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Shatner
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### Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Shatner » Tue May 08, 2007 8:11 pm

Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?
I watched Spiderman 3 over the weekend and had my fandom bruised. Its no big deal, every time a piece is readapted there’s always the chance it’ll be maladapted. The fact that a movie based on a comic sucked isn’t what baffled me, it’s the fact that the next installment to a popular movie line with massive sequel making (read: money making) potential and the largest budget EVER sucked. And this is a recent example of a truly inscrutable trend.
Hollywood is in the business of making money via movies. The movies don’t have to be good as long as they’re profitable. However, if a movie IS good then sequels can be made meaning some media corporation can net more profit by spending a little extra on quality control. Conceptually, this isn’t really any different than any other business: you make more in the long run if you invest more in your product rather than sacrificing quality for short-term gain. And like any industry, there are businesses that don’t get it. People get greedy or stupid and make a really crappy movie that either flops or renders the series sterile.
Here is where things get kinda baffling. A major movie represents a major business venture; many movies have budgets measured in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars (Spidey 3 had a budget of $258 million dollars, Waterworld had a budget of $175 million, Clerks II had a budget of $5 million). When that much cash is being dedicated to a project, how can quality control and general oversight not be a worthy expense? If an aircraft was commissioned for an airline and its right landing gear wouldn’t lower, peoples’ heads would roll. If an original Picasso piece needed restoration and it came back with a coffee stain on it than there’d be outrage and lawsuits. With that much on the line, people make sure what they’re doing is within acceptable standards. Also, the people to perform the tasks needed to make a successful movie are available. The American movie industry has been demanding many, many jobs since 1900 so there is the infrastructure in place to train scene builders, script writers, screen play writers, choreographers, etc. The demand is there, the needed “materials” are there, why is the supply so often flawed?
Here’s a couple of reasons that come to mind. Please step in where you felt I’ve left off because I really can’t fathom it…
Response:
The standards that define a “good” movie are subjective and I simply have different standards than the modern movie goer. The industry is producing a good product, I’m just part of the narrow demographic that doesn’t see it that way.
Counter-Response:
Movies are judged democratically and some movies, some major movies, are “poorly acclaimed” (Star Wars episodes 1-3 are a good example). My views may sometimes fall outside the majority but the existence of cases in which I’m not divorced from the unsatisfied assemblage disproves the argument above.
Response:
That fact that a movie is poorly acclaimed doesn’t necessarily affect how profitable a movie is, which is the primary reason for its creation. If adequacy is sufficient for financial success there isn’t sufficient pressure to produce excellence.
Counter-Response:
This may hold true for an individual movie but it doesn’t hold true for movie series. The fact that Star Wars episodes 4-6 were well received allowed episodes 1-3 to be created, getting a massive windfall for George Lucas and associates. Conversely, the first “The Land Before Time” movie grossed $72 million dollars profit. The same cannot be said of its lesser sequel and the same can definitely not be said of numbers 3-12 (yes, as of February ‘07 there are twelve Land Before Time movies). Because the same level of film wasn’t made, the series was quickly relegated to the less profitable straight-to-home-video circuit.
Response:
Movies are both an art form and a massive project that suffers from the usual overhead issues associated with large undertaking. Scripts change, artistic vision gets shifted and plans dissolve when exposed to reality. A good movie is the work of rare talent, creativity and luck; as such most movies simply can not be “good”.
Counter-Response:
It may be that some movies are more difficult to get right than others and there’s no accounting for hitherto unappreciated creativity that surprises everyone. Still, some (I would argue most, but I have no way to back that claim) movies are formulaic and it simply takes a faithful adherence to the formula to create a good movie. The Spider Man movies are based on a body of comics that have been in existence since 1963. Said body has been read and liked by millions, at least a portion of said millions being skilled authors and screen writers. With an intact, approved, canonical script (Amazing Spiderman #299 and on for the case of Spiderman 3) and an available source of talent intimate with the work it seems reasonable that the story could have been suitably adapted for cinema and still fall under the $258 million dollar budget. Of the ten highest grossing films of all time, eight are either based on an existing novel (LotR 2 and 3, Harry Potter 1-3 and Jurassic Park) or as sequels to existing movies (Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Shrek 2). Expanded, this holds true for fifteen of the top twenty and twenty-eight of the top forty. Clearly it is profitable to be unoriginal and I argue it is fully possible to be good while being unoriginal.
All numbers above were pulled from Wikipedia.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by User3 » Tue May 08, 2007 8:27 pm

