clear resemblance to what was actually on screen. There's no way for anyone to live up to that. There will always be that section of fans with their specific ideas who feel betrayed and bemoan everyone involved regardless of quality. if it wasn't one thing it would just be another.

So people can throw their arms up and complain that Star Trek 27: Trek Harder wasn't a 'true' Star TreK film, or people can just accept that their personal opinions on something made 40 years ago has no relevance to something being made right now. There'd be a lot more happy people I think if they started looking outside their own preset notions of a given franchise

You have a very good point. However, Into Darkness would have been a disappointment even without the Star Trek legacy to fail to live up to. It was just a bad movie.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You have a very good point. However, Into Darkness would have been a disappointment even without the Star Trek legacy to fail to live up to. It was just a bad movie.

I agree. Into Darkness had straight up problems not as a Star Trek film, but just as a film.

However, in both the cases of the rebooted Star Trek and Star Wars, people are overly obsessing superficial things, or proclaiming 'depth' where there frankly is none and never was. Star Wars and Star Trek are cultural icons and their logevity is partially driven by a lack of depth.A narrative simplicity that makes them kind of universal. People have so engrained those stories into themselves, that they take on a meaning far beyond anything the shows really had. Expecting the makers of new films to be able to read your mind and know what those stories mean to you is setting yourself up for disappointment because no one can do that.

The final frontier is made in a Hollywood basement.