Poll: If the Gorn were made realistic ...

[DarkenedWolfEye]

WARNING: MILD STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS SPOILERS!






It occurred to me while watching Star Trek 2, that some of the aliens of the Star Trek universe might not be well received if they were given the big-budget treatment. This was during the part when the Klingons showed up, one removed his helmet and his incredibly well done, high detail, realistic face was revealed. My first thought was "That is awesome." But my second was "But what if he wasn't still recognizable as a Klingon? What if they took an alien who was defined and iconic as a low budget, arguably shoddy-looking monster and did the same thing?"
For those two or three of you reading who don't recognize the name 'Gorn', here's what I'm talking about:
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090425224552/memoryalpha/en/images/9/9b/Gorn.jpg
It's an alien done back in the Original Series from the sixties, so naturally, it is a terrible special effect. My question is, if in the probable third Star Trek movie, Chris Pine fights a revamped, CGI, Godzilla-looking Gorn, would it be awesome or would you hate it?

 

[hazabaza1]

The 2013 game was based around fighting the gorn.

They look like every other lizardman ever, apparently.

 

[shrekfan246]

Blech! Blech! Kill it with fire!

Yeah, what hazabaza said. That mediocre, buggy, overpriced movie tie-in already ruined the Gorn by giving them the revamped Godzilla CGI treatment.

Also, TOS Gorn wasn't special effects. It was a rubber suit. You could call it the same end-game, but I like to think there's still a distinction.

Anyway, if you couldn't tell by my post so far, I don't like seeing the Gorn turned into modern-generic-lizardmen as opposed to 60's-generic-lizardmen. Part of it's the tail. Also the fact they just look like dumb dinosaurs, with ridiculous spines and no outward signs of intelligence. If that's what would happen to them in a new film, then no thank you.

 

[BlazeRaider]

I don't understand. How can you remake perfection?

 

[Aris Khandr]

I think Star Trek Online updated the Gorn nicely.

The game is very hit or miss, but the Gorn were a solid hit.

 

[Dangit2019]

Why did I assume "Gorn" meant "Gore porn"?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

There was a Gorn on Star Trek Enterprise. It was done in CGI.

It did not look very good.

 

[shrekfan246]

There was a Gorn on Star Trek Enterprise. It was done in CGI.

It did not look very good.

It's okay though.

We all know Enterprise never actually happened.

[sub][sub]After all, it's not like that was the only thing about Enterprise that didn't look very good...[/sub][/sub]

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Why did I assume "Gorn" meant "Gore porn"?

Maybe you've spent too much time in DeviantArt.

 

[BlackFlyme]

Why did I assume "Gorn" meant "Gore porn"?

I'd prefer to assume it was because of tvtropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Gorn

OT: So long as they don't look like the diseased fish Haza or Soviet posted, I'd be fine with a Gorn remake.

 

[Dangit2019]

Why did I assume "Gorn" meant "Gore porn"?

Maybe you've spent too much time in DeviantArt.

Worse, it's probably because I've been spending too much time on 4chan.

 

[Xathos]

I think I would like it a lot. Despite only showing up once in the Original Series, I really liked the Gorn. From a few scenes that I've seen of the 2013 Star Trek Movie game, the Gorn there look really cool I think (in fact, I believe there are even a few different types of Gorn? Can't remember, but they looked cool!). If they were anything like that, I wouldn't be disappointed. Aside from some big alien creatures, I don't recall any of the cast interacting with anything CGI at an average/slightly higher than average Human height before, so who knows how well it would be. Could be cool, could be cheesy, could be both. Would probably like it regardless.

Snip

Or this, I could be fine with this image of the Gorn too.

 

[xPixelatedx]

They look like every other lizardman ever, apparently.

And they look awesome...

Seriously, Star trek would be better if it had things like that walking around. The perfectly human-body on all theses aliens is just mind-numbingly retarded, like at the start of the latest movie. "Oh, those two girls Kirk was sleeping with are aliens because they have tails... lol? ...I guess? No, it isn't even worth a laugh." God, it's so stupid.

