Was There Enough DETONATION?

I'm always sheepish to admit that I love a well-choreographed space battle in Star Trek. I have been shot down by the more devoted fan-type who insists Star Trek is about something more noble than wanton spectacle. Well, fine then; I love the deep and meaningful stuff as well. However, I just have this thing for awesome fucking space battles and - goddammit - why were they not in STiD?

The scenes we got seemed so brief - my appetite had been whet but we never got to the main course. I'm curious to know if I'm alone in this estimation, is all...

 

Seems you're alone in this regard.

Rest assured,I like a drawn out space battle. But there's no context for it in STID. The Enterprise faces off against a ship which completely outclasses it in every respect. The fact that the Enterprise lasted as long as it did was a miracle.

When Ship A has ten times the firepower as Ship B, there's no plausible way to write a script calling for a long space battle between the two. The audience would be logically thinking "why doesn't Ship A just blast Ship B out of the stars?" A good example of how bad that is can be seen in Generations. Anyone casually versed in Trek tech knows a Galaxy class ship would utterly crush a Klingon Bird of Prey, shields or no. Yet that's not how it turned out on screen-But we got a long space fight out of it!

 

I would settle for more glamour shots of the Enterprise. Our introduction to the ship in ST09 when Kirk looks out the window of the shuttle just didn't cut it for me. I'm not saying I need a 5-minute tour around the ship like we had in TMP, but I'd like something.

 

In the case of STID, I don't think that's so. Scotty was aboard the Vengeance, so he could have done whatever sabotage was necessary to even the odds. In fact, he did, though the Enterprise couldn't fight at that point. Giving the Enterprise the ability to fight would have fundamentally altered the rest of the film, though.

 

I'm not sure the fight between the Ent-D and the bird of prey in Generations was that long. The BOP fired a few times, the Enterprise fired one measley phaser shot, and then one torpedo

 

I really believe we should have had more detonation.

We didn't even see Marcus's head detonate properly!!

 

It's a result of Abrams's "artistic sensibilities." Supposedly, jerky shaky cam that never focuses too long on anything and whatever you do see is obscured by lens flare is how he feels Star Trek should look.

And yeah, where were the detonations? The very first official plot description promised the fleet would be detonated. Yet this didn't happen. WTF?

 

I could see what was going on just fine. Perhaps you need spectacles?

 

Certainly not, indeed I'm the only one in my family who doesn't need glasses at all. I just need the camera to stand still, and for there to not be so many lens flares.

Anyone remember the days when lens flares were considered unprofessional and filmmakers were taught to avoid having them?

 

Yes, there needed to be more detonations. I expected to see the torpedoes slam into Qo'nos and detonate Ketha.

 

The storyline required to put Kirk in a situation of being out of his depth.

I thought the engagement between the Vengeance and Enterprise the right sort of space battle.

 

The story also reflects a more realistic depiction of combat.

As the Marines say on occasion,if you're in a fair fight you made a tactical mistake somewhere. In real life combat is short,brutal,and efficiently deadly.Just like the fight in STID.

 

That's an excellent point. The Vengeance got her punches in before Scotty's sabotage, and they counted. That's to be expected in the situation.

 

I expected all of London to be detonated, judging by the post-detonation landscape of the posters.

I was looking forward to this.

 

Oh, There was detonation, in the mothers' basements of the truTrekkers everywhere!

 

I believe that point was made by dialogue in the film itself:
"That is a Galaxy-class starship. We are no match for them."

 

If you really want to see London detonated, you may want to endure G.I. JOE 2.

 

Not only was the fleet supposed to be detonated. The fleet and "all that it stands for" was supposed to be detonated. How that was supposed to happen and be adequately portrayed on screen is anybody's guess. It would have required a degree of artistry and existentialism that J.J. Abrams doesn't seem to have.

Endure G.I. Joe 2? Is that endure, in the same way one endures Star Trek Into Darkness? Admittedly, STD is a bit better than G.I. Joe2, but not by much. Both movies are of the same ilk. They are both made for the same type of people. Sure STD has 87% on Rottentomatoes, while G.I. Joe has 28%. But when one looks closer, most of the positive reviews on RT for STD are only just barely. With many of the top critics giving 6/10 or 2.5 out of 4 stars. But since a mostly, kind of, positive review is counted as an overwhelmingly positive review, STD gets an overall of 87%.

I just don't see how STD can be enjoyed, but G.I. Joe has to be endured.

 

GI Joe 2 I saw once and was bored to death and had no idea who anyone was or why I should care about anything that was happening.

Each to their own, but I loved Into Darkness. Saw it four times, three in England once in New York. It packed a strong emotional punch, IMO. I loved the characters and I was gripped from start to finish.