Star Trek: Academy—Collision Course

posted by Tygrrius @ 10:59 AM

Star Trek: Academy—Collision Course novel
Pocket Books, hardcover edition, 2007
Authors: William Shatner with Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens

It has been said that all publicity is good publicity. When William Shatner and Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens released Collision Course at the end of last year, I had not read a Star Trek novel in years. While various Trek novels provided me with countless hours of enjoyment dating all the way back to 1986, I simply lost interest in them at some point. Though the fine work of this particular team is always on my radar, I also did not have any plans to read this installment in the adventures of James Kirk.

Then I read a crushingly negative review of Collision Course on another site, and I knew I had to buy this one. I had to find out for myself if three of my favorite authors had really so mishandled Star Trek's most important characters.

Collision Course is the first book of a new novel series from Shatner and the Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek: Academy. This marks their tenth collaboration. Academy will follow young Jim Kirk's adventures at Starfleet Academy. Collision Course starts things off well with the first meeting of Kirk and Spock.

"Star Trek is about moving forward," some whine as a protest against prequels like this one, or J.J. Abrams' forthcoming Star Trek XI. We already know everything about Kirk so it will be boring, right? Wrong.

As viewers of Star Trek, we actually know far less about Kirk and Spock than we think we do. Most of their history prior to the adventures seen on the television series has been revealed in one or two lines in a scattering of episodes. Though references like The Star Trek Encyclopedia do a great job of tying all of those loose threads together with strings of conjecture, a lot of the details are still missing.

For instance, what really happened on Tarsus IV when Kirk came face-to-face with Kodos the Executioner? What drove Spock to choose Starfleet over his father's more logical plan that he attend the Vulcan Science Academy? Collision Course offers some insight into these and other mysteries of our heroes' early years.

One criticism that can sometimes be leveled at Star Trek and other series fiction is that there is little room for character growth. Authors are often forced to leave main characters in essentially the same emotional state that they start. One of the reasons that the novels of Shatner and the Reeves-Stevens are usually among Star Trek's best is that they avoid this trap.

In Collision Course, we see the growth of Kirk, Spock, and even the Starfleet organization. Kirk and Spock may seem at first to be strangely different from the characters we know and love. If Kirk and Spock were exactly the same in early adulthood as they were on the original series, then what would be the point? While there is an interesting if occasionally predictable plot, Collision Course is primarily a journey of character. In that journey, Collision Course achieves tremendous success.

The authors know these characters well, too. During the Vulcan form of an argument with his son, Sarek states, "Spock, you are an alien on an alien world. What can you do?"

You can almost hear Leonard Nimoy (and, perhaps, someday Zachary Quinto) delivering Spock's reply, "You are mistaken, Father. On Earth, you are an alien. But like my mother, I am not."

Collision Course is definitely a worthy installment in the adventures of Kirk and Spock. For the first time in a long time, I am looking forward to reading a Trek novel - Star Trek: Academy—Trial Run, which will continue these adventures.

Overall Experience: 8 (out of 10)

The Making of Star Wars book

posted by Tygrrius @ 1:54 PM

The Definitive Story Behind The Original Film: The Making of Star Wars-Based On The Lost Interviews From The Official Lucasfilm Archives book (Ballantine Books, hardcover deluxe edition, 2007)
Author: J.W. Rinzler
Original 1975-1978 Interviews By: Charles Lippincott

Forget stamps. Forget conventions. Forget video games. The Making of Star Wars is the one essential 30th anniversary product. As a Star Wars fan and movie buff, I can tell you that the book is just about perfect.

Relying on extensive interviews conducted during the making of the first Star Wars movie, J.W. Rinzler has assembled the Star Wars book that never was. While there have been "making of" books for the five other films in the saga, the making of Star Wars never made it to publication, until now.

Well, that's not entirely true. There was a juvenile book, Star Wars: The Making Of The Movie from about 1980. That was actually the first behind-the-scenes movie book I ever read, and it sparked an interest in me that continues to this day.

