Okay some has to ask it. More Influential Star Wars or Star Trek?

[kexodusc]

Hmm, from strictly a Sci-Fi perspective, I don't think Star Wars has done enough to be more influential...though it has better movies. Even the worst Star Wars movie (hmm, Phantom Menace or A New Hope? - watching the original trilogy again has really softened my stance on the new ones, different thread altogether though) is better than some mediocre Star Trek films. There were what, 3 or 4 watchable Star Trek Films? Maybe...

To me, Star Trek isn't Motion Picture friendly though....Star Wars is. Star Trek was a story made for TV...ya just can't cram it into 2.25 hour slots.

I dare say that Star Wars crossed further into the mainstream too...ever wonder why Trekkies (er...Trekkers..er...whatever) are geeks and we all have to watch Star Trek in secrecy for fear of ridicule, but Star Wars is "okay"?

I think Star Wars was just a really cool feel good story with a pretty half-decent prequel/background story. Star Trek is a pretty massive universe based loosely on a concept of races and government by Gene Roddenberry that hundreds of writers have turned into a successful franchise. Way more collective thought has gone into Star Wars.

Lucas has only begun to take Star Wars "public" so to speak...with video-games, and the "ok" for TV series in the future. Too early to tell how well the Star Wars univers will play out.

Finally, safe to say Star Wars has always been more family oriented with strong appeal to younger kids - faithful to Lucas love for the old comic-books and sci-fi mini-novels of the first half of the 20th century. Star Trek was a bit more complex and more adult-oriented by comparison, IMO.

I don't think we've seen the end of either...both took long absences and came back by popular demand. I'm sure that'll happen again in some capacity.

In theaters Star Wars is better, but that's it...hands down Star Trek gets my vote.

[Woochifer]

Hmm, from strictly a Sci-Fi perspective, I don't think Star Wars has done enough to be more influential...though it has better movies. Even the worst Star Wars movie (hmm, Phantom Menace or A New Hope? - watching the original trilogy again has really softened my stance on the new ones, different thread altogether though) is better than some mediocre Star Trek films. There were what, 3 or 4 watchable Star Trek Films? Maybe...

Well, I think we're back at that adege about the even-numbered versus odd-numbered Star Trek films! Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and Nemesis are the even-numbered Trek movies; and any one of them I would rate above Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, The Final Frontier, Generations, or Insurrection. And Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and First Contact are at least within sniffing distance of the original Star Wars trilogy, and definitely above the first two prequels.

Star Trek has the advantage of simple quantity and ubiquity. You've got 10 movies plus 27 full seasons of TV episodes and syndication deals that will have Trek on TV everyday pretty much forever. That's an awful lot of material that's already out there, and I think that's the advantage that Trek has in that the movies do not have to spend any time doing the backstory. Seems that the first two Star Wars prequels have been investing an inordinate amount of time setting the table for Revenge of the Sith rather than working well as standalone adventures. As acclaimed as Empire Strikes Back frequently is, it suffers from the same problem in that it asks a bunch of questions that require another movie to adequately resolve. Even if Trek misfires frequently (i.e. "Spock's Brain" from the original series, or the snorefest parade of "moral dilemmas" from TNG during the fifth season), the best episodes of Star Trek are classics and up there with anything that's been done with the Star Wars universe.

[kexodusc]

Well, I think we're back at that adege about the even-numbered versus odd-numbered Star Trek films! Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and Nemesis are the even-numbered Trek movies; and any one of them I would rate above Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, The Final Frontier, Generations, or Insurrection. And Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and First Contact are at least within sniffing distance of the original Star Wars trilogy, and definitely above the first two prequels.

.

Are you kidding? Aside from Lucas' terrible romantic dialogue and the minor annoyance of that Jar Jar fellar I dont' think Wrath of Kahn, Voyage Home (time travel, after 25 years, time travel? where'd that come from?) I'd still take the prequels over any ST movie...now, there's some ST episodes I liked better.

Yeah, every 2nd ST movie seems good...I didn't mind V though, or III...but Insurrection, Generations, The Motion Picture, were horrible.

Hard to compare movies...Star Trek was made for the TV and performs best there...let's not bring up some of Star Wars' TV adventures...

[Woochifer]

Are you kidding? Aside from Lucas' terrible romantic dialogue and the minor annoyance of that Jar Jar fellar I dont' think Wrath of Kahn, Voyage Home (time travel, after 25 years, time travel? where'd that come from?) I'd still take the prequels over any ST movie...now, there's some ST episodes I liked better.

