http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-franchise7-2008dec07,0,2684805.story
Come visit the future. First stop: The past.
By Geoff Boucher
December 7, 2008
The future looks very familiar. Science fiction, by its nature, is a
celebration of the new, but you wouldn't know that by watching Hollywood's
space operas. "Star Trek," for instance, is on the way back to theaters
next summer in hopes that moviegoers will still want to boldly go where
millions and millions have gone before. And it's been more than 30 years
since "Star Wars" made film history, but the Force is still very much with
us -- whether we like it or not -- with a seventh film in theaters this
past summer, one of the year's bestselling video games and a new weekly
animated television show (there's also talk of a live-action series in the
next year or two). ¶ And that's just the tip of the meteorite. ¶ The
"Terminator" and "Robocop" franchises are being revved up now for more
mechanical-man mayhem, and classic films such as "Forbidden Planet" and
"When Worlds Collide" are in the remake pipeline, while the new take on "
The Day the Earth Stood Still," starring Keanu Reeves, opens Dec. 12. Even
" Battlestar Galactica," which began as a small-screen "Star Wars"
knockoff in the 1970s, has been revived with spectacular results and will
break new ground in 2009 with the TV movie "Caprica" on Sci Fi, with a
series to follow.
The question, though, is why does Hollywood keep looking to the past?
"Science fiction should be about ideas and what it means to be human, it
should always be about the new and the challenging," William Shatner said
on a recent afternoon as he sipped a Starbucks coffee and watched traffic
zoom past his Ventura Boulevard office. So why does Hollywood keep putting
its money in the same old Enterprise? " 'Star Trek' connected with so many
people for so long, and 'Star Wars' is the same way," he said. "There's a
thrill for fans to see the heroes they know."
Shatner won't be one of those heroes in the new "Star Trek" film -- a sour
point for the actor who played Capt. James T. Kirk on television and in
seven films and had hoped for a cameo -- but Paramount Pictures is
absolutely hoping that the new film, directed by J.J. Abrams ("Mission:
Impossible III," TV's "Alias" and "Lost") will have the warp power needed
for a 21st century "Star Trek" franchise built around young stars such as
Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Mr. Spock). Those ambitions go a
long way to explaining the Hollywood fixation on tried-and-true properties.
It's difficult to find a sci-fi project in recent years that wasn't based
on an earlier film or television show, although "Minority Report," "Signs"
and "Children of Men" did buck the trend.
Ronald D. Moore, creator of the modern "Battlestar Galactica," said that
commercial priorities push risk-adverse studios toward properties with
established names, but he said it's wrong to presume that artistic
ambition is stifled by remaking the familiar. "Battlestar" is proof of
that, certainly. Moore's version premiered as a miniseries in 2003 and
took the core concept of the creaky 1970s show -- a ragtag fleet of humans
fleeing an implacable foe of their own making, the sentient machines
called Cylons -- and added dark layers of complexity with themes of
religion, government-sanctioned torture, class struggle, terrorism and
bioethics.
"In the same way that Shakespeare's plays can be revisited again and again
in new ways and settings, with things like 'Star Trek' or 'Battlestar
Galactica' there is enough of the core mythology there that you can change
and adapt all the things around it for something very new and worthwhile,"
Moore said. "New generations can make it their own. Strong new
interpretations build on the past, they don't repeat it."
He added that Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek" marked a point where science
fiction in Hollywood reached a different level. "There was enough there
that it appealed to multiple generations and influenced creators. Some of
those creators want to go back and work with these properties they grew up
loving."
Perhaps, but returning again and again to the same ground leaves new
frontiers unexplored. There's also the risk of franchises becoming
calcified, campy or too self-referencing. And there is the simple matter
of fatigue, and not just with fans. Roddenberry had no idea he was
creating a pop-culture behemoth when he pitched television executives the
idea of " 'Wagon Train' to the stars" in 1964, but the colossal impact of
"Star Trek" left the creator feeling stifled as well. "I have felt many
times trapped by 'Star Trek,' " he once said. "It cost me dearly."
Hollywood's sci-fi trinity
Because of intensely networked fans and all those fans-turned-creators,
the galactic trio of "Star Trek," "Star Wars" and "Battlestar Galactica"
are now tied into one another more than ever. "Battlestar's" Moore, a huge
"Trek" fan through the years, said the military life and quest nature of
classic "Trek" helped shape his show, and Moore himself was a key producer
on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and
"Star Trek: Voyager." And, of course, the airing of the original
"Battlestar" in 1978 was clearly intended to draft off the popularity of
"Star Wars," which was released a year earlier.
Moore gleefully visited the set of the new "Trek" film and Abrams even
confided that there is "a shout-out" to Moore in the film that
"Battlestar" fans will absolutely catch. More than that, Abrams, who grew
up as more of an intense "Star Wars" loyalist than a "Trek" follower, said
the George Lucas universe and its visual sensibilities were key in the new
"Trek," while the battle scenes are influenced by the gritty dogfights of
the new "Battlestar."
