New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

[ZedNova]

Yet another subscription service... No thanks, I'm not paying another $10 a month just to watch one show. Doesn't mean I won't be watching it though. Arrrrrr!

So you're saying you'll watch it with your friend Captain Blondbeard who has a CBS all access subscription?

[Sampa]

If I recall, Do not remember my source, so don't ask, the plot of the upcoming series is supposed to have something to do with the Ferengi (main plot, not side plot)

[Dispatcher]

If I recall, Do not remember my source, so don't ask, the plot of the upcoming series is supposed to have something to do with the Ferengi (main plot, not side plot)

That's too bad. I didn't like the Ferengi looks and voices. There are other things I didn't like about them, but I'll leave it at that. So, while I like science fiction and was an original Trekkie, I don't think I have any interest in this upcoming new series.

[GeneralVeers]

Money is a strange subject in Star Trek.

Not really. It's just that money is hardly ever mentioned--and when it is mentioned, it's only offhandedly, and it's never a major plot device. With the exception of the Ferengi, money/business/corporations/capitalism have never been major factors in Star Trek. And that's a good thing, because the old tropes about the (alleged) evils of money/business/corporations/capitalism are ancient and worn-out.

[Sampa]

That's too bad. I didn't like the Ferengi looks and voices. There are other things I didn't like about them, but I'll leave it at that. So, while I like science fiction and was an original Trekkie, I don't think I have any interest in this upcoming new series.

Mind you, I cannot confirm that that WILL be the main plot...due to lack of source

[Dispatcher]

Thanks, Sampa. No offense, but I hope you are wrong about the plot.

[Sampa]

I do too! I agree with you on not liking the Ferengi. Though, if I remember reading correctly, that is only the opening plot which surrounds the real plot...but, again, it was so long ago (don't even ask me how long) I doubt it was anywhere close to being accurate anymore.

[CommanderSonic]

I hope the ship is at least an Enterprise with a letter after the or before the D/E.

[KerbMav]

Enterprise? New actors for the whole TOS crew with an updated design of the Constitution Class?

Enterprise-A? After the TOS crew finally retired? Completely new crew? Would need a good reason, because the A was to be mothballed as well.

Enterprise-B? With Captain How-the-Hoola-did-this-guy-get-into-that-chair? Hope not!

Enterprise-C? Story of the Alliance with the Klingons? Fighting Romulans every other episode? Naah ... Would also make for a depressing final episode (if they do not kill off canon on TV that is).

Enterprise-E? Still possible. With Picard finally accepting a promotion to Admiral and his "children" leaving the ship as well - Wesley might be old enough to return as the new captain now ...

Enterprise-F? So set in a even farther future? Then hopefully they drop a lot of the Borg tech Janeway brought back from the Delta quadrant.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Enterprise? New actors for the whole TOS crew with an updated design of the Constitution Class?

Enterprise-A? After the TOS crew finally retired? Completely new crew? Would need a good reason, because the A was to be mothballed as well.

Enterprise-B? With Captain How-the-Hoola-did-this-guy-get-into-that-chair? Hope not!

Enterprise-C? Story of the Alliance with the Klingons? Fighting Romulans every other episode? Naah ... Would also make for a depressing final episode (if they do not kill off canon on TV that is).

Enterprise-E? Still possible. With Picard finally accepting a promotion to Admiral and his "children" leaving the ship as well - Wesley might be old enough to return as the new captain now ...

Enterprise-F? So set in a even farther future? Then hopefully they drop a lot of the Borg tech Janeway brought back from the Delta quadrant.

What about the Enterprise-J?

[vger]

That's not really the angle ST:OS came from. Keep in mind there were two or three episodes where the Enterprise (yes, the Old School Enterprise!) committed outright genocide/extinction of various species. There was at least one episode where the Enterprise deliberately violated the Neutral Zone in order to draw in a Romulan ship and steal a cloaking device (when the United States does that kind of thing out here in the real world, there's international outrage). And also there were a couple of episodes where the Enterprise went in and intentionally changed the course of history for entire civilizations, Prime Directive be damned.

