Star Trek

[Lotd2242]

It's a pity they didn't just do a Star Trek film with new and different characters. But alas, the era of remakes continues to rake in the coin.

They did. They just had old and familiar names.

[JH Sounds]

They seem to propose that the original timeline exists in parallel, but since Star Trek's time travel always resulted in causality loops wherein everything that is supposed to happen happens anyway and the future does not change, this movie implies that either the original timeline has been obliterated, or the other half of the loop has not yet been completed.

I think the writers actually said they drew from The Next Generation episode "Parallels" where a similar fork happened. I suppose it raises the question of whether the black hole did more than just act as a time portal.

BTW, what did people think of the leitmotif in the film score? At first I was like "meh", but I grew to like it. EDIT: I just noticed the new theme melds with old theme during the credits. Nice!

[Lotd2242]

I think the writers actually said they drew from The Next Generation episode "Parallels" where a similar fork happened. I suppose it raises the question of whether the black hole did more than just act as a time portal.

BTW, what did people think of the leitmotif in the film score? At first I was like "meh", but I grew to like it.

That episode did not involve time travel though. That was one where Worf travelled through a rift in space to a parallel quantum realities. They proposed that everything that can happen does happen in an infinite number of parallel dimensions. So that would nullify the whole time travel plot device as creating a parallel dimension. What happens instead is either Nero's time travel has destroyed one of the quantum realities or has just knocked our cameras as it were into another quantum reality that happened anyway.

EDIT:

Found the score to be disappointing, especially when they revealed the new Enterprise. This is one thing the original Motion Picture did totally right.

[DjjD]

The only thing that didn't make sense about the movie is that somehow a Romulan mining barge was the size of one of the Titans from EVE, and the most advanced warships in the galaxy were about the size of flies.

Also, didn't they say that was a "normal" class mining barge, I just, ummm.....

Well, at least Spock's ship was cool...the spinning effects added a lot.

[Vivi22]

That episode did not involve time travel though. That was one where Worf travelled through a rift in space to a parallel quantum realities. They proposed that everything that can happen does happen in an infinite number of parallel dimensions. So that would nullify the whole time travel plot device as creating a parallel dimension. What happens instead is either Nero's time travel has destroyed one of the quantum realities or has just knocked our cameras as it were into another quantum reality that happened anyway.

You're forgetting that another possibility would have been that Nero and Spock never traveled through time and were destroyed by the black hole instead. Or any other number of outcomes that would lead to the original time line remaining intact in some fashion.

Also, you give Star Trek too much credit. They've never been as consistent with their time travel as you seem to think. They've had everything from pre-destination paradox to full on overhauls of the timeline they needed to fix in order to get home happen because of their various time travel excursions.

[Kizyr]

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW

Uhura used the phrase "alternate reality", but yeah, you got it. I consider it be a brilliant conpromise; the higher ups wanted a reboot, but the filmmakers wanted to respect canon, so they came up with a fork-in-the-road scenario. The most amusing part is that the forking idea isn't even new in the Star Trek franchise.

While the forking road isn't new, the fact that this didn't end with One Giant Reset Button is rather new. I think anyone who's watched enough Trek fully expected that, when the Enterprise was about to be sucked into the black hole, that they'd somehow come out the other end 25 years in the past and undo everything that juts happened.

So, when they made it out, continued with the movie, and rolled the credits, my reaction was something like:

1) Wait, where's the ending?

2) Damn, they really did something new!

MINOR SPOILERS BELOW

Overall, as a Trek fan for most of my life, by all rights I shouldn't have enjoyed this, yet I did--hell I'd even see it a second time in theaters, given the opportunity.

To break it down here, the good:

- Characterization, especially Scotty, Bones, and to a lesser extent Sulu and Chekhov

- The update to Kirk: still a womanizer, but not constrained by having to act like Shatner

- The update to Uhura: much more well-rounded

- Ship designs (internal and external) and action scenes

- The occasional dialogue references to TOS. (Bones and Chekhov, in particular.)

- Leonard Nimoy

The bad:

- Nero. For being a genocidal monster, he was horribly underdeveloped. (I heard that Abrams did have a backstory for what he was doing for the past 25 years, but it apparently 'confused the test audience'.)

- Angle shots. I @*(#%ing hate angle shots, and they used those constantly in exposition scenes. Shaky-cam comes a close second, but that wasn't as frequent.

