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Star Wars or Star Trek

Started by Hurricane Rex, May 01, 2018, 01:30:11 AM

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Hurricane Rex

I'm prepared for criticism for why I'm starting this and the potential drama involved so lets keep it calm.

Question in title and briefly explain.

Mine: Star Trek. I love how it incorporates issues at the time and turns it into an episode. It also fits my interests better than Star Wars. Lastly: "resistance is futile."

This isn't saying Star Wars is bad, in fact I love Star Wars still (except the prequels and episode 8) and dislike some series in Star Trek (discovery), but I like Star Trek better due to the reasons listed.

LG-TP260

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SSOWorld

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Max Rockatansky

#2
Star Wars was a lot more fun in the 1980s when there wasn't an uber geeky culture following it that would get butt hurt when the plot line didn't swing the really obvious way they wanted.  The worst thing that ever happened to Star Wars was the prequel movies since they made everything about the Force and Jedi.  For whatever reason the caustic following Star Wars has today really stemmed from those bland prequel movies and its hard to understand why.  The irony to me is that Star Trek used to the more nerdy of the two but oddly has become the more approachable with the recent J.J. Abrams soft series reboot.  Odd to think he was also behind Force Awakens and the Last Jedi too....incidentally I thought both were really good movies in their own right.  Generally I never cared much for any of the Star Trek TV shows, although the original series is amusing because of the camp factor in retrospect.

But to echo what SSOworld just said, personally I thought Guardians of the Galaxy was a better time than either Star Trek or Star Wars.  More than anything else, when I watch a movie I want to be entertained and that is where the Marvel movies generally are delivering these days.

jeffandnicole


ET21

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Clinched:
IL: I-88, I-180, I-190, I-290, I-294, I-355, IL-390
IN: I-80, I-94
SD: I-190
WI: I-90, I-94
MI: I-94, I-196
MN: I-90

abefroman329

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on May 01, 2018, 07:51:27 AM
The worst thing that ever happened to Star Wars was the prequel movies since they made everything about the Force and Jedi.

Specifically, the fact that you could determine if someone was a Jedi by running a fucking blood test on them.

Anyway, my vote is for Galaxy Quest.  Or Space Fleet.

dcharlie


hbelkins

I have not seen any of the "Star Wars" movies outside the first three.

And to me, there is no "Star Trek" beyond the first three television seasons, the animated series, and possibly the movies starring the original cast. I don't care for any of the spinoff TV series, and refuse to watch anything that doesn't have Shatner as Kirk, Nimoy as Spock, etc.


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

SP Cook

IMHO,

Star Trek, at its best, is very good.  It (TOS) is a product of its time and shows the hopeful optimism that science is going to solve the world's problems that people believed back then.  The follow on series each takes from their time.  TNG was, for the most part, quite good after they revamped it after year one to end all the preaching.  V was OK, although unrealistic (if you are 70 years from home, have males and females, and are in a universe with an apparent plethora of habitable unpopulated planets, you find one and ...)  Both TNG and V did to much technobabble where they started with "maybe, somehow we could reprogram the gizmo to do this and that".  It does not work that way in the real Navy.   DS9 was too dark.  TOS movies were uneven, but mostly OK.  TNG movies were unnecessary.  The "reboot" movies and the current CBS wants you to pay for it series are pure garbage.  PC preaching, comic book plots, plot holes a mile wide. 

Star Wars is fantasy.  Fantasy is to science fiction as a Hardy Boys book is to Agatha Christie.  In good scifi the author has to have realistic science based ideas about the future and how things might be.  In fantasy you just say "oh, he is magic and did a magic thing".   OK.  How hard was that?  He is magic and did a magic thing.  Also agree with the comments that it is being ruined by the geek squad that wants the particular magic thing to not contradict 1000 supposed "cannon" ideas they made up in their geek world.  Also 1000 demerits for, given 20 years to figure out why DV went bad, they came up with, in a society with magic, robots, light speed space travel, and all of that, his knocked up shack up died in child birth, something that really was cured in the post WWII west. 

roadman

Star Trek - TOS was best, with TNG a close second (although the 'improved' Enterprise in TNG was clearly built under a lowest-bidder government contract).  With the exception of The Wrath of Kahn, I never cared for the subsequent series or most of the movies.

Star Wars - A New Hope and Return of the Jedi were the best.  All the others were marginal, and the latest prequels are just trying to milk a bloated franchise.

My favorite quote regarding Star Wars was from Pawn Stars:

Rick:  To understand Star Wars, you have to watch Episodes 4, 5, and 6; and then watch Episodes 1, 2, and 3

Corey:  That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

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Hurricane Rex



Quote from: hbelkins on May 01, 2018, 09:19:28 AM
I have not seen any of the "Star Wars" movies outside the first three.