Well, this is where I beg to differ. I've gone back and watched the Star Wars prequels, and they actually get worse with every successive viewing. They stand up poorly as standalone adventures, the character development is lousy, and all of the complexity and intrigue that Lucas is trying to weave into the storyline just bogs down the narrative and simple enjoyment of the movies. Wrath of Khan is a very stripped down movie, about 1/5 the budget of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but it's a far more compelling story because it focuses on the interactions between the characters and their situations. The elements that the film weaves together -- revenge, personal sacrifice for the good of the many, cheating mortality -- work because they are universal and work well with all genres, not just science fiction.

The Voyage Home is a total hoot because it is such an irreverent and witty movie. Yeah, the time travel plot element has been done many times before, but not often to such great effect. I thought it was brilliant to put the Trek crew in present day San Francisco because it set up so many angles to poke fun at the Enterprise crew and ourselves. These guys have traveled the galaxy and met all sorts of alien races, yet 20th century humans presented them with their biggest challenge. Conversely, we think of ourselves as evolved and civilized, yet here's the Enterprise crew talking about how medieval the 20th century is. This is yet another movie where the sci-fi elements do not dominate the movie, and more the character interactions that drive the story along.

The Star Wars prequels have gotten so top heavy with the technology and unraveling this elaborate backstory/mythology, that it no longer works as good storytelling. Problem is the plot takes paragraph after paragraph to explain coherently, and you got only two hours of screen time to go through the exposition. The prequels seem way too self-reverential for their own good, and lost much of the fun and derring do that went with the original trilogy. Both Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home are great movies because they simply tell a good story, and don't get all bogged down by a sense of self-importance.

I hope that Revenge of the Sith is as good as some critics have been saying it is, because the prequels thus far have done nothing but move along a backstory that leads up to this movie. Hopefully, this will give all of us a chance to reassess the first couple of prequels, in much the same way that we couldn't fully appreciate Empire until after everything played out to their conclusion in Jedi. Keeping my fingers crossed!

[kexodusc]

Wooch: I dunno...I was only a young kid when Star Wars was released, so maybe growing up with that stuff my whole life makes me biased, but despite the flaws of Episodes I and II (and really, mostly just Ep. I if you take out the horrible Gone With the Wind love scene dialogue in II) I found them to pretty good movies in them selves...better than a lot of other crap out there...Blade 3, Spiderman (I not II), The Grudge, etc...I think maybe the impossible taks of living up the hype of the original trilogy has made these the easy target. Maybe I approach it differently, but by a 4th instalment of any movie, things start to get boring...Voyage Home was terrible...Star Trek comedy? C'mon...ST V was much better IMO, and that's not saying much.

Lucas said all along this was just a prequel to some very good movies he made years ago because so many people asked, and he decided he'd tell the whole story. The technology crap I don't think much about. Lucas had little to do with that other than wanting the best and having the resources to do it.

I will give you the characters aren't nearly as interesting but that's because the Jedi mystique is old, and there's no Han Solo. Only Ian McDiarmid's character (spelling?) really presents anything interesting this time around...

That being said, I never expected these to be anything more than Star Wars part 4,5,6 (as in installments) and I can't think of any other movies parts 4,5, 6 that do any better. If they were so good they would have been the first trilogy...they weren't. As disappointing as these may be. 3 more Lord of the Rings movies would start to wear thing I suspect too, which is why one Tolkein story is a classic, and the 42 other books are rarely heard of except by die-hard fans.

Watching the OT again really makes me see that if these were released today, story wise they'd be okay, but nothing spectacular, and they wouldn't be anywhere near the legacy they are. I think the proof is in todays youth not falling in love with these movies to the same level they appreciate the Godfather's etc...

Or you could be right and they just suck...I've been a happy camper so far so it doesn't matter to me...any excuse to go back to Star Wars.. Sometimes ya just gotta sit back and watch a movie.

And ya gotta admit...if they were that bad, you wouldn't even watch Ep. III.

[RGA]

Well i don;t think you can really compare these to be quite honest. Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back are IMO easily the best of the Star Wars franchise (though I did not see episode two because A) Episode One made my list of the ten worst movies of the deade and the people who raved about that film didn't like the next one. Harrison Ford is SOOOO incredibly underrated as a force on screen that can overcome drivel dialog and actually make you eat it up. Star Wars and Empire were FUN. They were spectacular entertainments and had larger than life characters with a singular good versus evil battle. It's LOTR only it has humour and was enjoyable to sit through.

Return of the Jedi was a by the numbers let's sell EWOK dolls to kids sham with Harrison looking as though he'd rather be doing Indiana.