http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegr ... ]Spiderman 3 is *already* in the top 100 highest grossing movies of all time. That's the only standard of quality Hollywood cares about, and by that standard, the movie is already a fantastic success.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by the_taken » Tue May 08, 2007 8:48 pm

Theory:
The low standards of movies stems from the fact that there are a large number of people in the audience. With many movies being below a certain standard, people's expectations drop and the quality drops even more to compensate. With so many people with low expectations or standards Hollywood can wastes vast amounts of money making sub-par crap, increase their paycheck, and have less actual good substance in the movie.
----------- In my opinion:
Spiderman was awesome.
Spiderman 2 was missing something, but a good movie nonetheless.
Spiderman 3 is really missing allot. I'm not going to buy it on video, unless Spiderman 4 comes out and is awesome, which means I'll need SM3 to fill the empty space on my shelf.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by User3 » Tue May 08, 2007 8:55 pm

Comparing work of art with "work of art", a Picasso restoration is judged by a small number of wise individuals, while Spiderman 3 is judged by a mob. To confirm the_taken's note: don't we see (I do, at least) people (in their own opinions) going to see "any garbage on the cinema" just because they aren't even vaguely able to figure out something else to do with their friends/"significant" others?
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fbmf
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by fbmf » Tue May 08, 2007 10:35 pm

> Noah Antwiller wrote:
> Here's a hard reality: producers and major motion picture studios don't care about making quality sequels. <SNIP> The rationale behind this is with a sequel, you already have a built-in audience who are going to see it no matter what. The tickets are already sold.

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Username17
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Username17 » Tue May 08, 2007 10:44 pm

Due to the nature of this discussion, I'm going to have heavy spoilers for Spiderman 3, so deal with it.
First off, I will say that many movies such as "Lawnmower Man 2" and "Waterworld" are actually intended to lose money. Seriously, they exist as weird scams to take money from elsewhere and redirect it to pocketbooks. Like the Producers, only real.
Anyway. Spiderman 3 is written by a committee. Not that Sam and Ted Raimi don't get reasonably full writing credits, but that there is a six-man producer staff and the property is being co-managed by SONY and Marvel. There are a number of segments that are in there "mandatorily" for brand maintenance purposes. That's why there are somany disconnects in the plot.
Now, one could easily imagine this being done better. Imagine for a second that the movie had cut a couple of minutes of Peter running around with Emo hair auditioning for Saturday Night Fever and you cut the entire web-cuddle in the park scene. In its place you threw in the following extra footage:

- A party after the show where MJ and Peter are at the house of John Jameson where John shows them a cool meteor he found. When the partgoers turn elsewhere, black goo comes out and chases Peter.
- Spiderman stops during the crane fiasco to lift a car that has trapped someone. He uses both arms and strains.
- Black-suit Spiderman is doing something and picks up a car he uses one arm and says something smack talkish about how his power level is over 9000. Then the car horn sounds and his suit gets flooby for a second and he needs to steady his grip.
- He tries to tear the suit off in his fvcking house and fails. He has a flashback to the car horn and staggers off to the church tower.
- Eddie follows a staggering Spiderman, hoping that he can show up Peter and get his life back.

