quote:Originally posted by Capped in Mic: 'the chase' was fine as a non-trek story.. ~* an archaeologist has secret information about an ages old puzzle, several warring political powers have to cooperate, making a scientific discovery about the beginning of civilization *~
the Trek thing about it was that they were parodying their own propensity for humanoids by creating a common humanoid alien forebearer
And yet....The Chase was one of the worst episodes of TNG for drama. It was so poorly written as to be laughable and at no point do you feel for any of the characters. It was Trek meets Cannonball Run but nobody was funny.
Not all drama stories require the heart to be engaged fully. I've never cried over Decker buying it in DOOMSDAY MACHINE, but it is still very thrilling and as rewatchable as any Trek. I didn't consider CHASE laughable in the slightest, except for the ludicrous Klingon.
The moment in CHASE that most enticed me was when they were figuring out code elements in Crusher's whatever the room was ... it was an intellectual rush, not an emotional one. Kinda reminded me of FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH, which has a similar kind of GOTCHA moment.
As for the conclusion, I think that a skilled filmmaker could pull it off, which is why I still think THE CHASE should have been the TNG Feature debut. An UNskilled filmmaker would have made it even more wince-making though, a la the "use them together / use them in peace" Hyams preaches over the end of 2010, which was going several bridges too far into schmaltz.
-------------------- Achievement is its own reward; pride obscures it.
Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged
posted
^No argument there -- that part of the message is foreboding as Hell, as in, "don't fuck with us, we're the guys behind these big black 2 by 4s, we'll OWN your ass."
-------------------- Achievement is its own reward; pride obscures it.
Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged
posted
But that part of the message was in the novel. Hyams added the "Use them together -- use them in peace" bit, as well as the US/USSR conflict. He also pissed all over a lot of real-science elements that were in 2001 -- starting with the "sound in space" issue. It was not a sequel to 2001, but its own distinct movie.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
The deal with 2001 and sequels is weird to me, because with all the discarded treatments for the original (some of this is collected in a book called LOST WORLDS OF 2001), you've got the makings of a helluva whole other movie or limited series in a 2001-like universe. I talked with a writer named Pete Briggs about this a few years ago, cuz I figured Tom Hanks, being the 2001 and space fan he is, might be interested in doing HOW THE SOLAR SYSTEM WAS WON (working joke title for 2001) or FROM THE EARTH TO BEYOND THE STARS or something, a kind of HBO does the 21st century version of FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON -- a kind of documentary of the future, but using the unused storylines purchased by Kubrick from Clarke for 2001 and the abortive storylines developed by Clarke in concert with Kubrick. You could build through a series of man in the solar system stories to the payoff being the discovery of an extraterrestrial obelisk ... sort of like a precursor to 2001 in a way, though obviously in an adjusted timeframe, since we're WAY behind schedule!
For 2010, I kinda think Hyams should have made it even more different than he did, since 'science' isn't Hyams' thing ... machine guns on the ships and the americans and russians teaming up to smoke out the Chinese mission ... instead, by trying to please Clarke and being (rightfully) in awe of the first film, Hyams kinda just wriggled around like a fish out of water (plus he pissed on the lighting scheme with all that smoke he loves so much.)
-------------------- Achievement is its own reward; pride obscures it.
Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged
posted
Yeah. About the only scenes from 2010 that I liked were the opening mission report (including Bowman's final transmission), the cut from Dr. Floyd looking in on his son to the Leonov, the revival of the Discovery and HAL, the stuff with the apparition of Dave Bowman, and the final scene with the Monolith. That's not good for a movie as long as this was, but those were some durn good scenes by themselves...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
Visually, I love 2010: it's just really refreshing to see spacecraft dwarfed by even Jupiter's moons after years of watching Enterprise fly-by in "standard orbit.
The ship models in the film were very impressive as well. Discovery is identical to the original model but with more of it's hull details visible in the improved cameras of the 80's. The Leonev was certainly copied by the B5 art department at least, so there is a surviving legacy to the film....
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
The thing that bothered me most when I first saw it was the total reversal on the Floyd character. In 2001, you see Floyd on a pretaped message tell Bowman that only HAL knew the truth about the mission (and earlier scenes establish him as being very political and in on the TMA-1 coverup), yet in 2010, Scheider's Floyd makes an enormous deal about it being the NSC who programmed HAL to lie and his NOT knowing.
At the time I reconciled it by figuring it is Scheider playing Floyd as 'protesting too much' just for the benefit of the other crew, but nobody else thought the writing and plotting in 2010 was smart enough to have a character that clever and conniving (yet Scheider's shit-eating grin after Chandra discovers his HAL-killer device suggests he really IS a bastard.)