- The Spock-Uhura love story. It only came up in 2-3 brief scenes, practically came out of left field, and could've easily been sacrificed without losing anything to the movie. Of course, this might just be my prejudice against Vulcans speaking.

The kind-of-endearing bits:

- Sulu saying he knew hand-to-hand combat. Soon as he raised his hand, I was crossing my fingers hoping he'd get to fence.

- The redshirt on the orbital skydiving scene. He's wearing red, really excited, and carrying all the charges--I'd've been disappointed if he didn't get killed inside of five minutes.

- Captain Pike. Really, knowing his fate in TOS, I can't take him seriously. KF

[Nekofrog]

I don't get the issue with Spock/Uhura.

If you actually pay attention early in the film, you see it. The entire scene where Spock assigns Uhura to the Farragut instead of the Enterprise and then explains that it's because it would look like a conflict of interest given their history, etc.

That right there laid the foundation of scenes to come.

[Toadofsky]

Personally, I get really sick of people going to see movies and complaining that they're "predictable" or that they "all ready guessed the ending". Woohoo. You're smart. But unless you're going to see a mystery or a thriller, you're barking up the wrong tree. Movies like this don't aim to have twist endings. In fact, 99% of stories are the same thing packaged differently, and that's the way it has always been and will always be.

I was waiting for someone to say that.

And Lotd2242, I appreciate that you've got your opinion on the movie, but man, why poke and prod it to death? I understand there's valid reasons for why you didn't like it but jeez man, tell me there's at least something you liked about it, besides it ending .

SPOILER

It may sound silly, but I loved it when Kirk stole that car, and they started playing Beastie Boys "Sabotage", for some reason I though that was just awesome, besides that scene.

END SPOILER

I'm still geeking out over how much I enjoyed that movie. I haven't felt that way from a movie in such a LOOOONG time.

I'm with Nekofrog on the Spock Uhura relationship not being that big a deal, I thought it was a good shake up. I mean, Vulcans seem to get all the chicks.

And yeah, I wish Nero could have had more build up, maybe they'll do a director's cut (there WAS deleted scenes for the movie, just look at some of the previews, you can see them).

[JH Sounds]

I don't get the issue with Spock/Uhura.

If you actually pay attention early in the film, you see it. The entire scene where Spock assigns Uhura to the Farragut instead of the Enterprise and then explains that it's because it would look like a conflict of interest given their history, etc.

That right there laid the foundation of scenes to come.

I dunno, it seemed like one of those ambiguous you-have-to-watch-it-again things. I suppose "oral sensitivity" can take on a different meaning.

[Lotd2242]

I was waiting for someone to say that.

And Lotd2242, I appreciate that you've got your opinion on the movie, but man, why poke and prod it to death? I understand there's valid reasons for why you didn't like it but jeez man, tell me there's at least something you liked about it, besides it ending .

I liked the beginning with George Kirk. Right up until the Corvette sequence I was actually starting to get engaged (pun intended) and thinking that I was going to be totally wrrong about this movie much to my chagrin. So many Star Trek fans had been saying "this thing is awesome go see it" that I was sitting there watching this sequence thinking "holy crap maybe they were right." I thought for that brief moment it was going to pull a Transformers on me, wherein I go in thinking it will suck and find myself surprisingly loving it. Then it just swerved right off the cliff with Kirk's car.

I also liked the portrayal of Pike. I think that was pretty well on the money considering how little we know about Pike (except for the whole "Hey suspended cadet Kirk you're the First Officer now" bit.) The thing that sealed it for me was his shifting into telling Nero name/rank/serial number during the interrogation. He also has the only good line in the whole film and he sold it perfectly.

But that's not enough to cover for all of the the problems with the rest of the movie, nor my distaste for Hollywood's insistence on messing with things that were perfectly fine the way they were in an attempt to make them "appeal to a wider audience." At the end of the day I have no idea why anyone, much less Star Trek fans, thought this movie was so awesome. It was a decent action flick but nothing special and a terrible adaptation of Star Trek. I also find it amazing how easily placated the general and usually extremely nitpicky Trek populace is by this alternate timeline nonsense.

I'm not particularly obsessed with the canon either, especially given how little there is about that time period in the show. I just want the characters to act within the established personalities, and that includes the Enterprise which for all their talk of making it updated to reflect our new level of technology looked less futuristic and more dysfunctional than even her 60s counterpart.