Considering what the Romulans were pulling when they were introduced, I'm not particularly surprised. Wiping out listening posts along the neutral zone without being caught? They were trying to open the door for an invasion without even a declaration of war. They're arguably based on Cold War Russia, but the episode is based on a WWII film and their attempt to sneak into Fed-space and cause chaos is very Pearl Harbor.

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at Starfleet HQ, whenever anyone read an official report from the Enterprise. Half the people at the table are facepalming, and someone else is scratching his head, saying, "Go over that again, he did WHAT?!" One has to wonder if he ever got reprimanded for any of his Prime Directive violations, or if UFP was content to just give him free reign. He never did seem too happy when he received direct orders from Starfleet.

Government corruption is a fiction story trope that's as old as Sarek's grandfather, and I was perfectly content to watch entire seasons of ST:OS that had ZERO episodes about government corruption. At all. Know what else the Original Series never had in it?

The Original Series never had the old worn-out trope about evil capitalists, either. If memory serves, corporations and business were never mentioned once in the entire series. Money was mentioned at least once, but the only case of that I can remember is Harvey Mudd conveniently neglecting to pay royalties when he sold the Denebians the patent rights for a fuel synthesizer...... All in all, ST:OS is proof that you can write a good story (or an entire season of them!) without resorting to the old worn-out trope about greed or business or capitalism. Writers who do resort to this trope are pathetic amateurs.

Corrupt governments were all over ST:OS, but it was usually the Enterprise that came along to straighten them out. A number of them were parallel Earth's, or the mirror universe. There was also Stratos, enjoying a life of luxury in sky cities at the expense of the under-appreciated labor class who lived in ridiculously unhealthy working conditions. And a final note on the topic of money, I chuckle at Triskelion a little, wondering if we as humans, even if we reached some insane level of immaterial existence, would still be clinging to some form of score-keeping as silly as currency.

If the Ferengi are actually going to be major players, a lot of fun could be had with their version of Capitalism. To the point of a lot of Federation folks thinking they're evil, because "we did away with that nonsense centuries ago," only to find out that the Ferengi version of Capitalism is actually far more honorable than anything humans were able to achieve. On Earth, we practically use it as a less messy alternative to feudalism.

Heheheh. To complicate things even further, ST:OS had that too. Dieties coming along and telling us (i.e. the crew of the Enterprise) what was good and what wasn't.

That usually didn't go over too well either. Though I especially liked the Apollo episode. I got a lot of interesting parallels from it, for some of the political issues we're dealing with in today's society (without going into too much detail with risky ban-worthy topics).

Edited November 12, 2015 by vger

[Brethern]

Considering what the Romulans were pulling when they were introduced, I'm not particularly surprised. Wiping out listening posts along the neutral zone without being caught? They were trying to open the door for an invasion without even a declaration of war. They're arguably based on Cold War Russia, but the episode is based on a WWII film and their attempt to sneak into Fed-space and cause chaos is very Pearl Harbor.

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at Starfleet HQ, whenever anyone read an official report from the Enterprise. Half the people at the table are facepalming, and someone else is scratching his head, saying, "Go over that again, he did WHAT?!" One has to wonder if he ever got reprimanded for any of his Prime Directive violations, or if UFP was content to just give him free reign. He never did seem too happy when he received direct orders from Starfleet.

Corrupt governments were all over ST:OS, but it was usually the Enterprise that came along to straighten them out. A number of them were parallel Earth's, or the mirror universe. There was also Stratos, enjoying a life .

Keep in mind that the interpretation of the prime directive changed from kirks era to picards.

The main reasoning behind the directive is to prevent the federation from doing what happened to bajor in DS9, imperial aggression and occupation.

