RLM - Half in the Bag does STID [SPOILERS]

Why do you 'like' hearing criticism of old Trek but dismiss criticism of nu-Trek as BS?

 

Respectfully, No.

I was told something similar when I saw Star Trek (2009). It has been 4 years, and I still love the movie, and I still consider it well made on all fronts.

I like Into Darkness better than I do ST09, in no small part due to the newer incarnation of Khan. I don't expect that to change too much over the next six months.

 

Wow at the anger/hate on display on a forum over people who discussed the movie on video rather than through text like we're doing now. Look, if you disagree, that's cool, but I'm with these guys 100%. Their views fall nicely in line with mine so it's nice to hear their thoughts.

I think we all need to agree that not everyone will love these new movies and not everyone will hate them. But the attitude that people who dislike them are "fanboys who can't get over their nostalgia" is asinine. People can have legit complaints about the film.

The point about "dumb" comes up a lot. Whenever someone says the new movies are dumb, the comeback now is "Trek was always dumb." That's just reductive and untrue.

And they went on for forty five minutes because there was stuff to talk about. We're going to be on this forum for months or years talking about the movie, so why get on them for how long they talked?

And it was not a rant. Please don't overuse that word. I'd prefer it if you listened and countered their points. Then we can have a discussion about the film.

 

RLM reviews are meant solely for entertainment purposes. As such, YMMV. There's often a kernel of "film major" truth at the heart of the reviews, but they're more about sensationalism, generalization and hyperbole than a strict, academic or objective review (as evidenced by the unnecessary lengths of some of these reviews).

Personally, I'm at the point where a RLM video is, by default, a non-starter. I've got better things to do with my time.

 

I'm a Plinkett fan. I love watching his reviews because I find them fun, entertaining, and often filled with silly moments that I find generally hilarious.

The other guys, though? Eh, not so much. If I'm spending 40 minutes watching two guys debate back and forth about a movie, I'd rather be watching Siskel & Ebert, and they managed to do a comprehensive review of three films in half the time. The RLM guys in the review above were just boring, and when you're doing a video review about a fast paced action/adventure sci-fi movie, that's just unacceptable.

 

I hated the movie, so it was nice to see a well thought out review that summed up a lot of my feelings about it. I hope they do a Plinkett review, too.

 

I don't "like" hearing criticism of old Trek(I quite like TOS and the movie series), but I don't like blatant double standards and unfairness in reviews. I also tend to roll my eyes at the now cliched "Star Trek used to be so cerebral and look what Abrams did to it!" TWOK and FC were both very much straight-forward action sci-fi movies, just like the last two movies from Abrams have been.

 

By admitting that Khan wasn't 'all that' in TWOK either, I don't see where the double standard is.

You are allowed to compare movies within the same genre and find one better than the other.

 

Bravo.

The reason why it was so long is because it was an in-depth discussion. It's not your typical spoiler-free movie review - they go over their impressions from all elements of the film, in a non-scripted casual way. I enjoy watching their discussions, and I more or less agree with their opinions on this one.

TWOK was at least coherent. My favorite part of this review was when the one guy was asked to describe the plot in detail, and the other two guys can't help but start snickering at the ridiculousness of it. If he had been summarizing The Wrath of Khan they wouldn't be laughing, because TWOK isn't mindless gibberish - despite whether you feel that it was 'cerebral' or not, it at least has a taut, believable storyline.

 

yeah, except that part of the review was clearly exaggerated for comedic effect to make the movie sound dumb. You can do that with anything, including TWOK. Here, I'll give it a shot:


-So there's this planet that exploded, but it knocked ANOTHER planet into the EXACT orbit of the exploded planet. No one found out about this, and no one on the USS Reliant noticed from their charts that a whole planet was missing.
-And then these scientists have come up with this magical tech that creates functioning ecosystems from nothing at all.
-And there's this madman who can stick bugs in guys' ears and brainwash them somehow, and Kirk has an old flame and a son he didn't know about, and Khan wants revenge on Kirk even though he tried to kill Kirk, and Kirk mercifully let him go, and had nothing to do with the other planet exploding...


you can make any Trek film's plot sound kind of silly if you try. They could have done the same thing with Iron Man 3, which they both really liked.

 

They simply know the audience they're playing too. Many of the people likely watching those reviews are people who simply can't let go of the Prime timeline.

It's like a conservative politician speaking to a religious crowd. They know all the notes to hit to fire the crowd up.

 

All you're doing there is making fun of the elements by rephrasing them in a silly way, not the plot. For instance, the 'magical tech' and 'the bugs which brainwash somehow' are explained well enough (in technobabble terms) that they're a non-issue in a sci-fi film. STID's very plot is what's ridiculous, not just the elements. It's a wacky, convoluted mess.

The reviewer that had the best criticisms of the film, IMO, was Jay, the only one of the three who wasn't a Trekkie - he gave his opinions on the film as a film, not a Star Trek film. Why do you think they're playing to an audience at all? You think they're lying about how they felt about the movie?

Do you honestly believe STID to be so far above criticism that anyone who says they didn't like must be dishonest and obviously lying? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?

 

No movie is above criticism and I have went over my perceived short-comings of the film in other posts.

But when they're saying this:

Shows me they're playing to an audience because you can snicker at the ridiculousness of plot details of many, many movies, sci-fi in particular. Seriously, protomatter?

 

I think this is disingenuous. Describe the plot for any motion picture, in detail, and it's going to sound a bit silly out of context. Just for kicks and giggles, try it with Inception. Or Avengers. Or even TWOK (seriously, trying working in the whole mind-control-space-slug component of the plot into your description without it sounding ridiculous; sure, it's explained in-film ... but so is STID's magic blood).

There are legitimate criticisms to be made of STID, but framing them in order to poke fun is done purely for the entertainment value, and not for any objective reasons. Put simply, they place a higher value on the style of their reviews than the substance. That's all fine and dandy, nothing wrong with that in and of itself. But it shouldn't be mistaken for the kind of quality reviews we got from, say, Ebert.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

I actually have to agree with sonak on this one.

 

So we're saying that you're not allowed to find fault in STID because other films are silly too?

 

Boiling a film down to its plot points and laughing at it tells me nothing of its quality (but it tells me plenty about the quality of the "review"). So trying to use that portion of the "review" as proof of the poor quality of Star Trek Into Darkness isn't going to work.