Word of Mouth Has Killed

[DarkHorse]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by DarkHorse:
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Kicked @ss start to finish. The best villain ever in the ST universe. Best part; none of the characters were played for cheap laughs.

Star Trek IV: The Beginning of the End

Horrible. Ridiculous. And to make matters worse, they resurrected the recurring thorn-in-the-side of Time-Travel (TM), the universal schtick of trying to make a movie interesting by introducing ludicrous plot devices that cause infinitely more problems than they solve. And here we first see our beloved characters played for cheap laughs. Unforgivable.

Second best of the bunch, because its funny, and good star trek at the same time.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

A serviceable attempt to right the ship. Still playing characters for cheap laughs, but at least the overarching theme (cold war ends) was timely for once and fairly well done. Shakespeare spouting Klingons (how would they have even known about the Bard?) was again stretching credibility, but Captain Sulu to the rescue! That was a good touch, and fun to watch the Excelsior kick some butt. Extremely hokey ending, though.

I have a question for you. Why _wouldn't_ the Klingons know about Shakespeare?

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Star Trek has always played its characters for cheap laughs.

I have to politely disagree with you on this one.
You can have occasional elements of humor without sacrificing the depth of your characters, and I think the original series (TOS) did a good job of relating that. The humor was unforced, just good-natured cameraderie between the crew, whereas in some of the movies, it appeared [to me] that several of the characters were just two dimensional props that were merely along for the ride, and to provide the occasional cheap one-liner for meaningless laughs. You could say they were "Hollywood-ized", if you will.

Second best of the bunch, because its funny, and good star trek at the same time.

That's fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion. I just got annoyed with the Time-Travel (TM) stuff first, then Shatner's increasing buffoonery continued the slide. Different types of humor for different folks, I suppose.

I have a question for you. Why _wouldn't_ the Klingons know about Shakespeare?

Well, my thoughts on this would be:
1. They are from a different planet, therefore do not share the same cultural history and references (e.g. Shakespeare)
2. Their interaction with the Federation to that point in time to my knowledge was limited to episodes of occasional skirmishes to outright war, conditions that don't seem to lend themselves to a rich cultural exchange.
3. They had been portrayed (especially in TOS) as gruff and warlike, or at least aggressive, people, not really the kind that would take much of an interest in xenos literature.

Again, these are all my opinions, YMMV
(your mileage may vary)
Cheers,
DarkHorse

EDIT: typos

[ January 02, 2003, 04:35: Message edited by: DarkHorse ]