Post by dex on Aug 15, 2010 6:20:16 GMT -5
The lack of any reaction to my Star Wreck poll means either nobody loves me or nobody knows the movie.
I'm not sure which would be worse. But if it's the latter, at least let me mend that horrendous injustice.
There's this “P-Fleet”, see, a cross between Starfleet and the B-Ark: it gets all the clumsy pathetic losers out of Earth's hair by sending them away in spaceships build by the lowest bidder. SW:ITP is a story about such losers (and a bunch of other losers) – not really a story about Earth, i. e. not about the aforementioned Earth... Look, I would do this (chrono-)logically, but there's parallel universes and time travel involved, right from the start... if the concept of a start applies here at all.
So here's the deal: I'll do a who's who first, 'cos no matter where and when they are, they're them. And at least there are no goateed twins from the other dimension.
Captain Pirk is an arrogant, snivelling moron, fearless and ambitious only because he's too stupid to understand most dangers or obstacles. So far, that sounds like a very cheap parody, but surprisingly we cheer for him. He pretends to be a charismatic leader. While nobody, not even himself, believes that, playing along with this idiotic charade comes easy, and so things just fall in place for him on a larger and larger scale. Pirk's two primary sidekicks embody the question of who's more pathetic, the loser or his followers: Commander Info is the android XO and Dwarf the tactical officer of Plingon persuasion. No points for guessing their character traits.
P-Fleet Command, threatening Pirk with a pesky remote self-destruct, forced him into a battle with the invading Korg, who shlepped Pirk back into Earth's past to take over his ship and nuke from orbit one Jeff Cochbrane, rock star, whose really loud guitar chords were just about to prompt the Vulgars to make First Contact. Sound familiar? Good. Now comes the twist. This being the plot of the prequel and said prequel being a short, Pirk jumped at the quick solution: Quite handy after all, that remote self-destruct. Problem solved, prequel over.
Only now Pirk is stranded on our old Earth with nothing but a communicator and a hand twinkler, both of which profoundly fail to impress the ladies. In this situation even an abundance of cheeseburgers can keep a megalomaniac happy only for so long before he gets antsy and sets out to become Emperor of the Earth, and maybe of that other Earth through the maggothole as well. Concerning SW:ITP's further plot, let it suffice to assure you that the antics are kooky, the stupidity epic and the space battles kooky and epic.
Back to the who's who. In the second act our POV and our sympathies shift to the other half of the cast, the crew of the to-be-invaded space station Babel 5 in a parallel dimension. While Captain Sherrypie has little more reason than Pirk to be as full of himself, at least his diction and eloquence are distinctly superior, if not tactically quite so advantageous as he believes, as his exasperated XO Ivanovitsa takes delight in pointing out.
SW:ITP is all shades of fun.
The plot could drive a mainstream movie and the jokes range from loud to cryptic: For every time Ambassador Flush shares his wisdom (“An itching nose must be scratched.”) and follows his own advice, for every time Pirk emerges from the head trailing toilet paper, there's a perfectly delivered cynicism or a twitching of the eyebrows that will have you rolling on the floor like the bridge crew after a direct light ball hit.
Oh, did I mention this is a strictly amateur movie? Blue screen scenes (which are ubiquitous but far from exclusive) were shot in someone's mother's living room. The render farm consisted of a bunch of PCs in someone's kitchen. In 1998-2005. Far away in Finland. Yes, subtitles. In Klingon.
Or in English, you wuss. But there's no need to scare any casual scifi viewer off; SW:ITP isn't far from Spaceballs in mainstream appeal. Of course it looks cheap compared to commercial movies of it's time, but often hardly worse than Babylon 5 itself. The overall production quality, the fairly large, varied cast, the soundtrack are truly enjoyable even without awarding brownie points for an epic fan effort. If you do take the nature of the production into account, however, SW:ITP is a jaw-dropping achievement.
“Emperor, the scanners show a free download!”
“On the telly!”
I'm not sure which would be worse. But if it's the latter, at least let me mend that horrendous injustice.
There's this “P-Fleet”, see, a cross between Starfleet and the B-Ark: it gets all the clumsy pathetic losers out of Earth's hair by sending them away in spaceships build by the lowest bidder. SW:ITP is a story about such losers (and a bunch of other losers) – not really a story about Earth, i. e. not about the aforementioned Earth... Look, I would do this (chrono-)logically, but there's parallel universes and time travel involved, right from the start... if the concept of a start applies here at all.
So here's the deal: I'll do a who's who first, 'cos no matter where and when they are, they're them. And at least there are no goateed twins from the other dimension.
Captain Pirk is an arrogant, snivelling moron, fearless and ambitious only because he's too stupid to understand most dangers or obstacles. So far, that sounds like a very cheap parody, but surprisingly we cheer for him. He pretends to be a charismatic leader. While nobody, not even himself, believes that, playing along with this idiotic charade comes easy, and so things just fall in place for him on a larger and larger scale. Pirk's two primary sidekicks embody the question of who's more pathetic, the loser or his followers: Commander Info is the android XO and Dwarf the tactical officer of Plingon persuasion. No points for guessing their character traits.
P-Fleet Command, threatening Pirk with a pesky remote self-destruct, forced him into a battle with the invading Korg, who shlepped Pirk back into Earth's past to take over his ship and nuke from orbit one Jeff Cochbrane, rock star, whose really loud guitar chords were just about to prompt the Vulgars to make First Contact. Sound familiar? Good. Now comes the twist. This being the plot of the prequel and said prequel being a short, Pirk jumped at the quick solution: Quite handy after all, that remote self-destruct. Problem solved, prequel over.
Only now Pirk is stranded on our old Earth with nothing but a communicator and a hand twinkler, both of which profoundly fail to impress the ladies. In this situation even an abundance of cheeseburgers can keep a megalomaniac happy only for so long before he gets antsy and sets out to become Emperor of the Earth, and maybe of that other Earth through the maggothole as well. Concerning SW:ITP's further plot, let it suffice to assure you that the antics are kooky, the stupidity epic and the space battles kooky and epic.
Back to the who's who. In the second act our POV and our sympathies shift to the other half of the cast, the crew of the to-be-invaded space station Babel 5 in a parallel dimension. While Captain Sherrypie has little more reason than Pirk to be as full of himself, at least his diction and eloquence are distinctly superior, if not tactically quite so advantageous as he believes, as his exasperated XO Ivanovitsa takes delight in pointing out.
SW:ITP is all shades of fun.
The plot could drive a mainstream movie and the jokes range from loud to cryptic: For every time Ambassador Flush shares his wisdom (“An itching nose must be scratched.”) and follows his own advice, for every time Pirk emerges from the head trailing toilet paper, there's a perfectly delivered cynicism or a twitching of the eyebrows that will have you rolling on the floor like the bridge crew after a direct light ball hit.
Oh, did I mention this is a strictly amateur movie? Blue screen scenes (which are ubiquitous but far from exclusive) were shot in someone's mother's living room. The render farm consisted of a bunch of PCs in someone's kitchen. In 1998-2005. Far away in Finland. Yes, subtitles. In Klingon.
Or in English, you wuss. But there's no need to scare any casual scifi viewer off; SW:ITP isn't far from Spaceballs in mainstream appeal. Of course it looks cheap compared to commercial movies of it's time, but often hardly worse than Babylon 5 itself. The overall production quality, the fairly large, varied cast, the soundtrack are truly enjoyable even without awarding brownie points for an epic fan effort. If you do take the nature of the production into account, however, SW:ITP is a jaw-dropping achievement.
“Emperor, the scanners show a free download!”
“On the telly!”