With a whopping 362 pages and weighing about sixty tons, The Making of Star Wars dwarfs that previous effort and offers much more than a glimpse into the film. You basically get to live it. And, along the way, there are many revelations.

These days, everything is hailed as "extensive" or "definitive." Star Wars products do not always live up to their hype, but this one exceeds it. In minute detail and in very small print for my aging eyes, the story behind the film is told.

We see the early seeds of Star Wars in the Journal of the Whills. The 1973 story featured Mace Windu and was George Lucas' first treatment for what would become Star Wars.

Though it does not reprint them, The Making of Star Wars covers each draft of the movie extensively. There are about a half dozen drafts and Rinzler does a great job after each draft discussion of noting the key "first time" elements from that draft that would appear in the final film.

Star Wars morphed completely from its initial concepts before it became the film we know and love today. Character names were often changed and reverted, which can sometimes make for a confusing read. Anakin, The Skywalker, Luke Starkiller, Binks, Organa, Chewie, Chewbacca (two different characters), and various other names come and go.

The script changes are fascinating and often demonstrate that budget and time crunches can actually result in a better story. Also of interest are early production drawings, including the very first sketches of an Imperial TIE fighter, an X-Wing, and the Death Star. Who made those first sketches? Lucas himself. And you can see them here.

The Ralph McQuarrie production paintings and drawings are examined extensively, though the book skimps by not having large-scale versions of each one. Instead, the illustrations are often tiny. This is probably to make room for the massive amount of text.

If you're expecting a picture book with just a bit of text, this is the wrong one for you. This book is really about the text with some pictures thrown in for good measure.

At times, perhaps the book gives too much detail and the pace can get slow. It takes a long time to get to the point where production actually begins on the movie; but then, it is realistic in that it took a long time in reality to get to that point as well.

Lucas, it seems, faced obstacles at every turn that threatened to derail the film. Even the Libyan army insisted on inspecting the Jawa sandcrawler when filming proceeded close to their border and they assumed it was part of a military buildup for invasion.

Every single piece of the movie is examined in detail, from selection of the actors, to sound design, to the musical score, to the special effects. It's all here. For ILM fans, though, I'd still recommend ILM: The Art of Special Effects and Sculpting a Galaxy to supplement that portion of this material.

The Making of Star Wars is a fantastic book, and the best thing is that it is usually written as if the year is about 1978. Most of the interviews took place before the film was released and became a blockbuster hit. Remember, most people, including many who worked on it, thought Star Wars was going to bomb. In that sense, they are perhaps the most truthful interviews that will ever exist about this movie. Time and success changes perspectives. For that reason, these vintage interviews are more pure than what you'll see today.

The book also doesn't place Star Wars within the context of the overall saga. Sequels, prequels, and special editions are not covered here. This also helps to give the book a 1978 feel.

The deluxe edition contains about 50 pages of bonus material not present in the softcover version. Most of these are incredible storyboards by Alex Tavoularis, Ivor Beddoes, and Joe Johnston, and are certainly more than worth the additional cost. Luke originally was to have made two trench runs and you can see them both here via storyboard.

Also included in the bonus section are circa-1977 notes from Lucas about backgrounds on the characters and the nature of the Force. It feels like a sort of first draft of a Star Wars encyclopedia. A shocker for the nay-sayers: Midi-chlorians are mentioned in those 1977 notes. They were not, after all, invented for the 1999 Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace.

In fact, padawan learners are also mentioned in the early drafts of Star Wars, so that concept, too, was already in Lucas' mind if not on the screen of the original trilogy.

If you're a fan of the original Star Wars, this is the book to have.

Overall Experience: 9 (out of 10)

“Infinite Crisis” Novelization

posted by JediSheltie @ 5:50 PM

As I alluded to in my “semi” regular "Round Up" column, I recently had cause to be on modest sized be-winged transportation devices sometimes known as “airplanes” recently. Mostly this one, to be specific. The Sunday before I left I found myself at the local Barnes and Noble, seeking something to keep me company whilst aloft, and whilst stuck in 3 hour layovers.

