Supplemental

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Picked up the Star Trek Countdown graphic novel at work the other day,* and pleased I was to discover that it's official canon that Nemesis Never Happened. It was an excellent handwave: two panels of "It's good to see you're not dead after all!" "Yeah, I get that a lot." And then they go on with explaining How Real Spock Got His ROFLcopter and Why Nero's Simple Mining Ship Is A God Damn Death Star.

This is the correct approach for Nemesis.**

It's also nice to see that the reboot was ushered in with a demonstration of the Worf Effect. Gotta love the fanservice in this franchise.

So, yeah, enjoyable graphic novel. Now, allow me to rant about supplemental materials in general!

Here is my thought: I like 'em a lot, but dammit they're supposed to be supplemental. I hate it when the answers to big gaping plot holes get buried in deleted scenes or the comics or whatever. Avatar would've been a better movie with that HOUR of cut stuff that explains pretty much everyone's motivation, the theatrical cut of Aliens leaves out some very useful information, and upon a rewatch I discovered that the theatrical cuts of LotR make NO GODDAMN SENSE. Aragorn has an actual character arc in the extended editions. Also, did you know there's an explanation for why the District 9 aliens have no idea how to pilot their own ship? Yeah, neither did I.*** Which, you know, would be nice to know in the movie itself.

I guess what I'm saying is, dangit, give me the infodumps. You can never have too much information, by god!


*God DAMN it's good working in a library.

**The most correct outlook is that none of the the TNG movies happened, on account of they were stupid. TNG's my favorite series, but the movies are not so much.

***Because they're the lowest caste of a eusocial society, is why. Apparently there was a big old epidemic on the ship that killed off all the smarter castes, and the ship itself limped to Earth on autopilot. Now they've got to start producing those smarter castes again.

Comments

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

Apparently there was a big old epidemic on the ship that killed off all the smarter castes

Well, all except for Christopher, I guess. He's pretty smart. Or, that lower caste is becoming smarter on its own?

BTW, I got this feeling from The Avengers as well - a lot of the scenes centering around Bruce's... condition, and the powers of Loki's staff felt like they were part of a bigger arc that was mostly cut from the final movie...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

The director implied he second possibility--Christopher (and, importantly, Junior) are changing to fill the vacant roles left by the upper castes. Which is a thing that happens in the animal kingdom, but the director's explanation is a bit garbled about how it works.

I do hate it when you leave a theater wondering where the rest of the movie went. We have multiplexes, dangit! just make the movies longer and include short intermissions.

[beccastareyes]

I actually hate the Worf Effect. (And I was disappointed that Crusher and Troi were left out, since otherwise it felt like 'hey, look here's everyone from TNG'.)

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

...I thought the District 9 thing was explained in the movies. Or maybe I have magical mind-reading powers that I didn't know about o_o.

But man, I totally hear you. Time/money constraints suck for movies that really need that background info. And for those of us who aren't into comics, that means we never get those holes filled in until we stumble across it on a wiki years later.
Or we just write EVEN MOAR fanfic to fill the gaps for ourselves. :p

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Alien 3 is apparently significantly better with the extra material in the Director's Cut as well. I wouldn't know for sure, since that's the only version I've seen, but I've heard it from others, and given that the Director's Cut was quite good and the Theatrical Release pretty much got panned, it seems a reasonable conclusion.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

If they make movies any longer I think my bladder will detonate. They're already pushing 3 hours.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I'm both amused and annoyed by it. From the storytelling level, it's kind of funny to see how it occurs. But in practice, it's just obnoxious to have Worf get his ass trounced all the time. And in this one, it was completely unnecessary, too. I really do think they did it on purpose.

So I was being clumsily snide up there. It's really a trope I could do without.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I think they explained it partially, but my sister says if so she missed it, too, and it was a little fuzzy.

I don't even write the fic half the time, but in my head I certainly have my own canon.

[shadesofmauve]

Oh, man, yes. Supplemental materials should be supplemental. Been encountering this with story-oriented RPGs a lot, lately -- it's especially obnoxious because most of the supplemental material is really poor quality compared to the actual games, and I refuse to waste my time with crappy writing when there's so much good writing to be had.

Thankfully there are wikis. Otherwise I'd be so confused.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

It's mentioned at the beginning of the film that the aliens that got stranded in Johannesburg are the workers, and that their leaders had somehow been killed, presumably by a virus.

[beccastareyes]

Ah, okay.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Which is why I also advocate bringing back intermission.

Or, even better, just watching it on the home theater system, where you can lounge in your own chairs, pause it when you feel like it, enjoy real food while watching, and yell at it to your heart's content. The only real advantages theaters have nowadays are that you can see the movie sooner, and the audience might be fun.

Oh, and, y'know, something about box office measurements. I think they're going to have to figure out another way to do it.

[shadesofmauve]

I may be in the minority, here, but I've found myself thinking more and more that I could do with a few less action scenes and a few more scenes that actually explain things/develop characters/further the plot. I mean, I like action movies, and I like swashbuckling adventure, but not every movie needs to be three hours long.

For instance -- and I'm picking a bad movie, I know! -- E and I just watched Cowboys and Aliens, with full understanding that we were watching something silly and fun. And... it was twenty minutes too long. It would have been nice ridiculous entertainment, a romp, but it need more to be shorter. Some movies have a lot more going on, obviously, but frequently they could stand to kill some of their cinematic digital-effects darlings and put in some actual plot relevance instead.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* I suppose you'd know. I watched it a couple of times and it seemed less detailed than I'd have liked--they said they thought the "leaders" had died off, but I didn't really get how it all fit together until I read it online somewhere. The whole movie made more sense after that.