It's perfectly fine to interact with other cultures, but you're not supposed to give them weapons or try and rule them. If they're planet is going to do something to destroy itself, you can actually save it.

The only reason the prime directive changed is that the federation didn't have a direct threat facing it. When the dominion and borg became known, the whole first contact thing became allot looser such as species only getting warp for a year being contacted.

[KerbMav]

What about the Enterprise-J?

I have not seen all ENT episodes - neither VOY - I am more a Picard follower.

The only reason the Prime Directive changed is that the federation didn't have a direct threat facing it. When the dominion and borg became known, the whole first contact thing became allot looser such as species only getting warp for a year being contacted.

A species being capable of interstellar travel - special case: able of FTL communication - is the condition to make first contact with them, before that it is forbidden to even let them know of other civilizations

After that the Prime Directive forbids interference with the natural development of a species - them asking for help is a totally different matter though.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I have not seen all ENT episodes - neither VOY - I am more a Picard follower.

[...]

I haven't seen much of anything but TOS either, I was just joking since it seemed improbable that it would be in the series.

[GeneralVeers]

Considering what the Romulans were pulling when they were introduced, I'm not particularly surprised. Wiping out listening posts along the neutral zone without being caught? They were trying to open the door for an invasion without even a declaration of war. They're arguably based on Cold War Russia, but the episode is based on a WWII film and their attempt to sneak into Fed-space and cause chaos is very Pearl Harbor.

In retrospect, something I really like about that episode? Both ships were trying to spot the other without getting detected themselves. There was the part with the Enterprise trying to hide its energy signature from the Romulans. In other words.......

THERE WAS STEALTH IN SPACE.

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at Starfleet HQ, whenever anyone read an official report from the Enterprise. Half the people at the table are facepalming, and someone else is scratching his head, saying, "Go over that again, he did WHAT?!" One has to wonder if he ever got reprimanded for any of his Prime Directive violations, or if UFP was content to just give him free reign.

Since G.R. never saw fit to make an episode about any of that, I think the second one is it.

Corrupt governments were all over ST:OS

I wouldn't call them examples of corrupt governments. The occasional criminal here and there, to be sure (Harvey Mudd says hi). Governments with different moralities than the Federation? Or no morality at all? Absolutely. Corruption? Usually no. Except for that one episode where an entire planet was based on 1920's Mob rule! Lol.

In the modern Bond movies, and in Knight and Day, and in the Bourne Word-Ending-With-The-Letter-Y movies, and in Mr. And Mrs. Smith, and a bunch of other present-day cinema, it's almost always the CIA or some other U.S. government agency that's up to shady shenanigans because Hollywood is afraid to offend anybody except Americans. The 1970's United Federation of Planets was never the Bad Guy.

That usually didn't go over too well either. Though I especially liked the Apollo episode.

That's the thing; in a Star Trek episode, when a God or Goddess came along and told the Enterprise crew what was right and wrong, not only did Kirk have something to say about that--but so did we, out in the audience. Because we'd already picked up our sense of morality elsewhere.

[KerbMav]

The 1970's United Federation of Planets was never the Bad Guy.

Apart from occasionally being depicted as a slow bureaucratic pain in the nacelles.

Since G.R. never saw fit to make an episode about any of that, I think the second one is it.

They kinda came back to that in a DS9 episode though.

(Also, I so love the names of the two temporal investigators. )

-----

SISKO: Are you sure you don't want anything?

DULMUR: Just the truth, Captain.

SISKO: You'll get it. Where do you want to start?

DULMUR: The beginning.

LUCSLY: If there is such a thing.

DULMUR: Captain, why did you take the Defiant back in time?

SISKO: It was an accident.

LUCSLY: So you're not contending it was a predestination paradox?

DULMUR: A time loop. That you were meant to go back into the past?

SISKO: Erm, no.

DULMUR: Good.

LUCSLY: We hate those. So, what happened?

SISKO: This may take some time.

DULMUR: Is that a joke?

