G.B. Blackrock wrote:These are the same guys that wrote the recent Star Trek movie. While that had it's flaws, the writing's pretty solid in comparison to the TF movies.
Of course, the fact that the TF movies and Star Trek had different directors makes a ton of difference, too. But I wouldn't be so quick to blame TF's failings (whatever they are, and only if you think it has them) on the writers alone.
Not the writers alone, but they're not entirely blameless. Not every thing even a great writer writes is pure genius, just like not every time (insert famous baseball player) is at bat, does he hit a home run. (Sorry, I don't follow sports, but I think the analogy might hold).
And yeah a director can completely change a movie. Read John Milius's script for _Apocalypse Now_ (oh my GOD that blows!) and then watch the movie. Coppola made enormous changes (all for the better). Some of the Milius stuff he kept made it out in the dreadful 'redux' version.
Still, I think Orci knew he was ditching the TF project months before it came out, and I can't help but wonder how much of that was his own acknowledgement that this one was a failure even by his own standards.
I still think Ebert thinks that making fun of TF fans is funny, the same way most of America thinks it's okay to make fun of fat people.
(Thanks for the spelling fix, btw, guys. Sometimes I think everyone here just ignores me.)
HK, today's the kind of day you hunt down old Army buddies on Facebook.