I mean, it doesn't solve the basic disjoints in the Sandman story line. I mean, Sandman was never actually told the identity of Peter Parker on camera, and his appearance at the end was just sort of out of sequence. A whole moral struggle section was just skipped. I don't know what to do with that, but I would honestly suggest scrapping that whole bit and having the sandman instead give his speech about how sorry he was over the Ben thing to venom, and have Spidey overhear. Then Peter can forgive Sandman without Sandman's knowledge setting up a better platform for character growth and story startup in Spiderman 4.
Such changes are really just there to make the Venom storyline follow a comprehensible narrative structure without so many incomprehensible coincidences time and time again to make everything go forward.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Crissa » Tue May 08, 2007 10:54 pm

[*]Replace Conners with a cameo for the Fantastic Four. (they have a sequel also out this summer)
[*]Ditch the girlfriend revenge scene with goblin II. It only needs that he remembers or is told that his father died in Spiderman's arms and recovery of the lab for goblin II to come back (again) and he make his niceynice ending.
[*]Why is it important that Sand Man is Spiderman's uncle's killer? Wasted time. Black spidey 'kills' him without remorse. No need.
[*]Eddie stalks Peter instead of 'happenstance' in the church. This guy needed to be a total creep throughout the movie, not just sad and inept.
PS: Waaaay to much het time (especially later in the movie) for my Sammi and why was 1/3th of the audience under the age of 6?
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Shatner
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Shatner » Wed May 09, 2007 12:46 am

First off, know that I am using Spiderman 3 as my main example only because it is fresh in our minds. This is meant to be about American movies in general, without becoming specifically "Why Spiderman 3 sucked". It's possible that people have a re-envisioning of a specific story in mind and that image isn't liked (The new Willy Wonka movie). Sometimes the team forced together just can't keep it functional through the whole of production (such as the dueling directors Kubrick and Spielberg in "A.I."). Regardless, there were some instances in Spiderman 3 that I just couldn't excuse as anything other than gross incompetence. Examples include but not limited to (and are spoiler-rific):
- Harry's butler, Hamfisted McPlotDevice, performed a butlerian autopsy on Norman Osborn and determined the cause of death was self inflicted (and not related to the bludgeoning or explosions he also endured). As though that isn't odd enough, he waited for Harry to endure one and a half movies worth of pain and confusion before telling him. Because he loves him. They seriously could have just shown Harry sitting in his den, staring at a wall and realizing that Peter/Spidey is his best friend and needs help. Done! How does $258 million dollars not buy you a single script editor that 1) has finished college and 2) knows an iota about the script's subject matter?
- Sandman killed Uncle Ben. The origin of Spiderman is that his negligence allowed his Uncle to be murdered. Shamed, he dons his tights… for justice! Only that isn't what happened at all, Uncle Ben was doomed to die anyway since the jerk what done it didn't slip by proto-spidey and the writers just undercut their own story. What purpose did that serve? Sandman could have been a tragic villain, like Doctor Octopus was in Spiderman 2, simply by being driven to crime because of confused familial love and necessity. Spiderman becomes his enemy simply because Sandman is committing crime and Spidey is thwarting him.
- Venom is one of the most recognizable and "liked" villains of the Spiderman franchise. The lead in to his arrival was already there from Spiderman 2 (Jameson's son the astronaut returning from space… with an unexpected passenger). I kept expecting them to pull the Venom-card when the series was flagging (around number four or five), that way all the fandom would come flocking back. Instead, they threw him out in the later half of the movie and 'sploded him at the end of his one fight. If nothing else, they really undercut their venom toy merchandising by excluding him from future movies.
They didn't need Peter Parker to become "The Mask" at the jazz club, they didn't need Sandman to fly or be the object of Peter's forgiveness, they didn't need Spiderman to pose in front of the American flag or Spiderman to forget he had a spider-sense for the duration of the film. They didn't even need Harry to become temporarily amnesiac but those are all issues that are either minor or can be worked around had the film been more coherent. The examples listed above are simply stupid, have no place in a movie that is also the next leg in a long-reaching series and would have been trivially easy to fix. We are talking about professionals with access to the largest budget for a movie to date. What gives?
Now I'm stepping away from Spiderman. Its true the movie going public are willing to pallet a lot but what is served from making a movie with what can only be described as intentional flaws? Lowest common denominator works fine in the short run but I don't think it takes much more to improve a film above that. Paying lip service to the story your filming will endear fans enough to sit through more cash-cow sequels. Remember, the Batman movies have grown progressively more and more ridiculous, with each sequel grossing less and less while having a progressively larger budget (though this trend does break slightly with Batman Begins). That right there is (anecdotal) evidence that declining quality means declining sales, in the long run.
Frank, what do you mean by mandatory segments for brand maintenance? I didn't notice especially heavy handed product placement or agenda pushing. The only scene that seemed really contrived in that direction was Spiderman jumping in front of a waving American flag. Can you expand on your points there?
Oh and fbmf, do you have a link to go with that quote of yours? While a little depressing, it sounds like a good line of inquiry to follow regarding the source of my confusion.
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Josh_Kablack
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Josh_Kablack » Wed May 09, 2007 2:52 am

