Castle Magus

This video here is the first time I've ever heard the term "soft Cboot" (or "ceeboot" or "seeboot" or "seaboot" or whatever the fuck it actually is, because Google apparently never heard of it before either), but I would agree with the definition of it as they put it forward here.

The nuTrek movies are indeed an example of... that thing mentioned in the previous paragraph, because while for all practical purposes, it's definitely a hard reboot of Star Trek, at least as far as the movies themselves go, they finessed it so that Star Trek "Prime" still exists, even for the new universe/timeline (i.e. the presence of Old/Nimoy Spock, for one thing). Which is good, because all the TV shows still take place in Trek "Prime," not the Kelvin timeline thing. And there may come crossovers between the two in the future, or maybe they're already happening, for all I know. (I haven't seen season three-and-beyond of either Discovery or Lower Decks yet [and I pretty much stopped reading that link there after the first couple paragraphs for that very reason], and I certainly haven't read any of the comic books about any crossovers between Prime and Kelvin.)

In any case, it's all just modern video game industry (and modern movie industry and modern comic book industry[1]) dumbfuckery. Nigh useless marketing buzzwords, for the most part, at least given how actual marketing people are uselessly using them, anyway. The words themselves do have specifically accepted meanings, though.

[1] - Or, maybe, not-so-modern in the case of comic books since, as was pointed out in one of the comments under the above video, Crisis on Infinite Earths from way back in 1985 was probably the first "soft c/cee/see/sea/whatever boot."

Wil Wheaton on Star Trek Beyond: "Beyond was a Fast and Furious movie in space, and that’s not what I wanted to see. I give it 1 out of 5 motorcycles that are on the bridge of a starship for no logical reason, and still work after not being used for an incredibly long time for even less logical reasons."

Yeah, that's about what I expected it would be. My interest in seeing it is still near zero, especially in theaters.

I can kind of agree with both sides of the discussion, though I personally have no problem with John Cho's Sulu being gay.

George Takei's perspective is that it isn't true to Gene Roddenberry's original version of Star Trek, because his Sulu wasn't gay in that. While I can see where he's coming from... kind of... well... in response to that I have to say... has Mr. Takei even seen the first two movies? Neither of those, in many ways, were true to Roddenberry's vision, either. My way of dealing with this issue is simply to call nuTrek what it is: an entirely separate universe (outside of Nimoy cameos, which, sadly, can no longer happen) that merely has in-name-only versions of Kirk, Spock, Sulu, etc. Just like the Mirror Universe (even if the mirror characters were played by the same actors in the original shows). Sure, there are many similarities between the nuTrek characters and the Trek Prime characters, but there are just as many differences as well.

Sure, nuTrek and Trek Prime were supposedly exactly identical up until the point where Nero entered from the Prime universe, but I've already called that into question, anyway (and that's not even counting other instances of time travel into the pre-Nero timeline by later crews from Trek Prime, e.g. Star Trek: First Contact.) And there were already differences between the nuTrek and Prime characters, even before that, so who can say for sure that nuTrek Sulu is (and was always) gay whereas Prime Sulu wasn't? (Well, I guess Simon Pegg can, since he's the one who wrote Beyond. So there you go.)

But generally speaking, yeah, Pine-Kirk is not Shatner-Kirk. Quinto-Spock is not Nimoy-Spock. Saldana-Uhura is not Nichols-Uhura. Pegg-Scott is not Doohan-Scott. Yelchin-Chekov is not Koenig-Chekov. Urban-McCoy is not Kelley-McCoy (though out of all of them, I'd have to say Karl Urban's Leonard McCoy is probably the most similar to DeForest Kelley's Prime version). Cumberbatch-Khan is most definitely not Montalban-Khan. And, of course, Cho-Sulu is not Takei-Sulu, even above and beyond the issue of sexual orientation or whatever. And, on the whole, I suppose that is a good thing, because it would be rather boring if the characters were exactly the same as the originals.

To put it succinctly, with all due respect to George Takei, complaining that nuTrek Sulu is gay makes about as much sense as complaining that Terran Empire Sulu is evil. This is my stance from an in-universe standpoint. From a meta standpoint (which, really, is what the disagreement between Takei and Pegg concerns), I mostly agree with Pegg on this one. I think Takei is simply coming at it from the standpoint of "Sulu wasn't gay in the original, so he shouldn't be gay here, either" and I get that, but I just don't think it's relevant, from either a meta standpoint or an in-universe standpoint. (To be fair, to get back to the in-universe stuff for a bit, the whole "alternate dimension vs alternate timeline" thing threw me off for a while, too.)