SISKO: No.

LUCSLY: Good.

DULMUR: We hate those too. All right, Captain. Whenever you're ready.

-----

DULMUR: Be specific, Captain. Which Enterprise? There've been five.

LUCSLY: Six.

SISKO: This was the first Enterprise. Constitution class.

DULMUR: His ship.

LUCSLY: James T Kirk.

SISKO: The one and only.

LUCSLY: Seventeen separate temporal violations. The biggest file on record.

DULMUR: The man was a menace. What was the date of your arrival?

SISKO: Stardate 4523.7.

DULMUR: A hundred and five years, one month, and twelve days ago.

LUCSLY: A Friday.

-----

DULMUR: Your men could've avoided that fight, Captain.

LUCSLY: Regulation one fifty seven, section three, paragraph eighteen. Starfleet officers shall take all necessary precautions to minimise any participation in historical events.

SISKO: All right. It was a mistake. But there were no lasting repercussions.

DULMUR: How do you know that? For all we know, we could be living in an alternate timeline right now.

SISKO: If my people had caused any changes in the timeline, we would have been the first to notice when we got back.

LUCSLY: Why do they all have to say that?

-----

Edited November 13, 2015 by KerbMav

[Andem]

So long as nobody on this thread mentions Star Wars...

--EDIT--

Craaap.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Andem
Facepalm.

[GeneralVeers]

Uhhhh.....yeah.....Andem? Bit of a problem with that. My choice of username and avatar picture......well......

You know what, my AT-AT is illegally parked, I gotta run.

[Nikolai]

On 11/13/2015 at 9:14 PM, GeneralVeers said:

The 1970's United Federation of Planets was never the Bad Guy.

<cough> "A Private Little War" </cough>

You're right that it was rare, but every once in a while, it was the very policy of the Federation that was the problem.  (And it was the sixties.)

[GeneralVeers]

Disagree. In that episode, Kirk never contacted the UFP authorities for advice on how to proceed (possibly he couldn't, due to risk of being detected by the Klingons). He simply reasoned this way: doing nothing (i.e. obeying the Prime Directive) would result in the complete slaughter of one faction by the other. He took a course that was intended (he hoped!) to preserve both sides.

It was one of those episodes where there were no easy answers. The Federation wasn't the bad guy--the Klingons and their aggressive proteges were. In more recent years, as fiction writers again and again turned to the easy but worn-out trope of "government as the bad guy" I have realized just how genius the stories in The Original Series were. No use of money or corporations as Bad Guys. Virtually no mention of shady conspiracies within the Federation (though one or two episodes come close). GR was able to write a good story without such drivel.

Edit: an additional note on "A Private Little War" is that there was never any concern about Kirk being shoved in front of a UFP court for his (mis?)handling of the situation. It simply never came up because that's not what the story was about.

Edited February 3, 2016 by GeneralVeers

[Nuke]

i wouldnt mind continuing the 24th century classicverse or move up another 100 years from tng to do something completely different. the trek movies were a nice tangent to explore but i kind of think we need to get back to the old skool timeline. though im still up for a tangent universe movie where tangentverse kirk fights classicverse locutus of borg.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Nuke

[Nikolai]

15 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

In that episode, Kirk never contacted the UFP authorities for advice on how to proceed

He didn't have to.  Kirk was practically parroting Johnson's rhetoric about reasons for staying in the Vietnam conflict.  By the end of the episode, he knew that he was helping an arms race, but also realized that wasn't much he could do about that.  (The original draft of the episode, according to The Star Trek Compendium (1981), p. 128, was even more blatantly about U.S. policy in Vietnam as reflected by Federation policy concerning Neural.  It suffered a Roddenberry rewrite that made it seem much more pro-Vietnam.)  Calling back to get official orders from the UFP was specifically written into the series bible as a practically nonexistent thing -- the creators liked the idea of having the starship captain acting largely autonomously.

