There's a reason they're similar...it's a genre.

http://io9.com/5241996/the-top-ten-rules-of-space-opera

my video is down, what shows up and whats all the fuss about?

This pretty much distills what I think the guys who wrote "Star Trek" do. Seriously, they just take from other movies in an almost blatant way. They did the same shit with "Bayformers". Don't get me wrong, Star Trek is a MUCH better movie. It's still kind of a ripoff though.

Ya duh, haven't you seen the aisle in blockbuster setup for "Farmer boy turns space hero" there are at LEAST 2 movies there

Wonderful!

No, the hero's journey isn't a genre - it's a narrative path in mythology. Repurposing it in cinema is common despite genre - which is the amusing factor with spotlight here, despite the other space opera similarities.

Meh, all sci-fi movies start with a bang so big bang = big ship. And of course it is going to be a underclassman for the hero. thats part of the heroes path. He has to accept that he is going to have to save the day. For the old dude, who else has wisdom in movies? certainly not a 11 year nothing who just discovered puberty. Wisdom comes with age, not that much of a similarity. And Han and Luke were never rivals, they just did not relate to one another. You never saw Han smacking Luke in front of Obi, Chewie, Leia, or C3PO did you? Nope. So you can come out of that closet.

Yeah it ain't like Star Wars invented that either.

Hell, if you're going to rip something off, might as well be Star Wars.

We put WAY too much emphasis on originality. It's vastly overrated. Shakespeare wrote a handful of 'original' plays; most of his work were remakes of previous stories or based on real events.

I feel as if the Arab-Israeli Conflict will be settled before the Star Trek-Star Wars Conflict

Yeah yeah yeah. And Star Wars is also able to be traced to Biblical allegory, or distilled into a direct translation of The Odyssey OR Moby Dick.

The hero's journey is a standard thing in all literature. Details may change, but the path is always the same: From Zero to Hero in the course of one story.

Here's an example:

The Hobbit...
Prologue is a long-ago battle over a special item,
common "farm boy" (gardener) Bilbo is introduced,
wise old man Gandalf convinces him to go on adventure,
Bilbo meets Thorin and they don't get along,
Bilbo rescues Thorin & company twice by going into the enemy's lair,
Bilbo causes the city-destroying enemy (Smaug) to be killed,
Big battle where key figures die,
Bilbo & Thorin respect each other in the end,
Bilbo is a humble hero.

Heroic paths are pretty much all the same in literature. Beowulf, Homer, Hercules, Perseus, etc... All come from humble beginnings, learn from a wiser figure, and defeat the enemy thus saving the day.

no wonder I liked it.

hey look at that, someone wrote a whole book on this;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth

this is a mute point as this current movie is not star trek, but a cheap knock off that sucks royally!!!

I love those "mute" points. I guess the blogger in question has never heard of Joseph Campbell ...

Dead straight Bob. It blows.

moot point.

If it's a "mute" point, then no need to express it. :D

right, moot. don't i feel stupid now.....

Yeah, so familiar themes in both movies, all Sci-Fi rips off of Star Trek, Shakespeare was an unoriginal douche, blah, blah, blah. Did people enjoy the movie(s)? That's really all that matters. Besides, go rent Forbidden Plant and see how much of modern Sci Fi looks familiar...

Wasn't it Hemmingway who said every story ever told boils down to the struggle between good and evil?

And REALLY, we can't expect anything original from Hollywood at this point.

It's a genre. Also, take out the space ships and it's like...every action movie (with more than one main character) ever.
Crisis averted :p

The Star Trek/Star Wars argument is as dumb as the people who thought the new Star Trek movie sucked.
Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it sucks.
I didn't like the Godfather. That definitely doesn't mean the movie sucked, it just wasn't my kind of movie.

Just because Shatner didn't get a cameo or you don't think Chris Pine acts enough like him or the fact that they included more action than previous movies and didn't have some kind of political conspiracy like in VI doesn't make it a bad movie. It makes you a picky douchebag though.

Soooo vindicated. And just generally glad I'm not the only one who noticed. When that big ship came out at the little ship at the very start, ANH was all I could think of. Didn't say anything though so as not to be disowned by my Trek-lovin bf and friends.

Don't get me wrong I loved the new Trek movie better than any previous Trek movie. And I'm not gonna lie -- this is probably why.

If you took my comment as disparaging Shakespeare you are way off base. I think we mostly agree.

Making originality so critical is ultimately bad. That's how you end up with artists striving for higher and higher levels of nonsense just to avoid being derivative.

Just a star wars fan who's mad that trek has an awesome new film out while meanwhile no good star wars anything is ever coming out again as long as Lucas is alive.

Funny, but I think the similarities are being over blown.

But, look on the bright side: If they were ripping off Star Wars, then Star Trek 2 should really kick ass!

And Star Trek 3 should feature a whole tribe of Scotty's little friends helping the Federation take on the Klingons!

Then we cut to the first prequel to see the adventures of a really annoying Kirk teams up with an preposterously annoying CGI monster.

Well atleast we'll have 3 kickass Star Trek movies then 3 crappy prequels.

