Peter Laird's opinions about the new Star Trek movie
 

For those who haven't read it, Peter Laird hated the Star Trek reboot:

http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/


Given the new TMNT movie may be a reboot, how do you think this movie could be done to appease Peter Laird, given he apparently hated another type of reboot done just recently?

It was a pseudo-reboot. But, yeah, that's not very reassuring. :ohwell: Good thing he's not a movie producer...

Pete so far has been the only really negative review I've heard on Star Trek...

I don't know much about Star Trek (nor do I care) but let's remember that it was Peter Laird who thought the script for the 2007 TMNT film was good enough to film...:tdead:

Did you guys see The Onion's "news" story about this?

http://www.theonion.com/content/vide...star_trek_film

But, it was "good enough"... Crap a lot less interesting than that still disgraces the silver screen regularly.

I pretty much lost what little faith I had in the new TMNT movie when I read what Peter wrote about Star Trek.

Sorry Peter, I'm a life-long Trek fan and the new movie kicks ass. If you have no interest in making a TMNT movie that people will embrace like they have this new Star Trek movie, why are you even bothering?

Maybe it is an age-thing? Peter Laird is 55 and grew up watching Star Trek on TV back when it originally aired, and this movie was too action oriented, and also somewhat teen oriented given the younger main characters. (I know they were all in their 20's or older, but you get my idea)

I am interested to see how other 50+ year olds who watched Star Trek back when it aired feel about this.

I hope TMNT fans are open minded if the new reboot goes in a new direction too.

Everyone I knew that grew up watching Trek loved it.

Roger Ebert also gave it a negative review, I'm sure there has been more and will be others, no movie is ever universaly accepted. I've also read a few articles criticising that it doesn't capture the feel of "Roddenberry's vision" or being a sci fi commentary on current events as some episodes of the series have been touted as.

(yes, exactly what the Onion's news video is parodying)

I myself have casualy followed the movies production and even by looking at the trailers I think it's obvious to anyone that this is not going to be the Trek that many already know, that's the whole selling point of the movie. "Think Star Trek is just for sweaty 30 year olds who live with their parents...think again. This is cool with tons of explosions and lense flares and the extreme"

I can certainly enjoy on that level and suspect I will when I go see it, particularly as it seems to retain elements of TOS that I liked and even Laird himself praises one of these aspects.."some of the key cast did excellent work with their interpretations of the established Star Trek" characters, and some of the visuals were very impressive."

I think a lot of Trek fans are enjoying it on the same level as I expect to as well as tons loving the fact that after the last decade or so of dreck and commercial decline thanks to Abram's name and the hype around the film it's not only going to be commercialy succesful but also make the franchise something it's never been before...cool. It's the same with the current crop of comic book movies, generaly comics are looked down upon as kids things but when they make succesful movies it almost makes the twentysomething fans that still read them feel validated.

If Laird is not one of those fans then I'm not really sure how that affects the upcoming TMNT reboot. It's not like the story that most fans want for TMNT
fits with big explosions and more modern hip versions of the characters like what I suspect Star Trek will be or Bay's Transformers:dead:. So it's irrelevant.

What we should be looking at is Laird's opinons on movies that play closer to what fans feel a TMNT film should be. Back when it first came out he stated that he enjoyed Batman Begins and in the first MTV interview he did said that he regards the first live action as being the best.

We also know what he'll never allow in a film, Venus, Bebop & Rocksteady and overt OT pandering. Now if that still makes people uneasy then...well what can ya do?

No offense, but what the hell does this have to do with the TMNT movie? It's a pretty ridiculous argument. Peter Laird didn't like Star Trek = TMNT reboot will be bad.

All I keep hearing, even when I tell the Trek fans I know to cut through the ******** and be honest with me as someone who has never really cared about Star Trek and maybe watched a couple of episodes I can't even recall, is that it's a pretty standard movie. The only reason Trek fans really love it, and this is exactly what I've heard from fans and non-fans alike (again after saying cut the garbage and be honest) is that the film essentially goes through a checklist of things that they hope will ensure the fans love it and then does its thing. Just because Trek fans embrace it, it doesn't make it a good movie for everyone. Star Wars fans embraced the prequels but that didn't necessarily make them good either.

How many other reboots have there been to date? Batman, Superman, X-men, Hulk, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, James Bond... They've all been hit and miss too. So Peter is a Star Trek fan who didn't like the movie. So what? I've got friends who are fans who didn't either. But what has this got to do with the TMNT movie? From the sounds of everything it doesn't exactly look as though they're going to be going into space. It's like saying "okay, this apple wasn't to my liking, therefore that pot roast will not agree with me either."

