Romulans

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Why do the Romulans from the 2009 Star Trek movie look like tattooed goblin thugs and act like Klingons?

That's not what Romulans are like.

It looks better on the screen, which in turn generates more ticket sales and more money for the studio?

Why else?

ST was re-invented several times and old canon abandoned. This isn't anything new. Do you remember the original Romulans from ToS episode Balance of Terror? Those Romulans looked like Roman Legionnaires with pointy ears.

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

The feeling I got was that they weren't the refined officer-type Romulans you see serving aboard battleships. Evidently theirs was a mining ship, and they were all rather pissed about their homeworld being destroyed in an alternate future. They could've probably found a better way... but I don't think they really cared. And they had borg tech on board... not terribly clear on that. So yeah, there are many things that aren't quite clear. So? Visual differences are allowed by artistic license. Canon differences are VERY common in any series.

Or the Klingons before they got the lumpy foreheads? Why are the Romulans different? We do not discuss it with outsiders.

And how I wish Star Trek had left it at that - it was better as a Noodle Incident than the lame-ass Enterprise episode that "explained" it.

As for the Rihannsu- pardon me, the Romulans, as noted above, that was a mining craft originally, crewed by hard-working, hard-drinking men and women of the Romulan Star Empire, not by the more refined officers of the Imperial Fleet or the Tal'Shiar.

Although I am not really sure I like 'Enterprise's' explanation of the Kling-forehead-wrinklement,
I would have liked to see what kind of extra twist they would have given to the Romulans/Rihansu.
But no, they had to cancel the show and put in the most crappy ending of all times... <sulk>

I guess the ST:XI Romulans/Rihansu were probably their version of Hells Angels, although I don't get why they're all bald,
Romulan/Rihansu marine style maybe?

What else do you expect from a people who refuse to embrace the blessings of logic.

OK, big Trekkie here from right back when the original series was shown in the 1960's

1) The explanation featured in the 'Enterprise' series was reasonable, it repaired the mistake which was made in 'Star Trek The Motion Picture' where we see Klingons with the lumpy foreheads for the first time. There were however so many other errors made in 'Enterprise' that the whole series is best forgotten.

2) The final episode of 'Enterprise' was OK but a better ending would have been Cmdr Riker commanding "Holodeck, end program' and the whole thing vanishes. They could therefore interpret errors in 'Enterprise' as problems with the holodeck.

3) The latest movie, 'Star Trek' is a complete new revision and you need to forget everything you ever saw in all of the TV series and the movies. This really is Star Trek for a new generation and I feel old.

4) Vulcan is destroyed in 'Star Trek', not the Romulan home world.

5) Nichelle Nichols was cute in that uniform, the new Lt Uhura played by Zoe Saldana is hotter than fire.

6) I once shook James Doohan by the hand

Vanilla_Slice

Wow!

The hand with the missing finger???

(I by the way hate the fact that Vulcan implodes and Spock's mom dies...grrr)
(I hope they correct it in a next movie and tell you that the past movie was just a waste of time and did not happen at all )

Because they're miners. And they're pissed off because they saw their planet destroyed on their return home.

Most cultures have varieties of expression within them.

So, for example, Irish Americans cavort like idjits on St Patrick's day, painting their beer and anything else they can think of green. In Ireland people either ignore the day, milk it for tourists, or go to mass. Both the American and the homegrown traditions are "Irish".

In England there are people who are defined to a certain subtribe by their "tatoos." Yet there are other groups who wouldn't dream of sporting a tattoo... it would be anathema to them. Both tatted and non tatted are English.

In the same way, I don't see why some Romulans couldn't be scruffy scary looking geezers with tattoos, who probably drink green beer, while other Romulans are more cerebral types who don't shave their heads, and don't sport tatoos. Can't see any problem with that.

At first I was resistant to watching Next Generation because I had grown up with TOS and it felt like an affront that anyone would try to re-make a show that was, as far as I was concerned, perfect. For about six years I avoided it and then someone strongly pressured me to watch some episodes he had videotaped. They were all Data-centric episodes and I was hooked. (No, autistic people aren't REALLY resistant to change, are they?)

So that paved the way to be willing to watch other spin-offs, some of which I liked and some of which I couldn't stand, but it was all okay.

But I felt strange and uneasy with this latest movie and my dislike for it was stronger than for any of the TV series I hadn't cared for. (Though I do agree about Zoe Saldana. She was on the cover of the latest issue of Siempre Mujer (the Latino women's magazine I read to improve my Spanish skills) as well and she is one hot tamale!)

Yeah, the latest Star Trek movie made me feel old, too.

The last three Star Wars movies made me feel old, as well. Half the time, I couldn't even keep straight what was happening because they were filmed in a style that's really hard for my eyes to follow. And they just felt wrong and not-Star-Wars-y. One of the more joyous days in recent memory was when I was able to get the original three movies in the original theatrical versions (not all mucked up from when Lucas decided to go back and change everything) in DVD format to replace my ancient and ready-for-a-decent-burial VHS tapes that I'd been clinging to for so long because for a while it became extremely difficult to find the original versions.

The main thing that bothered me about the Romulans was just the fact they were bald with tattooed heads...
I remember hearing somewhere that it was to differentiate them from the Vulcans, but If I remember correctly isn't that what the slightly bulkier brows and deep red hair was for..? o.O

Also, the lens flaring everywhere in the new movie gets slightly annoying after a while...

The Romulan ship being a big spiky mass of jagged metal was slightly annoying, but they retconned that as being enhanced with Borg technology, so I guess that's okay... ¬_¬

My main problem with Star Trek 2009 is that it just doesn't feel like Star Trek. It seems like, while the other movies were made mostly for the Trekkies, this one butchered the look and feel of the Star Trek universe to make it into more of a generic sci-fi action movie that would appeal to a wider audience. They may as well have just changed the characters' names, used a slightly different-looking starship, and changed the movie's title to Space Adventure and no one would even notice that it was based on Star Trek.

I've heard that the shaved heads and tattoos are a Romulan grief ritual.

I agree that the latest movie doesn't 'feel' very trekky, but I'm hoping that that was just a hook to get in new audiences and any subsequent movies/shows will return to some of the feel of the original.

Sorry to nitpick but not really. Over here people love to get pissed and go wild on Paddy's Day. Very few go to mass and even fewer ignore it.