Star Trek Into Darkness & The Bechdel Test

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Shaka Zulu, Jun 6, 2013.

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  1. CorporalClegg

    CorporalClegg Admiral Admiral

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    I suppose I'm going to have to pair "What was Roddenberry's vision?" with "What is real Star Trek?"

    And, yes, I'm going to keep asking until I get a definitive answer.
     
  2. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    No true Star Trek fan would do such a thing. :shifty:
     
  3. Opus

    Opus Commodore Commodore

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    Let's face it, "True Trek Fans" are just "Rick Bermanites"...

    ... and they are NOT pleased...
     
  4. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Good luck. Because they don't know the answer to either question. Hell, they can't even answer why a Star Trek movie being a "fun romp" is a bad thing. :lol:
     
  5. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    I guess my perspective must be skewed living so close to the beach and seeing women in bikinis walking down the street all the time, because that scene did not stick out as some excessive display of skin and cleavage to me at all. It was really tame. I mean, okay for TV before the safe harbor/watershed now tame. I mean, okay for TV after the safe harbor/watershed even in the 60s tame. Katy Perry showed as much cleavage on Sesame Street (also something which was blown way out of proportion).

    Sure, the scene could have been done with her back to the camera, but I don't even understand the need. OMG, women have breasts. Film at eleven. Making her turn her back to not show her shameful covered breasts sounds like something out of the Taliban. People are acting like this is an episode of I Love Lucy and not a film shot in 2013 based on a TV show from the 60s that regularly showed more skin than this way back then. William Ware Theiss would be lynched by modern fans if this thread is any indication.

    There are women in diverse roles in ST09 and STiD. There are several bridge officers, women working in engineering, women as medical staff in sickbay, women security officers guarding the brig, women flag officers/captains/XOs at the Starfleet briefing, Uhura as the communications officer/linguistics specialist, Marcus as a science officer/weapons specialist...

    Nyota Uhura - Communications Officer/Linguist
    Carol Marcus - Science Officer/Weapons Specialist
    Hannity - Operations Officer
    Darwin - Navigator
    Madeline - Science Officer
    Christine Chapel - Nurse
    Unknown Female Bridge Officer (White Hair) - Possibly meant to be Ensign Brackett, since the credits writers or IMDb wrongly assigned that name to the previously named (in ST09) Hannity, who was also in STiD

    [​IMG]

    It's also possible that Gaila was assigned to the Enterprise as a computer specialist, given her particular excitement with her ship assignment (which would especially make sense if she was assigned aboard the new flagship everyone wanted to serve on) and Kirk's confusion of another redheaded Orion Enterprise crew member with her in a deleted scene, which could imply that he knew she was aboard (but that's speculative).

    Lol, no, like I said, lol, given his track record and depiction onscreen, lol, Scotty is the evidence of Keenser's competence, lol. Scotty would not allow someone who could not perform the job superbly and be safe around his engines, period. Nor would Keenser be his best friend and confidant if Scotty couldn't talk shop with him.

    You could have explained that. I clicked through and watched a couple of the videos, and all I saw was a CGI Duplo character singing a Celine Dion style theme song while floating through space, and some other CGI Duplo bridge crew. It didn't tell me much of anything about the setting or plot.

    Except for how absolutely nothing works out right for him in this film. He gets demoted (and kicked off his ship and sent back to the Academy before the crisis happens). He gets rebuffed by Carol. He gets told by Spock that his vengeful attitude is wrong and against Starfleet ethics. He loses his chief engineer. He apologizes to his crew for getting their asses handed to them by the Vengeance. He's outsmarted by Khan (Spock's the one who saves the day). His ship is crippled and falls to Earth without ever firing a shot. He dies.

    If it weren't for being reborn Jesus style, it would be an entirely shitty day to be James T. Kirk. In what way is any of that an affirmation of his behavior? The whole point of the film is that he has to grow in order to become the captain he was meant to be, and after finally fumbling through things for a while he accomplished that at the end by realizing vengeance is wrong, being humbled and apologizing, sacrificing his life for his shipmates, treating Carol as a valued officer and member of the Enterprise family and not a potential conquest, and making an impassioned memorial speech, ethics mission statement, and a call for exploration at the end.

    My god, the horror. How will we live down being compared to a fun billion dollar grossing critically and fan acclaimed film series?!

    And yeah, you are supposed to laugh at the turbolift scene. I guess the audiences I saw the film with aren't as highbrow as you, because we all thought it was funny and not the abomination before Goddenberry you apparently felt it was.

    I and others have accepted it and have come up with deeper meaning behind that scene too, so don't presume to think your rigid and humorless take on how things should be is the norm.
     