It was with some trepidation I picked up the Infinite Crisis novelization. After all, I'm generally the “move forward” type, and I already knew the story. Perhaps, I thought, this might (as most film novelizations do) provide some deeper insight into the actions seen in the comic. So I grabbed it and latest Spenser novel and off I went to the ole homeland.

After the first few chapters, my hopes of additional insight were pretty much put to rest. I have to admit, author Greg Cox had an unenviable and most likely impossible task of novelizing a seven page comic whose roots ran throughout the entire DC Universe and through most of its last 20 years and beyond. Even with the book running 371 pages in a prestige paperback format, what was delivered was little more than a description of the comic pages you probably read a year ago.

If you didn't, then prepare for headaches. Hell, even if you did, you'll still probably be hitting the Wiki hard.

The action picks up from the last few frames of JLA 120 with the destruction of the Watchtower and then flips into a virtually frame-by-frame rendition of Infinite Crisis 1-7. With a few bare exceptions wherein some ancillary material is used, the pages follow along exactly with the comic. Events are described in a straightforward manner, usually preceded by a 2 or 3 sentence “expository” paragraph that does a poor job of preparing the uninformed reader about why what's about to happen is of any importance at all.

Don't know who the Freedom Fighters are? Have no clue what Rann and Thanagar are, much less why they're fighting each other? Wondering why Wonder Woman apparently offed some guy named Max Lord? What's Earth-Prime and why am I on it? Wait, there was more than one “crisis”? All these questions and more are covered in the barest of fashions, unable to communicate the gravity of the events they precede or are about to precipitate.

That's why I feel sorry for Greg Cox, who was given an impossible job. To cover everything, the “novelization” of Infinite Crisis probably should have been at least 10 400-page prestige format novels, not just one. Only then could we be given the opportunity to care about anything that happens in this event to characters we've never heard of and won't ever hear about again.

Essentially this novel was written for no one. If you've already read the comics, then there's nothing here you haven't seen before, in color with little word balloons, in fact. If you haven't read Infinite Crisis, then you're in for a mind boggling experience of characters and events that mean very little to you and won't be able to understand. Basically, if you're a DC Universe historian who missed out on the comics, then maybe this book is for you. Then again, picking up the trade is probably the best bet in that case.

What could have been done better? Where I given the same unenviable task as Mr. Cox, then I would have attempted to cut the story down to only people with S's, Bats, and abstract W's on their chests and their immediate associates. There is a compelling story to tell in terms of the 2 Supermen, Superboy Prime, Luthors, and the rest. One that still might span more than one 400 page novel. Attempting to tell the whole story, in such a small space, meant only that the story was poorly told.

The only really worthwhile part of the book is the forward by Mark Waid, who explains, in part, why the comic event happened. He focus more on the character aspect, instead of the “cleaning up continuity messes” aspect. The character aspect being the stranglehold Frank Miller and all his disciples held over the superhero comic industry for the past 20 years. Bravo for that, of course.

So, basically, if you see it on the shelf of your local Barnes and Noble, then read the forward and just walk away, you've gotten everything it has to give you.

"Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel" book

posted by Tygrrius @ 4:55 AM

Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel book (Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 2006 Updated Edition)
Author: Scott Beatty
Illustrations: Roger Stewart (and archival material by original artists)

This one comes to me courtesy of JS. It's always a little risky to review an item received as a gift. Well, actually, it's only risky if you don't love the item, and the person who gave it to you happens to read the site regularly. That narrows it down to two people. So, JS, if you're out there, uh, don't read this review.

The "coffee-table-sized" Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel looks like a wonderful book. In fact, I'd been eyeing this reference to the modern Superman comics for some time before it magically appeared on my doorstep at Christmas. Boasting an incredible cover and mostly fantastic illustrations throughout, The Ultimate Guide was a lot of fun to flip through.

