Star Trek

[RStar]

Saw it, loved it. The most fun I've had at a movie in a long time. Has plenty of stuff the fans will love, yet it stands on it's own merit as well. I won't add any spoilers, after the swanking we can get into that.

So for all those going tomorrow, enjoy!

[innerSpaceman]

Much as I love Star Trek, i'd like to confine my remarks to the thread already in progress ... seems to me it would work out better. We've already started talking about in there ... and I've barely begun to argue with JWBear about it. :p

[innerSpaceman]

On the other hand, since there are two threads, let's have this one allow spoilorz talk, and the "Star Trek Swanking" poll thread be for people who haven't seen the movie, since it's more about going to see the movie.



* * * * *

So, responding to JW about what I liked:

Primarily, for what they were trying to do - - namely, come up with a scenario that brings all the characters together from zip to how we knew them at the start of the original series in the space of a week or so, I think they succeeded beyond reasonable expectations for such a hokey endeavor.

Yes, the casting was mixed, but the only character I truly didn't like was Uhura ... and Sulu was kinda meh. I think the others were great, most especially Spock and McCoy.

I also liked the growing Kirkitude of Kirk and how Pine played him like Shatner only in the final moments when he became Captain of the Enterprise.

Most successful, imo, was the interplay between the characters and how that was set up. The standout of this being Kirk and Bones. And, hahahaha, that scene were Bones keeps jabbing him in the neck with one shot after another to cure the onslaught of bizarre side effects is just brilliant.

The revenge Nero time-traveling plot was boring, but as a device for having a series of Star Trekisms and especially Kirkisms along its length, I thought the film did just fine. But yeah, giant inconquerable Earth-endangering Verjurish ships are ho-hum boring, and I found the use of Leonard Nimoy to be gratuitous and too much.


But the film was funnny, breezy, endearing, action-packed, nice-looking and, to me, very very Star Treky.

Oh, and I want to have Chris Pine's babies.




Now, I will address some of your issues, most of which - quite franky - I see as nitpicking:


The original Scotty was a professional; this movie turned him into a buffoon.

Scotty evolved to a comic relief character in the original series, a process accelerated in the movies. I think this Scotty was completely in line with that, and was set up as an eccentric genius that others will dismiss, but Kirk will trust implicitely.



Overall, I was bothered by the “Muppet Babies” version of the Enterprise crew that they presented us. They were all the same age and all at the academy at the same time. How convenient! It ignored that Spock, Scotty, and McCoy were older and more experienced, and that Sulu and Uhura were younger… And what in the name of the Seven Hells was Chekhov doing there?

Well, it seems pretty obvious that Muppet Babies Star Trek was the entire point. Yeah, it was a tad un-canonly convenient that they are all part of the same cadet class, but a dramatic license I accept for the story of getting them all to their ToS status within a week of meeting. Besides, and I think this was the only clever achievement of the thin plot - - it's an alternate timeline from the first minute of the movie, so there's no canon to adhere to. Everything's the same, but free to be completely different. Brilliant, imo.

BTW, it's "canon" that Chekov was aboard the Enterprise in first season before he was promoted to a Bridge Officer. To have him on the Bridge from the get-go in an alternate timeline is, imo, completely acceptable.




My second big complaint was the sets. $150 million and they couldn’t afford to build some sets??? The 20th century power plant interiors reeked of Sci Fi Channel Movie of the Week. Totally unbelievable, cheesy, and cheap. Every time they showed “Engineering” I was yanked out of what little suspension of disbelief I could muster.

Yeah, ok, but so? I thought they were going for a kind of early-Federation look, but I don't watch Sci-Fi Channel and I didn't watch "Enterrpise" to see how they did that same thing. Of course, the Bridge was ultra high tech, so this was inconsistent. But really, set design? Nitpick.

(The Bridge was awesome, btw.)




The destruction of Vulcan was one of the biggest WTF moments in my moviegoing career. If I hadn’t been with friends, I think I would have walked out on the movie at that point. And I shall never forgive them for killing off Spock’s mother.

First, I'll grant that I'm tired of the movies having to have some "big" destruction thing, either the Earth in mortal danger or the Enterprise being destroyed over and over again. But I liked this plot-point very much for setting up the tortured Spock of the original series. We are so used to Spock being so together and wise and ultra cool, but in the early series he was a tortured soul of stranger in a strange land. I think this plot point and its affect on Spock brings this element back to the character, and I like it.

So what if they destroyed Vulcan? It certainly was unexpected! And the alternate timeline allows for anything. Oh, and the actress playing Amanda was lame, so I'm glad they killed her off. Jane Wyatt she was not.

(Young Sarek, on the other hand, came off reasonably well, I thought)




There were many other things that had me squirming in my seat; the red goo that was so dangerous and powerful that a drop of it can destroy a planet, yet it’s stored an handled so casually

Really? Do we want our madman planet-destroying weaponry depicted with precise realism now in Star Trek? Since when?




a starship being built out in the middle of a cornfield – at a place that just happens to be where Star Fleet recruits from all over Earth report to (what, no direct flights to San Francisco from anywhere else?).

Seems to me a lot of military bases are in the middle of U.S. nowhere. Sure this was a stretch, if you're going to think about things in terms of real-world probable logistics. When has Star Trek ever gone there either?




They made Kirk into the same arrogant asshole we seen in nearly every action film out there. He was indistinguishable from dozens of others of that type. At no time did I believe him as Kirk.

To me, this is the crux of it. Either you bought Kirk or you didn't, and your enjoyment of the movie is very affected by this ... because it's basically the story of Becoming Kirk.

I thought Chris Pine was pretty cookie-cutter at times, I admit. But overall, I thought he had a nice through-line of becoming more and more Kirk ... certainly more and more as he interacted with the other characters.

So I was sold on Kirk, and I guess that makes all the difference.



As I've said, imo, the movie was funny, endearing, well-paced, easy on the eyes, and relentlessly Star Trekian. Loved It.

[innerSpaceman]

Or, as Onion News (http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film) perfectly encapsulates it. :p

[JWBear]

To respond to some of your points:

Scotty evolved to a comic relief character in the original series, a process accelerated in the movies. I think this Scotty was completely in line with that, and was set up as an eccentric genius that others will dismiss, but Kirk will trust implicitely.

That doesn't make it right. imo. Why follow the trend from the later movies which i disliked, btw) if your goal is to "reboot" the entire mythos?

Well, it seems pretty obvious that Muppet Babies Star Trek was the entire point. Yeah, it was a tad un-canonly convenient that they are all part of the same cadet class, but a dramatic license I accept for the story of getting them all to their ToS status within a week of meeting. Besides, and I think this was the only clever achievement of the thin plot - - it's an alternate timeline from the first minute of the movie, so there's no canon to adhere to. Everything's the same, but free to be completely different. Brilliant, imo.

BTW, it's "canon" that Chekov was aboard the Enterprise in first season before he was promoted to a Bridge Officer. To have him on the Bridge from the get-go in an alternate timeline is, imo, completely acceptable.

This movie takes place 7 years before the events in the first season of TOS. I still don't buy Chekov being on the Enterprise in any capacity.

Yeah, ok, but so? I thought they were going for a kind of early-Federation look, but I don't watch Sci-Fi Channel and I didn't watch "Enterrpise" to see how they did that same thing. Of course, the Bridge was ultra high tech, so this was inconsistent. But really, set design? Nitpick.

(The Bridge was awesome, btw.)

Enterprise had sets that looked far better than the crap we saw in this movie. There is no excuse for putting a freaking chemical factory on board the USS Enterprise. It was lazy and cheap.

First, I'll grant that I'm tired of the movies having to have some "big" destruction thing, either the Earth in mortal danger or the Enterprise being destroyed over and over again. But I liked this plot-point very much for setting up the tortured Spock of the original series. We are so used to Spock being so together and wise and ultra cool, but in the early series he was a tortured soul of stranger in a strange land. I think this plot point and its affect on Spock brings this element back to the character, and I like it.

So what if they destroyed Vulcan? It certainly was unexpected! And the alternate timeline allows for anything. Oh, and the actress playing Amanda was lame, so I'm glad they killed her off. Jane Wyatt she was not.

(Young Sarek, on the other hand, came off reasonably well, I thought)

If he already was a "tortured soul" in TOS, why did they need to do something that wasn't part of original canon to make him so? It doesn't make any sense. the destruction of Vulcan was just a gratuitous excuse for more "gee-whiz" special effects.

Seems to me a lot of military bases are in the middle of U.S. nowhere. Sure this was a stretch, if you're going to think about things in terms of real-world probable logistics. When has Star Trek ever gone there either?

Star Fleet Academy is in San Francisco. Why were recruits from all over the globe going to Iowa first? As I asked, do they not have direct flights to SF in the future? Canon has established that the main Starfleet shipyards were in orbit around Mars. Why would you build a huge masive starship on a planet's surface? Illogical. Small things, yes, but all the small inconsistencies add up to one big annoyance.

[blueerica]

Without getting into finer details, which I reserve the right to do later, yes, I loved the movie, no, it wasn't perfect, but, it was a delicious departure that was camp, and IMO, not abusive to the original.

And - they said it in the movie - it's an alternate universe, so I didn't bother trying to get hung up on what I thought others would or should be like, because life's circumstances may have been completely altered with the death of Kirk's father. Maybe someone missed out on an important mentor - any number of things could have changed the timing or motivation behind the storyline. So long as they kept the basic elements, I planned to be pleased, and I was. (though I wonder if my ultimate enjoyment of Scotty had more to do with the fact that he was played by Simon Pegg, whom I have a huge nerd crush on)

Oh, and Uhuru... yeah, didn't care for her much...

Okay, so after reading iSm's post again, I mostly agree with him.

And yeah, Iowa... which, incidentally, is where J is at the moment as a part of a special test squadron. Was everyone getting on that transport from around the globe, or was it a regional transport center for Starfleet? I need to think about that one some more. Maybe it was a bit odd that there was a "shipyard" in Iowa.

Oh well, it got the cute Kirk on board.

[RStar]

The wherehouse looks to the sets were the one thing that bothered me as well. It just looked too different than the clean look in TOS (for those unaware, The Original Series). I was a little confused about the distruction on Vulcan. Didn't that go completely outside the realm of the history line already established, or did I miss something?

[Melonballer]

I was a little confused about the distruction on Vulcan. Didn't that go completely outside the realm of the history line already established, or did I miss something?

It was supposed to. The movie is set in an alternate universe from the original Star Trek series.

[swanie]

OK...I really liked it. I'm teetering on the L-O-V-E word, but at this point I can say that I'm deeply "in like" with it. I entered the theater completely unspoiled, and for that I was grateful. I agree that the film isn't without it's faults, but overall I found it to be a ton of fun. And unlike the Star Wars prequels, I thought this was a completely worthy addition to the series. It got a hardy round of applause at our showing and regardless of the following gripes, the film still earned two very big thumbs up from the Swanies.

I thought the casting was fantastic, and though I agree that Uhura was my least favorite of the regulars I don't blame that one on the actress. I didn't buy her relationship with Spock at all, and frankly I'd be happy to never see Uhura-Spock loving ever again. I didn't despise the actress, instead my issue was with how the role was written.

I really liked Chris Pine's Kirk. I loved seeing the John Wayne/Capt. Kirk swagger come out once he donned the yellow shirt and walked on the bridge at the end. Kirk has always been a rebel. He's always been mischievous. He's always been a hound dog. He's always had a fair amount of confidence. ;) I have to say that I loved watching his development into officer material during the course of the 2 hours.

For any old Alias fans there...did the big red ball bring back any memories? Mr. Swanie and I both looked at each other with a "you've got to be kidding me" look when it came on screen. J.J. was never able to explain away "the circumference red ball of whatever" during the show's 5 seasons, so I guess this was meant to be some kind of redemption? :D Regardless of his intent, it certainly gave us a good laugh.

I guess my biggest sticking point with the film is the idea of an alternate reality. In one sense, I see it as a brilliant move to keep the future prequels fresh and interesting. They can play with history of the series and throw us a bone here and there since not everything is bound to change (ie. the ceti eel and Pike, how Bones got his nickname, seeing how Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru, etc.)...but my big complaint is that they're inevitably going to screw with the series' history too. With the exception of the destruction of Vulcan and could someone please explain to me how 2 Spocks can live side by side without causing the universe to implode somehow (isn't that one of the basic rules of alternate realities...that you're never allowed to meet yourself without suffering some dire conequence?)...I thought it worked reasonably well for this installment. I'd like to reserve my final judgment until prequel #2 comes out. I hope it continues to work, but I could see it sucking too.

And finally for my most minor gripe...I hated having to wait to hear the theme until the end. Once I was in my seat I wanted to hear "the" music and it was cruel and unusual punishment having to wait until the final credits. ;)

[mousepod]

Hated it. I'm going to collect my thoughts and post more later, but yuck.

[innerSpaceman]

Really?

To the extent this will become one of those LoVE iT OR hAtE iT movies, with most people on the (correct) side of Loving it ... Star Trek might be destined to become one of my fAVoriTE MoVIEs eVeR.



Just got back from seeing it again, btw. Holds up completely. Might see it again tomorrow. So.Good.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

LOVED IT!!!! :D :D :D

I can't believe they did it. A reboot, an alternate universe, new and old at the same time.

I could easily nitpick things, as JW did (and I have more too) but I found myself laughing them off and enjoying the movie fully anyway, which surprised me greatly. They nailed so much that I love about Trek that the rest seemed unimportant.

My heart was in my throat for much of it...Vulcan! Spock's mom! *sob* Yet instead of getting angry at the writers I found myself involved in this alternate universe deprived of these things.

There were some amazing performances that drew on my deepest Trekkie emotions. There was a lot of nuance hidden in there. Bones was killing me - damn, he was amazing.

At the point where Kirk talks to old Spock in the ice cave, I felt a sharp pain in my chest as I fully grokked the death of the old show. These actors are beyond old, some gone. That era is beyond over. I truly felt a sense of grief while Nimoy told young Kirk of his friendship with him.

But, what this movie signifies is that these characters are defying death. It's a reverse engineered comic book. The show and actors came first - the characters developed later. And now, the characters have jumped out and beyond their origins and have become a mythos onto themselves, open to new interpretations, new adventures.

I laughed and cried and loved it.

Or, as Onion News (http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film) perfectly encapsulates it. :pEXACTLY! Bwahahaha!

[Alex]

Much I liked a lot. A bit too much I didn't like. And a smidgen of stuff that was just god awful stupid (the two slapstick scenes particularly).

Solid B.

But that is a huge improvement since the last 7 Star Trek movies have probably averaged a D.

[Alex]

(isn't that one of the basic rules of alternate realities...that you're never allowed to meet yourself without suffering some dire conequence?)I don't think there are "basic rules of alternate realities" though you're right that such a rule is not infrequent in the genre. Don't think it has ever been suggested for Star Trek though (and in reality, to the extent that alternate realities are hypothesized to exist, transfer of information from one to the other is also hypothesized as impossible so the issue can't arise).

Besides, old Spock is no longer the future of the current Spock, he's just another person.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I'm in the liked, verging on loved camp. I could surely pick apart things I didn't like, things that didn't make sense, etc, etc. But I just found myself happily overlooking it all as the whole package came together to make a very good, fun to watch movie.

I am conflicted on the whole alternate universe thing. I understand why, and on one level really do like the idea of flat dropping the decades of baggage. On the otherhand, I can't shake the nagging feeling of loss that they've just wiped out everything I've known and loved that's happened to these characters. That feeling is outweighed by the appreciation of the necessary freedom gained by it, but it is what's keeping me from saying I loved it.

Like I said, I have my quibbles with it, but I have my quibbles with every single Trek episode/series/film so whatever.

[Alex]

I will admit that the presentation of the physics of black holes was just so horrendously stupid that I had a hard time overlooking it.

I know that science isn't something that Star Trek has ever shown an interest in getting right but it would have helped if they just invented a new particle instead of referring to singularities and black holes (and if you have a black hole that sucks up all of Vulcan in a few seconds it is probably doing to do horrible things its Earth-mass-moon Hoth).

And that is where I'll try to leave the nitpicking since pretty much NOTHING shown in the movie makes any rational sense (apparently planets have no defense systems or satellites so that Vulcan reports "tectonic activity" but not a giant ****ing spaceship drilling a hole into the planet...whoops I'll stop) but most of it was still fun to watch.

[Ghoulish Delight]

So what if they destroyed Vulcan? It certainly was unexpected! And the alternate timeline allows for anything. Oh, and the actress playing Amanda was lame, so I'm glad they killed her off.
Yeah, total hack (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000213/). ;)

[innerSpaceman]

I don't think there are "basic rules of alternate realities" though you're right that such a rule is not infrequent in the genre. Don't think it has ever been suggested for Star Trek though.
In fact, that was one of the nicely sly bits ... Old Spock explaining to Spock how easy it was to get Kirk to assume the universe would implode if 2 of the same people were to meet in a temporal paradox ... but, no, that's just a wive's tale. Hehehe.

[mousepod]

I'll keep it brief, just to get my thoughts down.

It was a Star Trek movie, with characters from the original series. They made the movie about Kirk, Spock, Bones etc because they are characters that we love and are familiar with.