> Syd Field wrote:Nobody in Hollywood reads scripts

"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by tzor » Wed May 09, 2007 2:48 pm

> Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1178664869[/unixtime]]Why is it important that Sand Man is Spiderman's uncle's killer

I always fancied a parody where Parker was told the real killer of his beloved uncle "Gentle Ben." After all the real killer is none other than the writer Stan Lee himself who wrote that hackneyd Greek Tradegy and constanty beat his character over the head with it on every issue's frontspiece. Then Spidey would kill Lee and thus cease to continue to exist because no one is left to write about him.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by NineInchNall » Wed May 09, 2007 4:09 pm

Except for Joe Michael Straczinsky.
Which would make me happy.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Username17 » Wed May 09, 2007 5:48 pm

Joe Michael Straczinsky is probably the most overrated hack in the industry. Fans go on and on and on about how he's new and fresh and different. No he isn't. He writes bad sci-fi with the best of them.
He still has the commander of a multi-trillion dollar space station that is diplomatically important and known to be the target of repeated terrorist attack run around with a blaster pistol to fight monsters in a darkened cargo hold. Seriously man, what the hell?
Why does Straczinsky get so idolized when he has never heard of the chain of command?
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by fbmf » Wed May 09, 2007 11:56 pm

> Oh and fbmf, do you have a link to go with that quote of yours? While a little depressing, it sounds like a good line of inquiry to follow regarding the source of my confusion.

No, it's from the same guy, Noah Antwiller, that does www.spoonyexperiment.com, but it's in his review of Conan the Destroyer, which, AFAICT, isn;t available on his website.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by NineInchNall » Thu May 10, 2007 12:08 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1178732904[/unixtime]]He still has the commander of a multi-trillion dollar space station that is diplomatically important and known to be the target of repeated terrorist attacks run around with a blaster pistol to fight monsters in a darkened cargo hold. Seriously, man, what the hell?

Ya know, that's called a "TV moment." There's no rational justification for it except that it serves a dramatic purpose.
SF shows in general irritate with the whole lack of chain of command. That the command staff does most of the stuff is almost a feature of the genre, like the health kit in first person shooters. The health bar and health kits are unrealistic and mess with suspension of disbelief, but so far attempts to do away with them are no less unsatisfying, and sometimes they're less fun. The Random-Chance-to-Die-Once-Your-Shield-Goes-Down method from Halo 2 sucks ass, leading the player to feel (rightly) like his death was random. The Screen-Goes-Red-and-You-had-Better-Find-Cover-so-It-Will-Return-to-Normal of Call of Duty and Gears of War is just as irritating as the health kit.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by RandomCasualty » Thu May 17, 2007 3:33 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1178732904[/unixtime]]
> He still has the commander of a multi-trillion dollar space station that is diplomatically important and known to be the target of repeated terrorist attack run around with a blaster pistol to fight monsters in a darkened cargo hold. Seriously man, what the hell?
> Why does Straczinsky get so idolized when he has never heard of the chain of command?