Here are the creator's original notes; there's an interesting bit added as to why the Enterprise departed at episode's end -- to make contact with Federation agents and enlist their help in continuing the "private little war": http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/tyrees_woman.htm  There was also Kirk's line, "We have advisors there now... how long until we have troops?"(*), implying that everything that happened was perfectly in line with how the Federation preferred to handle things.

All that said, this amounts to speculation.  I enjoy talking about it, though, even if we end up simply agreeing to disagree.

---

(*) I admit that I know this line was in several drafts, but I don't know that it survived Roddenberry's final rewrite.  I'm going to have to go back and watch the episode, in any case.

[GeneralVeers]

Yeah.....here's the thing I was getting at in my previous post (so I guess you could say I'm writing this POST hoc......): it was a good story without having a political scandal or covert troops ever become part of the episode. Proving that it's possible to write a good story without resorting to the Government Corruption angle. Whereas today, sci-fi writers are doing that left and right--resorting to the quick and easy path because they lost the ability to think creatively, or maybe because they're afraid of offending anybody except the United States. And I'm offended by stories that offend the United States, so now they're required to stop doing THAT as well.

The whole point of science fiction is to give the writer a much bigger canvas (and therefore more outlandish possibilities) than is possible if events in the story stay on Earth. You can't have a robot "nation killer" weapon that destroys both sides in a war and then starts lumbering around the Earth on treads at five miles an hour to destroy every other nation it comes across. That story just goes plop. Put the robot weapon in outer space (and add "Jaws" music) and you get a story that actually works and is also a lot more frightening.

Constantly resorting to the old tropes about corrupt government or corrupt business does two things: it wears out these story lines, causing future stories that use them to fall flat (especially troublesome for James Bond films), and it ignores the huge canvas that's available with which to make stories that are actually good. The Planet Killer was scary as hell when it first appeared on my TV screen. Captain America Winter Soldier? BOOOOORRRRIIIINNNNG.

 

Edited February 4, 2016 by GeneralVeers

[Nikolai]

16 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

Whereas today, sci-fi writers are doing that left and right--resorting to the quick and easy path because they lost the ability to think creatively, or maybe because they're afraid of offending anybody except the United States.

I'm not sure it's a lack of creativity thing, or even a fear of giving offense.  Popular trends in science fiction have changed a lot over time, and I think the reasons are deeper than these.

16 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

The whole point of science fiction is to give the writer a much bigger canvas (and therefore more outlandish possibilities) than is possible if events in the story stay on Earth.

Yes.  But science fiction is never about the future.  It's about the present, as seen through a different lens.  Tales of political and corporate corruption are popular now, I'd argue, because they're among the bigger problems society is aware that it is currently facing -- and that because modern audiences are craving sensory experiences over thoughtful storytelling, themes surrounding them don't tend to be explored deeply or well.  (Also note the popularity of movies where some kind of natural disaster is helped along by mankind until someone figures out a way to stop it.)  This tends to lead to planet-sized holes in a lot of storytelling (e.g., "If the corrupt government could be taken down by Our Hero, and found herself surrounded by enthusiastic supporters as soon as she declared her intentions, why did no one else even try before now?"), but I think they serve to remind people what's important to struggle for in the face of our current circumstances.

16 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

The Planet Killer was scary as hell when it first appeared on my TV screen. Captain America Winter Soldier? BOOOOORRRRIIIINNNNG.

Well, yes, but I'd also argue that that's because "The Doomsday Machine" gave people a lot more to think and talk about than Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  The mainstreaming of a lot of geek culture has led to a lot of geek culture becoming less contemplative.  I remember when I first left Blade Runner, for example; friends and I had conversations for long stretches about the nature of mortality and the ethics of creating something aware of its rapidly approaching demise (which, in turn, raises interesting theological questions for various religious traditions); the implications of technology on the environment, and the degree to which technology creates the environment (artificial animals are popular in the movie), as well as how technology itself contributes to decay (technology is shiny in some parts of the movie and in serious disrepair and decay in others in the movie); the role of empathy in the human condition, and means by which it could be transferred to something not-exactly-human; and yes, even corporate and governmental corruption.  "The Doomsday Machine", even though it was primarily written as a sensory experience, still had interesting implications about sacrifice and the kind of leader it takes to work out a new strategy by watching the mistakes of other leaders who stubbornly refuse to alter their own.