Moreover, they could've easily taken an end-around any reboot reservations and accomplished what they wanted without having to add the stigma of wrecking what had come before by either doing a prequel within in the confines of the established lore and telling the story of Kirk & Co's first mission or skipping ahead of the TNG era 100 years and creating their own group. Hell the Enterprise had a bunch of sister ships in TOS they could've used as their own too without changing one iota of the timeline. Or there's a whole period between TOS and TNG that is completely unexplored. So many ways to accomplish the same goal without stomping all over the established characters.

[Maco70]

Damn clever way to reboot the franchise.

[Nekofrog]

I also liked the portrayal of Pike. I think that was pretty well on the money considering how little we know about Pike (except for the whole "Hey suspended cadet Kirk you're the First Officer now" bit.) The thing that sealed it for me was his shifting into telling Nero name/rank/serial number during the interrogation. He also has the only good line in the whole film and he sold it perfectly.

I was very happy with Pike's character. Since he isn't a vegetable, and is now an admiral, I fully expect him to continue appearing in future Star Trek movies, which would be a GOOD thing.

But that's not enough to cover for all of the the problems with the rest of the movie, nor my distaste for Hollywood's insistence on messing with things that were perfectly fine the way they were in an attempt to make them "appeal to a wider audience." At the end of the day I have no idea why anyone, much less Star Trek fans, thought this movie was so awesome.

But things were NOT perfectly fine. Track the gross of modern Star Trek movies and they were in a downward spiral. Trek was not creating new fans. Trek was losing old fans. The general feeling was that Trek was "done" amongst fandom; Enterprise was terrible and Voyager was beyond bad. There had been more awful Trek in the last 10 years than there had been good Trek.

It was in dire need of fixing, and more of the same was NOT going to fix it.

[Overflow]

I walked into the theatre fully expecting the movie to be a case of: "Look! It's Kirk! And Spock! Ooh, and they're flying the Enterprise! Isn't that great?" But I was greatly relieved when it turned out the writers were serious and were actually writing a full-on star trek story.

MAJOR SPOILERS

The timeline split was, in my opinion, perfectly acceptable, and even kind of cool. The fact that we have familiar characters, but they are essentially new people(Considering that their histories and upbringing are different now), makes for very interesting sequel possibilities. I don't know if they should fix the timeline or not; Would it be better just to create this parallel universe and leave it at that? I don't know. I do know that everything in the movie may not have occurred at all in TOS(For example, the love between Spock and Uhura, or Scott being stranded on that ice planet), and that those little (Or big) changes drastically change the characters and environments.

Once Vulcan was destroyed, I thought: "Holy crap, Vulcan is gone!! That's horr--Oh wait. That doesn't happen in TOS. They'll fix that by the end of the movie." And I was surprised when they didn't. they had the balls to do something new, and I think that's great. But I guess you can never please everyone. Someone will find something wrong, and you'll never make the perfect movie.

I actually find it pretty funny that everyone got jipped in the parallel universe. Kirk lost his father, Spock his mother, Vulcan is gone, many ships were destroyed that didn't need to be, Spock Prime(Why is he called that, BTW?) wound up in the past, etc. The only one who got the good end was Pike; he's crippled, sure but not a vegetable! He got something good out os all that, ROFL!

[Zombie]

I really liked this movie. Spock was a badass.

[Lotd2242]

But things were NOT perfectly fine. Track the gross of modern Star Trek movies and they were in a downward spiral. Trek was not creating new fans. Trek was losing old fans. The general feeling was that Trek was "done" amongst fandom; Enterprise was terrible and Voyager was beyond bad. There had been more awful Trek in the last 10 years than there had been good Trek.

It was in dire need of fixing, and more of the same was NOT going to fix it.

The original series was perfectly fine. It needed no fixing. They already did the only possible thing available to make it better which was to update the space shots with CG and clean up the effects. Things did not really start to fall apart until the end of Voyager, and it's just because they had the same five guys writing the stories and they were clearly burned out. Enterprise was a failure of execution more than anything. It could've been a really cool thing to see the founding of the Federation and mankind's initial forays into deep space, but instead we got a Temporal Cold War and emotional Vulcans that take their clothes off all the time.

Look I was not opposed to trying something to breath life into the franchise. I just prefer not to do it at the expense of existing characters, and I don't see how this movie does that. People who are entertained by this movie will be bored to tears by the average Star Trek episode or movie, so I doubt many of them are going to get into the old stuff. They can't really spinoff a new series from the movie since most of those actors are not going to stop doing movies for it, nor are the writers most likely. They'll probably be lucky to milk another two movies out of it.