So are we going to have one of these in the next movies?

Kahless Clone: There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you.
[pauses]
Kahless Clone: Kirk, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the core worlds.
James T. Kirk: I'll never join you!
Kahless Clone: If you only knew the power of the Negh'Var. Captain Pike never told you what happened to your father.
James T. Kirk: He told me enough! He told me *you* killed him!
Kahless Clone: No. *I* am your father.
Luke: No. No. That's not true. That's impossible!
Kahless Clone: Search the video feed, you *know* it to be true!
James T. Kirk: [anguished] No! No!

Your burrito is done.

@Mount_Prion: so, in your head, there exists only ONE sci-fi, only ONE sex&crime, ONE comedy and ONE horror movie? oh boy, your childhood sunday mornings must have been sad, with only ONE cartoon playing all the time... I just hope that book you red in your life was entertaining, because, you know, the others are also books & made out of paper like the on you already know, so no point in reading another one, ever...

Awww, Star Wars nerds are butthurt their franchise is in the tank.

I'm not going to repeat what others have said - it's a genre, there's similar tropes, nothing original under the sun, etc etc.

That being said, a lot of the Star Trek AND Star Wars crowd seem to be completely butthurt and upset by the fact that this movie borrowed a lot of inspiration from Star Wars. Good fucking job on them, if that's true. They took the best bits of SW and applied it to ST, and out came a damn good film.

Its okay to feel stupid, just don't be stupid.

Yeah, almost every story can be broken down into broad terms like this and seem eerily the same. It's all the meat in the middle is what makes it different.

At the outset, let me say I am (was) a Star Wars kid back in the day - still love the universe - but I think people are giving star Wars far too much credit. Lucas worked with Campbell a lot on th script - getting him to check it and make sure he's on the right track. The mythological elements of SW are timeless - I suppose for me and others my age, SW was our 1st experience of these myths. If Lucas should be lauded for anything, it's for recognising the gap in culture at the time and filling it with SW. New SW is crap generally - so if ST can draw water from the same pool as Lucas and make it work good on them - Lucas couldn't.

JJ Abrams has said he was not a Star Trek Fan, we was a Star Wars fan. There was no way he was ever going to be able to make a Star Wars movie, so he did a Star Trek film.

From the first trailer it was clear to me that JJ had made a Star Wars movie using Star Trek characters. So what? I'm fine with that. Star Wars rules.

I always thought Star Trek enjoyed a much loftier reputation than it deserved. Great ideas, terrible execution. I've hated everything Star Trek, it's fucking boring. Until now. Loved the new Star Trek. Now I can officially say, I am proudly a Star Wars and a Star Trek fan.

Everyone who tries to tear Lucas down just proves time and time again, he is the king of Sci-fi. His movies and his characters and his universe are the measuring stick. Both in quality and monitarily. His movies make tons of bank. Plus he is a revolutionary in the digital age of film making.

"Wrath Of Khan" the new Star Trek movie ain't.

Because it was/wasn't a copy of Star Wars? No.
Because the Kirk guy didn't act enough like Kirk? No.

The problem with this film was the writing.

The mid-point rug-pull was a brilliant idea, and into the bargain provides meat to push the new movies in a different direction, so thats all good.

But, they didn't do enough for me to identify with the Vulcans, Spock's mother or the people on-board the other ships in the fleet.

From then on, it was apparent that none of the major characters would die, or would get anything more than a cut lip. So no sense of danger and from that no sense of excitement.

Then spock gets a Vulcan Science vessel with "red stuff" on board, and we are supposed to believe that it can't just run rings around a Romulan Mining Vessel from the same era?

"Wrath Of Khan" or "The One WIth The Borg" it ain't. Sorry.

Next time, try harder.

It's true that all drama boils down to a very few conflicts, but sometimes the point-to-point similarities (in style, character, etc.) can be overpowering. As in this Star Trek movie. Whether you like it or don't like it, this is a film made by a Star Wars fan with a Star Wars template for a generation weaned on Star Wars. The similarities of development and conflict in the new Kirk are unapologetic lifts from Anakin Skywalker. Shall we expect Kirk to show up in a couple of movies wearing a re-breather?

I find the comment amusing that George Lucas was in communication with Joseph Campbell (who himself owes a great deal of unattributed debt to Carl Jung) over the construction of the Star Wars saga. Perhaps that was true on down the road (read: the most recent trilogy), but Campbell's name never came up in all the publicity for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas' major influence and inspiration? From his own lips - the Saturday morning adventure and s-f serials from his childhood.

I've always been more a Star Trek fan than a Star Wars fan... but I got to say, Star Wars was a far better movie than the new Star Trek. The things that happened in the Star Wars movie made sense and worked... Everything that happens in the Star Trek movie is coincidence... Star Trek is a dumb movie, not quite Independence Day level dumb, but close. The new Star Trek quality is no where near StarGate or Star Wars... It's not even a Star Trek 5 grade movie, as dumb as Star Trek 5 was, it at least had a story and ideas behind it.
I can under stand that Star Trek is getting a free pass for being a summer action movie, but come on intelligence should count for something!