Star Wars vs. Star Trek

I'll give my vote to Star Wars too...

 

I love Star Wars! I can't really stand Star Trek! I find it boring. Star Wars is so exciting and entertaining.

 

Star Wars....Not really watched much of Star Trek, find it far too boring.


Yoda's great
Jabba the Hut is great
Chubakka is great
The Wookies (Hamster things) are great

 

most of you people don't know shit about hard core sci fi! both star wars and star trek are shit. there are so many mistakes on so many levels in both of them, that they would be better classified as fantasy, then as science fiction. good sci fi which was produce at the same time, would be: 'the outer limits,' '2001: a space odyssey,' and 'alien.'

 

Star Trek at least started out as a sci-fi series and the fourth one had an environmentally-conscious message to it. But then they got so very old... and the next Generation just didn't have it.

Star Wars is a soap opera with no science in it whatsoever. Overall, it's got the best story though.

I'll go with Star Trek.

 

Definitely Star Trek

 

I like BOTH but only the ORIGINALS on each!!

Star trek original series and movies and STAR WARS original 3 movies..

 

I grew up right in the middle of the first three Star Wars movies. Star Trek was never really on TV when I was growing up. The original series was long done but still on as reruns. I'd see a few episodes pop on TV from time to time but never grabbed me.

Star Wars? Well, I had a lot of friends deep into it. All the toys, running around with 80s light sabres, but to me it seemed like everybody loved it just because everyone else loved it. You were supposed to love the movies because they were popular. I saw the movies several times growing up, then again in college when they were remastered and all that. It never made any damn sense to me as a kid and then in my late teens and early 20s, it made sense based on what they were explaining but it was all just kinda dumb.

Star Wars was worth a watch just for the sake of watching, but I was more entertained by Willow or the Last Starfighter, or the Navigator. Darth Vader was a pretty cool villain but none of it really stuck for me.

And when the Phantom Menace came out, my room mate and a bunch of friends in college wanted to go see it, so I went too. Note that our courses were for 3D Animation and modelling, so everyone was hyped to see the effects and what we might be doing in the future...... I gotta say, I was bored out of my fk'n mind. Jar Jar was annoying as hell for unnecessary slap stick comedy that wasn't funny, some of the scenes and effects were good while other areas I simply couldn't get past the glaring flaws, and I was a damn beginner picking this stuff up. How did a giant studio let some of that stuff slide? The nail in the coffin was the ending where they're handing over some unknown glowing orb as some odd celebration. Besides having no context of its importance, their hands weren't even in the right positions to be holding it. They couldn't hold something real and then overlay the CGI orb? I was like, "Nope. I'm done."

I didn't see the second movie, Attack of the Clones or something, until years later. I think I got halfway through. Revenge of the Sith? Bits and pieces but never sat all the way through.

I did watch the Force Awakens and the Last Jedi, but found they were essentially the same stories as the original movies. The last movie? Haven't even bothered to watch it.

They're good action movies, if you can follow along, but a lot of it doesn't make any sense. To each their own. I don't trash others who like Star Wars. It just isn't for me.

Star Trek though? While I passed on the original series, The Next Generation was around season 5 when I was flicking through channels on a Saturday afternoon when all the cartoons ended and it was on. I figured, what the hell, might as well watch it. I didn't know any of the character or what was going on, or how the ships worked. Nothing. I went in blind. And yet, by the end of the episode, I was like, "Huh. That wasn't that bad." The next weekend I watched another episode, until eventually I started to get sucked into it all.

When this was all happening, it was the summer time I think, so the show was in reruns mixing through seasons. The first episode I ever sat down to watch was Darmok. The very next one I saw was Who Watched the Watchers..... Two very acclaimed episodes. They were done well, they made you think, but they were written in a way you still understood what was going on. There was enough action to keep you entertained, but more importantly, the characters were deep and well written.