Star Trek -- and don't laugh but I wrote a university paper on Star Trek, takes 19th century idealism from writers such as Coleridge and Wordsworth, transplants the idealism many years into the future and that is TNG. The great thing of course about Star Trek is they never tell you how they got to that ideal(because they probably can't. They are taking us to OUR possible future if all goes well we'll be learning high level calculus at the age of 8. We'll have super renessaince men like Captain Jean-Luc Picard who has to be the ideal human being ever constructed for the screen. He's extremely well spoken, level headed but has a heart, intelligent, his little side career as an archeologist LOL, or tectonic plates expert and of course he knows tons about engineering, piloting ships, computers, --- oh yeah and he can fence, knows his wines, can play musical instruments and bang of lines of Shakespeare on a whim and it goes on like this to such a ridiculous level that it offers hope.

Shows like Star Trek TNG have SOOOO many sheer brute hours to develop characters that no film can match in a 2 hour period. Secondary characters were so fully developed in TNG -- we know that Troy has a mother who is seemingly looking for a mate -- heck Lwaxana is arguably far more developed that anyone in any star wars film -- and she was a guest actress over several shows. The quality and depth of writing just isn;t even remotely close. Star Wars is style, Star Trek is substance.

Having said that I would say that to me the best film of either series has been The Empire Strikes Back and I agree with Kex that Star Trek does not translate as well to the big screen. And here is why. Star Trek is about ideas it is about moral delimmas, and generally less about spectacle and action. When the films are made the pacing increases and what often ends up being left is 2 dimensional good vs bad battles. The Wrath of Khan works because Khan has some history in the show and this is the ultimate Submarine story in space -- Two capatains of big ships doing battle trying to outsmart eachother.

I actually felt Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was the best Star Trek film and I know a lot would disagree with me. It is a time travel story --- but of all the films probably holds truer to Star Trek vision than the other films while also managing to please non Star Trek fans -- it was even advertised as such. Some felt the humour mixed with the serious issue of saving Whales was innapropriate -- I feel it's the best way to not be preachy while still making a point on where we COULD go with earth (the Wordsworth/Coleridge/Rodenberry world or the sludge heap we're heading in right now. And it was damn funny. (And truthfully I can watch it more often than any Star Wars movie).

And then there is DS9 that took an entire season+ to tell one story...this one played a bit like a Sci-fi soap but for me it worked. You still had the same LOTR/SAR WARS Absolute power corrupts absolutely messages all along the Star Trek Series that would pop up from time to time (alla the prime directive) - but it wasn't ALWAYS the center piece for the plot -- about 45 minutes in to LOTR I was thinking Please i get it already the ring is the beacon of corruption blah blah blah they must have hit me over the head with that 50 times.

Jaws was the film that changed the summer blockbuster becoming by far the largest grossing summer movie and film of all time to that point. And it's still the best big sea creature eating people movie!! Not that that;s much of a horserace.

My Movie critic hat:

Sar Wars ****/*****
The Empire Strikes Back ****1/2 / *****
The Return of the Jedi *** / *****
Episode 1 */*****

in order from best to worst in numbered in brackets.

Star Trek: Motion Picture **/***** (9)
Star Trek 2: ****/****** (2)
Star Trek 3 *** / ***** (7)
Star Trek 4 ****1/2 / ***** (1)
Star Trek 5 *1/2 / ***** (10)
Star Trek 6 ***1/2 / ***** (5)
Star Trek Generations **1/2 / ***** (8)
Star Trek First Contact ***1/2 /***** (3)
Star Trek Insurrection *** / ***** (6)
Star Trek Nemesis ***1/2 / ***** (4)

[Woochifer]

Wooch: I dunno...I was only a young kid when Star Wars was released, so maybe growing up with that stuff my whole life makes me biased, but despite the flaws of Episodes I and II (and really, mostly just Ep. I if you take out the horrible Gone With the Wind love scene dialogue in II) I found them to pretty good movies in them selves...better than a lot of other crap out there...Blade 3, Spiderman (I not II), The Grudge, etc...I think maybe the impossible taks of living up the hype of the original trilogy has made these the easy target. Maybe I approach it differently, but by a 4th instalment of any movie, things start to get boring...Voyage Home was terrible...Star Trek comedy? C'mon...ST V was much better IMO, and that's not saying much.

Actually, The Voyage Home was probably the most critically acclaimed of all the Star Trek movies, and it remains the highest grossing installment in the series. And unlike other trilogies, Star Trek is more of an open ended story, even though II, III, and IV were basically continuations of the same storyline. The Voyage Home was not comedy in the strictest sense, because you still had a central story where they had a planet to save in the 23rd Century!