 

[Vrex360]

You know, speaking as a reptilian alien myself I find it rather offensive that my kind are so often designed to just be generic evil monsters in movies and video games. Why do you people hate the scales so much?

[sub]Is it because I keep setting fire to your planet?[/sub]

Anyway personally I wouldn't mind if the Gorn were made to look more 'realistic' (how realistic can you make a non existant alien race anyway), like if they had more reptilian features and even spines and tails and shiny scales. The picture Aris Khander linked was honestly pretty cool.
I think my problem though lies not in how they look 'realistically' reptilian in say that Star Trek game but rather how utterly de-humanized they were. Like Yahtzee said in his review of it the fact that they were monstrous lizard aliens basically made killing them by the mass 'okay' because they didn't really have any distinctly human features.

It's fine to have reptilian or reptile like aliens in pop culture but I would much prefer it if they actually had some kind of... humanity I guess would have to be the term. I mean like sure the Sangheili in the Halo games for example were very alien looking, giant, dinosauric and having two sets of mandibles but in Halo 2 and Halo 3 they were also given personality. They conversed with each other, and even to humans, they had expressive faces and human voices and they conveyed emotions. They may have been aliens but they also actually felt like people with a society and a culture. By contrast the ones in Halo 4 just look like evil grotesque monsters and it is impossible to imagine them having any kind of emotion or personality beyond that, and even when one does show emotion he gets killed immediately afterwards.

Same with Mass Effect, the Krogans and Turians may look like Gamera and Dinosaur birds respectively but they had personality, faces that showed emotion. Wrex could be full of rage but he could also be witty, sad, interested and even sometimes genuinely happy and friendly. Externally he looked like a monster but you quickly started to view him more as a friend.

I guess what I'm saying is realistic textures and very reptilian features for the Gorn are fine, but try to give them some kind of personality and expressive facial features beyond just being mindless killer monsters. That's what I don't like about the stereotypical evil alien lizard freak trope is that the Gorn, Sangheili and countless others are supposed to be part of society and culture but their design is only to reflect them as hideous monsters and their attitudes are made to reflect that.

Realistically reptilian is fine, but dehumanization is not.

 

[FalloutJack]

I have nothing wrong with this. I like the Gorn.

 

[Flames66]

The 2013 game was based around fighting the gorn.

They look like every other lizardman ever, apparently.

What is that supposed to be? It's certainly not a Gorn as they don't run around naked, do not have tails and don't have legs like velociraptors.

 

[Thaluikhain]

They conversed with each other, and even to humans, they had expressive faces and human voices and they conveyed emotions.

I disagree about that, alien emotions shouldn't really be readable by humans. How do you tell is a crocodile is feeling depressed by looking at its face?

OTOH, that's not to say they shouldn't be people, in some sense.

For example, Doctor Who had terrible rubber costumes for their original Silurians, and terrible voices, but they were able to make them come across as people.

Admittedly, they learnt from that and made the Draconians have facial expressions, which did work better.

 

[Da Orky Man]

They conversed with each other, and even to humans, they had expressive faces and human voices and they conveyed emotions.

I disagree about that, alien emotions shouldn't really be readable by humans. How do you tell is a crocodile is feeling depressed by looking at its face?

OTOH, that's not to say they shouldn't be people, in some sense.

For example, Doctor Who had terrible rubber costumes for their original Silurians, and terrible voices, but they were able to make them come across as people.

Admittedly, they learnt from that and made the Draconians have facial expressions, which did work better.

Remember, this is Star Trek, where the vast majority of aliens consist of slightly odd-looking humans with a variety of forehead cancers. They explain this in a TNG episode in that there was an ancient progenitor humanoid race that seeded the galaxy with their own DNA, influencing evolution on other planets and causing them to have similar features, such as four limbs, bipedal, similar facial features and so on. Except for the foreheads.

 

[Alfador_VII]

As has been said here, the terrible Star Trek game already tried more "realistic" Gorn, which didn't work