None of the characters were perfect, and you could relate to each one's flaws at some stage in life, but you could see how each character tried to be better people than who they were the day before.

I could go on for days, but TNG hit the right spot at that time in my life. Then Deep Space Nine came along. That took me a while to get into, but eventually, DS9 became my favourite Star Trek. Even more flawed characters. A lot of grey areas on topics, awesome characters, both main and side characters. And it was the first Star Trek that actually focused on a serialised way of storytelling, where past actions in episodes actually affected future episodes. This was also before serialised storytelling was common for any show at the time. And the Dominion War was so in depth and the battles & effects rivalled anything Star Wars put out there, and that's saying something considering it was a TV show and not a movie. But again, it was the characters in the middle of it all.

While I watched the original Star Wars movies multiple times, if you asked me to tell you everything I knew about Luke Skywalker, I'd be done in about 2 minutes tops. If you asked me to tell you about Garak, a side character on DS9, you'd better sit down. Point is, the side characters in Star Trek were more fleshed out than any main character in the Star Wars movies.

This is of course excluding additional media, like cartoons or books/novels from both franchises. Obviously Star Trek has the advantage of being primarily a TV show, most being 7 seasons long with 26 episodes per season. It's advantage is having all that time to flesh out much more than what you could cram into a few movies. Even the Star Trek movies are dumbed down a bit due to time restraints, and of we go by movie franchise vs movie franchise, unless you know the characters and universe of Star Trek beforehand, Star Wars beats them out, movie'wise.

First Contact will always be my favourite movie though. Great effects, spectacular battles, and you can dive right in without knowing anything about Star Trek & the first half of the movie not only provides you with the basics of each character, but it also clearly explains how the Star Trek Universe came to be after a future WWIII.

I think what solidified Star Trek for me is it isn't some "Galaxy Far Far Away" based on some magical Force of Good vs Evil, Black and White. It's us Humans, from Earth, in a possible future. A future where we unfortunately have to endure a devastating third World War involving global nuclear destruction, but rise from the ashes unified as a species and ready to take ourselves beyond our solar system.

The ships, the weapons, the technology, while some of it was made up in the 60s based on budget restraints, not only was a lot of other stuff based on actual science and real life physics, but many of the things that were made up at the time actually became reality in our real lives. It pushed people into physics and science fields, who were fans of the show, and they made those things a reality. You'd be surprised at how many things we take for granted today and in the last 40s years that originated from Star Trek.

Warp Speed travel used to be thought of as impossible, now some are seeing it as possible. Teleporters are already in their infancy. Replicators are also in their infancy. It blows the mind at how much in Star Trek is actually possible, one wonders if maybe something we'll actually be able to live in that kind of future where poverty, disease and prejudice no longer exists. A future not based on greed and accumulation of things, but a future based on our own freedom to choose our own path in life with little restriction and simply just to better ourselves.

Star Wars is more just, here's the good guys, there's the bad guys, have some entertainment for an hour or two and then move on. Star Trek has good guys and bad guys, but a crap tonne of grey areas. Sometimes the bad guys aren't actually bad. Sometimes the good guys are not really good. Often times the bad guys are justified or you can at least understand where they're coming from. They're not just twirling their moustache and trying to destroy planets just because they can. You get to understand why they're the way they are.

Star Wars tried to do that with Darth Vader, but meh. They really didn't do it very well. Star Wars just doesn't flesh characters out very well and when they try to expand on their villains, it's kind of sloppy.

Meh, anyway, that's where I am between the franchises. I won't say what franchise is better than the other flat out. I have my personal preference, but it doesn't negate another's preference. In the end, they're two totally different stories and franchises that shouldn't really be compared. It's unfair both ways.

But I will say this: Star Wars wouldn't exist without Star Trek. And Star Trek wouldn't have continued on past the original 60s series without Star Wars. They're polar opposites of each other, but they're the ying & yang of each other. For that, I'm grateful for both.