So happy I was initially with this book that I even picked up a copy of the updated DC Comics Encyclopedia, also from DK, based solely on The Ultimate Guide's visual merits.

Then, with much anticipation, I read The Ultimate Guide. The love-affair with this book pretty much fell apart from there.

It starts out promisingly enough, with a section called "Birth of a Superman," which goes into details about Krypton, Smallville, the Kents, Superman's powers, weaknesses, and even his "super style" - a phrase I thought I coined but apparently not.

The other modern sections of the rest of the book cover Metropolis (and its associated characters), "Secrets of the Man of Steel" (including the Fortress, Godfall, and the Eradicator), and supervillains (Luthor, Metallo, Brainiac, etc.).

The text in these sections is dry and jumpy. The worst part is that it is often painfully obvious where the 2006 updates are (the original edition was 2002), as they are tacked on at the end of most entries while the opening text of the entries are not correspondingly updated.

So you read all of this dry material about a character's role in the comics and then get to the end where a final paragraph says something to the effect of: "Oh yeah, by the way, so-and-so later died in a tragic accident, came back as a supervillain seeking revenge, died again, and his remaining life-force became a super robot, later dismantled by Superman, but stolen by Lex Luthor." And that's a parody, by the way. Not a real character, so no need to check wiki.

The Superman history student in me had hopes for a strong finish, though, as the concluding section ("Superman's Career") examines the pre-CoIE comics as well, including a timeline. For whatever reason, the JLA and "Birthright" are tacked into this section as well.

The "Birthright" section is particularly interesting, as it pretty much tells you to forget what you already read in the earlier part of the book. Why not simply update the earlier part of the book appropriately? What a tangled web the DC Universe can weave, so I don't fully blame author Beatty for this part.

The overviews of the Golden Age and Silver Age of Superman comics are pretty good, while the timeline, which covers all eras, is disappointing. As a kid, I used to re-read the timeline/issue review presented in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" (the last pre-CoIE Superman issue) over and over. It was captivating. Presented here, a similar timeline is a sleepy step through apparent highlights.

The worst parts of the timeline are in "The Steel Age" (post-CoIE to the present, though I've never encountered this designation for it until now). And by that, I don't necessarily mean the actual comic stories but just the writing of the timeline itself. Incidentally, the timeline and, presumably, the rest of the book cover Superman through the beginning of the recent Infinite Crisis series.

Beatty tries to instill some action by peppering the timeline with plenty of exclamation marks. "In this issue, Jimmy eats breakfast!" or "In this issue, Superman brushes his teeth!" But it just doesn't help.

In the end, The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel was a great idea for a gift and a lot of fun to look through. Sadly, it was just a chore to read.

Overall Experience: 4 (out of 10)
Recommended: Only if you want to look at the pretty pictures

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"Superman Returns: The Complete Shooting Script" book

posted by Tygrrius @ 8:44 PM

Superman Returns: The Complete Shooting Script book (Titan Books, 2006)
Screenplay by: Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris
Story by: Bryan Singer & Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris
Interviews by: David Hughes

While waiting for my Superman: Special Edition-Disc 1 and Superman III: Deluxe Edition replacement DVDs to arrive, I figured I would delve into my ever-increasing backlog of material to review.

I have definitely been in a Superman mood lately, so up today is Superman Returns: The Complete Shooting Script. This book compiles the Final Production Draft screenplay of Superman Returns (AKA Red Sun), interviews with writer/director Bryan Singer and writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, and some storyboard selections.

Being a movie nut, I love these kinds of books. The fact that this one happens to be about my favorite movie of 2006 makes it all the better. Still, I must admit that I was skeptical of the non-script parts of the book. I assumed the interviews would be minor fluff pieces and that they would throw in 3 or 4 storyboard panels.