No one involved in the Star Trek movie is currently working on the film. At the moment it's the dude who put the money forward for the Batman movies, 300 and Superman, and the dude that put the money forward for TMNT 4. Then you've got Peter and Gary and Legendary Pictures. There's not even a writer or director MENTIONED... ANYWHERE... So just chill, and wait until there's something solid ABOUT TMNT said.

What Galactus above me has said is spot on, and my own post probably would've hit around the same time as his if I hadn't taken a phone call :P
Sorry for the repetition without directly quoting you or referencing your own post G!

Tristan pretty much said it for me. Star Trek and TMNT are two totally different things. There's no Logical way to compare how the star trek movie was done and what will happen with the new TMNT movie. We don't even know a PERCENT of what's going to happen with the TMNT movie. Can we at least WAIT and SEE something before we immediately go TRASHing it?

I think people are just reaching WAY out and trying to grasp at straws to be negative about something.

I think people are worried because he said this about Trek and has said things about George Lucas, when he can't see that it's the same thing when his fans dislike something.
I'm pretty sure thats the point people are trying to make.
It's time to move on from the past and I mean everything, it's time for a new turtles.

I can understand that argument, as it's been brought up in reference to some issues of Tales and Volume 4, and both Peter and the fans have recognised that point. The argument here though, in a nutshell is Peter didn't like Star Trek, therefore TMNT reboot is a write off.

He hated the film because he's a fanboy and he stated that pretty clearly. It's the highest rated movie of the year, with a whopping 94% on Rottentomatoes, so I'm going to take a guess that's it's at least a decent movie. Fanboys don't appreciate it because the guy who directed it doesn't even like Star Trek and it's more of an action film then anything. Star Trek fans like watching what I call "Live action Battle Ship" where rooms of people stand around and yell at each other while occasionally firing weapons and pretending to fly around the room when they get hit.

The point of a re-boot is to appeal to an audience the series has never appealed to before. With this I think this new Star Trek movie probably succeeded just as Batman did. The first 4 Batman films before Begins were goofy and cartoony in nature, not much like the comic book more like the TV series. Then Batman Begins was a lot more hard edged and more like the comic books.

Does this remind you of another franchise? The first turtles film might have been based off the comics but it was obviously geared towards fans of the old cartoon series, as were the other three, the newest one being for fans of the new toon. With that said if he wants to do a new film as a reboot I'd honestly expect a Batman Begins style film like he promised. He's not a turtles fanboy and even if he was he knows that's what almost all his fans want so he'd actually succeed in pleasing everyone. Making a turtles film more like the comics isn't changing the source material or altering the personalities of the characters like this Star Trek reboot supposedly did.

Not to play devil's advocate, but I completely agree with Peter Laird on the new Star Trek movie. Pretty much every word.

I will say, however, that it's a highly entertaining film. Very riveting. I'd recommend it to anyone.

But it's a very strange thing, this movie. I mean, I get that it's for new fans who have never really been involved in Star Trek... so why not just do a real reboot? Or if they wanted to do a prequel, why not do a proper prequel?

As it is, it is a strange pitch: "What if Kirk wasn't really Kirk... and what if we saw this new Kirk's origins?" It's like a new, less-interesting Mirror Universe or something.

Have you even seen Batman and Batman Returns? They aren't anywhere near the 60's show. If anything Batman feels exactly like comics back when it came out.

batman and batman returns felt like the comics did at the time.

back on track. this is easily the stupidest thread i have seen started here. tristan, galactus, machias banshee and spitfire speak the truth. i vote this thread be locked.

A thread isn't going to be closed just because you don't like it.

Yeh... if all unlike threads were locked, we'd be running out of thread to talk about.. :lol:

I think Peter makes a lot of valid points, and you can tell he's a huge star trek fan from the passion in his words.
I thought it was a brilliant blockbuster, even if engineering did look like the inside of a factory, but to state that Peter's opinion of star trek will mean a crap TMNT movie is both irritating and stupid, it really is.

All this negativity is getting really tiresome, but this in particular is taking the piss, as it's based on nothing valid or logical.

I wouldn't say it's stupid. Just... really, really unfounded. I'm all about assigning blame and anger where it's due... but looking at someone's view of Star Trek as a reboot (which it isn't) to conjecture their stance on what a TMNT reboot should be just doesn't seem like a sound comparison.