The new "Trek" was written by the "Transformers" screenwriting team of
Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wanted to take the combat scenes away
from the large-ship, "submarine style" of combat choreography in past
Starfleet movies and introduce more of the fighter-pilot ethos of
"Battlestar" and " Star Wars." The special effects for "Trek," by the way,
are the handiwork of the Lucas-founded effects house, Industrial Light &
Magic.
"Star Wars" still stands apart from the other two long-lasting franchises
for several reasons -- most notably, Lucas is still the wizard behind the
curtain. But with the launch of "The Clone Wars" animated series on
Cartoon Network and hints dropped by Lucas that he'd like to add a
live-action weekly series in the next few years, the filmmaker is at least
borrowing the "Trek" model of isolating in on certain time periods in his
saga as the settings for episodic television.
Frank Oz, the man who gave voice to Yoda, said "Star Wars" endures because
of the imagination of Lucas, and he doubts very much that the filmmaker
frets when critics say that the saga has lost some luster.
"George has created this story of good and evil and these characters that
stand up as symbols through the years," said Oz, himself a director
("Bowfinger," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"). "Some people say that the acting
isn't nuanced or that the dialogue is too broad. But look at what's on the
screen, the acting and dialogue fit what's going on. The story has
connected with people all over the world. George knows what he's doing."
Oz said one of his favorite touches in the "Star Wars" films was the
"lived-in" look of the universe, with pitted spaceships and battered
droids and none of the untouched gleam of most prior sci-fi films. "You
see that now in all the films" -- and certainly in "Battlestar" -- "and
when I see that I always think, 'They got that from George.' "
All this talk of the great sci-fi franchises commingling (although, to be
precise, "Star Wars" is more of a fantasy film than pure science fiction
and it takes place "a long time ago," not in the future) will not sit well
with some purist fans. Abrams, for instance, took some heat for daring to
say that he wanted to import anything from "Star Wars" to "Trek," and he
has been careful in public comments to modulate that early statement --
and he's always careful to refer to fans as "Trekkers," not the
unfashionable "Trekkies."
"These are people who really care about these characters and these stories
and the details," Abrams said. "But I have to tell you, I'm not going to
make a movie that tries to make every hard-core Trekker happy, because
it's not possible. I'm making a movie for fans of movies. I want it to be
an adventure and fun and sexy and scary and epic and intimate and
everything. I feel a great responsibility to these characters and
everything that has come before, but I need to make a film that is not
paralyzed by all of that."
Each of the three franchises faces new challenges. Critics have not been
kind to Lucas, and many longtime "Star Wars" fans were aghast at the
flimsy characters and disquieting flippancy in "The Clone Wars," both the
movie and the series -- the presence of a sidekick who refers to Anakin
Skywalker as "Sky-guy" isn't exactly enhancing the gravitas of a franchise
that once aspired to be a melding of Arthurian legend and Flash Gordon
zip. There's no need to even mention Jar Jar Binks.
"Star Trek," meanwhile, left television in 2005 when "Star Trek:
Enterprise" fell into a ratings black hole, a whimpering end after logging
18 consecutive years with at least one of its permutations on the air. The
new "old" crew will have to prove itself at theaters -- no small feat,
especially since this franchise is attempting to pull a somewhat
retro-future look to fit its time frame (it follows a young Kirk and
company in their Starfleet Academy days and shortly after). The biggest
challenge may be for Pine, who needs to play Kirk, not imitate Shatner.
"That is exactly what he's done," Abrams said. "None of the actors are
doing impersonations of the original cast. If they did, it would be a
disaster."
"Battlestar" has to find a way to capture an audience that has never
matched its acclaim. The Peabody- and Emmy-wining series, often called the
best-written show on television, returns on Jan. 16 with the first of its
final 10 episodes. A two-hour TV movie directed by star Edward James Olmos
will follow that and then, in 2010, the prequel series "Caprica" will
continue the tale of humans and Cylons. Unlike "Galactica," that new
series will not have a ragtag fleet of survivors fleeing the Cylons in
space -- it begins its story before the massive attack that nearly wipes
out the humans, which means Moore will have to find a way to replace the
inherent urgency of the current series.
Orci, the "Trek" film writer, said that "Star Wars," with the presence of
Lucas, has largely stayed the same since the 1970s, while "Battlestar,"
with the arrival of Moore and the reboot of 2004, could hardly be more
dramatically different from the less-nuanced 1970s series starring Lorne
Greene. "We're trying to do something in the middle, something that holds
on to everything that makes 'Star Trek' what it is but also take it into a
new place. One thing about the original show was its inherent optimism,
and we very much wanted that in this movie. This is a future you would
want to live in. And we hope it's a future people want to watch."
Boucher is a Times staff writer.
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