But, given the grim and heavy tone of The Wrath of Khan, and Search for Spock, infusing The Voyage Home with more of a self-depricating edge was a brilliant move IMO. Given that this was the fourth Star Trek movie, I appreciate that they weren't afraid to make fun of themselves (stuff like Kirk sarcastically bellowing out at the end of the movie, "Well, once again we saved mankind as we know it" or McCoy constantly pointing how absurdly impossible their mission was). I certainly prefer that approach over the more self-important and self-reverential deliberation that the Star Wars prequels have gotten bogged down in.

Constrastly, The Final Frontier is probably the most maligned of the Star Trek movies (either that or Insurrection). It pretty much fails at every level. The directing was awful, it did a bad job of trying to juxtapose the humor from Star Trek IV with the stern seriousness from Star Trek I, and it had lousy visual effects. Plus, The Final Frontier committed one of the cardinal sins with science fiction -- if you make big promises and string the audience along for two hours, the payoff had better be good. This is the same problem that faced the first Star Trek movie (not surprisingly, director William Shatner has always said that the first Star Trek movie was his favorite, and with V he was clearly emulating the first one). In the first movie, they kept tagging the audience along as to who that mysterious V'Ger was -- and the Voyager punchline turned out more groan inducing than anything. In The Final Frontier, the audience was promised God, and once again the punchline got flubbed badly.

Lucas said all along this was just a prequel to some very good movies he made years ago because so many people asked, and he decided he'd tell the whole story. The technology crap I don't think much about. Lucas had little to do with that other than wanting the best and having the resources to do it.

It's not the technology in the film making process, but rather in how the hardware/battle scenes now dominate the narrative rather than provide an assist to the central story.

Watching the OT again really makes me see that if these were released today, story wise they'd be okay, but nothing spectacular, and they wouldn't be anywhere near the legacy they are. I think the proof is in todays youth not falling in love with these movies to the same level they appreciate the Godfather's etc...

Well, with any movie, you have to appreciate it within the original context, and we're definitely in a different time than May 1977. The original Star Wars was such a phenomenon because it connected with the audience, it presented them with something they'd never seen before, and it was an escapist contrast from the prevailing filmmaking of that time frame. We're now used to the big budget effects-laden blockbusters that start parading around movie theaters every May, but Star Wars was the major force that drove the entire movie industry to bigger budget extravaganzas and moving those to a summer-centric release schedule. Our expectations are now fueled by the endless "event" releases that fall one after the other in May and June, but that phenomenon in large was spurred on by Star Wars.

If you think that today's youth haven't fallen for the original trilogy, consider that each of the original Star Wars movies pulled in another $100+ million at the box office when the Special Editions came out in 1997. Just about any other classic movie would never generate that kind of buzz for a theatrical rerelease.

Or you could be right and they just suck...I've been a happy camper so far so it doesn't matter to me...any excuse to go back to Star Wars.. Sometimes ya just gotta sit back and watch a movie.

And ya gotta admit...if they were that bad, you wouldn't even watch Ep. III.

Like I said a few weeks ago, I'm still breathing what's left of the fanboy fumes from the original trilogy, so I will keep my fingers crossed and see Sith.

Basically, I'm hoping that the payoff in this installment will be worthwhile, because like I said before, all that we've gotten so far is backstory with a smattering of battle scenes in between. I've tried to give the movies the benefit of the doubt, but like I said they just kept getting worse with each viewing. Unfortunately, the first two prequels are indeed that bad. In the Star Trek universe, they would have been assigned odd roman numerals!

[kexodusc]

If you think that today's youth haven't fallen for the original trilogy, consider that each of the original Star Wars movies pulled in another $100+ million at the box office when the Special Editions came out in 1997. Just about any other classic movie would never generate that kind of buzz for a theatrical rerelease.

The re-releases success was the result of people seeing their favorite movies again, not really capturing a new audience...but your point is well taken, not sure the Godfathers on the big screen would pull in that kind of cash.

I rank EP I and II as above average films, on par or better than most movies that hit the screen these days. Better than a good rental quality. But they aren't classics though like the originals. There's things I don't like about them...cheesy dialogue especially - Lucas really should have got someone else to do that (and it apparently returns in Ep III during romance scenes...oh well), and maybe the casting could have been better in Ep I... for Anakin...maybe Ep II as well, but any actor would have an impossible task of living up to 20 years of expectations.

As for Star Trek IV grossing a lot of money...I'm sure we can agree grossing the most money doesn't make a great movie...Spiderman was proof of that...and Ep I I'm sure out-grossed any 2 Star Trek movies put together, probably any 3...

Movie starts in 4 hours...we'll see. I know I'm going to like it no matter what...guess I'm a fanboy - but that's who these were made for!