Now, if I read Peter Laird posting to his blog about what a piece of crap "Batman Begins" (which was a reboot) was and how it trampled over the history of the previous 4 movies, I'd be throwing a sh** fit with the rest of you.

What if I don't like it? :P

J/K I guess the fear can be, "Well what if Peter just goes back to the well and doesn't try something fresh, like Star Trek did?" In that case, the question has some merit.

Gah, I love using italics.

EDIT: Then again ST didn't really try something new in that Future Spock (as much as I liked the movie) felt like a huge cop-out.

I don't know why it's so odd. I mean the crew members of the USS Enterprise are iconic characters, so I can see why Abrams didn't go with a new crew. And then we start these characters off young with a new, different story, so that it isn't bogged down by all the decades of continuity that your average schmoe coudln't care less about.

Basically your casual viewer will recognize the characters and the lines, like "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!", but then will also be drawn into this new story and timeline.

For all intents and purposes this is a reboot even if it isn't a "real" one.

Anyway all I really want out of the new TMNT film is for it to be true to the characters and for it to be a damn good movie, and of course Laird's opinion of Star Trek doesn't really have anything to do with that.

Peter Laird is a dork. I don't care what he thinks I'm still gonna she the movie anyway.

But everything about the new movie seems to be about deconstructing Trek, making it more accessible to people completely unfamiliar with actually having watched Trek but maybe are passingly familiar with the tropes of it in pop culture. I get it. It's a sound strategy, really.

My question to this end is: Isn't harkening back to Kirk and Spock a bad thing? The "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!"/"Beam me up, Scotty!" stuff? I would think they'd want to distance themselves far away from all of that, and the mileau of something like Star Trek allows it.

It doesn't need to pick up after Nemesis. It doesn't need to even be in the TNG/24th century era. Hell, set it in the 29th century, when Starfleet polices Time, on a temporal ship with a bright and mixed young crew.

Going back to Kirk and Spock just seems pretty creatively bankrupt. And now I'm even reading interviews that say that Abrams and company want to start redoing Khan and other stories in this new Abramsverse... god forbid they attempt to do anything new or original.

People seem very confused about the widely mis-publicized "downfall of Trek." Enterprise wasn't cancelled because of bad ratings... it's ratings were strong, they just weren't getting any better and the show didn't fit in with the-then UPN's present strategy ("OK, we can make an episode of Moesha for $10,000 an episode for pretty much the same ratings as Enterprise, which costs $2,000,000 an episode..."). And the only reason the TNG movies crapped out is because, flat out, the last two movies were horrible. Insurrection and Nemesis, both of them. God awful.

But it's not TNG's fault! First Contact was the last TNG movie that was good, and everybody saw it -- in fact, it's the highest grossing (unadjusted) Star Trek movie to date, and it's a TNG movie. Proof that if they give us Trek movies that don't suck, we'll see them. Lesson being: don't make Trek movies that suck.

Simple as that. No reboot, no Kirk and Spock needed, no quasi-Mirror Universes or erasing/rewriting of 50 years of history needed.

For most intents and purposes, not all.

It's funny, I have a childhood friend who is a complete Trekkie. He has the posters, has seen every single episode, memorizes lines and episode titles, seen every movie; hell, he's even tried getting me to watch all the stuff. I told him I was really looking forward to Star Trek, but I guess he didn't know about my undying love for J.J. Abrams' peni- I mean pensmanship. I seriously think anything this man touches is flawless.

Surely enough, my friend texted me as soon as he came out of the earliest showing of the movie (the movie was released Thursday at 7 p.m. in my town), and pretty much every text he sent me was just giddy, overexcited, all-Caps babble about how godly the movie was. I came out of the movie yesterday completely convinced that J.J. Abrams is a god and will soon be etched in film/television history. If Laird wants to complain about his favorite, childhood franchises not sticking well in film nowadays, he should probably be thankful he's not a Wolverine fan right now.

I can sorta understand how he's upset that the movie is probably nothing like the Star Trek he knew [to be honest, I can't comment on it because I've never seen an episode/previous movie of Star Trek in my life] and that it wasn't meant to appeal solely to the diehards [even though many of the diehards I know personally and the ones online are raving about this movie]; but this just means that the new TMNT movie's plot that he and the production team are personally working on better be fan-f***ing-tastic in the sense of capturing the essence of the comics.