The interviews were actually a fairly decent length and, along with some of the more common stories, went into some things I have not read elsewhere. The Singer interview is first, about eight pages long.

The best parts deal with Singer's thoughts on Warner Brothers' many aborted attempts at Superman V prior to his landing the deal for Superman Returns. He admitted jealousy to his friend Kevin Spacey when he heard rumors the actor had been attached to Tim Burton's premise ("not confirmed," Spacey told him). Though the Burton movie never panned out, Singer later signed Spacey to play Luthor in his film.

Singer thinks a Batman vs. Superman movie, which was another of the abandoned concepts, would have posed problems. Which of them would have been the villain, he asks. He guesses Batman, but states the character would have been a weak villain because he would have to be redeemable by the end. If such a film flopped, Singer notes there would have been a real danger of killing both movie franchises.

Interviews with Dougherty and Harris round out the opening, about twelve pages between them. I have not read or seen nearly as many interviews with Dougherty and Harris, so both were quite interesting and held new information. Dougherty mentions that Superman For All Seasons by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale was a huge comic book influence on the script, particularly for how it humanized Superman.

Peppered throughout all three interviews are comments about the influence of Richard Donner and his 1978 Superman film. I think the respect of the Superman Returns team for the previous generation of films really worked to their advantage. There was no air of superiority, as often turned me off to Star Trek's TNG-era team, for instance.

Even six months later, I still cannot believe how well Singer, Dougherty, and Harris managed to pull off Superman Returns - making it both new and familiar.

Oh yeah, the script! I get side-tracked so easily these days. The script was fun to read, including looking for changes and additional scenes compared to the released movie. As one of them pointed out in the interview section, even after a "final" script there are story changes during filming and the editing process.

For most of the script versus movie variations, I think what we saw on screen for Superman Returns was the right choice. An example is that in the script, when the shuttle is crashing and Clark leaves the bar to change into Superman, he rips open his shirt in classic style only to remember that it is just a plain, white t-shirt underneath. Oops!

He hurries back to the Planet to his suitcases (I knew the suit was in there, clearing up the question of why they made such a big deal of him bringing them in) and puts the suit on in a janitor's closet. He steps back out as Superman, but everyone at the Planet is too engrossed with the shuttle footage on TV to notice him. Which is fortunate, since he has accidentally left his Clark glasses on. Oops, again!

Though I can see what they were trying to do, this sort of scene would have ruined the introduction of Brandon Routh as Superman. The movie's take on it, just having him already wearing the suit when ripping open his shirt the first time is much more effective and allows Superman to get right to work.

One variation I side with the script on, though, is the opening -- which would have featured scenes from Donner's Superman, and then the modern Kal-El's return to Krypton. These deleted sequences did not make the recent Superman Returns: Special Edition DVD, either. Hey, they gotta save something for the inevitable re-release around the time of the sequel. Maybe we will get an alternate cut -- or at least a complete, alternate opening even if it is not placed onto the film proper.

Though people like me would have loved it, additional use of Donner footage would have only added more fuel to the fire of those misinformed souls who criticized Superman Returns for paying too much homage to Donner.

Anyway, do not take me wrong about the movie generally being better than the script in places where it varies. This is a great script, and the improvements are just a natural part of the process. The majority of the variations are not nearly as drastic as the ones I have highlighted above. Most are just subtle dialogue changes.

The storyboard selections are: "Lex gets funded," "The bank robbery," and "Catching the Daily Planet globe." About 65 pages in all. "The bank robbery," for obvious reasons, is probably the most interesting of the three.

As usual, the quick two or three paragraph review I planned to write has turned into . . . this. Anyway, great book, definitely worth checking out. I would love to see additional books like this one--maybe an "Elseworlds" of sorts for the movies, with scripts and storyboards/concept art for each of the key, abandoned Superman V plots. Not likely to happen anytime soon, though.

Overall Experience: 9 (out of 10)
Recommended: To all Superman Returns fans that are fellow movie buffs

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