Well, this sort of thing is hard to avoid, because generally your commander and command staff are the main actors and it's just not very satisfying if you have some random soldier kill off the alien.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Joy_Division » Tue May 22, 2007 12:05 am

Why do the commanders have to be the main characters.
I've seen a lot of other scifi where the main characters are just joe blow trying to get along in the world (in space) and the commanders are cool but not hands on.
I don't think that recycling the worst parts of star trek has anything to do with being a valid sci-fi. Science fiction is an easy genre to belong to. All you need is spaceships or lasers or anything that makes the story not "right now" and then you pose lame philosophical questions for your audience. It's not hard.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue May 22, 2007 12:24 am

Technically REAL scifi is a hard genre to belong to because you're supposed to be posing somewhat plausible if elaborate "what ifs".
Much of modern "scifi", especially since star wars, is infact more futuristic fantasy than scifi.
Its often more Flash Gordon than Star Trek. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Crissa » Tue May 22, 2007 1:15 am

Why do they compress story timelines when written into scripts?
It doesn't matter to the viewer how long it takes to drive or fly or walk from point A to B, but why make that mistake intentionally? Usually it's just a matter of a character saying 'hour' instead of 'minutes' or 'days' instead of 'hours'. (most annoying is when they say 'minutes' instead of 'days'...)
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by fbmf » Tue May 22, 2007 4:19 am

Example?
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by the_taken » Tue May 22, 2007 5:20 am

StarTreck 2: The Wrath of Kan
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by Draco_Argentum » Tue May 22, 2007 7:32 am

> PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1179793489[/unixtime]]Its often more Flash Gordon than Star Trek. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I thought Flash was science fantasy too.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue May 22, 2007 11:04 am

So when considering Star Trek (the original of course, otherwise I'd have said "wanky sequel series X") and you thought I might be presenting flash gordon as the example of actual scifi?
No, star trek got the scifi standing in that comparison, admittedly their what ifs were surrounded by hillariousness but it generally stuck to themes of what if this or that.
Mind you. I still like Flash Gordon, Star Trek the original would have totally rocked to a Queen sound track... (they could keep the opening theme though).
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by technomancer » Tue May 22, 2007 1:30 pm

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/09-A ... /[br][br]I found that series of books to be quite good science fiction. A tech base that held together, with very little in the way of magic black-box technology. Well thought out implications of the technology base, and the captain stays in the freaking bridge in the middle of combat.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by tzor » Tue May 22, 2007 3:28 pm

Here is an interesting question. What really was Star Trek (now called "The Old Series" or TOS)? When you get down to it what really was it? The answer might shock you.
Star Trek was a discussion of modern moral problems veiled with the veneer of aliens in order to avoid the strict protocols of theteleision censors which reached their height in the 1950. Simply put, Star Trek paved the way to make "All in the family" possible. It is, therefore, most ironic that it was replaced with "Laugh In." The censors won the battle, but in the end they completely lost the war."
Technically Star Trek would be best classified as "Space Western." Ironically the next popular sci fi series after Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, had a popular actor of TV western's as it's main lead character.
This is why Kirk seems more like the sherrif of a small western town than a commander of a deep space exploration vessel with a crew in the hundreds.
Flash Gordon Star Trek can be seen in the original pilot in which Science Officer Spock gives the near panicked order, "Fire the rockets," when the warp drive and the impulse engines were not operating. (Well they actually were operating, they were just mentally prevented from knowing that they could be used.) Also in the original intro scene in which the Enterprise rishes from stage left to stage right, and then from stage right to stage left while the theme music was playing.
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### Re: Why does Hollywood produce bad movies?

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Post by fbmf » Tue May 22, 2007 4:52 pm

> the_taken at [unixtime wrote:1179811252[/unixtime]]StarTreck 2: The Wrath of Kan

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