With recent movies, what is there to talk about?  The fact that we just saw the Hulk beat up a robot, and it looked cool?

[GeneralVeers]

Advance warning, this post is a long one! (notice how our posts are beginning to increase in length at a geometric rate? bad sign..... )

 

7 hours ago, Nikolai said:

I'm not sure it's a lack of creativity thing, or even a fear of giving offense.

I am. The creativity problem is easy to see just by looking at how few plot engines there actually are in movies. Take Liam Neeson and Jason Statham, for example; the recent film work for both of those actors has been the SAME story retold twenty times with different scenery. Ex-criminal/secret agent wants out or is already out; someone close to him gets kidnapped/killed/tortured; ex-criminal/secret agent returns for that "one last job" which usually turns out not to be that one last job because some idiot in Hollywood decides there HAS to be a sequel.

The fear of giving offense? Takes longer vision to see that because that change has occurred very slowly, over a few decades. Back in the 80's, there were plenty of films where the bad guys were black, Arab, Chinese, or (this last one was very popular back then) Muslim. And there also wasn't a trend for people to sue everybody who offended them. These days, the only films where the bad guys are Muslims are films such as Zero Dark Thirty which are based on actual history (however loosely). You can't have Chinese bad guys much any more because a billion of the moviegoers are Chinese (but if it's a martial-arts-based movie where the good guy is also Chinese, it can work out, but must be handled very carefully). The U.S. government is one of the few safe bad guys these days because they've withered into complete sissies and won't do anything. Russia and North Korea are the only other really reliable places to find bad guys because nobody takes them seriously any more.

Ironically, science fiction has an easy and safe solution to this problem, which we've been seeing often in recent years: ALIENS. You don't have to worry about aliens suing you because they don't actually exist...... (to be honest, there's a very few films out there where visiting aliens ARE offended by humans' portrayal of aliens in culture, but this is messing with the Fourth Wall in a way that usually doesn't work well)

 

8 hours ago, Nikolai said:

Yes.  But science fiction is never about the future.  It's about the present, as seen through a different lens.

Naturally, I disagree. Star Trek TOS was about a future very different from ours, in which the human race no longer had most of the problems we end up dealing with today. It wasn't about the present. Certainly some of the episodes were parables about present-day problems, but only because there are some problems that never go away. Other stories in the series weren't based on present-day problems at all. And in a few cases, Kirk and his crew sighed with resignation at aliens who had problems the human race had already solved. The iconic Planet Killer for example. Certainly that episode has some parallels with nuclear war (one of which Kirk mentions explicitly in the episode) but that parallel is a faint one. We never actually find out where the Planet Killer came from; Kirk and Spock could only guess. This episode was not about the present; the human race has never fought a global nuclear war. We have never had our ultimate superweapon go bonkers and start destroying all of intergalactic Creation, for a very obvious reason. Bottom line, this episode was not about the present. It was one of those episodes that looked out across the canvas of possibility and thought to itself "what if this happened?" The Planet Killer was a weapon that is simply not possible with present-day technology.

 

8 hours ago, Nikolai said:

Tales of political and corporate corruption are popular now, I'd argue, because they're among the bigger problems society is aware that it is currently facing

Heh. No. These are not new. Get Smart. Wonder Woman. The Incredible Hulk. The A-Team. Knight Rider. Stories of political and corporate corruption have been popular for FORTY YEARS. Particularly the A-Team, in which the real Bad Guy is a U.S. military desk pilot who's gone off the reservation. The problem today, in the 21st Century, is that these storylines are being overtold to death and people are getting burned out on them.

