(0:36-end mark from the theme from the final season of American Gladiators original run play the camera moves back to see James on top of the slab with the words “The Last Of The Americans” on it then cutting to James in his chair)
TLOTA: I’m James Faraci, The Last Of The Americans and the views I’m about to express are that of my own & some of yours and welcome to another edition of “In Defense Of…”(Show pics of maligned pieces of pop culture while the fanfare from the Olympics play and James comes up after Vanilla Ice slides back and his right hand thumbs up and the words “In Defense Of…” before cutting to scenes from “Star Trek: Beyond” as James does a voiceover)
TLOTA (Voiceover): This year marks the 50th year in the history of one of the best Space themed Sci-fi series of all time “Star Trek” and to commemorate it Paramount released “Star Trek: Beyond” the third in the Kelvin timeline version of the franchise and I can’t talk about this unless I talk about the recent tragedies with the passing of both Leonard Nimoy and sadly Anton Yelchin and while Leonard’s was sad and Anton’s came out of nowhere and obviously there had to be changes to…The THIRTEENTH movie?! (Cut to James physically)
TLOTA: OH MY GOD! IT’S AN ODD NUMBERED “STAR TREK” MOVIE! RED ALERT! (Alarm Blares as James looks as it cuts to everyone panicking as Rebecca Yaun and Nick Yaun start looting the vaults and then cutting to Paulo Fonseca as he holds a book with the title “To Serve Man” bumps into Rowdy)
Paulo: IT’S A COOKBOOK! IT’S A COOKBOOK! (Cut to James looking at the chaos)
TLOTA: Yeah, it seems that everyone has that reaction to odd numbered Star Trek movies.
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A little bit that jumped out at me during the ‘script’ early on.
(Show pics of maligned pieces of pop culture while the fanfare from the Olympics play).
It’s kind of vague as to what maligned pieces of pop culture are intended here. Unless this was actually filmed as a video, for which this is just the script. Or you’re just telling us to fill it in with whatever we can think of that fits the description.
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Now, on topic. The odd-numbered Star Trek movies. Well, the first one and the third one weren’t so bad. ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ was padded, there’s no question about it, with scenes that go on longer than they needed to. Such as circling the Enterprise, or the long drawn out view of V’Ger between ‘How do you define unwarranted?’ and the attack resulting in Ilia’s being taken away by the probe. But aside from the pacing problems, it’s not that bad of a movie.
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And I agree that Star Trek III’s main problem was that its predecessor, ‘Wrath of Khan’, was a tough act to follow.
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But yes, my least favorite odd-numbered Star Trek movie would be Star Trek V. Some interesting ideas there, with Sybok and his quest, and a few fun quotable lines (“What would God need with a starship?”), but some of the comedy seemed forced, and there were a few things we could have done without (Uhura’s nude dancing, Scotty’s bumping into a bulkhead for a cheap laugh).
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And I actually liked Star Trek: Beyond a lot more than I thought I would. The scenes with Spock and McCoy were, I thought, especially well-done. It was, of course, bittersweet as it was also the final performance of Anton Yelchin.
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Least favorite even-numbered Star Trek movie: Star Trek Nemesis. A lot of contrivances and stuff that felt forced. ST:TNG could have gone out on a better note.
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Least favorite Kelvin timeline movie: Star Trek Into Darkness. What really cost that movie a lot of points for me was the ending, with its role reversal of the heroic sacrifice of ‘Wrath of Khan’ and then the almost deus ex machina way it’s all-too-quickly resolved (to spare them the trouble of a ‘The Search for Kirk’ movie). That was just a little too over-the-top.
Use your imagination when it comes to the maligned Pop culture characters and Icons and whatever you can think of. And you made some good points on the Odd and Even Numbered Star Trek Movies. Keep in mind, it wasn’t until I got it on Blu-Ray that I actually got to see “Star Trek Beyond” so I couldn’t comment on it outside of what I wrote about it, Least favorite Odd Numbered one “Insurrection”
Least Favorite Even One “Nemesis”
And of course Kelvin Timeline was “Into Darkness”