STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Agent Richard07, Apr 18, 2013.

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Grade the movie...

  1. A+

    18.8%
  2. A

    20.6%
  3. A-

    13.2%
  4. B+

    11.1%
  5. B

    7.9%
  6. B-

    4.1%
  7. C+

    5.7%
  8. C

    5.0%
  9. C-

    3.5%
  10. D+

    1.5%
  11. D

    1.6%
  12. D-

    1.3%
  13. F

    5.7%
  1. Franklin

    Franklin Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Most of those are good episodes. Only a few real clinkers on the list. I think the point you may be trying to make is there is variance among them in quality and the type of story being told. Of course, no one ever said the series wasn't a versatile platform for storytelling, or that the writing of one person can be uneven. (Except maybe folks who get hung up on "the vision thing" and the overal purity of the product.)
     
  2. Jolaris

    Jolaris Commander Red Shirt

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    There was one single thing I dreaded more then anything for the last year....
    That this movie would be a remake of TWOK and that it would be just as 'meh' as ´09, good as a flick but no Star Trek-soul.
    ´09 was to me a one night stand, it was fun while it lasted but I felt so very emotionally drained and empty afterwards.

    Then a few days ago a friend told me to watch TWOK in preparation for the movie and suddenly all my hopes were dashed of seeing a good movie. :rolleyes:
    As the credits rolled my first conscious thought back in the real world was: "Well played J.J Abrams, well played!"
    Or to put it in more emotional terms: BOOOOYAAAA! STAR TREK... IS... BACK!!! :drool:
    For me it was the best Star Trek movie since 1996.

    And after having a night to sleep over it, yup not a one night stand, still very much in love with it.
    Still have goosebumps actually.
    Even though I saw the Tribble resurrection coming a mile away Kirk's death actually made me cry, only to make me laugh out loud at Spock's heroic BSOD. :guffaw: I don't think I ever cried at a Star Trek movie before.
     
  3. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    While I don't like these issues I think perhaps your overall stance is too much hyperbole. A tribble is a fairly simple life form. Kirk survived because his body was intact but his cells had been damaged by radiation. Although the biology was not explained in scientific detail, I think the serum is not that much of a miracle - it's more like an injection of super-powered stem cells.

    However - it is stupid to suggest that such a serum would not already exist. Harrison is a product of 20th century science. Enhanced individuals are outlawed but this serum should already exist.

    Similarly, in Trek 2009 I was annoyed that the transporter could travel over a light year. I think you can imagine my disgust when it's used to send someone 20+ light years onto not just an enemy planet but their homeworld.

    However, despite them making an overpowered plot device about 500 times more powerful :rolleyes: there are many ways that they could place restrictions on use - massive cell damage from use (where is Khan's blood when you need it?). It is a terrible, terrible plot device.

    I really hope that they NEVER return to it in the animated series but then I said that after the last movie and they took it even further...
     
  4. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    These are the episodes of Star Trek for which Gene Roddenberry received a sole teleplay credit:

    These are the episodes for which he shared a credit with another writer:

    The episodes listed uptopic which are not included here are those for which the teleplay is credited to other writers and Roddenberry received a sole or shared "story by" credit.

    As I mentioned before, a "story" can be anything from a one or two sentence premise to several pages. With rare exceptions scene breakdowns, detailed action, dialogue and character development are inherent in the teleplay itself. The teleplay is the actual script, the blueprint from which the episode is budgeted and produced. WGA contracts establish much higher payments and percentages of residuals for the author(s) of teleplays than for those awarded story credit alone.

    BTW, I searched using the list of episodes presented uptopic as my basis. Therefore, if there are episodes that Roddenberry was credited for that were not in that list I've missed them in mine as well.
     
  5. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    You're sleeping with the wrong people. ;)
     
  6. Cinema Geekly

    Cinema Geekly Commander Red Shirt

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    Add to that, I think the larger point of that list was that the creme de la creme of Star Trek both in shows or films do not appear.

    Gene may have had a vision of the show when he started it, but ultimately the very best of Star Trek was done by other people.

    To this day I can't stand the glorification of Gene. He had a great idea for a TV show, and he had some good ideas about how life should be in the future (by-in-large) but he isn't responsible for the shows best work.