Either way, I can't say I agree with Laird when he says this movie was a huge disappointment or that it's a bad thing that the future of Star Trek films will be in the direction Abrams took it. Sorry if most of the movie doesn't consist of 100-word techno babble sentences, I still think it was a kick-ass movie.

Ok, I'll ask this to Andy, since he's the most die hard Mirage fan I know here: Isn't it ironic that Laird hated Star Trek because it'd totally not the Star Trek he knew, but he had little problem with TMNT, which was hardly even about the Turtles, or for that matter allowed things like Secret of the Ooze, Turtles III (Which aren't the worst, but are about "meh."), and CooTS, the 2 Turtle sing-along cassettes (Turtle Tunes and We Wish You a Turtle Christmas), and the Next Mutation?

I guess you're talking about Scott Mednick, but I can't find any connection between him and any Batman movie.

Batman Returns was one of the most ridiculous movies ever. I watch it to cleanse myself of sin, it's that brutal.

It's not ironic. He makes money off that garbage, so of course it's "good enough".

I have in fact, I own them. Batman is super goofy, and cartoony. The museum scene...the way the Joker acts 90% of the movie. The way the goons act is way over the top screaming as loud as they can and wearing matching jackets with Joker's face on them.

Returns was a step in the right direction but I still don't feel it made it all the way. As much as I like the film it's still cartoony to me. The Penguin is way over the top, giant rubber duck boat and penguins with missiles strapped to them I mean come on. I can't take a film with stuff in it like that and go "Yeah this is just like the comic where Batman fights serial killers and is tormented by the death of his parents".

HEY!! Did I ask you? NO!! NO!!!

J/K. I'd like to think as someone who calls himself an artist, Peter Laird would prefer quality product over schlock that will bring in a quick buck, but what do I know, I'm just somne guy in fly-over country.

Heh, which one of you posted the last few replies on Pete's blog? :D

No considering the turtles all started out as a Dare Devil spoof/ joke.
I think some times fans see things differently than those who created the characters.

An homage to a couple of aspects from Daredevil, Elektra, and Ronin do not a spoof/joke make.

When you put it like that, I would almost have to say yes... but I guess it would depend on what Laird considers "the TMNT he knows." I think "the TMNT he knows" might be different than, say, the TMNT Kevin Eastman knows, or the kind of TMNT we know that comes when the two of them work together, collectively.

But I'm not sure. Both men are guilty of making some head-scratchingly terrible deals in the mainstream with Hollywood and TV.

You just made me think of
http://www.therightone.biz/_RefFiles...e%20Symbol.gif

Maybe my real name's Andy. :P

The concerns that Laird voices about the new Star Trek movie on his blog is pretty much the way I felt about Transformers. It was a movie that bore the name Transformers and a vague similarity but that's were it ended.

The franchise was capable of making a much better film and while I knew Hollywood would never take the concept of transforming robots seriously it's sad that it felt it had to make a mindless action flick which instead of at least attempting something decent...and lets not forget that Bay's Transformers also had a lot of hype, made a lot of money and people loved it, then a few months on forget and dismiss soon after.

While I don't think Star Trek will be quite like that from what I've read it almost reminds me of this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwyIMzfzz8o

I realise that a lot of people want the TMNT reboot to be popular and make money and whatnot but is that what we really want Is that what we really want for the turtles?

[SCENE 1 April sits up in a pile of unconcious Foot Solidiers, Raph stands over her]

Raph: They were sent here to kill you

April: What are you.

Raph: You don't want to know what I am.

April: But you're so..so-

Raph: Different?

April: Hot.


SCENE 2 Mike and Don hiding behind a wall as Don franticaly works on something. As Foot Ninja charges at them from a distance Don leans his home made bazooka over the wall and fires at an oil tanker causing a massive explosion with the Foot caught in it.

Mike: Dude, we were supposed to take one alive so we could find out were they're holding Splinter.

Don: um...my bad.

[FINALE Mike, Don and Raph are fighting the Shredder when the battle is interrupted by head lights. It's Leo driving the Party Wagon full of explosives. The turtles dive out of the way as the wagon goes directly into Saki. As a huge explosion erupts we see Leo jumping out of the flames. His friends help him up, the four turtles stand dramaticaly over the fire, close up on Leo

Leo: (to camera) Turtles to Shredder you've been pwned!

[CUE CREDITS]

Truly horrible.

I think Peter is not going to be happy when reading the new replies on his blog. It's turned into a real Vol. 4 bash-fest.