And to me, there is no "Star Trek" beyond the first three television seasons, the animated series, and possibly the movies starring the original cast. I don't care for any of the spinoff TV series, and refuse to watch anything that doesn't have Shatner as Kirk, Nimoy as Spock, etc.

On most series, I can give you that. Seasons 3-7 it TNG though are just as good as TOS. DS9 has a episode remake of the trouble with trivvles and is actually one of the best in Star Trek.

LG-TP260

ODOT, raise the speed limit and fix our traffic problems.

Road and weather geek for life.

Running till I die.

roadman

Quote from: Hurricane Rex on May 01, 2018, 10:30:42 AM


Quote from: hbelkins on May 01, 2018, 09:19:28 AM
I have not seen any of the "Star Wars" movies outside the first three.

And to me, there is no "Star Trek" beyond the first three television seasons, the animated series, and possibly the movies starring the original cast. I don't care for any of the spinoff TV series, and refuse to watch anything that doesn't have Shatner as Kirk, Nimoy as Spock, etc.

On most series, I can give you that. Seasons 3-7 it TNG though are just as good as TOS. DS9 has a episode remake of the trouble with trivvles tribbles and is actually one of the best in Star Trek.

LG-TP260



FIFY
"And ninety-five is the route you were on.  It was not the speed limit sign."  - Jim Croce (from Speedball Tucker)

"My life has been a tapestry
Of years of roads and highway signs" (with apologies to Carole King and Tom Rush)

nexus73

Star Trek wins due to so many episodes being made.  They had a ton of good ones in their various series, then include the movies for frosting.  Were Star Wars a franchise with TV series other than the animated ones (which I did enjoy), they would be right up there if one is measuring the amount of good material created.

My first impression of Star Wars when A New Hope was released was not that good as I was used to a more adult sci-fi experience.  2001: A Space Odyssey, now that was Serious Science Fiction.  After a while I decided to take Star Wars movies on their own terms.  The ones I liked the best were the three prequel movies as they dealt with the politics of the Republic very well. 

I would have kept Anakin as a good guy all the way through and had him die off after a great battle while a secretly made clone version becomes Darth Vader.  Anakin deserved better.  Qui Gon Jinn was my favorite Jedi so I wish he would have lasted longer than one movie.  Senator Palpatine would be shown as an okay but typical politician with weaknesses who gets involved with the Dark Side so the spirit of the Sith takes him over for their own ends.  After all, there is an afterlife for them so they emerge from it to interfere in the affairs of the galaxy.

The Honorverse would be a rich vein of material to mine for a movie.  Going back to the first ever space opera series, the Lensmen, I would love to see the book Triplanetary turned into a movie.  Asimov's Foundation series is one of the greatest series ever written but no film ever emerged from it.  2001 got a sequel in the form of 2010, but the book 3001 was not given the movie treatment.  Seeing life 1000 years from now would be a real stretching of the imagination! 

One thing about the topic of sci-fi: There will be so many opinions and dreams being expressed.  After all, what format of literature can encompass so much as sci-fi? 

Rick   
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Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

kurumi

Star Wars! Not only is there sound in space, there's up and down -- you can drop bombs on an enemy ship -- and you can breathe in vacuum. Star Wars makes space fun.

Serious answer: a little more of a Trek guy. And really liking The Expanse.
My first SF/horror short story collection is available: "Young Man, Open Your Winter Eye"

abefroman329

I love 2001, but I can see how it begat Star Wars and all of its grimy, outdated technology.  Everything in 2001 was just so clean, as if it had just been taken out of its packaging.

kkt

Star Trek.  They could make better drama as a TV episode.  For a blockbuster movie like Star Wars to succeed, they have to get 2/3 of the 16 to 25 age group to go see it, and that means they can't offend anybody.  No social criticism, no moral dilemmas, just work magic and fire blasters.  Even more so with the Star Wars sequels that lowered the target age to 6.

abefroman329

Quote from: kkt on May 01, 2018, 04:00:12 PM
Star Trek.  They could make better drama as a TV episode.  For a blockbuster movie like Star Wars to succeed, they have to get 2/3 of the 16 to 25 age group to go see it, and that means they can't offend anybody.  No social criticism, no moral dilemmas, just work magic and fire blasters.  Even more so with the Star Wars sequels that lowered the target age to 6.

Attack of the Clones (and, to a lesser extent, Revenge of the Sith) were seen by many as heavy-handed critiques of the Bush Administration and the War on Terror, and not in a good way.  It might have worked better in the hands of a capable actor rather than Hayden Christensen, but it was an attempt.