I disagree that it was an alternate universe from moment one. In many prequels, the backstory is rewritten. Sometimes it's to make sense out of sloppily written existing backstory, and sometimes it's dramatic license. Either way, that didn't bug me at all. I rather enjoyed the first chunk of the movie, the same way that I've enjoyed the various iterations through the years of say, Batman. But in every origin story of Batman, his parents die. That's the thing that "made" him Batman.

So when they introduce McCoy and he's bitching about his divorce, I slapped my knee and chuckled, "That's why he's so crotchety! Good for the writers!" When adolescent Spock is taunted by the young Vulcans, I appreciated the duality that the character was being handed by the script. Again, I was delighted by the writers' choice.

But then, they blew up Alderaan Vulcan. And then I realized that they hadn't just scrapped the backstory, they scrapped the whole shebang. Past, present, future.

Again, to bring it back to comic book terms, it was as if there was a character I really liked and they promised for years that a great writer was going to write his origin story. But that origin story negated not only the hastily written backstory that had stood for years, but had also completely negated any of the adventures that I'd enjoyed so far. And that, to me, is cheap shenanigans. Why bother using the characters from the original series if you're going to change them all? The only answer I can imagine is that the last Star Trek movie only grossed $47 million so they went back to the original well to revive the franchise. If it had been done artfully, I might have been happy. But it was ham-handed and sloppy.

An illustration of my point: in the 70's, there was this great DC comics character called Swamp Thing. He was a scientist developing a plant serum that, through no fault of his own, was involved in an explosion that somehow fused him with plant matter, making him a weird human/plant hybrid. The original issues of that story, created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, were very cool and, for the time, pretty forward-thinking. Decades later, when Alan Moore (the guy who would write Watchmen) was brough in to "re-boot" Swamp Thing, he rewrote the origin and in this case, the scientist dies. Somehow, his essence, his soul, or whatever, is what animates the plant. The comic took on a whole other dimension - examining what it truly is to be human. If one looked back at the previous (pre-Moore) Swamp Thing stories, they take on an extra layer of poignancy, because the character isn't what he thinks he is.

With Star Trek, it's more like the crappy "multiple earth" concept that DC comics used to make the heroes perennially young. How could The Flash (or Green Lantern or Hawkman or Superman or Batman...) be the same superhero in the 1940's and the 1960's? Easy! They weren't. Those stories took place on a different world.

So this movie sacrificed the entire Star Trek universe as we know it for a mediocre story about a rogue Romulan... miner? Nice work, guys.

This wasn't how Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Chekov, Sulu et al met... this movie is how similar characters with the same names met. And I felt like a victim of bait-and-switch halfway through. And I don't like it. Not one bit.

[innerSpaceman]

Oh, and yeah, realized it was Winona Ryder when I saw it again tonight. Still think she's a lame Amanda, and I'm glad she won't be in this movie series anymore.


And I'll grant that some of the details were completely stupid (Assembling Starships on planet, in Iowa or anywhere ... traveling through black holes and all of Alex's other blackholisitc observations - - -


- - - BUT since they could explain away any of this with a line of expository dialogue, I don't care that they didn't bother with that step.




Edited to add: ooooh, I see mousepod has posted his remarks. gonna read 'em now.

[Alex]

Before tehy make the next movie, Karl Urban needs to have some issue arise that prevents his continued participation. I'm sure another quick temporal issue can explain McCoy suddenly being played by Macauley Culkin or something (that would be an improvement over Urban's apparent attempt to do an impression of DeForest Kelley doing an impression of Jack Nicholson).

I was surprised at how quickly I accepted Quinto as Spock and I was mostly fine with Pegg taking Scotty to the next level of comic relief. Sulu and Checkov I'm indifferent to though I'm curious about it appearing that they are enlisted rather than officers (only way to explain their presence on the ship when so young). Interesting move with Uhura. Chris Pine reminds me too much of Neal McDonough (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_McDonough) and I found that distracting for the first half or so.

Wouldn't have minded a few movies of Bruce Greenwood as captain while mentoring Kirk and Spock. Pike remains my pick for best captain of an Enterprise.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I'll keep it brief, just to get my thoughts down.

It was a Star Trek movie, with characters from the original series. They made the movie about Kirk, Spock, Bones etc because they are characters that we love and are familiar with.

...

This wasn't how Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Chekov, Sulu et al met... this movie is how similar characters with the same names met. And I felt like a victim of bait-and-switch halfway through. And I don't like it. Not one bit.
I'm okay with that. Honestly, one of the things I hated most about Enterprise was how much, "Ooooh, THAT'S the backstory x, y, and z for that person or invention or treaty," stuff. I find that after a while, I don't give a crap about back story. So I'm pretty okay with just scrapping it all and starting new. Same characters, new adventures, screw the obsessive continuity hawks.

[mousepod]

I'm okay with that. Honestly, one of the things I hated most about Enterprise was how much, "Ooooh, THAT'S the backstory x, y, and z for that person or invention or treaty," stuff. I find that after a while, I don't give a crap about back story. So I'm pretty okay with just scrapping it all and starting new. Same characters, new adventures, screw the obsessive continuity hawks.

It's okay to be okay with it. And I don't think a prequel needs to adhere to some canonical backstory, either.

But to go back to my comic book analogy: The Flash was cool because he could run really fast. The Green Lantern was an interesting hero because all of his power was in his ring. When they brought out new versions of those heroes - with different 'real' names and everything - it was okay because they still retained the stuff that made them popular.

I would argue that this particular Enterprise crew is popular not because of any super powers, but because of the adventures they had together and the relationship they had with each other. I liked Shatner's Kirk and Nimoy's Spock because of the relationship they had with each other. So that was the bait that brought me to the theater on opening weekend.

And it turns out it's not those guys. Not even those characters. And it's okay that you're okay with that. But the "alternate timeline" stuff is hackneyed and easy. Not clever.

It's as if Marvel took an issue of the old comic "What If?" ("What if Spider-Man had joined The Fantastic Four?" "What if Conan The Barbarian walked the earth today?") and decided to make it a series of its own, but didn't tell anyone until halfway through the comic.

[Alex]

But the "alternate timeline" stuff is hackneyed and easy. Not clever.

The admission of such with the line about going back in time and changing things being cheating was a bit too meta for me.

I definitely understand what you're saying and I'm surprised I don't agree more than I do. I told Lani walking home afterward that it was bittersweet since the movie essentially instructs us to ignore the hundreds of hours of TV and movies that have come so far (not to mention the first 100 or so of the novels I read as a kid). Sure it still happened in one sense but is no longer relevant to any future engagement with the Star Trek world.

But I'm bothered by that much less than I though I would be (I've always preferred Trek to Star Wars but the product has been so awful for long enough that I think I'm grateful for something that can be enjoyed on at least some levels).

[innerSpaceman]

I don't understand what mousepod is saying at all. Maybe I need sleep.

But these characters are NOT different people. It's an alternate timeline, not an alternate universe. If my father had not died 10 years ago, but was still alive today ... I would still be me. Different incidents may happen, and I might be slightly different for that. But no more different than I am between a Monday and a Wednesday.

So I'm really not getting this thing about the charcters not being the same, or their relationships to each other being false ... especially since the characters and their relationships to each other are what I think the movie nailed so successfully.



It seems quite clearly to me the alternate timeline element is a skimpy conceipt to allow slight differences without being lambasted for it, and nothing more. I frankly don't know what mousepod is on about.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Leonard Nimoy has officially declared JW and mousepod to be dickheads.

[mousepod]

I don't understand what mousepod is saying at all.

It seems quite clearly to me the alternate timeline element is a skimpy conceipt to allow slight differences without being lambasted for it, and nothing more. I frankly don't know what mousepod is on about.

Leonard Nimoy has officially declared JW and mousepod to be dickheads.

I appreciate that iSm doesn't understand an argument that's not the one he expected and is prepared to defend.

And I'm sad that Leonard Nimoy is retarded.

Here it is, in simple terms, for both of you:

I have no problem with fvcking with the canon of Star Trek. I'm not a Trekkie, or a Trekker or whatever. I actually am fond of messing with stories. If I'm not mistaken, both iSm and GD, to name but two LoTers are sticklers for canon in other similar entertainment franchises. Not me.

My problem isn't that they changed the story, my problem is that the "sell" of the movie is "this is how the characters you loved all these years met." But once they blow up Vulcan, it's clear that this movie is about how different versions of these characters met. Sorry if you can't wrap your head around it, iSm, but that's not what they're hinting at, that's what they're telling. Because in this movie, Leonard Nimoy's Spock is the one that had all of those experiences that we saw in the TV show and movies. The new Spock won't be the one to have those experiences. He's a different guy.

And Leonard Nimoy's dentures suck.

[Ghoulish Delight]

But the "alternate timeline" stuff is hackneyed and easy. Not clever.

Which I agree with. Like I said, it brought it down a notch for me. But I understand why they did it and appreciate the benefit that comes with it. To me, it frees me up to just enjoy this stuff as pure popcorn adventure again instead of worrying about whether it makes sense with what I already know. This coming form someone who's watched Next Generation with my Nitpicker's Guide in hand...and has sent in things the author missed.




And just for the record, the "dickhead" comment was a line from a cameo by Nimoy on SNL

[innerSpaceman]

It's just a silly device.


I don't read comics, so the only thing I can relate to as far as the stupid tricks mousepod eluded to previously is the James Bond movie series.


They don't explain why he's a different actor and often pretending to be the exact same character from 40 years ago perpetually young (e.g., Pierce Brosnon's Bond refers to his marriage to Diana Rigg that happened to George Lazenby Bond in the Sean Connery era).

They simply don't explain it, and it seems a little silly, but we accept it.

In the reboot, they also breeze past it ... but imply this is James Bond's first adventure, but happening in modern times. Has all of James Bond history not happened? Do they just keep assigning new agents the number 007 and the name James Bond? Do they implant some of these guys with past memory chips and some not?

No, it's just not explained and it's fine.


So Star Trek inserted a little plot point to "explain" why these guys will be the same, but different. Big freaking deal. It doesn't make these characters not the "same." Is Roger Moore the same Bond as Sean Connery. Is Daniel Craig? Who the fvck cares?


How do these "things" make for a bad movie or a good one? They are simply exposition points.

And you are mistaken, at least about me, as far as being a stickler for canon in other movie series. I may be a sticker for things not being dumbed down, made silly, or becoming bad entertainment ... but I've never given a fig about canon.


Did it bother me when Khan recognizes Checkov when he NEVER met him in the episode Khan is from? Not a single, solitary bit. Wrath of Khan is a fantastic movie.


And for those who freak out they killed Vulcan, does anyone recall the uproar and upset when they killed Spock? Pfft, they brought him back to life in the next episode. Relax, it's just a story.



I guess it seems to me JW and mousepod are, from different approaches, basing their dislike of the movie on plot points and expositionary choices. That seems a thin criteria.

I'm really rather sorry such ephemera took you guys out of the film and bugged you. That's too bad. I think you've missed out on a fantastically entertaining movie.

It's not a necessary indication of quality, but this is one of the best-reviewed films I've seen come along in a long time. And I've already seen the movie with at least 20 friends, all of whom liked it immensely, some of these people have been my Star Trek buddies for 30 years. They are all giving the movie great word-of-mouth, as are most people in this thread.

So what I'm suggesting is there's a strong possiblity of finding this movie a great entertainment. I regret it didn't hit you two this way. C'est la vie.

[Alex]

So I'm really not getting this thing about the charcters not being the same, or their relationships to each other being false

Yeah, while I'm not so bothered by it, I'm with mousepod here. I'm not sure you can at all argue that these characters are just slightly different but essentially the same people.

Because of the alteration of the timeline Kirk grew up without his father and a huge chip on his shoulder taking an entirely different route to where he is and meeting all of the characters in entirely different circumstances.

Spock is having a romantic relationship with Uhura has learned that it is ok to express that love and is living as the refugee of a nearly eradicated species.

Sulu apparently bought a stupid ass sword somewhere and now takes it with him everywhere.

This movie set up extremely different characters with the cheat that in future films they can return to our shared now falsified experience for cheap nostalgia.

I didn't care, but I am surprised to see that so many of the people who were so horribly upset when The Force turned out to be a bacterial infection don't seem to care at all that Abrams just pulled the science fiction version of "and then he woke up to find it was all a dream."

[innerSpaceman]

Nope, not buying it. Before I was with Isaac, I was repressing my homosexuality. Not anymore. Am I a "different" person after such a major lifestyle change?

No.

I am me under radically different circumstances.



And since it's just a silly plot point to explain why they won't be slavishly copying the original series, this entire line of argument just strikes me as beyond silly.


Oh, and Midochloreans are not what made The Phantom Menace a bad film.

[innerSpaceman]

I am surprised to see that so many of the people ... don't seem to care at all that Abrams just pulled the science fiction version of "and then he woke up to find it was all a dream."

I suppose it comes down to an analog of the Roger Rabbit dictum, "As long as it was funny."

In other words, if the last season of Roseanne had been as good as the first 5 seasons instead of being craptacular, it wouldn't have mattered to me that the entire season was just a dream.


So slightly tortured exposition to explain why they won't be copying your father's Star Trek to a T. for Tiberius, building starships on gravity-bound planetary surfaces, engineering sections that look like 20th-Century power plants, and radically stupid alterations of basic scientific and plausible concepts don't matter ... since the movie was enjoyably fantastic.


Again, in my humble opinion (and that of 91% of critics and 97% of filmgoers) :p

[Alex]

Of course that's not what made Phantom Menace a bad film. But it is a "violation" of the pre-known story that pissed a lot of people off.

And your example of coming out of the closet isn't even close to the same thing as what we're talking about so I think we really are talking past each other. If the future you cam back and changed something from before your birth so that every single life experience you had was fundamentally different than what had already experienced then yes, I'd pretty strongly argue that you are a significantly different person. And that is what happened to Kirk (and now to significant degrees, if not before, for every other character).

A night's sleep hasn't helped my regard for the movie. As I think about it the near total stupidity of plot and science is coming more to the fore so it is probably best for me to stop thinking about it at all if I don't want to ruin what was a pretty good in-the-moment experience.

[mousepod]

iSm ... you're arguing against a position that I didn't take.

I'm wondering if you don't understand what my real beef is.

And perhaps that's why you loved the movie. So rather than reiterate, I will just accept that you have gotten hours of entertainment for your money, and be happy for you.

[Alex]

Presumably Spock will now warn the Federation about such oncoming threats as V'Ger (plenty of time to clone some whales rather than going back in time and thus delaying the invention of transparent aluminum), the Borg (so no reason to go back in time and jump start the invention of Cochrane's warp engines, drawing the attention of Vulcan, and triggering the founding of the Federation), and all the other various galaxy threatening events that will be happening in the next 150 years.

(And I just remembered the real reason why putting a black hold in the middle of a supernova won't help. Generally -- and definitely in one big enough to "threaten the galaxy" though no such supernova could really exist -- there is already a black hole at the middle of a supernova, the creation of which being what causes the explosion.)

Dammit, I can't stop! It was fun! But it was stupid! But it was fun! And since I probably won't see it again for years, if ever, eventually I'll just remember the stupid! and not the fun!

[CoasterMatt]

I kept waiting for somebody to say that Kirk's midichlorian count was off the scale...

[innerSpaceman]

If the future you cam back and changed something from before your birth so that every single life experience you had was fundamentally different than what had already experienced then yes, I'd pretty strongly argue that you are a significantly different person. And that is what happened to Kirk (and now to significant degrees, if not before, for every other character).

Ok, I'm not suggesting the following is due to any philosophical purpose of the screenwriters, but what happens is that there is "fate" to certain elements of one's life. Captain Pike is crippled from the waist down instead of face down. Checkov ends up at the helm 8 years earlier. Kirk becomes Captain of the Enterprise. On and on. The premise, which I happen to like and which is time-travel fiction standard, is that certain things will happen no matter what, and other things will change.

And, um, since it's all a matter of accepting Daniel Brosnon Moore as James Bond, I hardly think it matters anyway.

But, for curiosity's sake, when is the tipping point of total character-difference for you, Alex? Does it have to be a time anomaly before one's birth, or will the change occurring at age 7 do just as nicely? Is Spock a different person if, as in much fan fic, he's a big Vulan 'mo and Kirk's lover? Or is he only a different person if his planet is destroyed?


* * * * *


mousepod, I'm sorry I've seemed to miss your point. I love your opinions on film, even when I don't agree with them ... so I'll have to go re-read your posts with an eye on better comprehension ... but not just so's I can disagree with you properly. ;)

[Alex]

The premise, which I happen to like and which is time-travel fiction standard, is that certain things will happen no matter what, and other things will change.

Yes, that is a time-travel staple...when things remain in a single timeline. It is definitely not a staple of multiple timeline science fiction however and that is what we are dealing with here.

But then I also simply don't have any personal or philosophical affinity for ideas such as "fate" so I'm sure that doesn't help.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Dammit, I can't stop! It was fun! But it was stupid! But it was fun! And since I probably won't see it again for years, if ever, eventually I'll just remember the stupid! and not the fun!This was exactly how I felt about Phantom Menace (except for the not seeing it for years - I saw it 6 times in theaters).

Regarding midichlorians - the reason it was such blasphemy to me was that it put a mystical concept and made it scientific. They took the magic out, which to me was denying a basic principle of the original trilogy. This is the major difference between Wars and Trek, as Trek was based in science and logic. The only analogy I can think of to Trek is if they claimed that the science of Trek was actually magic - warp drive created by God or something. Then you'd get a rant out of me.