So assuming you consider this movie Star Trek (as a case can be made that it isn't beyond the name), it's more like a stay of execution than a new life.

The only movie that really did a good job of drawing in the non-fans and making them fans was First Contact. It had a wide appeal when it came out, and it was fairly consistent within the Star Trek universe so that people could quickly hop over to TNG or DS9 and go from there.

[Jam Stunna]

I have to agree with Neko, about Pike and Star Trek in general. TNG was way too sterile as a series; DS9 was good, but just didn't have the mass appeal of a Picard-type character; Voyager was just terrible, and I can't say anything about Enterprise, I never saw an episode of it. It just didn't seem interesting at all.

And the Star Trek movies were all hit-or-miss, with way more misses. First Contact was the only good TNG movie, with the others being really horrible.

This new movie brought back the things that have been missing from Trek for the last twenty years: action, comedy (it's no coincidence that the most commercially successful Trek movie prior to this one was Star Trek IV)and sex appeal, but in an appropriate way: the obligatory sex scene with Kirk was actually pretty funny.

I'm really looking forward to the next movie, and I hope Pike has an active role in it.

[Lotd2242]

This new movie brought back the things that have been missing from Trek for the last twenty years: action, comedy (it's no coincidence that the most commercially successful Trek movie prior to this one was Star Trek IV)and sex appeal, but in an appropriate way: the obligatory sex scene with Kirk was actually pretty funny.

This goes back to what I was saying about this not bearing a resemblence to Star Trek. Most of the Star Trek movies have very little action in them especially by comparison. I think First Contact probably takes the award for it. Wrath of Khan, which is held as the gold standard of Star Trek, has all of two major action sequences and they don't last long. They are also pretty slow considering.

What Khan does have that this movie doesn't is the hallmark of Star Trek, deep moral and philosophical questions. Even IV, despite being a total comedy, deals with what we would now call the "green" debate. It also has very little action of any kind.

[prophetik music]

i like star wars.

i also liked where this series is going now. old star trek was boring as hell, and most of the movies were terrible. new star wars is interesting, there's less boobies than there has been (i love boobies, but not in space, and not when they don't make sense and/or are strange colors), and there's comedy in a way that isn't just stupidity.

lotd needs to stop being a blatant (read: BLATANT, you dumb shit...you hold no credibility, you have numbers in your name for goodness sake) fanboy of 80s drama and move on. the series was stagnant, so they blew up vulcan. and nero ear-raped your mum.

[Jam Stunna]

What "deep philosophical question" was present in Star Trek II? Or III? Or any of them? These are movies, it's supposed to be two hours of wham, bam, thank you ma'am, not discussion of existential issues. That's what the TV shows are for.

Enterprise was canceled. Nemesis was the lowest grossing movie of the franchise, despite having the largest marketing budget. Star Trek was dead, and this movie has brought it back to life. Now they have a whole new universe to play with, one where the Federation has been significantly weakened with the destruction of one of its founding planets, and the Klingons are still the baddest muthafuckers in the galaxy. Do you see how potentially great this can be for the franchise?

[Vivi22]

Things did not really start to fall apart until the end of Voyager, and it's just because they had the same five guys writing the stories and they were clearly burned out.

I disagree, things really started to fall apart when DS9 ended and we didn't have a good Star Trek show to cover for the pile of crap that was Voyager. Voyager sucked right from the start. It was a show with what could have been a great premise that fell flat on its face thanks to terrible villians, boring characters and a ship with pretty much unlimited resources. The fact that their ship was in pretty much pristine condition every week and the crew weren't falling into depression and hopelessness after 7 years was a slap in the face to anyone with an ounce of common sense.

And you really think the new take on the Enterprise looks less futuristic? Explain to me how it seems less futuristic than a bunch of big bulky buttons, flashing lights, and no console displays. I can only assume you're talking about pipes and valves carrying water and things like (what I'd assume to be) coolant to the engine. Seems perfectly acceptable to me considering we never saw the inner workings of the TOS Enterprise.

[Native Jovian]

But that's not enough to cover for all of the the problems with the rest of the movie, nor my distaste for Hollywood's insistence on messing with things that were perfectly fine the way they were in an attempt to make them "appeal to a wider audience." At the end of the day I have no idea why anyone, much less Star Trek fans, thought this movie was so awesome. It was a decent action flick but nothing special and a terrible adaptation of Star Trek. I also find it amazing how easily placated the general and usually extremely nitpicky Trek populace is by this alternate timeline nonsense.