Overall, Star Trek is more thought-provoking than Star Wars, by all means.

US 81

Trek overall, although I might prefer the SW movies just barely over the ST movies. (the Trek odd-number curse, etc)

I'm old enough to have been raised on TOS, and have probably memorized every episode, even the really bad ones. Agree that TNG had a slow start but by season three had evolved into a quality show. DS9 - took me a while to warm to, but has some of the best moments in all of Trek ("Far Beyond the Stars", "The Visitor" and the aforementioned "Trials and Tribble-ations" among them). Voyager also a slow start but once Seven of Nine came on board, good stuff. Enterprise season four is excellent (arguably except for the finale) but just when it got good it was cancelled. I like what I have seen of Discovery, but it is very dark - doesn't quite feel like Trek (nota: not paying for the service, I visit friends to see it)

Each TV series was (is) a product of it's time and there are both gems and garbage in each TV series, but generally each succeeded in creating thought-provoking drama (sometimes in a ham-handed way, but hey)

Now I need a drink of Aldebaran whiskey, Romulan Ale, Saurian Brandy or .....something...........green......

TheHighwayMan3561

Trek, though I love both franchises. I'm surprised this thread has been as heavily skewed toward Trek as it is, though.

I've completed TOS, TNG, and VOY, and seen all 13 films. The only film I found with little to redeem itself was Nemesis; even the infamous Final Frontier had its charm at times. TNG is my favorite, which I agree season 1 was generally trash and things picked up late in season 2.

VOY I don't think of as fondly in retrospect, mostly there being multiple episodes every season involving some moral conundrum where Janeway refuses to violate Starfleet rules, her senior staff whines about it because they're 60-75 years from home, and she finally says "fuck it, just this once" . Then Season 4 is basically "Season Seven"  as most of the existing main characters are cast aside for the season so they can develop Ryan's character as fast as possible. It's the Trek I've rewatched almost none of since I finished it.
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formulanone

#20
Eh, count me in more for Star Wars than Star Trek. Say what you want about the franchise's direction, but I suppose the whole monomyth of the hero's journey makes for interesting viewing, and therefore, a relatable theme to me. The point was that there is "something" non-quantifiable running the universe, but not in a way that needed to waste time disproving or explaining science, but in the transcendental individual and universal symbolism. Of course, it's a bit of a comic book, because that's all hokey stuff that is rather pseudoscentific, if you dig at it just a little.

If you're looking for politics reflected back in the movies, then you're going to find it in anything. Obviously the worst villains are reflections of mankind's most heartless rulers, and we tend to set up those targets on every Bad Guy, thanks to Godwin's Law.

I just don't have much emotional attachment for the latter, though only a few of the movies and TNG ever really caught my attention because it was on after work/class when I was in college. They're supposed to solve problems with knowledge instead of brute force.

Quote from: nexus73 on May 01, 2018, 11:11:17 AMAsimov's Foundation series is one of the greatest series ever written but no film ever emerged from it.

I think one of the great difficulties with a Foundation series/movie are the large gaps in time between the stories. The Robot series works in a smaller timeframe, about 100 years or so. The Galactic novels are thousands of years apart. The Foundation stories take place many dozens or even hundreds of years apart. Other than Are Whatshisface and Harold Importantguy, it might be considered hard to develop an emotional attachment to those characters, who are just going to die off naturally. Although if you've enjoyed the books over the years, that isn't much of a problem. (Names modified to prevent spoilers, and lets all forget about that I-Ro80T thing made about 15 years ago.)

That said, I'm all for it, but I think it would lend itself better to a series. There was a rumor that HBO was going to pick it up, but either there was too much on their plates, or they've passed.

adventurernumber1

Star Wars for me, due to the simple fact that I have never seen anything Star Trek (movies, TV shows, etc.). I have seen a whole lot of Star Wars stuff, and as a result, I am very familiar with the entire story (even if certain parts, such as the prequels, are for better or for worse). I'm sure Star Trek is great, and I'd love to see it, but I've just never seen it before, so as of now, I cannot form an opinion on it. Hopefully I will be able to see some Star Trek things in the future, though.  :nod:
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Max Rockatansky

Quote from: abefroman329 on May 01, 2018, 09:02:15 AM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on May 01, 2018, 07:51:27 AM
The worst thing that ever happened to Star Wars was the prequel movies since they made everything about the Force and Jedi.

Specifically, the fact that you could determine if someone was a Jedi by running a fucking blood test on them.


Finding out Darth Vadar has something against sand did it for me:




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