As I said before I did feel like I was mourning the old Trek. But I don't feel that they were saying the old experiences didn't matter. I can accept that that universe remains intact, elsewhere. This is an alternate universe. The characters have slight differences, sure - you're going to have a scrappier Kirk due to daddy issues and a more live-for-today Spock, but hey, holy crap, they have something MORE to write about! A slight twist. Like iSm, I also caught the new Kirk acting Kirk-ish in those last moments of the movie. Yay.

I am seriously hoping that after LOST ends Abrams will bring this to TV. Please!!!

[innerSpaceman]

Yes, that is a time-travel staple...when things remain in a single timeline. It is definitely not a staple of multiple timeline science fiction however and that is what we are dealing with here.
You mean they've mixed up time-travel-tropes and black hole theory? On Star Trek? Heavens to Betsy Ross!

[Alex]

I'm not going to say there is a solid line. But Kirk's motiviations and Spock's motivations for how they proceed through life have been fundamentally changed. And whether that results in somewhat similar courses that is, in my opinion, a very important difference.

But the key thing is not just that they are different people than originally depicted but that with this film we are told that all that has come before is irrelevant (and I believe one of mousepod's points is that it is cheating to use the love of what has come before as the draw to get you into the theater only to reveal halfway in that it is all being discarded) to any future engagement with the franchise except insofar as it allows the writers a convenient shortcut. Yes, those events still happened in some other timeline (similar to "its just a dream events" really happened in the dream) but they are of no future use in experiencing future events (except where they provide easy one-liners to future writers).

I also don't understand at all the comparison to James Bond beyond the fact that they are really the only examples of such lengthy movie franchises. I'm sure you really do see a parallel of importance but I'm completely missing it since the internal structure of the two franchises has never been on similar terms.

[Alex]

You mean they've mixed up time-travel-tropes and black hole theory? On Star Trek? Heavens to Betsy Ross!

No, I'm not accusing them of mixing up time-travel-tropes. I'm accusing you of mixing them up.

[innerSpaceman]

This movie takes place 7 years before the events in the first season of TOS.

Sorry, but I missed this earlier.


Um, did I miss this? I've seen the movie twice now and I don't recall them mentioning that it was seven years ealier? Was there some StarDate announced that's seven years earlier than the first StarDate ever mentioned in the first season of the show?

That would be a stretch, but please don't tell me it's in the press materials or the novelization or some such completely non-canonical source. The MOVIE made it seem as if the time of the tv series is about 3 months later, though of course they didn't specify if it was that or 7 years or any such thing.


Unless I missed it.




Oh, and Alex ... touche.

[Alex]

I don't recall if there was anything in the movie that established it. However, assuming that the construction of the Enterprise itself was not significantly changed due to the loss of the Kelvin then its maiden voyage happened in this film (Pike says as much when they first leave Earth). And so this is the final year (one presumes) of Kirk's time at the academy.

In the original timeline when Kirk becomes captain the Enterprise had already been on one five year mission with Pike as the captain (and Spock as first officer). So that would seem to argue that the movie is happening at least 5-7 years before the beginning of TOS (that episode starts with the Kirk five-year mission already some amount of time under way).


And looking at the "canon" timeline I see that the events of "The Cage" happened in 2254 (this is the episode that used the original pilot with Pike as captain) while the first episode of TOS happened in 2265. So by that timeline, again assuming that the construction of the Enterprise was not moved, the events of the movie must be more like 10-13 years earlier than when Kirk became captain of the Enterprise in the originally presented timeline.

Stardates were mentioned frequently in the movie so it would be relatively easy to align with the events of the original timeline (unless destruction of the Kelvin triggered a change in what stardates mean).

[innerSpaceman]

I also don't understand at all the comparison to James Bond beyond the fact that they are really the only examples of such lengthy movie franchises. I'm sure you really do see a parallel of importance but I'm completely missing it since the internal structure of the two franchises has never been on similar terms.

True, but the kernel of analogy is there. A new Bond does not mean that all that stuff for the last 40 years never happened. Even Daniel Craig presented as the "start" of James Bond does erase the past. Though I suppose some upset purists could have ranted on about that.

It's left incredibly fuzzy in the Bond series. But for all we know, the internal structure is exactly the same as Star Trek. As far as the films present, Sean Lazenby Moore Dalton Bronson the Third are all the same, non-aging person ... and Daniel Craig is then the very first James Bond in an alternate universe where S.L.M.D.Bronson III never existed.

They just don't bother to make an explaination ... perhaps so people won't have silly discussions about it.

The New Timeline element of this Star Trek movie is simply a matter of literary convenient licensing. It's being blown out of proportion here. It does not mean that James T. Shatner and Leonard Spock never lived. If you like, their exploits continue unchanged in an alternate timeline of endless reruns. These are different actors stepping into their shoes with the explanation that they are essentially the same characters under more or less drastically changed circumstances. Perhaps the timeline change is also why Chris Pine looks only vaguely like Bill Shatner, and Zachery Quinto looks like Leonard Nimoy only in the right light. In other words, WTF?

[innerSpaceman]

I'm glad my memory is fuzzy, it makes the changes so much easier to accept.


But was Kirk on the Enterprise while Spock was first officer under Capt. Pike? I know he's not in "The Cage," but was it explained in "The Menagerie" that Kirk was some sort of junior officer on board at the time???

[Ghoulish Delight]

To me, yeah, they are now different characters...and that's kinda why I like it. As I sat and struggled with the surprising fact that I liked it in spite of my dislike (which does mirror mp's reasons) of the alternate timeline device, I tried to think of another way to accomplish the same effect of dropping the 40 years of baggage that I liked about it.

I came up with two alternates. One was in the model of Next Generation. Set it in the future, start over with new characters. But that's an obvious non starter at this point. It worked for Picard and crew, but the amount of "canon" is now so great that there's just no way to go far enough in the future to be entirely divorced of it. And while I would have been more impressed by them creating new, interesting, likeable characters than by cultivating impressions of the old characters, fans (myself included) at this point have massively high standards for what any cast of characters should be like that it's a tall order to meet those expectations with something new and original that doesn't feel derivative.

The 2nd thought was along mp's comic book reasoning. But unlike comic books, there has been a (sort of) unbroken timeline/body of canon for the last 40 years. I can't even count the number of versions of the Batman origin story I've seen, they reboot that series every 5 years in one media or another. For them to just create a parallel version out of thin air, entirely unrelated to the timeline that's been obsessively picked over, I don't think it would have been embraced.

So I understand how they came to the device they chose. It semi-plausibly DID put things in "the same universe" while explaining how things can be completely different and not just a rerun of what we already know. I just don't think Trekkers would have been accepting of the comic-book model of redoing origin stories. If there's no in-universe explanation for the differences, they'll just reject it.

That's why, for me, I'm okay with this, but not okay with Midichlorians. It claimed to be the same universe with no explanation for the massively stupid inconsistencies. Sure, in this they pulled it off a little clumsily, and yeah, I did think things like, "He's supposed to be just as good a captain having grown up without a father as he was having grown up with a father? Really?" But the relief I felt of not having to fit everything I was watching into what I knew and whether it made sense with later events outweighed all of that for me.

[Alex]

Yes, we're definitely not talking on the same wavelength because what you're saying doesn't make any more sense to me than what I'm saying apparently does to you.

One key difference with Bond is that, at least in the movies, there has never been any attempt to create a universal tapestry with strong interconnections between every part of the narrative. With some exceptions, James Bond movies are essentially one offs using the same character idea. Each movie, essentially, is a reboot, with vague hints at consistency and hardly any acknowledgment of what has come before.

Admittedly, if Star Trek had been left with just the original three seasons that would be true of it as well, but that has not been the form of things for nearly 30 years now. For me, part of the fun of being a Star Trek fan is in how it all tries (and frequently fails I'll make no claim that Star Trek has ever been great at internal consistency) to tell a bigger story of a proposed future than just the individual stories of a few characters.

It is fine that they've said "ok, that's played out and we just need to drop all that and start over with the same general core starting point but with the convenience of a 40-year-old short culturally embedded shorthand." It is fine that we have Riker and Troi in the form of Spock and Uhura. It is fine that the engine room looks like a power plant (because that is what is and actually that look, in my opinion, better matches the "actual" engineering described in various semi-canonical sources and even if givign Scotty the Agustus Gloop treatment was beyond idiotic). But being fine with it is not, for me the same as it not being an important development in how I've interacted with this universe for 30 years.

[Alex]

I'm glad my memory is fuzzy, it makes the changes so much easier to accept.

According to generally accepted canon (stuff said or hinted at in TV shows and movies), after graduation from Starfleet Kirk served on various ships (starting with the USS Farragut) for almost a decade before getting command of the Enterprise (and no, he hadn't been on it under Pike).


ETA: Oh, and something that occurs to me, just to add to things that break canon even in the new timeline. In TOS, there was an episode in which the Federation first made visual contact with the Romulans and it was a surprise to everybody (including Spock) that they were related to Vulcans. Just a minor thing, but the kind of thing that has been trickling into my head all morning. Having all episodes on Hulu is really going to make nitpicing easier (as now I'm tempted to rewatch the episode to see exactly what was said).

[innerSpaceman]

Hmmm, yes, in that sense of going over details, it breaks with canon even more than I thought, and yep - even in the new timeline.

Which is kinda what I like about it. It's just an obvious literary device, not even interally consistent on its own terms. It's a reboot, with a line or two thrown in for how it could possibly be slightly more like Superman Returns and slightly less like Batman Begins.


I've been with Star Trek for my entire life, for all intents and purposes, and I'm an old man. So I'm going to assume that most people are very far removed from the original series, and all that matters was a way to get new versions of Spock, Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov and Sulu aboard The Enterprise. They did this in a way that cheats absolutely everything ... but avoids the blunderbuss "more realistic" re-introductions of, say, ST:The Motion Picture, and breezes through it in a more lightweight Star Treky style in a far more entertaining and enjoyable "first" film.

Cheaters, yes. But as long as it was funny, says Roger Rabbit ... and as long as it was great, says I.

[blueerica]

CP...

As I said before I did feel like I was mourning the old Trek. But I don't feel that they were saying the old experiences didn't matter. I can accept that that universe remains intact, elsewhere. This is an alternate universe. The characters have slight differences, sure - you're going to have a scrappier Kirk due to daddy issues and a more live-for-today Spock, but hey, holy crap, they have something MORE to write about! A slight twist. Like iSm, I also caught the new Kirk acting Kirk-ish in those last moments of the movie. Yay.I could not heart you more right now.

These events don't change a timeline - they create a new timeline, and I'm pretty damn okay with that. I like a Kirk that didn't have the ideal childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. And I'm thrilled to see a Spock that shows his deep emotions that he'll need to continue balancing. I don't mind the inconsistencies because I have been starved for something great out of Star Trek.

No, I didn't watch the original series when it first came out - I did watch it as a I few up on re-runs... so maybe the magic wasn't there for me in the same way that it would have been had I watched TOS as it unfolded on the small screen. Perhaps because of that, the slapstick didn't bother me. I pretty much saw TOS as camp, anyway. It just took it to another level. No sense in arguing personal taste... it's almost as impossible as arguing religion.

I think I need to go see this movie, oh, about 30 more times.

[Alex]

When GC sees it (if he hasn't) I am wondering how much the Nokia product placement (can we agree that this was truly unnecessary and really belong?) will annoy him?

I guess we're just lucky they didn't put Uhura in one of those Motorola headsets that NFL coaches wear.

[Melonballer]

Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine on SNL (http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-feature-star-trek/1099561/)

[Alex]

Watched the Romulan episode again just for fun. Yep on them all being completely surprised to learn that Vulcans and Romulans are the same species (something that bothered no one in the movie though I guess not that many people actually saw the Romulans). Though this movie really de-emphasized that physical similarity.

I had forgotten that the Romulan in question was played by Mark Lenard, who of course, starting with an appearance the following season and then through Star Trek VI, played Sarek, Spocks father.

[JWBear]

Hated it. I'm going to collect my thoughts and post more later, but yuck.

Thank you! I'm not alone! (On LoT, that is. There are a lot of people out there that agree with me.)

Or, as Onion News (http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film) perfectly encapsulates it. :p

EXACTLY! Bwahahaha!

Except I didn't find the movie the least bit "fun and watchable". Take the name "Star Trek" off of it and I'd still consider it a terrible movie.

[JWBear]

Sorry, but I missed this earlier.


Um, did I miss this? I've seen the movie twice now and I don't recall them mentioning that it was seven years ealier? Was there some StarDate announced that's seven years earlier than the first StarDate ever mentioned in the first season of the show?

That would be a stretch, but please don't tell me it's in the press materials or the novelization or some such completely non-canonical source. The MOVIE made it seem as if the time of the tv series is about 3 months later, though of course they didn't specify if it was that or 7 years or any such thing.


Unless I missed it.




Oh, and Alex ... touche.

Kirk was 35 when the first season began (accepted canon). He goes from 0 to 28 in this movie.

I also found the idea that Starfleet would promote a cadet fresh out of the Academy to Captain of one of their capital ships to be laughable.

[Alex]

I also found the idea that Starfleet would promote a cadet fresh out of the Academy to Captain of one of their capital ships to be laughable.

Actually I think there's precedent. Isn't it true that after the events depicted in Red Dawn, Lea Thompson was appointed Secretary of Defense by a grateful nation-fragment?

[innerSpaceman]

There were lots of laughable improbales in this movie. But I accept the conceipt that going from zero to TOS-minus-4-days in the space of 2 weeks rather than 8 years is going to lead to several improbables.

If we simply posit that in an altered timeline, for some reason, events and people reach their fated points with far less resistance and far quicker, "problem" solved.

Any problem that can be explained away with 2 lines of dialogue and thus remain no less implausible than any standard Star Trek gibberish is plausible enough for me in Star Trek.


If you took the name Star Trek off this movie, I would not like it either. Since my enjoyment came completely from the relationships between Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Checkov, it's a pretty moot point to fathom this as just another movie not about Star Trek. Certainly a movie with the same dumb plot featuring characters I didn't give a hoot about would not be one I'd enjoy.

[€uroMeinke]

I thought it was fun. Didn't "love it" - but sci-fi films just haven't been the same for me since I came across magical realism and gave up the need to have everything explained to me.

I didn't hate it either, though I found myself wondering why everyone's motivation come from some Freudian situation of reacting to the death of a parent. Considering the amount of people with dead parents in the world it's a wonder why we aren't all star ship captains or evil villains.

Still, I was happy for the ejection of cannon (though annoyed a bit that they had to explain that too) one of the reason's I've avoided all the other interations of Star Trek was that I just couldn't keep up with the evolving mythology - just tell me a fun story in 50 minutes of less that didn't requirement to remember all the details of every past episode. (hmmm come to think of it, that's why I've avoided, Lost, Buffy, X-Files, etc. - damn geeks)

Anyway, I enjoyed it - probably won't see it again, but it was a nice way to spend an afternoon.

[Chernabog]

Just got back from seeing it, and super-enjoyed it. I mean, it wasn't anything deep, but it was a fun space opera to watch.

It is a general law of movie-watching that if time travel is involved, it WILL NOT MAKE SENSE. EVER. EVER. EVER. So do not even try to resolve that issue, because there will always be plot holes. This has been true in every single movie ever with the concept of actual time travel, since the dawn of the cinema.

So, you just need to sit back and enjoy it for what it is.

Plus, Chris Pine and Anton Yelchin are so super adorable. :)

[Alex]

It isn't that the time travel stuff doesn't make sense. As far as such goes it was handled pretty well (though it isn't explained why sometimes the Red Matter black holes create time portals and other times it just destroys everything (unless Vulcan -- and Nero once again -- have simply been shipped to another time).

It is the rest of the story that is stupid: the fact that Spock alone was trying to save Romulus, that a mining ship is super armed and powerful, that once in the past Nero spends 25 years waiting for Spock so he can exact revenge rather than going to the still existing Romulus and beginning the process of saving it, that the entire Federation fleet is in the Lawrentian system but whatever the reason for that is, it goes unmentioned, that despite this there are a dozen uncrewed ships including the new flagship vessel just waiting to be crewed by the entire student population of Starfleet Academy, that Vulcan and Earth apparently have zero dedicated defences other than starships and yet still sent their entire fleet to one system off somewhere else, that Vulcan is just 8 minutes away from earth, that the entire idea of a spaceship is rendered obsolete by the super-teleportation deus ex machinaed into existence by Spock Prime. That even though Vulcan was about 8 minutes from Earth (or some ridiculously small number given by Checkhov in his shipwide mission briefing) Earth was at least a few hours from Vulcan (since that is how long it took the Enterprise to get back), that a moon orbiting Vulcan is somehow an isolated Federation outpost manned not by Vulcans but by a lone super-genius engineer and his own personal Muffit, that Nero put Spock on that moon rather than letting him watch from the Death Star so he could gloat, that a device that destroys through black holes apparently requires first digging a hole to the center of the object since a black hole simply put on the surface apparently wouldn't be destructive enough (and one wonders how exactly Spock was going to dig a hole to the center of a star so that he could save Romulus), that apparently Romulan miners like to keep their ship decks under several inches of water, that when an Academy cadet is particularly brave he will be given command of the flagship vessel of the fleet.