    In some cases Trek's best moments came from people who were just doing a gig and were never Trek fans.
     
  7. dulcimer47

    dulcimer47 Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    This actually illustrates an important difference between Star Trek (prior to J.J.) and every other "franchise"...

    Star Trek never rehashed their own stories before now (actually even '09 isn't a rehash, but STID clearly is).

    Batman, Superman, X-Men, and many, many others retold their stories over and over again.

    Joker is in a comic then in a 60's TV show, then in an 80's movie, then in a 00's movie, and it doesn't really seem like a ripoff, because that's what Batman has always done.

    In the hands of J.J., Trek is now just "another franchise"...

    Maybe in the next movie, the crew will have to go back in time to save the dolphins!
     
  8. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    At least four of the outstanding TOS episodes were written by people who were among the most successful of sf prose authors before even trying their hands at television writing: Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Jerome Bixby and Norman Spinrad.

    Take away their episodes and the original Star Trek is diminished by at least ninety percent.
     
  9. Phily B

    Phily B Commodore Commodore

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    Er...
     
  10. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    This pretty thoroughly misses the point, because what ultimately doomed oldTrek was that the various producers repeated the same few storytelling and stylistic moves over and over and over, with little real evolution, for nearly forty years.
     
  11. Franklin

    Franklin Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I think the A.O. Scott review in The New York Times is the first I've read good or bad that takes be aback. He's a very respected reviewer, but one wonders if even this review is bad just because it's not the kind of movie he wanted to see. I think he's too professional to do that, but there are elements of it in the review, especially his dislike of the militarization of Starfleet and that he wishes the movie had the "wit and sincerity" of the old series (again romaticizing the past).
    His "rotten" reviews at Rotten Tomatoes start at 2.5 of 5 stars. He thinks STID is that bad? Anyway, this one surprised me kind of like the Roger Ebert review of ST09 did.

    Link:

    http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/05/1...rected-by-j-j-abrams.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
     
  12. marksound

    marksound Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Yeah ... no.

    TMP was blatant in its 'rehashing' of "The Changeling." "The Naked Now" ripped off "The Naked Time." The one with Pulaski's rapid aging is too reminiscent of "The Deadly Years" to be a coincidence. And so on, and so on ...

    It's been said that there are only so many stories to be told. Eventually any franchise is bound to revisit one of its own.
     
  13. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Admiral

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    While I haven't seen Into Darkness yet, I pulled this nugget from the Writer's Guide of TOS:

    [​IMG]

    Sounds like Abrams understands Trek just fine.
     
  14. Phily B

    Phily B Commodore Commodore

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    Nemesis was a far bigger rehash of TWOK than this film!
     
  15. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Admiral

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    :wtf:

    You clearly have no idea what your talking about.
     
  16. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    :lol:I wonder how many episodes this guy's seen?

    Here's an old thread listing many of Trek's recycled stories: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=128174
     
  17. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    You guys don't understand - it's not a "rehash" if they do the same thing over and over as long as they change the names of the characters and the shapes of the bumps on their foreheads. :lol:
     
  18. dulcimer47

    dulcimer47 Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    My "Star Trek: Transformers" comment is actually completely accurate, as both are action/explosion/CGI-focused messes written by Orci and Kurtzman.

    I'd rather see Patrick Stewart play a flute or read every part in the script by himself than these last two movies.

    J.J. is the director, that's true, so I should have said, "J.J.'s writing team."

    I'll absolutely compare 7 years of episodes to 2 films because those 2 films are what has replaced the legacy of Star Trek on TV for the time being, at least.

    Kirk chopping wood was hardly even integral to the story, let alone the resolution of the story, as the magic Khan blood is. It's terrible writing and there's no way around that.

    Of course Star Trek isn't real, that was obviously not my meaning. However, sticking a "Star Trek" label on something doesn't make it Star Trek, which is my main point here. If you put a Star Trek label on Fast and the Furious 6, does that make it Star Trek? Of course not, which is basically what has happened to this franchise.
     
  19. Franklin

    Franklin Vice Admiral Admiral

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    :techman:
     
  20. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    No.

    Completely accurate would be simply to say "both movies were written by Orci and Kurtzman and others." The rest is no more than your personal opinion, for which no evaluation of "accuracy" can be vouchsafed.