  6. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    [​IMG]
     
  7. Ovation

    Ovation Admiral Admiral

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    Don't let T'Bonz see that. Has nothing to do with clothing but it won't make her happy. :shifty: :lol:
     
  8. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yeah, it's not a big deal but that doesn't change the fact that, as you admit, it wasn't necessary. Men like looking at tits. Women get frustrated that men like looking at tits. The cosmic ballet goes on. Mind you, I think most women are just rolling their eyes. Nobody really thinks it's a big deal, just more of the same.
    Well done! Chapel is not in the movie and is no longer on the ship though so she doesn't count, Gaila is most likely dead and wasn't assigned to the Enterprise in any event, and there was but a single woman in security. You also scraped the bottom of the barrel with two characters so obscure that even IMDB struggles to tell them apart and these are our top six (or our only six)? So, we have six principle male characters before we movie onto Pike, Khan, and Marcus any one of whom has 10 times more lines than characters 4-6 on your list added together. At least GoT uses its numerous women as part of the plot, often using them to drive the plot, and lets them speak. Diversity works but the STiD top six is pretty poor.

    Tut tut - are we getting a bit tetchy there? That's still assumption, not evidence. Scotty might have just promoted his mate. I can make that same assumption about any one of those women working in engineering or do I have to assume they aren't any good because an 18 year old boy got promoted above them?



    LOL
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2013
  9. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    Yeah, but you're a chauvinist with your Alice Eve/Janeway avatar, so what do you know?

     
  10. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    If mos6597 does not like it he/she should just TURN AROUND.

    Also does T'Bonz hate The Cloud Minders or something?
     
  11. Ovation

    Ovation Admiral Admiral

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    IIRC, she abhors the whole Spock/Droxine interaction, particularly the casual discussion of pon farr.
     
  12. Opus

    Opus Commodore Commodore

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    Sooooooo....

    The Hangover III opened one week after STiD, but we're supposed to be outraged and upset that STiD is the most misogynistic film of the summer because of a two-second bikini scene?

    Perspective - It's been lost by some...

    ...yep...
     
  13. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Droxine is so 60's looking she cracks me up.
     
  14. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, that was bogus.
     
  15. Pauln6

    Pauln6 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The problem with Hangover is that the characters are all so awful. Didn't one of them have unprotected anal sex with a transexual prostitute just before his wedding? I bet his wife chuckled when he recommended she get a HIV test the day after the honeymoon. A tit shot pales by comparison to that gem.

    I do like the monkey though.
     
  16. Opus

    Opus Commodore Commodore

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    Can't say I know. I've never seen The Hangover movies...
     
  17. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    [​IMG]

    I said there were several women serving in diverse roles aboard the Enterprise in ST09 and STiD. You said name six. I named six, added a possible name for a seventh, and gave speculation why Gaila might be aboard as well. Then you start adding a bunch of bullshit qualifiers even though I met your challenge.

    Christine Chapel counts because I said ST09 and STiD. She was serving aboard Enterprise in ST09.

    You have no idea what ship Gaila was assigned to. It was never mentioned, so you can't rule out Enterprise. But regardless, I didn't add her to the main list because I was just speculating there and had no proof.

    So what if if there was a crediting mistake? The actress (Amanda Foreman, an Abrams' regular) was named Hannity in ST09. There was supposed to be a new female bridge officer named Ensign Brackett in STiD. So, I speculated that since they're both operations division officers in red, the confusion might have been there and the white haired officer might be Brackett. It's not as if it's some gotcha moment for you, since I pointed it out myself in the post.

    How many times does it have to be spelled out for you that they weren't going to screw with the established crew from TOS? There's Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov. That's the main cast and focus. That's always going to be the main cast and focus in a TOS reboot. Deal with it. They can shuffle the characters around in prominence, like they've done with Uhura taking over McCoy's level of attention vs. TOS. They can add a few characters here and there, like Carol, but the more you add the more you take away from the main cast, and that's before you get to adding character development for the villains like Marcus and Khan.

    Game of Thrones has also had thirty+ hours of airtime versus ST09's and STiD's four+ hours. GoT had an established novel series where there were numerous female characters, Star Trek and Into Darkness had TOS from the 60s with a seven member main cast, six of which were men. I bet if you gave them equal time to develop an expanded secondary cast, things would more than balance out in terms of dialogue and activities for female characters, because even in that four hours, the male to female ratio onscreen is (estimating) roughly the same as GoT. Not to mention none of them are prostitutes or get brutally murdered by sadist serial killer child kings, so they have that going for them.

    Not tetchy; calling out your condescending overuse of LOL in multiple posts, which you did again.

    There's nothing in Scotty's character background in either TOS or the new movies that would indicate he would engage in that kind of favoritism of an incompetent engineer, especially when it could endanger the ship and crew. Even his nephew had to start at the bottom and perform better than anyone else on his engineering crew, a fact that cost him his life in TWoK when he bravely stayed behind to help as all the other trainees ran.
     
  18. Clancy_s

    Clancy_s Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Nope, not with any convinction - IMO she had no grounds for indignation as Kirk had no reason to expect her to undress - the overalls go on over the regular uniform, and she'd not said or done anything I recognised as a sign she was about to change.

    Kirk looked as stupified as I felt on first viewing.

    Not I - amused or pleased depending on circumstances. There's no harm in looking and if one doesn't want one's tits looked at don't put them on show in public places...

    Eyeroll is it for me; I don't mind the nudity but I find the setup for it in this case so silly it irritates me. YMMV.
     
  19. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    fff
     
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  20. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    And the award for most ironic post goes to:

    The person who argues vociferously for percentage quotas in background extras and then uses the term "gender roles" to refer to sex.
     
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