Compared to everything else the time travel and its implications was a paragon of reality and clarity. But it was a fun ride. A stupid ride with characters I am very fond of, but a fun one.

[innerSpaceman]

I'm really glad you ennumerated the rank stupidiities, and they are indeed doozies. It's a wonder to even me that the nature of Star Trek, as I see it, has allowed for similar and worse stupidities through its long history ... and coupling them with interesting ideas and clever treatments with some regularity.


Reading the list, I can barely believe I was bugged by little or none of it, and that I consider such blatant fallacies of sensibility, believability and, ironically, logic to be part and parcel of perfectly acceptable Star Trek.


I guess I had a similar feeling about the 4th Indiana Jones movie that came out last year. Everyone was hailing the nuclear test refrigerator escape as the millennial jump the shark. But the series had jumped that shark so many decades ago, i was no longer bothered by it.


So, yeah, completely stupid implausiblities either don't bother me or simply don't occur to me as I'm swept away with the fun space adventure with some of my favorite characters.


That seriously is quite the list. That it doesn't matter a fig to me is oddly more testament to the wonderfulness of this movie.

[mousepod]

Hey iSm... if you like Alex's list, here's one that one of my friends wrote on another board:

Why didn't Spock just throw Kirk in the brig.. and then he HAPPENS to run into ______ down on the planet..?!?

ARE YOU ****ING KIDDING ME!?

And they BEAM from the planet to the ship that's been at warp for at least an hour...?? I thought Orsi and Kurtzman understood a LITTLE about Trek science..

And you don't just go to warp from a stand-still..

And you're not suppose to go to warp within a star system (pushes up glasses) ..

and WHY would you come out of warp blindly?!

And what the **** was up with Engineering.. TURBINES?

and oh yeah, Scotty also just happens to be there on Delta whatever...
THATS LAZY STORYTELLING!

and the Romulan Empire's only hope for salvation was for S______ to implode a super-nova? How is creating a black hole where a planet's sun used to be suppose to save the planet..?

WAY TO GO SPOCK!! I thought you were supposed to be a genius..

I'm fine with re-casting and re-imagining everything but they didn't need this time-travel element..

I've got a bout a dozen other complaints... I guess I didn't like it..

I liked the cast. I liked the look of it.. I liked the opening with the kelvin..

[Chernabog]

I guess I had a similar feeling about the 4th Indiana Jones movie that came out last year. Everyone was hailing the nuclear test refrigerator escape as the millennial jump the shark. But the series had jumped that shark so many decades ago, i was no longer bothered by it.

I was bugged by none of the inconsistencies in Star Trek because they are, for the most part, sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, where every futuristic device is more or less a plot device. We just accept that what happens, happens. Star Trek is not about complexity. If you want to see that, watch Battlestar Galactica (the Sci-fi channel series).

Indiana Jones, on the other hand, really bugged me because the real physicality of what they were doing was impossible. Not the alien crystal skull thing (which was pretty lame, admittedly) but the refrigerator, the falling off the waterfall, etc.

It isn't as if they had Kirk get sucked out into space without a suit on, into the black hole, then plummet to the nearest planet and land safely in a feather bed, merely by holding his breath.

[JWBear]

If you took the name Star Trek off this movie, I would not like it either. Since my enjoyment came completely from the relationships between Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Checkov, it's a pretty moot point to fathom this as just another movie not about Star Trek. Certainly a movie with the same dumb plot featuring characters I didn't give a hoot about would not be one I'd enjoy.

Not even having the characters up there could save it for me (and perhaps, it was a failure for me especially because it was Kirk, Spock, etc up there being dragged through the mud of execrable screenwriting).

[Jazzman]

Saw it last night, and I have to say that this lifelong (thanks to an obsessed older sister) Trek nerd absolutely LOVED it. Loved, loved, loved. I knew going in that it was a time travel story, and after suffering craptastic remakes before (a la Transformers) was totally prepared for a major, major disappointment. But, glory be, as I sat there I found myself grinning and giggling with joyful abandon. So help me, this movie rocked. Destroying Vulcan threw me a bit, but honestly, I felt that this reboot needed a canon defying shocker, otherwise they'd just be making a big budget fan film, and blowing up one of the galaxy's most important planets and civilizations certainly filled that requirement. The black hole transporting them through time was weak sauce, I admit, especially when the Enterprise was later only able to escape a similar blackhole by detonating it warp core(s?) but that one sticking point aside, I saw no issues. I sincerely enjoyed how the cast captured the spirit of their original counterparts and portrayels without becoming lame parodies and imitations. The ship was stunning! Beautiful, and lots of good money shots to drool over. I actually loved the industrial feel of engineering and thought it juxtaposed wonderfully with the shine and polish of the bridge and other non-engineering decks. I read that the filmmakers looked to the Titanic being a sleek, sexy ship with a hidden away, purpose oriented engine room for their inspiration, and I think it's brilliant. And while I'm at it, the turbines, I believe, were merely there for water circulation, which even on a starship makes perfect sense as I've never known Trek to have included a "humans no longer need water" bit of canon. Onward, I totally geeked out when Nimoy popped up, and totally relate to CP's sense of sorrow over TOS and its cast at that point. That whole sequence was beautifully done and Spock's joy/pain at seeing his old friend was palpable. Nimoy owns Spock, and though Quinto was amazing, I think we all know who the real Spock will always be. Another thing I loved was the new warp and transporter effects. I'm glad they redid these completely, as we've seen these effects so often that I think most people forget that these things aren't actually real. How do we know what it looks or sounds like going to warp or being beamed off the ship? Oh, and the quick little line about the Enterprise maybe getting up to warp four was cool, too. It gives them something to work toward instead of having a fleet of already-warp-9-capable ships available. Loved that. Let's see... what else... Oh, the Red Ball of Doom. Forgive me, but I dug it. And I believe, to answer Alex, that the point of drilling to the core was that the Red Matter had to be ignited in order to create a singularity/black hole, which only a planet core, collapsing star (or starship collision, apparently) could do. So I personally saw no plothole there. And I have to say, this flick had some of the best effects I've seen onscreen in a while. The new phasers and torpedoes looked wicked, and that last big climactic battle was some serious sci-fi space battle goodness that I can't wait to watch again and again.

I could probably go on and on, but to wrap it up, I'll say that I'm uber-stoked to see it again, this time in IMAX (YES!!!!) and I wish everyone involved in making this film peace, long life, and to live long and ROCK!

[Alex]

So I personally saw no plothole there.

The stuff was apparently easy to "ignite." When Quinto was flying around with the stuff the ship's computer warned him that if he was hit by Nero's ship shooting at him that it would happened (and Nero's crew warned him of the same thing). So definitely much easier ways to create this black hole than drilling to the center of the planet to do so.

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, the ignition temperature was all over the place, but the idea was, excuse the pun, planted.

I'm wondering if the person who objected to turbines in engineeering also objected to photon torpedos being manually loaded by a crew of six back in earlier movies.

Sure it was a stylistic choice of seafaring homage back then, but my point being Star Trek has long since established a sort of stylistic freedom from common sense. Is building a starship in Iowa any less absurd than the spacedock palace suddenly available in the few days between Trek II and III?


Yes, some of the more egregious plot and logic holes have become troublesome to me, all the moreso because they are unnecessary. It's not enough that they didn't occur to me while watching the movie, but someone connected with the film for years of production should have ironed those things out. I have to admit that was laziness.

[Alex]

The impulse drives aboard the Enterprise have always been said to operate using nuclear fusion to generate plasma which is ejected for propulsion (though we never see a propulsion trail) so I have no problem with the look of engineering (much better than the very sterile TOS look) since that would require a major coolant system and even in a couple of centuries water will be one of the better options for that.

[Alex]

I mentioned on LJ an idea that I think would have rocked if Abrams truly wanted to establish he was going a different way and that what has come before will not be a constraint:

And I think Abrams, whether he knew it or not, set up the perfect opportunity. When Kirk, Sulu, and the Third Guy were preparing to dive down to the drill over Vulcan the Red Shirt joke was obvious (Lani and I looked at each other knowingly).

If Abrams had the balls for it, what he should have done is have Sulu (remember, at this point none of them are integrated parts of any crew) be the one to misjudge the drop and be instantly incinerated. Since they didn't really know each other yet, Kirk would have been upset by this no more than he was at the death of the Red Shirt as happened (actually, this is also the same amount of upset as he apparently felt in witnessing the simultaneous murder of 6 billion people -- notice how everybody expected Spock to be upset but apparently it wasn't that big of a deal to anybody else?).

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, I saw that on your el jay, and it would have rocked. But I never got the impression Abrams was trying to even remotely establish such a difference. Quite the opposite in fact.


I guess I really don't consider destroying Vulcan that big a deal. Nor collaspsing 8 years of Starfleet history into one week for the sake of presenting it in a single episode. Rather I thought J.J. was incredibly faithful to Star Trek and the rather drastic twist you suggest, while cool, would have been uncharacteristic to the character of the film - -as I perceived it at any rate.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Yup, that's a huge list Alex posted, and I can't quibble with any of those quibbles. But I still loved it, and will continue to use the word "loved".

Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine on SNL (http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-feature-star-trek/1099561/)

It's funny, but it wasn't until we saw this that it actually occurred to me that Chris Pine really is attractive. He never really caught my eye during the film.

[Alex]

I agree that destroying Vulcan is not that big of a deal if you take Star Trek as primarily a chronicle of the joint career of seven specific Starfleet officers. And I know that this is how a lot of Star Trek fans (and pretty much all of the, at best, casual Star Trek watchers) view it.

But for me, as someone who as always engaged with it at the much higher level of those seven people (then, with later series, different crews) simply being the lens through which a much larger universe is observed, destroying Vulcan is much more significant than killing any one of those seven people would be.

Plus, doing what I suggested so early in the movie would have hugely ramped up the suspense and feeling of real danger through the rest of the movie. Kind of like once they killed

Wash in Firefly

you had an "oh ****, this could have real repercussions" feeling for the rest of the movie.

[innerSpaceman]

Ah, yes, that IS the big difference. And I'm having a hard time thinking of any episode of any Star Trek I have watched (never seen much of Deep Space Nine or Enterprise) that didn't wisely bring the focus back (if it ever momentarily departed) to the main cast of characters, where the audience's emotional connection lies.


For the vast majority of viewers, the only possible emotional connection with the destruciton of Vulcan was the death of Amanda, the solitary known character. Even this was iffy, as I don't think we'd made any emotional connection with her new incarnation. It's not enough to just don an Amanda mask and, viola, you're Amanda.

The big success of the new Star Trek, imo, was establishing an emotional connection with new Spock and new Kirk, et al. If they'd have ...

killed Spock in the first five minutes, I really wouldn't have cared either ... because Quinto had not yet established himself to me as Spock. Similarly, killing off Sulu would have little effect, because ... to date, actually, that actor has not really established himself as Hikaru Sulu.

So, no, not at all the same as killing Wash, which was a fantastic move. But, in any event, Farscape is a little grittier than Star Trek. Still, brave and effective ... but perhaps because it had never been done. And why am I spoiler tagging something from a 5-year-old movie?

[Pirate Bill]

I love-love-LOVED the movie. Even looking back on Alex's list of flaws, like ISM, those things just didn't bug me at the time. I was too caught up in the fun of it. And quite frankly, the flaws still don't bug me. And I'd consider myself a Star Trek uber-geek.

The franchise has really suffered after Voyager and Enterprise (which I see as more symptoms than causes really) and was in need of a major jolt if it was ever going to get going again. In fact, I'm really surprised anyone was even brave enough to try. When I first heard a new Star Trek movie was in the works I was very worried, fearful, and even disappointed (again...big fan here). What this movie has done is extraordinary and has brought new life to the franchise.

I look forward to seeing it again this weekend.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Just adding a "me too". I recognize all of the holes and shortcomings. And I was aware of them while watching. But for whatever reason, something about this movie let me tune it all out. I'm rarely that forgiving for ANY movie, let alone Trek (for a time, the only thing a search for my name on the internet turned up was an email list for the Nitpicker's Guide fan club). But somehow this movie managed to strike a tone that allowed me to say, "Screw it, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy this."

And as a testament to how engaged I was in the movie, I just looked up the runtime. I'm shocked to learn that that was a hair over 2 hours. By the 2 hour mark of a movie I'm usually feeling pretty impatient. I would have pegged it a 90-100 minutes based on my perception.

[JWBear]

I still don't get why anyone found this tedious and porly written movie to be fun. What was it that you all found fun in this movie? I'm just not seeing it.

[Alex]

Personally I'd say that because of the cheat of hooking a stupid story to beloved characters, and because they didn't commit any particular atrocities to those characters it made the stupidity more acceptable.

I enjoyed almost everything that was at the very character local level (except Karl Urban, the Muffit, and the horrible make-up/cgi on the Orion)

I'd say the larger story here is actually stupider than in Transformers was two years ago and I gave it absolutely no quarter since it had neither a good story nor characters I should care about.

[Ghoulish Delight]

What Alex said, save for I quite like Urban as Bones.

[innerSpaceman]

I still don't get why anyone found this tedious and porly written movie to be fun. What was it that you all found fun in this movie? I'm just not seeing it.

You mean us on this board, and 91% of critics and 96% of all filmgoers everywhere on this planet and the next?


TEDIOUS? I'll grant you poorly-written, but it seems from the comments here and my personal reaction and the reaction of the twenty-plus friends I've so far seen it with, that the infectious spirit and move-along pace and energy either detracted from or negated consideration of the screenwriting flaws.


Here's the short way to arrive at everything I found fun in this movie. Take the entire movie, subtract 50% of Alex's list of quibbles, and everything left is what I found fun and enjoyable.



Oh, I'll make it easier.

Kirk on the road to Kirk with Shatner-like Kirk at the end.

Spock on the road to Spock, being an excellent Spock even with the real Spock on hand to mock the new Spock.

Kirk and Spock.

Hysterical Dr. McCoy.

Kirk and McCoy.

McCoy and Spock.

Kirk in Green Girl's dorm room.

Kirk in his underwear.

Kirk smiling just at me in the audience.

Kirk.

The Geekship Enterprise.

Simon Peg, er, I mean, Scotty, yeah, Scotty.

Ben Cross as Sarek.

Alternate Timeline device as a shorthand for reboot with differences.

Destroying Vulcan as a short-cut to re-establishig the tortured Stranger-in-a-Strange-Land Spock of early Star Trek.

Costumes, Production Design, Special Effects.

The entire opening sequence.

The cool, nonsensical Drill of Fire and implausible but neat skydive from space for cool Kirk and Sulu male bonding fight on it.

The completely stupid stranding of Kirk on the impossibly-close-to-Vulcan sister planet to Hoth, just so that alien monsters can chase Kirk.

Kirk in obligatory bar fight in Iowa.

Spock beating the carp out of Vulan bullies. Spock baited into losing it on the Bridge and nearly choking Kirk to death. Out of control emotional Spock.

Great McCoy Dialogue.

Adorable Ensign Chekov.

Two friends of mine in so many scenes as Starfleet Cadet extras.

Smoldering Kirk and Uhura proto-romance, lesser appreciation for Uhura-Spock romance, but great love triangle jealousy pon-farr foder.

the 8th time Kirk hangs by his bare hangs over a deadly height.

Transporters actually working to rescue characters on multiple occassions instead of breaking down to keep characters in jeopardy.

Cool going to warp effect.

Way-cool new transporter effect.

Use of my alma-mater CSUN campus library as Starfleet Academy.

Cool phaser battle.

Lotsa laughs peppered througout.

Kirk.

And ... the awesome shot of the Narada with Kelvin-inflicted damage as the convoy of shuttles escape against the backdrop of a huge star, and the best strains of Michael Giaccino's score as it seques to the bitchin' Title shot.



There's more, but that's off the top of my head.


Oh, and I really liked Chris Pine as Kirk and as my new boyfriend. And loved, loved, impossibly loved Zachary Quinto as Spock.

[Pirate Bill]

What iSm said...except I don't want be Chris Pine's boyfriend. But I would help him out in a bar fight.

[mousepod]

I'll admit that it was a fun movie. With 36 hours behind me, I think it can nail exactly why I had such a visceral reaction to the movie.

As a wanna-be writer, I tend to focus on story-telling. I can forgive gaffes in real-world logic, as long as they follow the internal logic of the movie.

I expected to see a movie about how the officers of the original series originally met up, so when I was presented with a time-travel anomaly, which is a standard sci-fi gimmick, I was waiting for the "fix" that also inevitably occurs when the gimmick is present.

Kirk's dad dead at the beginning... ok... maybe that was a backstory rewrite... that didn't bother me. In fact, it was cool seeing young Luke Kirk driving the speeder convertible across Tatooine Iowa.

But when they blew up Alderaan Vulcan, I knew that there was some serious fixing that needed to happen if this prequel would actually be a prequel.

So I waited for the writers to dig themselves out of a the hole that they had made.

When Kirk finally meets Obi-Wan Spock on Hoth the icy planet, after he saves him from the Sand People some ugly monster, I thought, "Finally. They'll fix the anomaly. Or at least figure out a way to bring back Vulcan."

So for the last half of the movie, I sat there and watched as Earth was threatened by a Romulan with a mining ship. I wasn't as forgiving as I was of the dumb crap during the first half of the movie. I just couldn't believe it. They had created a whole new backstory to Star Trek (which was fine by me), but then threw in a time travel anomaly to explain why it still fit in the canon. And the time travel stuff was poorly done, to boot.

