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

[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

[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.

[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.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

I want to know about your headcanon.

[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.

[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.)

[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.

[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 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.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

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