 

8 hours ago, Nikolai said:

and that because modern audiences are craving sensory experiences over thoughtful storytelling, themes surrounding them don't tend to be explored deeply or well.

This is also not a new thing. The Doomsday Machine, that one ST:TOS episode I keep talking about? Very sensory experience. Scary and action-packed. The audience has pretty much always had a craving for action and violence, with an attendant tolerance for cheesy stories as long as the needed action and violence are included. Personal testimony: when Star Trek TNG came out, me and my fellow Trekkies (just not to the level of cosplay.....) started watching when every episode was brand-spankin' new (reference! anyone remember which episode?). The first few episodes of TNG were pansy episodes. Then, at the end of one of them, in the trailer for "Next Episode" we see an actual firefight with phaser strikes hitting every which way, and a guy sitting right next to me goes "YAY! FInally we get to see some action!" And I agreed with him.

That was in the eighties. Go further back and you can probably see the same thing in every cheesy spaghetti-Western flick, which had a dreadful story but nobody cared because Clint Eastwood was spouting awesome one-liners and beating the living bejeezus out of people.

So no, this isn't a "modern" thing. The sensory experience has always been important.

 

8 hours ago, Nikolai said:

Well, yes, but I'd also argue that that's because "The Doomsday Machine" gave people a lot more to think and talk about than Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

It was intended by the writers to be the other way around. Project Insight was an obvious parable about the present day, and it was supposed to be a holy-crap-what-has-our-government-come-to kind of thing. It wasn't. I just didn't care, and that not caring killed the action part of the movie. Captain America's speech about "this isn't freedom--this is fear" was total cheese. A big part of me actually wanted to see the system go off and shoot 750,000 people in the head all at the same time just to make the entire audience go "HOLY BLEEP, WHAT THE BLEEP JUST HAPPENED!?!?" for probably the first time in ten years of moviegoing. (in the first and third Terminator movies, the system DID go off, so that shouldn't be such a gigantic leap for Hollywood to take)

 

8 hours ago, Nikolai said:

With recent movies, what is there to talk about?  The fact that we just saw the Hulk beat up a robot, and it looked cool?

Here's a little irony for ya. I actually enjoyed the first movie in the Transformers reboot. I'll explain why in a minute, but first it's important for me to note that, instead of being original, TF1 followed the usual trope to a T--but here it worked perfectly.

Next I need to do some backstory: in the original animated Transformers series, Optimus Prime was a total wuss. I really tried to like him, but Prime did some incredibly stupid things and even as a kid I was disappointed in him. He kept overlooking who Megatron was, made treaties with the Decepticons while I was yelling at Prime that he was going to get betrayed again (and I was always right!), failed to learn from his mistakes, was pretty weak in battle, and was just a really poor leader for the Autobots. (one of the best parts of Original Transformers was when the Autobots built the Negavator--I was blown away. I was going "holy crap, the GOOD GUYS invented a superweapon!?!? YAAAAAY!")

In the TF1 reboot movie, Optimus Prime is a total badass. Here he's following the trope to a T. He rips Decepticons limb from metal limb and smacks other Decepticons upside the heads with the pieces. The reason the trope works here is, Optimus Prime doesn't have the character flaws he had in the animated series, and I found the change very refreshing. Prime doesn't do stupid. He doesn't negotiate with the bad guys. In fact, the first time he encountered a Decepticon in open battle, I don't think Prime said one word. He opened an economy-size crate of You Messed With The Wrong Robot, stabbed his unfortunate victim in the face, and treated the wreckage with zero respect. WARRANTY EXPIRED!

(the other thing I liked about TF1 was that human weapons did actual damage to Decepticons, and the human race actually had a fighting chance on the battlefield--something you don't see a lot of in modern sci-fi without the humans resorting to various hastily-MacGyver'ed superweapons)