If Earth-2 Spock hadn't come back, and Nero had exacted his revenge on Earth-1 Spock, then I might have let it go... but the showdown wasn't a showdown and the anomaly served only to let Abrams and crew reboot the series.

So I felt manipulated and cheated. And I was mad.

Perhaps when the next movie comes out and I revisit this one, I'll soften and enjoy it more, but for now, I think that above all, this movie was sloppy and pandering from a story-telling perspective. And that's the worst thing you can do in a movie.

[Andrew]

When GC sees it (if he hasn't) I am wondering how much the Nokia product placement (can we agree that this was truly unnecessary and really belong?) will annoy him?

I'm not GC, but I appreciated the product placement. Of course.

[Alex]

I figured, but for purposes of the question imagine it was a bit of Sprint product placement. Or if when boarding the Enterprise they mentioned it was powered by the latest Generation of Ford Elantra V6 Warp Engines (on the assumption at this point that Ford is the only American car that might possibly survive to the Star Trek era).

[Ghoulish Delight]

The Nokia placement, as well as the Budweiser mention, did bug me a bit. Actually, the whole corvette scene with Sabotage bugged me. But, just as I predicted from the trailer, I hated those parts, but they were short-lived and the rest of the movie made up for it, for me.

[innerSpaceman]

The Nokia bugged even me. The budweiser not at all, as there was a joke involved.

Still, real companies in Star Trek universe was a poor choice. Considering the dozens of other poor choices .... meh.

[JWBear]

You mean us on this board, and 91% of critics and 96% of all filmgoers everywhere on this planet and the next?

Where are you getting 96% of all film goers? IMDB has it at 8.6 out of 10; and if you read the User Comments, the "bad" and "mediocre" reviews far out number the "good" or "Excellent" ones.

Rotten Tomatoes has a 95% currently, but that is based on the reviews of bloggers and professional critics who are affiliated with RT. If you look at the "RT Community" tab for the reviews of regular people, it's only at 88%.

Then there are the Trek message boards and online communities.... From my informal reading, they are running about 50/50, and the flame wars are getting just nasty.

Regardless... When did "popular" ever equate to "quality" anyway?

[Andrew]

Actually, the whole corvette scene with Sabotage bugged me. That did bug me a bit - two or three hundred years in the future and the Beastie Boys are still state of the art "angry driving" music?

[JWBear]

That did bug me a bit - two or three hundred years in the future and the Beastie Boys are still state of the art "angry driving" music?

maybe Kirk develoed his taste for antique things at a very early age... ;)

[Alex]

In a 20th century antique car I didn't have a problem with it having 20th century music on its player (I'm assuming that was set there by the step-father not by Kirk).

I'd forgotten about the Budweiser mention.

[innerSpaceman]

Where are you getting 96% of all film goers?
Regardless... When did "popular" ever equate to "quality" anyway?
Oh, I made those numbers up. I never said popular equates to quality, I was just impliying with made-up percentages that the onus of what was un-fun about the movie belonged on the small minority that disliked it, rather than on the vast majority who found it fun.

I figured it kinda silly to ennumerate what was fun about it when it was 93% fun, but turns out setting it out in a list was also kinda fun.

The fun just keeps going!


And wow, I can just imagine the flame-wars among the Trekkies. Ugh, I have no desire to watch.

[JWBear]

Honestly, iSm... Most of the things on your list are things that annoyed me. You and I obviously have different ideas of what is fun.

[blueerica]

Okay, I'm not sure if it was supposed to be 96% of filmgoers, but didn't rottentomatoes.com have it rated at 96%?

[innerSpaceman]

Honestly, iSm... Most of the things on your list are things that annoyed me. You and I obviously have different ideas of what is fun.

Can we at least agree about Kirk in his underwear? :D

[Andrew]

Can we at least agree about Kirk in his underwear? :D
Uhura in her underwear was indeed quite entertaining, as was her Orion friend.

[Alex]

I wanted to appreciate the Orion friend but the make-up CGI was too goofy looking.

[Jazzman]

I forgot about the Nokia thing. Yeah, that was pretty lame. The Budweiser thing was a little jarring too, but neither was as bad as Baby Kirk's awful, awful wig. When the camera initially panned down on him in the Vette I instantly thought, "WTF? Billy Idol is a car thief in Star Trek?" But thankfully that whole sequence ended quickly and didn't recur, so I wasn't to caught up in it.

I have to say that I'm surprised that so many people are reacting so negatively to the film, but then again, I was one of the few people I know who absolutely despised Transformers, so obviously some films just strike that chord in some people. I wonder, though, if for a large segment of the population this film was doomed from the start as seeing such beloved characters recast and in new surroundings was just too much to swallow.

[Alex]

I'm sure that is happening to some degree, but most of the nay crowd I've seen has said something like "I'm fine with the reboot and liked the characters but the story was just so stupid..."

So I think it is coming down to how well the good things could counter the bad things and that just varies a lot from person to person.

Most here have acknowledged that everythign I've labeled stupid was in fact stupid but they don't care because they were having enough fun and liked the characters. For me I cared enough that it took the edge off the pleasure but I still enjoyed it while watching it and then as I thought about it later it began degrading.

Others just couldn't get into the groove.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Where are you getting 96% of all film goers? IMDB has it at 8.6 out of 10; and if you read the User Comments, the "bad" and "mediocre" reviews far out number the "good" or "Excellent" ones.It's the internet, bad reviews almost always outnumber good, especially in early going. People are far more motivated to bitch online than praise. An 8.6 out of 10 at imdb puts it in the top 40 movies of ALL TIME on imdb. The highest rated is a 9.1.

Not that I put much stock in imdb ratings seeing that that 9.1 is Shawshank Redmption (an enjoyable flick, but highest rated movie of all time? Seriously?) But even so, a 96% from the critics and an 88% from the community at RT? iSm's 96% might have been an out of thin air number, but it's not much of an exageration. Hell, Citizen Kane only has 90% from the community at RT. So yeah, I don't think it's much hyperbole to say, "Nearly everyone who's seen this movie has liked it."

[Ghoulish Delight]

I just chatted with the biggest Trek geek I know (he contributed to the Star Trek Encyclopedia and worked on StarTrek.com). He loved it.

[JWBear]

Okay, I'm not sure if it was supposed to be 96% of filmgoers, but didn't rottentomatoes.com have it rated at 96%?

95% as of today; but that figure is from the reviews of the bloggers and critics that are affiliated with Rotten Tomatoes. Based on the reviews of just normal everyday RT members, it’s only 88%.

Can we at least agree about Kirk in his underwear? :D

Yes.

[JWBear]

It's the internet, bad reviews almost always outnumber good, especially in early going. People are far more motivated to bitch online than praise. An 8.6 out of 10 at imdb puts it in the top 40 movies of ALL TIME on imdb. The highest rated is a 9.1.

Not that I put much stock in imdb ratings seeing that that 9.1 is Shawshank Redmption (an enjoyable flick, but highest rated movie of all time? Seriously?) But even so, a 96% from the critics and an 88% from the community at RT? iSm's 96% might have been an out of thin air number, but it's not much of an exageration. Hell, Citizen Kane only has 90% from the community at RT. So yeah, I don't think it's much hyperbole to say, "Nearly everyone who's seen this movie has liked it."

I'm not saying it isn't popular. I was just pointing out that iSm's claim was… Um… inflated a bit.

Honestly, I wouldn’t give a damn if it was getting a 99.9999% approval rating. It would still be a piece of shyt movie as far as I’m concerned.

I just chatted with the biggest Trek geek I know (he contributed to the Star Trek Encyclopedia and worked on StarTrek.com). He loved it.

And one of the biggest Star Trek fans I know hates it. So?

(So far, I haven’t heard Bjo Trimble’s opinion yet. It will be interesting to hear; she’s the T’Pau Trek fandom.)

[CoasterMatt]

There's a new Star Trek movie? ;)

[Cadaverous Pallor]

If Earth-2 Spock hadn't come back, and Nero had exacted his revenge on Earth-1 Spock, then I might have let it go... but the showdown wasn't a showdown and the anomaly served only to let Abrams and crew reboot the series.

So I felt manipulated and cheated. And I was mad.I realized this as well, and it was all I could do to stay in my seat instead of jumping up and screaming in joy, "THEY DID IT!!! THEY REBOOTED THE SERIES!!!"

Each to his own. :)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Honestly, I wouldn’t give a damn if it was getting a 99.9999% approval rating. It would still be a piece of shyt movie as far as I’m concerned.
Can't argue that your reaction to it is your reaction, just pointing out that iSm was not wildly off the mark with his guesstimate.


And one of the biggest Star Trek fans I know hates it. So?

(So far, I haven’t heard Bjo Trimble’s opinion yet. It will be interesting to hear; she’s the T’Pau Trek fandom.)
Neither carries any more weight than the other. And one of my friend's colleagues who also worked on the Encyclopedia and website and other stuff walked out on it. I didn't post that as an attempt to call it an authoritative view on the quality of the movie. I guess my point is that one can argue whether you enjoy the movie on whole or not, but when someone who literally wrote the book on what is "canon" is okay with it, I personally take that as license to ignore appeals to canon as a reason to hate it (which I don't think anyone here really has done, so not aimed at anyone here who didn't like the movie for their own reasons).

[mousepod]

OMG. Have I been living under a rock? I just found out that the writers I've been lambasting are the same guys who wrote the Transformers movie, which I hated. I guess I just don't like their writing style. Oh well.

[Chernabog]

OMG. Have I been living under a rock? I just found out that the writers I've been lambasting are the same guys who wrote the Transformers movie, which I hated. I guess I just don't like their writing style. Oh well.

See, I thought Transformers was the biggest piece of crap movie to come out in the past few years, but loved Star Trek.

[innerSpaceman]

Yep, HaTEd Transformers. Loved Star Trek, go figure.


Of course, I never played with Transformers, but have loved Star Trek for 41 years.

What does it all mean!?!?! :D

[Chernabog]

What does it all mean!?!?! :D

That you're old? I dunno. ;)

[innerSpaceman]

I'm so happy to have lived in the 60's, you have no idea. Totally worth it to be old now.

[blueerica]

I'm not saying it isn't popular. I was just pointing out that iSm's claim was… Um… inflated a bit.

Meh, I was just trying to think of where iSm might have had the number from, that's all. Not trying to counter or attack anything... Sorry if I came off that way - I pretty much don't give a rat's ass what others think and think that trying to convince someone that they should have liked it is fairly pointless.


And one of the biggest Star Trek fans I know hates it. So?


Precisely.

I'm wondering if this is really just an argument to feel understood about our opinions. Not sure... but arguing about likes and dislikes isn't something that can usually be won or lost, nor is it likely that many minds will be swayed. So, what's the point?

[JWBear]

Can't argue that your reaction to it is your reaction, just pointing out that iSm was not wildly off the mark with his guesstimate.


Neither carries any more weight than the other. And one of my friend's colleagues who also worked on the Encyclopedia and website and other stuff walked out on it. I didn't post that as an attempt to call it an authoritative view on the quality of the movie. I guess my point is that one can argue whether you enjoy the movie on whole or not, but when someone who literally wrote the book on what is "canon" is okay with it, I personally take that as license to ignore appeals to canon as a reason to hate it (which I don't think anyone here really has done, so not aimed at anyone here who didn't like the movie for their own reasons).

And I don't dislike it due to anything regarding canon. I just think it was a boring inanely written movie.

I actually don't have a problem with the concept of an alternate timeline "reboot". It could have been very cool, if it hadn't been done so poorly.

(ETA: I did find the destruction of Vulcan to be horrible and unforgivable. If that can be considered a reason to hate it due to canon, so be it. To me. it was more of an emotional thing.)

I'm wondering if this is really just an argument to feel understood about our opinions. Not sure... but arguing about likes and dislikes isn't something that can usually be won or lost, nor is it likely that many minds will be swayed. So, what's the point?

It is, and it can't. I'm just glad we can discuss it without resorting to ad-hominem attacks.

[Alex]

Second time you've said something like that so I'm wondering.

Does this really come off as arguing? To me it doesn't, it just seems like people talking about the movie, what they liked and didn't and so on. Seems to be pretty much what a message board is for.

I'm certainly not trying to convince anybody to my point of view (that certainly never works with aesthetics) but rather simply to explain my point of view (and in the process revealing to myself what may be behind initial visceral responses).

[mousepod]

I'm with Alex on this point. I'm always interested when my initial reaction to something artistic is so radically different from that of my friends. I read threads like this to see if perhaps there's something I'm missing. I post because I imagine that my friends have similar curiosity.

[JWBear]

Well, not an argument, I agree. I was agreeing with Erica on the understanding opinions part.

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, not arguing here either. I like the revelations about people's taste, and what might be behind it.


mousepod, I've found on a number of occassions that I didn't like "Movie X" ... but saw it again anyway, and once aware of what IT was trying to do rather than what I wanted it to, gained a strong appreciation for "Movie X" that I originally hated.


I'm not saying this is what happened to you at all ... but your description of expecting the Time Alteration gimmick to follow the standard pattern and sorta waiting for that to happen, and being disappointed when it didn't ... well that kinda reminds me of when I don't like a movie until see it again under its own terms instead of mine.

[blueerica]

Hmm, I guess I find different meaning for the term argument. More like presenting a case, different sides - not quite fighting. Arguing for me, while not fighting, can become tiresome once the point's been made. 100+ posts later, and I feel beaten about by the same points on both sides.

Then again, I keep reading. I must be a glutton for punishment.

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, I'm getting near the done point. I think I've said all I can muster about Star Trek.

Let's see, 42% of the posts in this thread are mine. ;) Maybe Alex and I should take this to email or text message or something.



I could talk about Chris Pine some more.:evil:

[blueerica]

Yes, please do talk about him. He's incredibly handsome.

[Alex]

The Transformers thread was 143 posts long. Certainly Star Trek is deserving of more talk than that piece of pucky.

[Alex]

And I just reread that thread and see that blueerica made much the same comment about the pointlessness of the endless discussion (though she's the one who started the thread even before the movie started).

Reality loops. I am Alex'. Alex Prime no longer exists.

[alphabassettgrrl]

Reality loops. I am Alex'. Alex Prime no longer exists.

I thought "Alex' " was "Alex Prime".

[Alex]

Shut up!

[JWBear]

Has anyone seen this? (http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-feature-star-trek/1099561/)

[€uroMeinke]

Has anyone seen this? (http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-feature-star-trek/1099561/)

Whoa - did I just fall through a black hole? Did anyone see a lightening storm

[RStar]

I wanted to appreciate the Orion friend but the make-up CGI was too goofy looking.
I just thought it was a third reality they forgot to mention, and Elphaba from Wicked decided to join Star Fleet rather than become a witch.

[blueerica]

And I just reread that thread and see that blueerica made much the same comment about the pointlessness of the endless discussion (though she's the one who started the thread even before the movie started).

Reality loops. I am Alex'. Alex Prime no longer exists.

Huh? I started the thread?

Am I on an alternate timeline?

[mousepod]

Huh? I started the thread?

Am I on an alternate timeline?

The Transformers thread.

[RStar]

The Transformers thread.

What's that got to do with this thread, the one I started the day Star Trek came out?

Anyway, this thread has been interesting, answering some of the questions I had during the movie......

Oh, and a pet peeve of mine.....

People on the news or TV that continually call it "Star Track".....:mad:

[innerSpaceman]

Alex was making an analogy between last year's Transformers thread and this one. blueerica apparently also posted in the Transformers thread that it was getting repetitive and done (just as she recently did in this one), but that thread went on to 143 posts.

Alex posits Star Trek is worth more posts than Transformers. And I heartily agree.


I wonder what Chris is doing tonight and if he'll call me. He's so dreamy.




Ok, more substantively ... Alex, what don't you like about Urban's take on Bones McCoy? Most people seem to love his characterization. I'm in that crowd. What's wrong with you? :p

[Chernabog]

Elphaba from Wicked decided to join Star Fleet rather than become a witch.

Bwahahahahah!

(Now I have "So if you care to find me... look to the Vulcan sky!" stuck in my head...)

[blueerica]

Ahh - yes. I like hearing peoples' points, but there inevitably comes a point where my brain starts screaming "come on!". Like someone is hitting middle C over, and over, and over again.

Or perhaps my making the 'this is pointless' statement is a bit like Godwin's Law.

[Pirate Bill]

So, why was Winona Rider cast as Amanda? It didn't make a whole lot of sense to cast someone young just to make them up to look old. Was there going to be a scene with young Amanda that got cut? Or did I blink and miss it?

[swanie]

So, why was Winona Rider cast as Amanda? It didn't make a whole lot of sense to cast someone young just to make them up to look old. Was there going to be a scene with young Amanda that got cut? Or did I blink and miss it?

I read an interview with Zachary Quinto that said...

Q: Winona Ryder plays Spock's mother. Was it strange having someone so young playing your mom?

A: She's, like, six years older than me or something. ... In the original screenplay, Amanda is seen giving birth to Spock, and in the movie you just see her when she's older. She did some amazing work.

[Alex]

Ok, more substantively ... Alex, what don't you like about Urban's take on Bones McCoy? Most people seem to love his characterization. I'm in that crowd. What's wrong with you? :p

Two things, one his fault and one not so much his fault.