Hey guys. Stop liking this movie. It's bad. Srsly, really bad. Stop enjoying it. Enjoying it is wrong because it's so bad. Why haven't you stopped liking it even when I've explained to you how bad it is?

[DarkeSword]

i like star wars.

i also liked where this series is going now. old star trek was boring as hell, and most of the movies were terrible. new star wars is interesting, there's less boobies than there has been (i love boobies, but not in space, and not when they don't make sense and/or are strange colors), and there's comedy in a way that isn't just stupidity.

lotd needs to stop being a blatant (read: BLATANT, you dumb shit...you hold no credibility, you have numbers in your name for goodness sake) fanboy of 80s drama and move on. the series was stagnant, so they blew up vulcan. and nero ear-raped your mum.

...why are you talking about Star Wars?

[Lotd2242]

What "deep philosophical question" was present in Star Trek II? Or III? Or any of them? These are movies, it's supposed to be two hours of wham, bam, thank you ma'am, not discussion of existential issues. That's what the TV shows are for.

Star Trek II had lots of them. "How we deal with life is just as important as how we deal with death, don't you think?" to name one. There's also a discussion of the proper use of science, whether or not we should develop a technology that has both the potential for extreme good and extreme evil.

III: Existence/importance of souls and how far you'd go to save a friend's soul. Arguably the weakest in terms of moral/philosophical issues.

IV: Conservation and the "green" debate.

V: If you could wipe away all your bad memories would you? Is God "out there"? What really makes a family?

VI: Racism & Prejudice. Cold War allegory.

Generations: Duty vs. personal happiness. Is living in a fake paradise better than the real world?

First Contact: Moby Dick.

Insurrection: Good of the many vs. Good of the few. Allegory to the forced movement of Indians etc.

Nemesis: Nature vs. Nurture.

Star Trek was always at its core a discussion of existential issues or an allegory to some issue of the day wrapped with some science and a hopeful view of the future. That's why geeks liked it.

Enterprise was canceled. Nemesis was the lowest grossing movie of the franchise, despite having the largest marketing budget. Star Trek was dead, and this movie has brought it back to life. Now they have a whole new universe to play with, one where the Federation has been significantly weakened with the destruction of one of its founding planets, and the Klingons are still the baddest muthafuckers in the galaxy. Do you see how potentially great this can be for the franchise?

I don't. I stated why earlier.

I disagree, things really started to fall apart when DS9 ended and we didn't have a good Star Trek show to cover for the pile of crap that was Voyager. Voyager sucked right from the start. It was a show with what could have been a great premise that fell flat on its face thanks to terrible villians, boring characters and a ship with pretty much unlimited resources. The fact that their ship was in pretty much pristine condition every week and the crew weren't falling into depression and hopelessness after 7 years was a slap in the face to anyone with an ounce of common sense.

And you really think the new take on the Enterprise looks less futuristic? Explain to me how it seems less futuristic than a bunch of big bulky buttons, flashing lights, and no console displays. I can only assume you're talking about pipes and valves carrying water and things like (what I'd assume to be) coolant to the engine. Seems perfectly acceptable to me considering we never saw the inner workings of the TOS Enterprise.

I liked the beginning of Voyager. I disliked the end for many of the same reasons you stated. There's not much else to be said.

The Budweiser Brewery (that's where it was shot) for engineering is one, yeah. The refit design and the later TNG ships have the futuristic warp core look. The original had a clean two-tier engine room with a window to the core.

On the bridge, it's hard to tell if the buttons are still there or if they're touch screens, but we know Sulu's console has a throttle. Even the 60's ship had evolved past the throttle. Apparently both he and Chekov also need desk lamps despite how ridiculously bright that place is. The new ship's comm officer has to stand for some reason, and her console has all kinds of things sticking out of it that appear to serve no function. Microphones I guess? Do we still need microphones in the 23rd century?

The one thing I did think was well done was increasing the size of the main view screen, which I think they turned into a window with a HUD. That can really go either way. One the one hand it means the bridge is far less protected than it probably should be, but on the other if the power goes out you can still see what is in front of you.

[relyanCe]

I have no clue what Star Trek is all about or how any of it works, except that you can set phasers to stun.

I went into the the movie expecting lots of laser beams and explosions and crazy effects, with a plot thrown in there somewhere.

I left satisfied.

[Native Jovian]

itt relyance is wise