As for the good stuff in the flick ... I liked the Chandra/HAL/"I think we should abort the countdown and investigate" scene ... that and the Europa remote probe sequence (which at least plays the contrast of sound and little sound with interior/exteriors) are two bits in the film that FEEL very movie-like and compelling ... if they had maybe another half-dozen scenes as good as those, I'd have eventually forgotten they were attempting to sequelize an untouchable classic and gotten into the movie, but alas ...
A guy I used to work for at Cinefex saw the 2010 miniatures up close and in person when he covered the film, and even though he still holds that the APOLLO 13 fx are the best he has seen, he said the modelwork on 2010 was just staggering.
My disappointment with the fx (which in the theater were rather stunning, and certainly deserved the Oscar more than Indy2, which won that year) has to do with the way they look on video ... you have to adjust the picture rather severely to keep the 'garbage matte' boxes from showing up during space scenes, due to how 'hot' the film was printed during video transfer. I have held off on buying a dvd of 2010, hoping they'll go back and do a really nice new transfer, but since this was a problem on laserdisc as well, I think we may have to live with it as chronic.
-------------------- Achievement is its own reward; pride obscures it.
Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged
posted
Those damn "hot boxes" are on my old VHS copy of Empire Strikes Back as well. All the TIE fighters have square halos around them.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
As for SW, the pre-spec ed laserdisk box sets for the films are really awful in this way, esp some of JEDI. But I can't imagine swapping them for what followed, considering the tampering I'd have to live with.
I think the 2010 stuff is the MOST objectionable instance, mainly cuz the garbage mattes aren't just boxes ... in some instances, you can see the garbage matte around the supports as well, so you have flickering boxes around the ships plus rectangles around the connecting tube and garbage mattes around the pipes holding the ships. From what I remember, if you turn the brightness down by about 65% it hides them, but then you can barely see the ships!
-------------------- Achievement is its own reward; pride obscures it.
Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by kmart: As for SW, the pre-spec ed laserdisk box sets for the films are really awful in this way, esp some of JEDI. But I can't imagine swapping them for what followed, considering the tampering I'd have to live with.
Because the changes made to Empire and Jedi were radical in the extreme and destroy classic movies?
I have no great love for Crazy New Dance Number, but if you think that it ruins a movie which has several moments of Ewok partying, then you have strange and foreign tastes.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by kmart: As for SW, the pre-spec ed laserdisk box sets for the films are really awful in this way, esp some of JEDI. But I can't imagine swapping them for what followed, considering the tampering I'd have to live with.
Because the changes made to Empire and Jedi were radical in the extreme and destroy classic movies?
I have no great love for Crazy New Dance Number, but if you think that it ruins a movie which has several moments of Ewok partying, then you have strange and foreign tastes.
When I say "what followed," I'm referring to the SEs of all three movies, not to the sequels to ANH. So with that in mind ...
I haven't been able to watch JEDI all the way through since 1983, and never even tried to see the SpecEd of it. I think it is a shitty movie on just about all levels, with only some good spaceship stuff to offset the awfullness. (I ain't that big an enthusiast of SW period ... if there was a film that should be a classic example of using Campbell and mythology, it would be THE PRINCESS BRIDE, which stands much taller than Vader's shadow IMO.)
My objection to the way the films were reworked for the SpecEds was that they were reworked at all, and moreover, that said reworking was MUCH more than just digital recomping to lose matte lines, a process I can sorta live with as being something akin to cleaning up the negative.
I don't think that being able to see the x-wings sweep around camera to approach deathstar in one shot (in the se) to be an improvement in any way compared to the pair of excellent model shots that they replaced -- all I see is a B5-ish fleet of ships which don't have the dynamic range in the imagery that was present in the miniature photography.
Most of the other changes in the SEs I've seen (I saw EMPIRE SE in the theatre and have seen bits of ANH SE on TBS) seem to be disimprovements as well ... for every couple bigger vistas provided, there is either a sacrifice in visual credibility (see dynamic range above) or in storytelling (Han not shooting first.)
Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by kmart: I don't think that being able to see the x-wings sweep around camera to approach deathstar in one shot (in the se) to be an improvement in any way compared to the pair of excellent model shots that they replaced
Not to mention the shot is so stupidly composed that it actually adds a continuity problem to the film. We see the rebel ships level with Yavin IV directly behind them. The camera turns 180 degrees and we see the Death Star directly in front of them...which means it already has clear line-of-site of the moon. Ergo, the Death Star should have vaporized said moon before "Porkins" could say "Ham Sandwich standing by."
Another great example of why tampering after the fact often creates more problems than it solves.
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
I do, however much prefer the new ending of RTOJ to the "yub yub" song. The Courscant scene of the masses pulling down the statue of Palpaltine is a nice touch and sets up the look of the capital city nicely for the prequels. But I'm admittedly biased against Ewoks. Hate them fuckers.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