1. I thought he was trying too hard to to an impression of DeForest Kelley. And, in my opinion, he didn't do a good one. I think I said this earlier but to me it sounded like he was doing an impression of DeForest Kelley doing an impression of Jack Nicholson. It just grated on me.

2. I really didn't like the slapstick involved in getting Kirk on the enterprise so since he was central to that I'm sure he was tainted and then not given enough additional work in the rest of the movie to overcome it. The one big spotlight moment being just so he could toss out a cliched (not one of those pieces of Star Trek tradition that I like) "Dammit <name>, I'm a ... not a ..." line. Especially since he said "Dammit <name>, I'm a doctor not a physicist" and then immediately followed it up with an exact understanding and restatement of the implications of the physics mumbo jumbo he was responding to.

Maybe he'll grow on me in the next movie if given more to do.

[Strangler Lewis]

I haven't seen it, but I assume that if he did, in fact, follow up his stock line with a physics lecture, it was supposed to be funny.

By the way, is it my imagination, or are all the rectangles on this site newly outlined in bold?

[innerSpaceman]

Hmmm, I guess I thought his "impersonation" was a necessary adjunct to being curmudgeonly. (I have some experience at this, and often inadvertenly sound like McCoy myself). At least he never did the Southern accent.


On the other hand, the extended slapstick bit of getting Kirk on board the enterprise and annoyingly jabbing him in the neck with a new batch of cure every 3 minutes was my favorite thing in the entire movie.

I don't usually care for slapstick, but this struck me as quintessentialy Star Trek. (The Augustous Gloup slapstick bit did not, and so I was pretty 'meh' on that.)

Now I'm pretty familiar with Star Trek, but the episodes tend to merge together in my memory ... so I can't tell you categorically if there was an episode or episodes where McCoy did this to Kirk, I simply get the impression its a brilliant synthesis of their working relationship.

[Alex]

I probably could have gone with it up until the bloated cartoon hands and hammy Disney channel acting that accompanied it. I'm guess I was fine with the idea but I think they overplayed it a bit.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Hmmm, I guess I thought his "impersonation" was a necessary adjunct to being curmudgeonly. (I have some experience at this, and often inadvertenly sound like McCoy myself). At least he never did the Southern accent.


On the other hand, the extended slapstick bit of getting Kirk on board the enterprise and annoyingly jabbing him in the neck with a new batch of cure every 3 minutes was my favorite thing in the entire movie.

I don't usually care for slapstick, but this struck me as quintessentialy Star Trek. (The Augustous Gloup slapstick bit did not, and so I was pretty 'meh' on that.)

Now I'm pretty familiar with Star Trek, but the episodes tend to merge together in my memory ... so I can't tell you categorically if there was an episode or episodes where McCoy did this to Kirk, I simply get the impression its a brilliant synthesis of their working relationship.Repost, because I agree with everything you said. What's even more amazing than the movie itself is that I agree with pretty much everything iSm has said in this entire thread. It's amazing!

I probably could have gone with it up until the bloated cartoon hands and hammy Disney channel acting that accompanied it. I'm guess I was fine with the idea but I think they overplayed it a bit.Yeah, a little hammy, but it didn't hurt it for me.

Just so I'm not hitting middle C over and over :) I'll mention this - the Scotty sidekick thing made me wince. WTF was that? Completely unnecessary, unfunny, pointless. I'm eternally grateful that it didn't make much noise. And yes, Scotty Augustus Gloop, ouch. At least I thought Scotty's dialogue was funny.


My theory is that Spock and Uhura were totally getting it on the whole time in TOS, they just kept it on the down low. ;)

[Pirate Bill]

My theory is that Spock and Uhura were totally getting it on the whole time in TOS, they just kept it on the down low. ;)

But Nurse Chapel totally had a thing for Spock. Now I'm going to have to go rewatch TOS specifically to see if there's any cattiness between Chapel and Uhura.

BTW, as soon as they showed the Enterprise bridge my only thought was I wanted to see Yeoman Rand.

[Jazzman]

What's even more amazing than the movie itself is that I agree with pretty much everything iSm has said in this entire thread. It's amazing!

Ha ha! I thought I was the only one thinking this! :D There must be some planet alignment going on or something! LOL


Since it was mentioned and I forgot about it, I'll add that the flushing of Scotty was a bit much for me too. I especially cringed when Kirk got the trap door opened just in time and Scotty came falling straight down accompanied by only about three cups of water, from the gigantic, hundreds-of-gallons-per-minute, Enterprise Water Slide. I know I'm really picking nits here, but come on! Would it have been so difficult to put a couple garden hoses up there, or a bigger bucket?

[Alex]

Not to mention that it even had an escape hatch just in case someone was accidentally teleported into the tube from a couple solar systems away (not to further mention that teleporting into a non-gaseous medium is quite the nifty trick according to the canon on the technology).

[mousepod]

Not to mention that it even had an escape hatch just in case someone was accidentally teleported into the tube from a couple solar systems away (not to further mention that teleporting into a non-gaseous medium is quite the nifty trick according to the canon on the technology).

Alex... you should know better... the time-traveling Romulan miner changed the canon only from Kirk's birth on (the stuff that the average audience would notice). It was a time-traveling Ferengi shoe salesman who traveled back to the mid-21st century and changed everything else.

[Jazzman]

Well, yeah... if you want to get really picky...

:D

[JWBear]

But Nurse Chapel totally had a thing for Spock. Now I'm going to have to go rewatch TOS specifically to see if there's any cattiness between Chapel and Uhura.

BTW, as soon as they showed the Enterprise bridge my only thought was I wanted to see Yeoman Rand.

Well... There is the saucy little song she sings about him in Charlie X...

[Not Afraid]

I am just in awe that so many people have a) seen this film and b) are participating in a thread that is now 146 posts long. It's just another NA clueless moment - of which there are many.

[Alex]

See! The world repeats. The Transformers thread is also peppered with NA popping in every once in a while to point out that she hasn't seen it and is surprised others have.

NA Prime is dead, replaced by NA'

[innerSpaceman]

I am just in awe that so many people have a) seen this film and b) are participating in a thread that is now 146 posts long. It's just another NA clueless moment - of which there are many.

Mel Brooks makes a cameo as Spock's cousin Spechala.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Not to mention that it even had an escape hatch just in case someone was accidentally teleported into the tube from a couple solar systems away (not to further mention that teleporting into a non-gaseous medium is quite the nifty trick according to the canon on the technology).How do you know that the water in the non-transparent chamber he was transported into wasn't being held in some sort of gaseous suspension state. Sure that usually requires heat and pressure that a human couldn't survive, but it IS the future you know!

I am just in awe that so many people have a) seen this film and b) are participating in a thread that is now 146 posts long..Including your husband.

[Not Afraid]

See! The world repeats. The Transformers thread is also peppered with NA popping in every once in a while to point out that she hasn't seen it and is surprised others have.

NA Prime is dead, replaced by NA'

Cool! I've been looking for a replacement!



Including your husband.
My husband is regularly clueless to me. Besides, what else what he going to do while I was hosting a quilting party? It IS a movie I wouldn't be mad that he saw without me.

[Alex]

How do you know that the water in the non-transparent chamber he was transported into wasn't being held in some sort of gaseous suspension state. Sure that usually requires heat and pressure that a human couldn't survive, but it IS the future you know!

You raise a good point. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Some fanwankery math. When they teleported onto the Enterprise from Hoth it was going at warp speeds and presumably at least Warp 3 since they were in a hurry (Scotty later was said to maybe be able to get them up to Warp 4).

That means they were moving at 27 times the speed of light. So let's say it takes four seconds for the complete phase-in of the teleportation effect from the first hint of that whine to the final molecule being in place.

So, to put it in local terms, when they first started to appear the Enterprise was on the surfage of the Earth and when they finished it was 3.1 times farther away than the moon.

That's some fancy shooting.

More seriously, I do think that from a "creating a new canon" point of view, the super-transporter may be their biggest mistake. How many "problems" in future movies are we going to have to just pretend that this technology doesn't exist? Enemy ships in quantrant X should now not be met with a cry of "send the fleet to battle" but rather "gather everybody on Treasure Island and we'll just teleport onto the enemy ships while their still 900 lightyears away!"

[Andrew]

More seriously, I do think that from a "creating a new canon" point of view, the super-transporter may be their biggest mistake. How many "problems" in future movies are we going to have to just pretend that this technology doesn't exist? Enemy ships in quantrant X should now not be met with a cry of "send the fleet to battle" but rather "gather everybody on Treasure Island and we'll just teleport onto the enemy ships while their still 900 lightyears away!"
There was similar technology introduced in an early TNG episode. It turned out that using it more than once or twice caused genetic damage (or something) that eventually killed the people using it. If the writers care enough to explain with super-transporting isn't used in future crises, they could use a similar explanation.

[Alex]

TNG also explained that teleporters could be used to cure disease by simply not re-assembling the disease part and that major discovery was also never again explored (I've not claimed Star Trek has ever been good at consistency; I just think this issue with the transporter is one that was so prominent that it will stick out to the general new audience apparently rediscovering Star Trek because of the new movie).

Of course, it would seem that within a few years the Federation should have post-TNG technlogy in many areas since Spock apparently knows all that stuff.

Maybe at the beginning of the net movie Q can show up and say "oops, let me clean all of the inconsistencies!" and snap his finger claiming it is done and all now makes internal sense.

[Jazzman]

I don't remember the issue of transporters not being able to transport into non-gaseous environments. Maybe I'm just Trek Brainfarting, though. In Wrath of Khan wasn't there a scene where they were worried about transporting into the cave, blind, and rematerializing inside solid rock? It may not be Wrath that I'm remembering that from though. Anybody recall?

[Jazzman]

Maybe at the beginning of the net movie Q can show up and say "oops, let me clean all of the inconsistencies!" and snap his finger claiming it is done and all now makes internal sense.

As lame as that would be, that is so Star Trek that it wouldn't surprise me at all. Thank Zeus that Rick Berman is no longer helming the franchise, though, or that may have actually happened.

[innerSpaceman]

And yes, in Wrath of Khan they were concerned about transporting inside solid rock, which wouldn't feel too good.


Yes, too, the brilliant original series concept of the transporters for saving all those expensive and air-time-consuming shuttle trips was almost instantly regretted when it sapped every bit of drama from the show unless the transporters were consistently malfunctioning for any return trip.

They are gonna regret Universe-wide, light-speed transporting ... if they don't already. It was beyond stupid. There are so many stupid things in this film, it amazes me. And none of it was necessary. But how fantastic a job they did that no one, me included, seems to care.


On the other hand, to the very casual observer ... once you can teleport someone, it doesn't seem to register that there would be a distance limitation or that you'd have to "hit" a moving target with a stream of actual molecules. In fact, that almost seems quaint.

[Pirate Bill]

There are so many stupid things in this film, it amazes me. And none of it was necessary. But how fantastic a job they did that no one, me included, seems to care.

Or we're just so used to putting up with stupid things in Trek that it's just par for the course. I mean, come on. There are probably only a couple dozen episodes out of all the hundreds that you can't spend all day nitpicking.

[Alex]

True (and honestly, for me that is part of the fun), but at least for most of the movies, I've found them a bit better about it, at least internally.

This one is just extremely poor writing from one end to the other with some pretty fun characters carrying it along.

[innerSpaceman]

And since, against my better judgment, I've spent too much time trying to figure ways around all the lame stupidities, it's a shame they didn't come to my door with a hefty check for one last re-write.

(Of course, they'd have had to push the Disney folks out of the way, who'd be on my front step with my monthly consultation fee.)

[mousepod]

All of this Star Trek conversation reminds me of a panel from the Logan's Run comic adaptation (I always thought this line was from the movie, but when I watched it again, it's not there... kind of like iSm's CE3K tower...):

http://pocketsymphony.com/lot/logan.jpg

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

I saw it today. I enjoyed it, though flawed. I agree with the opinions of the last 6 pages that I skimmed over. I think the script was a lazy, hack version of a pretty good story. I think the directing was ok but the guy need to pull back so we can see something. The bad guy and his motivation was lame. Didn't like Uhura and Chekov shouldn't have been there. BUT, since everything was based on time changing once Kirk's dad died, everything we know is out the window.

I agree with MP on the comic reboot idea. It doesn't really work in comics but I enjoy it working with this and OO7. It's a clean slate without saying everything else is void because older Spock being around shows that all that we know still "exists."

[CoasterMatt]

I managed to stay awake for most of the film.

It was fun.

I still will kick J.J. Abrams in the balls upon meeting him, though.

[JWBear]

For all the Star Trek tech geeks (http://www.utopiaplanitia.info/)

[JWBear]

I had forgotten about this one... The Enterprise J:

http://img455.imageshack.us/img455/6008/enterprisejjy1.jpg
http://drexfiles.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/untitled-319.jpg

[Jazzman]

Blech... I've always hated the direction the ships have taken in the last few years.

(Letting Nerd Flag fly)

I can't stand how they increasingly became flattened, with the saucer section being squished into a football shape and smashed directly onto the engineering hull, and the nacelles brought in and flattened too. I absolutely loved seeing the Enterprise back in its proper, elegant form in the new film. Hopefully the new timeline means that the ugly, spider crab Enterprise J never happens now.

[CoasterMatt]

I just want to beat the hell out of whoever let all that ugly lens flare / chromatic aberation into the movie.

[Jazzman]

I actually liked the lens flares. They lent a more realistic feeling to the shot, at least in my eye. Reminded me of BSG in a way, like we're seeing handheld combat footage instead of thought out cinematography.

[innerSpaceman]

Lens flares are gay. What's "realistic" about a lens flare when you need a camera to create one? Adding them on purpose is retarded. It doesn't say realism, it says fakery.


All versions of the Enterprise beyond 1701-A are completely gay. Yes, Jazzman, it was so nice to return to the elegance of the original design. It's been shown decade-after-decade that the original looks so much better on film, proof they got it right the first time back in the 60's. You can't improve the wheel.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

I liked the lens flares for a bit but it was gratuitous. I do like the concept of "we really have a camera filming this stuff".

[CoasterMatt]

Filmmakers looking for 'realism' used to do everything they could do to avoid lens flare.

Let's see how Mr. ADHD Abrams and his movies age.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Lens flare has been used stylistically forever as well.

[Alex]

JJ Abrams is on record saying why he used lens flare (not for reality but to give a sense that we were in an environment where exciting momentous things were happening). But he also admits that he went overboard on it (they were not digitally added or anything and required a lot of work to light them into the picture so probably not a lot that could have been done once he realized this.

[JWBear]

I love the shape of the Enterprise D. B, C, & E? Not so much.

I didn't care for the nacelles on the new movie Enterprise.

[Alex]

My problem with the design of a lot of the sleeker ships it that it would appear that the explosion of a well placed M-80 would separate the engines from the ship in a most unsatisfactory manner.

[Pirate Bill]

A fun read. (http://www.comicmix.com/news/2009/05/12/star-trek-movie-annotations/) (Lengthy too.)

[innerSpaceman]

I do like the concept of "we really have a camera filming this stuff".
For the exact same reason, I hate them ... because it says "this is not really happening, we have a camera filming this stuff."

I know it's shorthand for what would happen in real photography. But it is a stark reminder of photography. It would be like paying attention to the texture of the pages while you're reading a book. Either way, you're too far out of the story being told.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

For the exact same reason, I hate them ... because it says "this is not really happening, we have a camera filming this stuff."

I know it's shorthand for what would happen in real photography. But it is a stark reminder of photography. It would be like paying attention to the texture of the pages while you're reading a book. Either way, you're too far out of the story being told.I guess my interpretation is that it's filmed from "reality", that it's a documentary of sorts. I like film tricks and interesting editing choices, even if they do remind you that you are not actually there but watching a rendition of it.

[innerSpaceman]

Oh, I'm sure most people interpret it as reality. Your reference to documentary-look is quite accurate. Commercial filmmakers used to studiously avoid lens flare, because it would not ever actually be seen by human eyes in what they were photographing.

But documentary filmmakers rarely bothered to avoid it, and so it became synonymous with realitstic ... when, of course, it is quite the opposite.


Still ... most people interpret it that way, and it's why filmmakers use it ... and overuse it.

I hate it. But that's just me. Takes me out of the story almost every time.

[CoasterMatt]

There are some good uses of lens flare - my favorite two are movies that I know iSm loves (Star Wars - Han coming into save Luke from Darth) & Close Encounters of the Third Kind - but in both those instances, there is an intensely bright light IN THE FRAME- not some dinglecheese off camera with a flashlight just making the scene "shiny" for all the ADHD'ers.

[CoasterMatt]

My Favorite Movie compares Star Wars and Star Trek (http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910025)

[JWBear]

My Favorite Movie compares Star Wars and Star Trek (http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910025)

LMAO!!!!

[innerSpaceman]

Yep, great --- especially after all the similarities noted in this thread. Perfect.

[JWBear]

Ok... Any other Trek fans care to list the movies in order of preference?