(With all that said, even so, I still have little to no interest in going to see Star Trek Beyond, for the reasons I've already stated. Cho-Sulu being gay wouldn't have been a dealbreaker for me, though.)

(Yeah, yeah, I said I need to disconnect from the Internet, not that I was actually going to do it.)

So, there is apparently a new trailer out for the 2016 Ghostbusters movie. I don't know if this was the trailer that James Rolfe was discussing or if this one was even out yet when he released his video. In any case, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter. I do not agree with the headline (or the content) of that Forbes article. The new trailer is not funnier and scarier. The new trailer is still just the same roughly 50% rehash of the original Ghostbusters movie (seriously, some of the lines in that second trailer are almost word-for-word from the original movie, and I rolled my eyes at those just the same as I rolled my eyes at the "KHAN!" scene from Star Trek Into Darkness) and 50% inane bullshit that the first trailer was.

But whatever, anyway, a good chunk of the Internet has gotten and is at this very moment still getting really super-duper insanely enraged over the fact that a semi-famous Youtube guy has said he doesn't want to see this movie, and I find that to be absolutely fascinating. Also appalling, disgusting, and stupid, yes, but still morbidly fascinating. We're talking trainwreck-can't-look-away here. What's actually bad is that, with this ludicrous, hysterical overreaction to James's video, I can even almost, almost see, if I tilt my head and squint really hard, the point that Irredeemably Toxic Shithole is (ostensibly) trying to make about how, in some ways, extremist feminism (which they and many others erroneously equate with feminism) is running amok and ruining everything it touches... but then I remember that the vast majority of those those guys are terrible, festering shitstains on the underwear of humanity for a multitude of reasons, and I come back to my senses. Yeah, I don't turn into a frothing idiot at the mere concept of feminism and such, but at the same time, I also don't turn into a slobbering moron at the mere thought that James Rolfe said he doesn't want to see nuBusters, either. I just don't get it. I really don't.

If you're one of those people who is finding yourself to be outrageously, unreasonably pissed off by James Rolfe's video, to the point that you feel the need to hurl ridiculous ad hominem attacks, or make spurious speculations that "he's probably going to just torrent it anyway" or "really, he's just scared of girls" (when the guy is married and has a daughter), or spread shitty image macros equating anything he said with fucking, goddamn GamerGate of all things, or whatever other stupid horseshit you feel like spewing all over the Internet, then here's a pro-tip for you: He wasn't talking to you. He didn't make the video specifically for the purpose of trying to troll you, or whatever. Yeah, sure, there's nothing at all stopping you from watching the video yourself (or, more likely, merely hearing about it from someone else who knows a guy whose brother's pet gerbil might have watched it and made an angry tweet about it, which you unthinkingly retweeted, causing the whole asinine thing to spiral out of control into an echo chamber of angry clusterfuck), and there's nothing stopping you from getting outrageously, unreasonably pissed off by it (whether you actually watched it yourself or not, which I kind of doubt you did), but just be aware that you were not and are not his target audience. He was merely talking to his fans (yes, believe it or not, dear people of the Internet who may not have even heard of Mr. Rolfe at all prior to this incident, the guy has a lot of fans, and for good reason), many of whom would have been, and indeed probably already were, bugging him incessantly to see the movie and post a review of it. He was simply explaining to them (not to you, to them) why he wasn't going to see or review it (and implicitly begging them not to flood his inbox with requests to see it and review it). If you read more into that than was actually there, then perhaps you need to stop and consider the possibility that the problem may actually lie with you, not James Rolfe.

(EDIT) No, really, I'm seeing several people that I respect(ed) and admire(d) (and, in some cases, even [used to] follow on Twitter) turning into knee-jerk, reactionary nitwits over this stupid horseshit, and it is disheartening. (/EDIT)

"When the first trailer for Star Trek Beyond landed a few months back it had many fans of the classic franchise scratching their heads. For a series that often uses science fiction to ask deeper questions about humanity, there seemed to be an awful lot of things exploding. Simon Pegg even came out to relieve concerns and tell us that the trailer was not representative of the final film."

You know, when you have to come out and assure people that your movie isn't as bad as the trailer made it out to be... that's still not a very good sign. I mean, isn't that the whole point of a trailer in the first place, to be representative of the final film? You know, to get people interested in going to see it?

Also, it looks like they're apparently just going to completely ignore the whole Klingon War thing that they heavily foreshadowed in the previous movie.

