Star Trek - Page 3

Ghoulish Delight · 05-09-2009, 11:47 PM

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 · 05-09-2009, 11:52 PM

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.

mousepod · 05-10-2009, 12:02 AM

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.

Ghoulish Delight · 05-10-2009, 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

...

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 · 05-10-2009, 12:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

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 · 05-10-2009, 12:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mousepod

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).

Ghoulish Delight · 05-10-2009, 01:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mousepod

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 · 05-10-2009, 12:03 AM

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 · 05-10-2009, 12:06 AM

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 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.

innerSpaceman · 05-10-2009, 12:49 AM

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.

05-09-2009, 11:47 PM	#1
Ghoulish Delight I Floop the Pig Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Alternative Swankstyle Posts: 19,348	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. __________________ 'He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.' -TJ
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05-09-2009, 11:52 PM	#2
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	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.
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05-10-2009, 12:02 AM	#3
mousepod You broke your Ramadar! Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 4,635	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. __________________ "Give the public everything you can give them, keep the place as clean as you can keep it, keep it friendly" - Walt Disney
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05-10-2009, 12:03 AM	#8
innerSpaceman Kink of Swank Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Inner Space Posts: 13,075	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.
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05-10-2009, 12:06 AM	#9
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	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 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.
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05-10-2009, 12:49 AM	#10
innerSpaceman Kink of Swank Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Inner Space Posts: 13,075	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.
	Submit to Quotes