Here are mine:

#1: The Wrath of Khan

#2: Generations

#3: The Voyage Home

#4: The Motion Picture

#5: The Search for Spock

#6: First Contact

#7: Insurrection

#8: Nemesis

#9: The Undiscovered Country

#10: Star trek (2009)

#11: The Final Frontier

[Alex]

1. The Wrath of Khan
2. The Voyage Home
3. Star Trek
4. Seven way tie for 4th place (or 10th would be more accurate).
5. The Motion Picture

[innerSpaceman]

Easy:

1. The Wrath of Khan (winner by a light year)

2. The Search for Spock (warm place in my heart not shared by many)

3. First Contact

4. Star Trek (as of now)

(big gap drop-off)

5. The Voyage Home

6. The Undiscovered Country

7. Generations

8. Insurrection

(another great big drop)

9. The Motion Picture

and a dead-last tie between
10. The Final Frontier
-and-
11. Nemesis (which I saw only once, so I'm not sure if it's really as bad as The Final Frontier)

[Jazzman]

Here's mine. Hope I don't get phasered for it. :D

#1: Star trek (2009)
#2: The Voyage Home
#3: The Motion Picture
#4: The Wrath of Khan
#5: The Search for Spock
#6: Generations
#7: First Contact
#8: The Undiscovered Country
#9: Insurrection
#10: Nemesis
#11: The Final Frontier

[Jazzman]

While we're at it, what about series preference?

For me it goes;

#1: Next Generation
#2: Original Series
#3: Voyager
#4: Deep Space Nine
#5: Enterprise

Voyager and DS9 are more of a tie, though, and I've never seen the animated series, so that may be great too. I'd love to see a new series with the new cast and effects, though that is kind of a longshot, I think.

[mousepod]

I'm not trying to be contrary in this thread... I'm really not... I liked Enterprise... probably more than Voyager and DS9.

[Jazzman]

I've only watched a handful of Enterprise episodes, and they all involved the Xindi, which was a story arc that I absolutely hated and turned me off to the series. I should probably Netflix the series and watch the whole thing. It might move up the list for me then.

[blueerica]

Enterprise?? What, mousepod?!?!

I actually watched every episode of that. Never fell in love, just loved everything Star Trek. Was a bit too soap opera-ish for my tastes, too much dependent upon previous episodes.

Need to think about the films, but the television series:

1. TNG
2. TOS
3. Voyager
4. Enterprise
5. DS9 (just never really got into it - only caught about 1/3 of the series)

The first three are pretty tight races for me, though.

[innerSpaceman]

I think I maybe saw 3 epsiodes of Enterprise. Pfft, not much more of Deep Space Nine. But at least enough to say it was my least favorite Star Trek.


Plus, I can't say whether I like Star Trek or Next Gen better. I guess one way of measurement is that I'd rather watch any randomly-selected epsisode of Next Generation than a similarly selected ep of Star Trek.

Voyager after that ... but I'm likely one of that show's biggest fans. Loved the first two seasons.

[DisneyDaniel]

Adding another opinion about preferences of the TV series:

1. Next Generation
2. The Original Series and Deep Space Nine (tied)
4. Enterprise
5. Voyager

I actually enjoy watching DS9 as much as TOS.

[Jazzman]

How'd you feel about the ending iSm? Personally, I've only been more letdown by Star Wars Episode III.

Oddly enough, it involved time travel and altering the past... Hmm.....

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Next Gen and TOS both have places in my heart and it would be hard for me to rank one above the other. Ok, fine, Next Gen is better.

DS9 comes next because I watched it longer than Voyager. Once DS9 got so serial that I couldn't miss episodes I stopped watching. I'm still confused about the Worf period, as I never saw it. Voyager was supposed to be good and I stuck with it long after I stopped caring. The characters were great but the storylines devolved into garbage.

Enterprise was almost impossible to watch. I so wished it were better, as I loved Scott Bakula. But nothing else worked. I don't think we finished half of the first season.

Sorry mousepod.


I won't even rank the movies, I never liked them much.

[Alex]

Nobody wants to put the animated series into the series ranking?

I'm not bothering because I never saw an episode of Enterprise (no TV during most of its run) and only a few of Voyager.

[innerSpaceman]

oh, I forgot about the animated Series. I put it after Voyager and before Deep Space Nne.


I love how it was completely bizarre, and yet is totally canon. Hahahaha!



And the ending of what, Jazz Man? Not sure which ending you're asking about.

[Jazzman]

I so wished it were better, as I loved Scott Bakula.

Totally agree. I got so excited and had major Quantum Leap nostalgia when I first found out about Enterprise. When I finally got around to watching and they Xindi-ed the crap out of the show, I turned away. :(

[Jazzman]

Ending of Voyager. I was pissed for a week over how crappy it was. Just curious what your reaction was.

[innerSpaceman]

Oh yeah, so ulbearably disappointing. I was really liking that show, but it took a nosedive and never recovered and ended horribly. Bah.



oh, and I just wanna say that I'm rewatching Wrath of Khan, which is generally considered the best of the Star Trek movies ... and it's got just as many stupidities and story wrongnesses as the current film. We just looked past them because of the infectious good spririt of the movie.

I guess something of the same thing is happening with the new Star Trek.

[Alex]

TOS a la Abrams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAaX8Aq6smQ&feature=player_embedded)

[Jazzman]

Ha ha! That's pretty funny. :D

[JWBear]

While we're at it, what about series preference?

For me it goes;

#1: Next Generation
#2: Original Series
#3: Voyager
#4: Deep Space Nine
#5: Enterprise

Voyager and DS9 are more of a tie, though, and I've never seen the animated series, so that may be great too. I'd love to see a new series with the new cast and effects, though that is kind of a longshot, I think.

That's exactly how I'd rank them.

[RStar]

That's exactly how I'd rank them.

Me two! While TOS is special, TNG is my fave. I watched an episode of each tonite in fact and TOS was painfully cheesy in the special effects department. It was great for the time period and the time alloted to make them and the small budget.

[blueerica]

Ahh - this thread only serves to remind me of how much I hate Comcast since they removed all the science-named channels from the basic and basic HD programming (the HD doesn't have Spike, which also shows some Spike in the afternoons - not that I'm home to watch it) about a year and a half ago. I mean, seriously... I look through the guide, and there's all this Trek going on, and I CAN'T FRIGGING WATCH IT!!

When I was going to school (Round II, for those keeping track), I probably caught the majority of Voyager at least three times. It was always during my "off time" between school and work. *sigh* Thems was great relaxing moments.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Everyone seems to think that Vger was better than DS9, though I disagree. Discuss?

For me, DS9 had better plots and better acting. Vger did have the actual starship and old school set up. I did like the characters about as much as in DS9 but the plots got silly very quickly. Janeway's whispering....lordy.


ETA - love the youtubery, Alex. The camera shake put it over the top.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I rank the two nearly equally, though if forced to pick I'd take DS9, at least the first few seasons. Quark and Odo were good characters and I felt the show overall was better quality.

[Pirate Bill]

Once again, Wil Wheaton is in my head verbalizing what I can't. His review (http://suicidegirls.com/news/geek/23684/) (review is SFW, but it's over at Suicide Girls which is NSFW) sums thing up perfectly for me. Not only because I agree 100%, but because I had the exact same thoughts and feelings, he just was able to put it down in words that I couldn't.

[Alex]

Can't read that from work (not going anywhere near Suicide Girls even if isn't blocked by the proxy -- which I'm not going to test) but did see his blog comments right after seeing it.

It would be interesting to see if he did a write up with one of his former hats on. For some web site he used to review episodes of Next Generation and pretty mercifully mocked all the writing and story sillinesses.

As for me, in pondering the movie over the last week, it is suprising. Yes, there was a drop in regard after the experience passed, but it hasn't continued. I'm still simultaneously remembering the fun of watching it and the stupidity of it all I was noticing while watching it. That pleases me.

Probably still won't see again for a very long time (I think Voyage home is the last movie I've seen more than once).

[innerSpaceman]

Everyone seems to think that Vger was better than DS9, though I disagree. Discuss?

I never took to the characters on DS9. I tried and tried, but couldn't like most of them (exceptions were Odo and Quark -- in fact, I think the Ferengi were the best thing about the show, being such a classic Roddenberryish race who's entire point was to point out human foibles).

The soap-operaish plots also didn't work for me (I similarly faded from following Next Gen when they went on a Klingon soap opera binge for most of a season).


For Voyager, I preferred the Starship setting right from the get-go, and took a shine to most of the characters. Most especially Captain Janeway (omg, one of my occassional girl-crushes) and The Doctor. Mostly, though, and some of you will appreciate this -- I found the stories in the first couple of seasons to be very psychedelic-drug influenced.

I'm not sure if the writers were drug afficianados, and I've been wrong about that sort of thing before (turns out Pink Floyd weren't into psychedelics, they were boozers). But I could swear most of the episodes were penned by people who had done a lot of acid or mushrooms or peyote or all three at once.

Hence, loved Voyager.

[Alex]

The Star Trek writers talk (http://darthmojo.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/trek-scribes-speak-complaints-addressed/) about how some of the stupids were handled. Whether in cut footage or at least in their minds while writing.

My responses using the pages section headers:

Why Time Travel - The time travel part didn't actually bother me at all. It is a well established event in Star Trek. I do understand the view that a complete canon-separating reboot was a bit of a bait and switch but it doesn't bother me.

The Corvette - Glad they cut the scene that would have set it up even better. Too bad they didn't cut the entire thing.

Families on Board - This explanation helps, wish they would have made it clearer. Though it does still raise concerns about fraternization (but is part of canon; Kirk officiates a wedding between crewmembers in season one of the original series).

25 Year Wait - Does really help explain one of the bigger stupids in the movie, though it would raise another (why would the Klingons have done nothing with a ship from 180 years in the future except leave it around for escaping prisoners to steal back).

Coincidence on Hoth - Better a stupid coincidence than the mystical mumbo-jumbo they wanted. That would have been even stupider (though I suspect that iSm would have been keen on it; but we have pretty different world views).

Next on Jerry Springer - No problem at all with the Uhura/Spock relationship so no explanation needed.

Green Girll Blues - Thought this was somewhat self evidence, no reason to have wasted time on it. Played fine even if you didn't know how exactly he cheated the test.

Spock, Meet Spock - Also no problem (and also the same as how I answered someone's similar point earlier)

All Blowed Up - Stupid explanation. Why would a mining ship be designed to travel through black holes. Does this mean that Spock's was also so designed? Somehow this was all part of the plan? Also doesn't deal with any of the other black hole stupid in the movie.

Lens Flares: The Movie - Didn't bother me once I got used to it but I'm hearing from some that it gets more annoying on successive viewings.

Explosion Surfing - Their explanation of the stupid is just as stupid. Event horizons are determined entirely by gravity and spin, an explosion isn't going to change it. Unless I'm wrong but I don't think I am.

[innerSpaceman]

Why Time Travel - As stated, I found this the best reboot concept of all the many film reboots ever done. Plus, not only is time travel a Star Trek staple, so are Alternate Universes with doppelgangers of the same people (but, ya know, evil and with facial hair). This was brilliant storywise, and Treky up the ying-yang.


The Corvette - Yeah, set-up wasn't needed (though I would have geeked out to a pre-teen Carol Marcus). Any number of similar-results kid-rebel scenes would have worked ... most, I daresay, better than this one. But it was standard and easily accepted by me.


Families on Board - As Alex says, families traveling together is Star Trek canon. Um, and since voyages are so long, coupling and families are gonna happen anyway. I'm not aware of Starfleet ever forbidding it.


25 Year Wait - They should have left this scene in, or some better explanatory dialogue. It's a brilliant solution, that would have needed further tweeking to completely un-stupidify. But having the Romulans "prevented" from doing anything during the 25-year wait is an obvious fix. Though I suppose the more obvious fix is not to have the 25-year wait. Why was it necessary to the story? It could have been 25 days with the same story result.


Coincidence on Hoth - They picked the wrong stupid coincidence. It only got groanific when not one, but TWO Trek characters were on Hoth. Scotty's appearance as a stranded World's Greatest Starfleet Engineer was the more atrocious coindicence.

And yes, Alex, I like the "fate" angle, and that's just what I assumed. Though I put a little more spin to it to "justify" both Nero and new Spock making the boneheaded and nonsensical move of marooning their respective targets on some planet (much less the same one) instead of taking them prisoner and keeping them under their respective control.


Next on Jerry Springer - Yep, Uhura flirts with Spock in the early original series. I liked their new relationship better when, as in the turbolift scene, Uhura seems to be just openly and physically emphathetic to Spock ... but since the reveal of their relationship comes a bit later, I'm even cool with how the movie handled it. Can't wait for Pon Farr.


Green Girll Blues - I agree it played fine without knowing how he cheated. But since we've known he cheated since 1982, it would have been nice to show (not that the contemplated scened did) how he managed to be the only cadet ever to do so.

Yeah, yeah, there's no money and no disease, but don't tell me Trek-era earth students don't cheat!


Spock, Meet Spock - Not only is there no problem with it, I loved, loved, loved that Spock Prime told Spock the whole thing about temporal selves meeting each other resulting in universal armageddon is a stereotypical time travel canard that he Vulcan-lied about to manipulate baby Kirk.


All Blowed Up - the stupid part of the explanation is that the ship is "designed" to go through Black Holes, but the genuine part (and I thought obvious from the movie) is that Kirk had to destroy the ship that has been known to make it through Black Holes without a scratch.

The wiser thing to get around this stupidity would to suggest that ships at warp (such as both the Narada and Spock's ship) could travel through black holes. After all, warp is not simply a "speed." I don't know that it's ever been described in canon, but thinking of warp speed as some kind of generated field that bends space and time would not be too much of a stretch, and from there a field that survives another kind of space-and-time bender like a black hole might be a tad more plausible.


Lens Flares: The Movie - It didn't bother me the second time. I'll pay more attention the third.


Explosion Surfing - This is another standard Trek trope, but I've no problem with that. All sorts of things that wouldn't have any effect in zero-gravity environments somehow work like there's gravity in the Trek universe. The details of a real black-hole and warp core explosion may be even further in reality from TrekWorld norms, but the general concept has been well-established.


* * * * *

Nice of the writers to put this out there, tho. I think the complaints got more vocal once more people realized these were the hacks responsible for the Transfomers movie.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Explosion Surfing - This is another standard Trek trope, but I've no problem with that. All sorts of things that wouldn't have any effect in zero-gravity environments somehow work like there's gravity in the Trek universe. The details of a real black-hole and warp core explosion may be even further in reality from TrekWorld norms, but the general concept has been well-established.

Tangentially related to this was a welcome break from Trek trope...space was silent in this film! I didn't pay close attention to how consistent they were, but there were at least 2 scenes where they made a point of hitting mute on the sound track as the camera followed a subject from inside a ship to the vacuum of space.

[innerSpaceman]

Best of which was during the opening Kelvin battle where pre-redshirt starfleet girl gets sucked out into Space via a loud explosion, and all goes silent and eerie.

Totally wicked cool.

[mousepod]

25 Year Wait - They should have left this scene in, or some better explanatory dialogue. It's a brilliant solution, that would have needed further tweeking to completely un-stupidify. But having the Romulans "prevented" from doing anything during the 25-year wait is an obvious fix. Though I suppose the more obvious fix is not to have the 25-year wait. Why was it necessary to the story? It could have been 25 days with the same story result.

It needed to be 25 years, so Kirk's birth could be changed and then he would be grown up enough to see Vulcan destroyed. (And so Muppet Baby Spock wouldn't be killed in the Vulcan implosion.)


Coincidence on Hoth - They picked the wrong stupid coincidence. It only got groanific when not one, but TWO Trek characters were on Hoth. Scotty's appearance as a stranded World's Greatest Starfleet Engineer was the more atrocious coindicence.

And yes, Alex, I like the "fate" angle, and that's just what I assumed. Though I put a little more spin to it to "justify" both Nero and new Spock making the boneheaded and nonsensical move of marooning their respective targets on some planet (much less the same one) instead of taking them prisoner and keeping them under their respective control.

The "fate" thing seems close to the "magic" that CP was glad didn't make it into the movie earlier in this thread. Is there a differentiation? If not, is it good that it didn't make it into the theatrical cut?

[Alex]

Families on Board - As Alex says, families traveling together is Star Trek canon. Um, and since voyages are so long, coupling and families are gonna happen anyway. I'm not aware of Starfleet ever forbidding it.

I believe it was established in TNG that Starfleet ships having entire families on board was a relatively new thing and families were never shown on board in TOS. The part I was saying was canon is married couples being allowed to serve together (and in the Star Trek episode not only is the guy serving with his fiance but he's her direct reporting officer).

But I guess we can presume the intent was that Kirk would be taken off ship after being born (and that is why his mom was off-planet when stealing the car and he wasn't with her).

I did like the quiet in space thing. THey weren't super consistent about it but the nod was nice. Though combined with the insta-warp effect it did add a BSG (new one) feeling.

[Jazzman]

Wil Wheaton's hilarious blog (http://www.tvsquad.com/bloggers/wil-wheaton) about TNG, in case anyone hasn't seen it. Worth a read for any Trek fan.


As per the DS9 vs Voyager question, I agree that DS9 had higher quality acting and deeper characters, but personally I prefer episodic, stand alone Trek as opposed to endless story arcs, and DS9 got so buried under wormhole aliens, religious dogma and the boring Dominion war that I tuned out, much as with Enterprise and the Xindi. Voyager was a little hokier, the characters a little more cardboard and the writing maybe not as profound, but it was fun, imaginative, and dogma-free, which is what I believe makes Trek its best. This is why DS9 and Voyager are largely a tie in my mind; where one succeeds the other fails, so they balance out in the end.