Yeah, no... I might go see this movie, or at least watch it when it comes out on DVD or whatever... but as it stands now, I most likely won't. I think I'm pretty much done with nuTrek, unless I am given a compelling reason to feel otherwise.

Maybe I'm just weird, but a Star Trek/Green Lantern crossover just doesn't interest me all that much. Maybe because it's the reboot Trek universe with Pine-Kirk rather than the Prime universe with Shatner-Kirk? I don't really have a problem with the reboot movies, aside from them being way too action-y for my tastes, but still... Or maybe it's the fact that out of all the big DC superheroes, the Green Lantern Corps are among the least interesting to me? I don't know. In any case, this just doesn't appeal to me all that much, despite the fact that I'm usually a huge sucker for crossover stuff like this.

Then again, I still haven't even gotten around to reading the Star Trek TNG/Doctor Who crossover comic yet either, which I have far more interest in (for some reason, despite having never seen even a single full episode of any season of Doctor Who as of yet... I really, really need to get my hands on that stuff and watch it someday).

Allow me to put on my super-nerd/geek hat for a moment here. I hear a lot of people saying that the timeline for the Star Trek reboot is pretty much the same as the timeline for Star Trek Prime prior to the 2009 movie. That is, things shouldn't be any different prior to the moment that Nero first appeared and started messing things up. But here's the thing: in Star Trek Prime, Kirk and company go back in* time on several occasions to points well before that. So I'm just wondering how all of this has been affected or changed in the new reboot universe. Will reboot Kirk go back to these time periods at some point, or does the reboot universe simply have Kirk Prime going back to those time periods already baked into it somehow, or something else entirely? I'm sure none of this will ever be dealt with, of course, but it's still something interesting to ponder, at least for me anyway.

Yeah, yeah, I know, parallel universes and all that, but still, if people are going to be saying that the reboot universe was exactly the same as the Prime universe prior to the events of the reboot movie, this kind of muddles the waters on that a bit.

* - And if you follow the Star Trek expanded universe stuff at all, Gary Seven played a direct role in all the Khan stuff from the 20th-21st century, so who knows how all of that was affected by Kirk not going back in time (or if his going back in time happens a different way in the reboot universe) during Gary Seven's introduction.

(NSFW warning for language.)



Even ignoring all the flagrant, ridiculous bugs and glitches seen here, this game just looks like complete ass.

"Star Trek: The Videogame, as it's so enigmatically titled, is a steaming turd dropped from the ugliest bumhole in the world. It is a quite exceptionally terrible game, from its numbingly dreary repetition, useless broken AI, archaic combat, clumsy construction, and utter nothingness story."

Ouch. That just sounds terrible.

I had little interest in this game to begin with, and now that interest has just dropped to negative values. Seriously, who the hell thought a Star Trek-based cover-shooter would be a good idea? o_O I mean, even if such a thing were done well, it still wouldn't appeal to me much at all.

(EDIT)

Also, this (which was linked to in the RPS article above):


Seriously, video game developers/publishers, stop trying to put up ratings for your own game on Metacritic or talk it up like you're just an anonymous member of the general public on forums and such. You're going to get caught, and when you do get caught, it's just going to make you and your game look that much worse. Though, in this case, I suppose it's not really possible for it to look much worse, even taking this into account.

Let the above be a lesson to anyone reading this: don't buy games at launch. Like, ever. As for me, I didn't need this lesson, as I'd already been burned too many times before.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2)

Oh, and here's a Forbes article about it: "Paramount said it had taken three years to develop this game. But what we received was so buggy it was a veritable roach motel."

(/EDIT 2)

This is why the 2009 Star Trek movie is possible without seriously screwing over the original Star Trek timeline. Until I watched this TNG episode again (and saw the movie mentioned on that Memory Alpha page for the ep), it was always a niggling point to me that, based on most of the other time travel episodes that occurred in Star Trek, changing what happened in the past could cause problems for the future, or at the very least that was always a concern in such episodes even if it didn't come to pass. Well, in the case of Spock Prime and Nero, they didn't just time travel, they also dimension hopped, apparently. I know lots of people have been saying this was the case all along, but despite that, it only really clicked with me just now. So yeah, as far as the future of Star Trek Prime (or whatever one wants to call it) is concerned, Spock and Nero simply disappeared, never to be seen again.

(EDIT)

Of course, stuff like this, this, and especially this show how it would be possible as well, I guess. But, again, it just didn't click for me until I finished watching "Parallels" tonight.

(/EDIT)