(It also made more sense when I discovered that the subtitles track also subtitles the aliens. Makes it a whole different movie.)

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

I am part of this "minority."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I've seen them both, and I STILL hate Alien3. Yes, the director's cut fulfilled a little of the potential of Charles S. Dutton's character, but not nearly enough.

But then, you probably knew I thought that way. ;)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

That was exactly my problem with Avatar. It took out all sorts of great plot/character moments and left in a lot of VROOM VROOM BUDDOW. Now, I like me some VROOM VROOM BUDDOW, but I like to know WHY it's going on, and I like to care about the people doing it. My attention span is not so short that I will wander away if there isn't constant yelling and exploding.

I am firmly convinced that Daniel Craig took all his cues for how to act in Cowboys & Aliens from the Silent Video Game Protagonist. Which is a really nice character to have in video games where you can supply your own characteristics, but not so much in action movies.

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

(It also made more sense when I discovered that the subtitles track also subtitles the aliens. Makes it a whole different movie.)

Ooh, yeaaah, it does. We watched it on TV, and being a non-English country everything is subtitled anyway. I can't imagine trying to watch it without the subtitles, you'd miss even more!

We missed the very beginning though, so the bit about the leaders dying off was probably in there somewhere.

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

I love your icon! Can I steal? ^__^

[shadesofmauve]

Heh, sure, as long as you don't mind my Shepard and Warden on your LJ. :P

It really needs a third RPG hero with a Giant Quest they ignore in favor of random shit, but I didn't have screenshots of any.

(And, as very odd as it seems to say this, other people may actually recognize Shepard. Turns out 150,000 words of fic'll get a few people to remember your video game PC. *feels sheepish*).

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

I thought I had heard something along those lines >:d.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, it definitely wasn't explained in detail, it was in some throwaway line somewhere in there.

My headcanon is insane. I have to tone it down for my fics.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

But I want to keep First Contact! It's got great stuff like Data's "resistance is futile" and Troi's "In my opinion, as ship's counselor, he's nuts!"

Insurrection is essentially an overblown episode. It doesn't work as a movie, but would have been perfectly fine as an episode. Not an outstanding one, but not a terrible one, either.

But yes, the other TNG movies were definitely lost in the Time War. As were any Alien movies after Aliens and any other Highlander movies - there can be only one! Oh, and Star Trek V, too.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I knew why the "District 9" bugs couldn't pilot their ship. I thought it was heavily implied in the introduction.

And while I've seen the LotR Extended versions so many times I no longer recall the theatrical releases well, I don't recall ever finding someone's characterisation confusing in itself. Frustratingly and pointlessly tampered with, but not confusing.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I'll give you that.

I still think the main problem people have with the series, tho, stems from the fact that every movie in it is a different Genre. Alien 3 trying to do Psychological Thriller and Alien: Resurrection shooting for goofy self-aware 90s Action Movie didn't mesh well with the Creature Feature Horror of the Original or the played straight 80s Action Flick of the sequel.

[baroncognito.livejournal.com]

I thought the Aliens in District 9 couldn't pilot their ship because they were the Telephone Sanitizers, the TV producers, Hairdressers, etc.

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

Weeell, your Shepard and Warden kind have an uncanny resemblance to my Shepard and Warden, so...

You could add a Dragonborn not fighting dragons. Then again,Skyrim has more than enough 'bottle cap collections' of its own:D My friends and I were totally squeeing over the way you can place books on bookshelves and even order them kinda of, and take them out and read them and put them back. >.>

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

When the humans finally broke into the ship, they found one just sitting in a bathtub, insisting the other ships would be along presently.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Okay, MAYBE First Contact. If nothing else, there's always the line "You broke your little ship."

I don't think I've seen Insurrection.

Data has some good stuff in Generations, but it must still be discarded because the rest of it is dumb. Sometimes sacrifices must be made.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

It is a bit patchy, yes; in some places it feels like they were making up the script as they went along, and in some it feels like they filmed one thing, then decided to go in a different direction when they edited it. Also, there's no real balance between the emotional drama of the first half and the blood splattering action of the second half, but that's old news. It's still the film that's had the biggest impact on my life, mostly thanks to the splendid performance of Sharlto Copley.

(There are no automatic alien subtitles in the non-subtitled version? Weeeird.)

By the way, have you heard about a film called Iron Sky? It's a Finnish crowd funded film about Nazis. IN SPACE. See it if you get the chance, it's hilarious. :D

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

With movies like that, the flaws become part of what Iike about them. Must be the same for you, then?

I have not heard of it! I'll have to check it out. My favorite right now is Attack the Block. Seen it?

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

I want to know about your headcanon.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of having somebody like Peter Jackson saying "Here's 30 million, do whatever you want." (Fun fact: 30 million USD is more than the most expensive Swedish film in history cost. I think? Okay maybe it isn't, but it's still more than most films done here cost.) Also, using things like an actual township built on top of a landfill and actual dead animals found on site rather than greenscreen studios and fabricated props; disgusting, but cool. Using what you have at hand when making films seems like a good philosophy to me. :)

Haven't seen Attack the Block, there hasn't been a lot of buzz about it, though lately I've heard some mentions of it being worth watching. The last film I saw at a theatre before Iron Sky was The Artist, which is now in my top 3 along with District 9 and Toy Story 3.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Felt to me like Bruce's arc was pretty much all there. And if there was anything more about Loki's staff, it wasn't that essential. The movie felt pretty damn tight, especially considering it was 2 and a half hours. Not a lot of filler.

Also, Ruffalo is best Hulk.