And I wholeheartedly agree about the awesomeness of the silent, 2001-esque outer space. During the first battle when things began as usual (loud and bombastic) I thought, "Well, they didn't fix that. Too bad." Then that crewman got sucked out and it went silent and I was blown away. Totally awesome! Even BSG didn't quite get this right. Hopefully they take this further. I kind of got the feeling that they were trying to make it look like the space sounds we hear are how it sounds inside the ship, but it actually is silent outside. Anybody else get that feeling too?

[innerSpaceman]

I believe it was established in TNG that Starfleet ships having entire families on board was a relatively new thing and families were never shown on board in TOS.

So was the TOS couple married by Kirk forbidden to procreate while onboard? And do condoms in that future consist of a force-field barrier, or are they still using latex? If force-field, can it be adjusted for "her pleasure?"

Kids were never shown on the TOS Enterprise, but neither were any but a tiny fraction of those on board. I think the just married couple implies enough to cover the implausibility of George and Winona* conducting their entire pregnancy aboard the Kelvin.

Not I that I didn't groan a bit about his wife giving birth right at that moment, but ultimately it worked as a cornball bit.





* Is that why Winona Ryder was given a part in the movie?

[innerSpaceman]

I kind of got the feeling that they were trying to make it look like the space sounds we hear are how it sounds inside the ship, but it actually is silent outside. Anybody else get that feeling too?
No.




Though I will always appreciate that, way back when, they originally tried the Star Trek series opening with accurate silence as the Enterprise whooshes past the camera, but found it simply didn't work without the sonic whoosh added.


I won't mind if this new movie series employs a combination of both.

[Jazzman]

I imagine, and may obviously be out in left field, that Starfleet allowed crew members to marry, as it would pretty clearly be a rights violation to tell anyone that they are forbidden to marry, (I'm thinking that Starfleet is evolved enough to not have any stupid Prop 8) yet, if a couple does tie the knot one would have had to be reassigned once the ship returns to spacedock at the end of the tour so as to avoid the "families on board" issues. I remember reading, even, that the backstory of the Enterprise E includes a bit about the experiment with onboard families being largely deemed a failure and the E model reverting to only carrying serving crew. I don't know how canon this was, but I do remember reading it.

[Alex]

So was the TOS couple married by Kirk forbidden to procreate while onboard?

Never mentioned. I don't know if it was ever explicitly said that there were children on board but I think it is generally accepted that there weren't.

And in Encounter at Farpoint (the first episode of TNG isn't there a scene when Picard is first getting acquainted with Riker where he says he's not confortable with the new policy of allowing children and families on board and that one of Riker's jobs is to make sure he [Picard] doesn't come off as an asshole abou it?


And do condoms in that future consist of a force-field barrier, or are they still using latex? If force-field, can it be adjusted for "her pleasure?"

I'd imagine that chemical birth control is pretty well perfected by then and we know that all but the most exotic of space diseases took exactly 4 seconds to heal so STDs probably aren't a problem.

I think the just married couple implies enough to cover the implausibility of George and Winona* conducting their entire pregnancy aboard the Kelvin.

I agree, but what was not conveyed about that was that the movie did not convey (at least on my first viewing) that she was also a member of the crew and not just a wife brought along for dramatic tension in times of crisis.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

The "fate" thing seems close to the "magic" that CP was glad didn't make it into the movie earlier in this thread. Is there a differentiation? If not, is it good that it didn't make it into the theatrical cut?I'm not a fan of the fate thing, it's an easy cop out, and if they were going to have Spock mention it it's even more annoying, because how in the hell does Spock know that?

[innerSpaceman]

Well, you won't like my "solution" much better, because it involves psychic communication. I think the Vulcan mind meld is barely one step from that, and it's clearly shown in TNG that Picard can sense and "hear" the Borg through a psychic connection.

So, "magic" or no, I think psychic communication clearly exists in TrekWorld.

[Alex]

But what was the psychic communication?

Spock to Nero: "Abandon me on Hoth."
Spock to Spock: "Abandon Kirk on Hoth."
Spock to Abandonment Shuttle: "Crash land about 2 kilometers from my cave."
Spock to Monster 1: "Chase Kirk away from my cave.
Spock to Monster 2: "Eat monster one and chase Kirk into my cave."
Spock to Monster 2: "You're here now but won't do what I tell you any more so I'm going to scare you away with fire."

[innerSpaceman]

no, more along the lines of a suggestion to his own Spockness to maroon Kirk on Hoth instead of the much more logical step of putting him in the brig. I figure a psychic connection with his non-Prime self might be slightly easier to swallow.

But, given my druthers, I would have concocted an entirely new scenario to get Kirk and Spock Prime together, and certainly never would have introduced Scotty that way.

That whole section of the story was ludicrous, and the only good thing about it was Kirk running from alien monsters.

[innerSpaceman]

Ok, but is there anything in the new Star Trek remotely as stupid as this retardedness from the highly-esteemed Wrath of Khan? - -

They are in the transporter room of Regula 1 station when Spock informs Kirk the Enterprise is so damaged it cannot transport them back. So they are stranded. Except they're in a transporter room, and the first thing they do is transport to the center of the planetoid ... because they, er, can't transport to the Enterprise instead????


Breezes right by. I certainly never thought about it the first few times I watched Wrath of Khan. But, imo, it's as stupid or worse than anything in the new film.

We have to face it at some point. Star Trek = Stupid.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

That whole section of the story was ludicrous, and the only good thing about it was Kirk running from alien monsters.Nah, the monsters totally wreaked of underwater Naboo pointlessness.

The only truly good thing about it was Spock's moment talking with Kirk, which I found very touching.

[innerSpaceman]

To be honest, I hated that Leonard Nimoy was in this movie. It seemed like pandering. I can't deny loving seeing him as Spock, but I think it dimmed the reboot that was otherwise going so successfully.

But it took me out of the film. If that's old Spock, we know what young Spock looks like ... and it's not like Zachary Quinto. I just found the whole thing off-putting ... and completely groanific when Nimoy had more scenes at the end.


Besides, it's not a smart idea to ask your audience to accept Quinto as Spock ... and then throw in a heavy dose of "real" Nimoy/Spock.


It worked regardless. Not a choice I would have made, but it's always a blast seeing Nimoy as Spock. So just another bit of fun that might have been a tad stupid, but was undeniably and mostly fun.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

I can't deny loving seeing him as Spock, but I think it dimmed the reboot that was otherwise going so successfully.I agree that when he came back later it was too much, but I had a truly emotional moment when Spock talked about the old/real/alt universe. It was a passing of the torch that hit me in the gut. ymmv, of course.

What might have been with Shatner. (http://www.mtv.com/videos/movies/380509/what-would-shatners-star-trek-scene-have-been-like.jhtml)

I think the voice over could have worked, and the birthday card could have worked too. I think I'd really dig the latter, and it might have given them a better reason to bring Nimoy back at the end.

[Chernabog]

Nah, the monsters totally wreaked of underwater Naboo pointlessness.

Awww come on, it was nice to see that the US Government shipped Clover off to Hoth after all.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

I love that everyone is calling the snowy planet "Hoth", including Wheaton.

[innerSpaceman]

Star Trek Hoth was one of my favorite scenes ... until the Scotty coincidence.

It had the "Just Like Star Trek" of Kirk vs. Aliens, and the "All About Star Trek" of new Kirk meets Spock Prime.

Reminds me of what I love about the Wrath of Khan / Search for Spock two-parter. The first movie was so bloody much like Star Trek it made me squee. And the 2nd movie was not like Star Trek at all, but All About Star Trek - with grandstanding by Sulu and by Uhura that was so ultimately their characters, but they never acted that way in the series - - and a plot that ... without any Leonard Nimoy on screen till the last minute ... was all about Spock and Spockisms (pon farr, etc.) - - and over-the-top stuff like mutinous stealing the Enterprise, and the (first) destruction of the Enterprise that would never have happened in the series, but made fans all gooey.

In fact, the latter film played more like fan fic that authentic Star Trek, but it was good fan fic and I loved it.


The Spock Prime and New Coke, er Kirk scene on Hoth was very fan fic. I liked it for that.

[Ghoulish Delight]

:D

(larger version (http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e75/MaxRadical/posters/startrekmovierecognitionguideSMALLE.png))

[Moonliner]

Here I am, late to the party as usual.

I'll add my vote to the I enjoyed it enough I was willing to overlook the glaring plot/effects issues camp.

My $0.02....

1. The destruction of Vulcan: I suffered from delayed stress syndrome on that one. My initial reaction was, yeah great this is a time travel movie, it'll get fixed at the end. Then somewhere later in the movie than I'll admit, It hit me. OMFG! They are not going to fix this. It's really gone. :eek:

2. I have neglected my kids education, When they were getting ready to skydive out of the shuttle and the unknown actor donned the red armor I leaned over to Moonie Jr. and whispered: "never wear red" he did not know why I said that.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Where's child protective services when you need 'em?

[scaeagles]

At least your kids will see it with you. Mine thnk I'm a geek for saying I want to see it. Poisoned by their evil mother, they are.

[Gemini Cricket]

I saw Star Trek yesterday and really liked it.

With the exception of the red ice planet monster (which looked like something from the Star Wars prequels), I liked almost everything about it. I mean, why would a monster on a snow planet be red? Evolution-wise. I guess sci-fi doesn't necessarily have to follow any sort of rules but a red colored predator seems like it could be easily avoided by its prey.

I liked the casting choices. Young Spock and young Kirk were both hot and not bad actors. It took me awhile to place that young Bones was in 2 of the Lord of the Rings movies. I didn't mind Uhura, I thought she was gorgeous and had that retro style going, nice!

The beginning of the film was truly excellent. Such a great setup to get you sucked into the film. Although, I don't know if I'd calmly be discussing baby names 15 seconds before I died, but oh well.

I liked the homages that tied this movie in with the others. The red shirt guy, the "dammit Jim" moments, Sulu the Fencer, the horny green chick, etc. I thought they did the right amounts of that. They didn't go overboard like they did in the Star Wars prequels.

My goodness Nimoy looked freakin' old. Just saying.

I had heard from someone that a member of the original cast was going to show up in the film. I was glad it was Nimoy and not Shatner. Shatner is a walking cartoon of himself now...

Winona... hmm. She looked better with old makeup in this film than in Scissorhands. I wonder if she stole her costume after her scenes were done. I have a feeling she will be back somehow. The transporter beam did seem to grab her before she fell. Maybe they'll find out she is stored on the Enterprise harddrive somewhere...

I didn't mind the destruction of Vulcan. Why? Because it's Star Trek. It can easily be undone at some point. People come back to life, there is time travel... I think if the trekkers/trekkies complain enough, they'll figure a way to undo it.

I like the whole rebooting of the series. The film franchise was pretty much dead after the last awful Trek movie. This movie was a heart defibrillator for Star Trek.

I liked Simon Pegg's Scotty. So funny. Love him. I must say the tube scene freaked me out. It gave me claustrophobia.

Was it me or was the young Spock just barely able to do he whole Spock eyebrow raise?

Anyway, I'm glad I saw it. I may see it again.

Not sure how I feel about them using the song 'Sabotage' at that one point in the film. I like the song, I like the sequence (except for the kid's bad blond wig) but I wasn't sure it was Star Trek-y... it played off as kind of Michael Bay-ish.

Anyone catch the Obama moment at the end? The whole "we'll rescue you if you want" thing? It felt deliberate to me. It reminded me of the whole "unclench your fists" Obama thang.


ETA: I have to go back and read through this thread. I have avoided it because I hadn't seen the film yet. There are a lot of beefy posts in this thread. It may take me awhile to absorb it all...

[mousepod]

Not sure how I feel about them using the song 'Sabotage' at that one point in the film. I like the song, I like the sequence (except for the kid's bad blond wig) but I wasn't sure it was Star Trek-y... it played off as kind of Michael Bay-ish.

The choice of "Sabotage" was a poke at Shatner and his famous outtake (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlOTRxt-dIw).

[Alex]

There seems to be a fair amount of buzz that the next Star Trek movie might involve Khan again.

As near as I can tell this seems to be reading too much into Abrams comments that while the new timeline avoids the limits of the canon it also doesn't mean that events are 100% different (though I'd argue that putting the entire crew together on the enterprise 15 years earlier will pretty dramtically change the entire sequence of exploration).

Regardless though, I'm curious what the general response is to the possibility of them going right back to that well? Personally, I think they should leave Khan alone.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Abraaaaaaaams!!!

[Moonliner]

In plotting the next movie I'd probably start with the question:

How would things change without the Vulcan's?

How strong is the Federation minus a few billion Vulcan's?

Would the Romulans make a move? The Klingons?

What happens when the remaining Vulcan's get the urge to swim back upstream to mate?


Etc...

[innerSpaceman]

I know it's canon that Spock served with Captain Pike for some time, but is the 11 years bandied about canon or not? How about Kirk for 8 years on the Farragut? Canon or no?

I can't remember the episodes with such precision, but stating exact amounts of years of prior service doesn't seem like something that would have been uttered on the show.


So, until demonstrated that these specific past histories aired on the tv show, I'm not buying that everyone's reunited on the Enterprise 15 years early in the new movie.

Certainly Spock is there sooner than he should have been. But that's about it, as far as I can tell. And that was just dumb, since it would have been beyond easy to simply have Pike and Spock already serving on the Enterprise for an unnamed period of time.

[Pirate Bill]

Watched it again on Saturday. I liked it even more the second time.

I wasn't distracted or bothered by the lens flares the first time, but with all the talk here (and everywhere else) about how annoying/distracting they are I was worried about the second viewing. No problems though. I noticed them about the same and wasn't distracted. I think I actually like them. (Although if all movies/tv shows started doing it too I'd get bothered. But in this case it's an interesting style choice that I think works.)

Again, got all choked up during the destruction of the Kelvin. Probably more choked up than the first time. I'm not even sure why. It's just a beautiful scene. The visuals, the music, and being a father probably doesn't help much either. Then when the title comes up you want to cheer out, but the tears and the knot in your throat just get in the way. My wife was with me this time. She was sobbing at the end of that scene and punched me in the shoulder for taking her to a "sad movie." I had to reassure her that it gets happy.

My kids were mad at me for not taking them again to the second viewing.

[innerSpaceman]

The denouement of the Kelvin scene is the most brilliant part of the film. I've praised that scene before. The emotions at that moment are high, and the mood goes from sad to exhuberant in a moment, with the best musical score and visuals in the entire movie.

[Alex]

Yes. Many of those references are from actual episodes of The Original Series.

A lot of the Christopher Pike stuff comes from the two-part episode The Menagerie (the one that reused a lot of the original pilot before Shatner was attached).

The work history of Kirk prior to the Enterprise was mentioned in a couple episodes ("Court Martial" puts him aboard the USS Republic as his first duty, and "Obsession" puts him on the USS Farragut about a decade getting the Enterprise). This is an example of the canon not being consistent depending on how you align things it took him 8-15 years to get his first ship.

Then there's the fact that stardates are used in all the episodes and in the movie placing them in time relative to each other.

By those dates, the start of the original series is 2265 and the events of the movie are in 2258 so there is at least a 7 year gap. However, the movie also moves the initial launch of the enterprise from 2245 to 2258.

So Kirk is getting the ship at least 7 years earlier in his life than in the original timeline and the Enterprise is about 20 years younger when he gets it in the new timeline than in the original.

I'm not really too bothered by it all. Timeline is always bent to the needs of the story so as long as the story is ok then I won't be too bothered by it. Trying to make the pieces fit is just part of the fun.

[Alex]

Kamikaze piloting always brings a patriotic tear to my eye, so long as it is done by white people speaking English.

[mistyisjafo]

Star Trek was so unbelievably good. I was so happy that it turned out to be such a good movie. I loved that it referenced many old shows, the actors took on many of the original series habits/speech patterns and Chris Pine is the perfect replacement for "The Shat".

I'm not clear on some of the plot about the time travel stuff. But who cares? Alternate reality? Cool!

Looking forward to seeing it again and getting it on DVD.

[JWBear]

I'm begining to think that there are two Star Trek movies out there, 'cause I can't believe you all watched the same movie I did...

[mousepod]

I'm begining to think that there are two Star Trek movies out there, 'cause I can't believe you all watched the same movie I did...

You just have to say that some people are going to like it, and leave it at that.

Sure, it's frustrating when arguing logic vs emotion (very Trek-like, no?), but I know that the things that infuriate me about the movie are things that don't even matter to those who enjoy it.

I was talking to someone who won't read or watch Twilight because she rewrote the rules for vampires.

I always claim to be an apologist for genre movies, even though I know that most of them are crap. When so many of my friends love a particular genre flick that I know in my heart of hearts isn't a "good" movie, it's probably better to just let 'em.

I'm reminded of my pro-Suspiria arguments a year or so ago. I'm aware of the faults of the movie, but I feel that the pros far outweigh the cons. Many of my friends don't agree. C'est la vie.

I've made my points about Star Trek. I'm ready to move on.

[Alex]

I have faith that we'll all come together again in hating Transformers 2. Sure, there were people who liked the first one, but we've all got two years of additional wisdom built up so that shouldn't be a problem this time around.

[Pirate Bill]

I had no plans to see Transformers 2 in the theater until my wife saw the trailer and is now insisting that we go see it. I'm just going to put aside the desire for a good movie and enjoy Megan Fox and Transformer action.