The Official STAR TREK Grading & Discussion Thread [SPOILERS]

Thanks for the link to that review, Trampledamage
The guy totally loved it, that's just great to read reviews like this one from time to time.
"I tell myself it's popcorn dust."

 

This is the link to David Hayter's IMDb page if anyone's interested in his credentials for making the joke about maybe not everyone can write a good film beginning but he can!

I love his voice as Solid Snake - but that's a story for another thread

 

That was an awesome review. Honestly, when he was describing the opening scene, I actually got choked up!

Damn you, dirty Abrams! Damn you all to hell!

J.

 

Better late then never I suppose.

This movie supplants every other sci-fi film I've ever seen to become my favorite of all time! Quite a statement when you consider The Empire Strikes Back just fell to no.2.

I love Star Trek. It's just that damn good. Like a phoenix, it rises from the ashes of Star Trek: Enterprise and Nemesis - except now it's cool too!

 

The soundtrack also kicks a lot of ass, too.
I'm listening to it right now, as it segues from "Hella Bar Talk" to "Enterprising Young Men" and the hair on my neck, arms and legs just stand up and shivers go up my spine. It just reminds me when I saw it in the theater and how incredible an opening it was. I remember yelling out "Holy Shit!" in the awestruck and quiet theatre before I could stop it.

That same feeling again.

J.

 

I saw Star Trek. Overrated, I'd give it 7/10.

Certainly ahead of the hokey (but related) Nemesis and streets ahead of the abysmal Insurrection. I thought Chris Pine was a little underwhelming, he only gave off Shatner smarm during the training simulation, but Quinto, Urban, and Yelchin were pitch perfect in their roles. I didn't mind Simon Pegg, but he was played up too much as comic relief. Ben Cross, Eric Bana, Faran Tahir, and Bruce Greenwood were impressive in their supporting roles.

I have mixed feelings about the production values - I kinda of liked the bright lights and genuine feeling of 3D in outer space. Headgear and hats being common among Starfleet personnel makes a change (helmets seemed to have vanished since the early TOS movies). The interior of the USS Kelvin seemed a lot more like the original Shatner Enterprise than the actual Enterprise featured in this reboot (who's command bridge vaguely resembled the original Excelsior command bridge). Nero's weird Borg-Romulan hybrid flagship was very impressive and scary, it looked amazing when revealed on the big screen, but it seemingly kept changing its scale (likely perspective with the other space ships it dwarfed).

The storyline was silly and full of holes you could drive a Borg Cube through (come on, a sun going supernova threatening the Milky Way?! How can a seemingly unremarkable star mess up around 300, 000, 000, 000 other stars across 100, 000 light years?!), with Voyager's "Year of Hell" having a slightly better plot about a super ship causing a time paradox and a antagonist character with a better fleshed out motivation, even though that was silly as well and written by Brannon Braga. The best Trek movie since First Contact, mainly due to the fresh blooded production crew, yet First Contact was marginally better.

 

I did mutter a very unlady-like "Fuck" at that very moment at my first viewing. That and I had a lot of dust in my eyes too.

The Vulcan theme gives me shivers each time I listen to it. This is so spot on, either for Spock himself or the planet or Vulcans in general.

 

Hayter's favorable review seems to be largely influenced by that he liked the characters (the work of the past installments) and how the new actors were playing them. By that standard most adaptations would be considered great films.

 

Re: STXI...unsure

Very true.

Some of us are filtering STXI through a 43 year old minds eye and most of us added many missing pieces along the way. JJ Abrams' new pieces don't match our pieces and some people truly can't deal with it. They'd rather have no Trek and I can sort of understand that even though I totally disagree. So please take it as given that the following is just a long time Trekker's opinion.

I think the cast, the writers, Abrams, they all nailed it. I don't care that the bridge looks different, I just care that the charactors feel right to me. Despite the differences, it feels like Star Trek to me. They got all the charators right and everything flows from there. It has just enough iconic dialogue organically there instead of shoehorned in with a blowtorch and festooned with neon lights. And how much do I love it that Scotty had a tribble they didn't feel a need to hit us over the head with. It's just there, barely viable at the edge of the screen faintly purring.

Add just enough humor in the right places, terrific quotable dialogue, glorious music that turns some of it into opera (the Kelvin) and there we are. And I like where we are. I've seen it seven times and I turned metaphoric somersaults today when I saw it's still here next week.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth in black&white (at least in my house) I made up a whole backstory for TOS Spock. Abrams gave me a different back story, one that I had no trouble seeing as equally valid. Abrams' Spock could have aged into TOS Spock if he had made different (equally possible) choices after graduating. All the charactor felt like who they could have been when they were younger.

This Spock is going to make even more of those different choices, and he's going to be better at balancing logic and emotions. I love STXI Spock and I love TOS Spock. Both exist, in different timelines. I love Pine's Kirk much more than I did TOS Kirk largely because I was always aware Shattner was acting. McCoy is perfect, and Uhura is finally the Uhura she should always have been, to be where she was.

The less said about red matter, black holes, and supernovas, the better. McGuffins, all of them. Let's just say Abrams added handwavium to the periodic table and call it a day.

Losing Vulcan really hurts but in the long run, that's the real reboot and Abrams needed that. The future is wide open with story possibilites and no reset button.

One of my favorite TNG episodes is Parallels. I didn't have any trouble with STXI's alternate timeline. Maybe that's because one of my favorite authors is H. Beam Piper who wrote the fabulous "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen" about a cop who inadvertantly goes through a Paratime gateway and winds up in a parallel timeline and ends up with a much better life. Harry Turtledove has made an entire career of alternate timeline books, including a few set in Piper's Paratime multiverse. The Piper book is long out of print but Turtledove's Paratime books are current and pretty pretty good, although tending toward YA.

My only real regret is the missing scenes between Nero's end and Kirk's promotion. Would have liked to see Star Fleet's reaction to finding Kirk, last seen on academic suspension, is now the Enterprise captain who just saved the universe. And I would have liked to see Kirk and Pine while he recovered and the Enterprise was repaired. Ah well, that's what good fanfic is for.

 

One of the best parts of the movie for me. I loved Spock Prime talking about what their friendship meant to him, and how he tried to make it happen again for this Kirk and this Spock.

I totally bought Kirk & Spock on the bridge in the last scene. They ~are~ going to be lifelong friends.

I've read this entire thread and I'm crosseyed but something else occured to me after I wrote my previous post. Nero is a revenge plot which is easy to understand in a couple of lines. So much else had to happen in this movie to bring seven people together in one place, they really didn't have any extra time to spare on Nero's backstory and motives.

 

Amen. I can't wait to see it again.


J.

 

Saw this in London and it's brilliant! I love how clever it was. Did anybody else get all the references? The time-travel was confusing.

 

Yeah I can't wait to go again. I might understand it more if I see it again. Maybe I should have watched the last one first? Or the very first Star Trek (the film from 1980).

 

yep, this is one of those movies where I recommend multiple viewings.

 

Finally got around to seeing it. It was all kinds of awesome!

 

I didn't know that one

That was heartbreaking to see. Spock Prime has lost his friend a long time ago, he's just lost his planet (you could say both of them as he lived on Romulus for quite some time) and he tries so hard to help nuSpock take what he thinks is a good direction in life.

Yep! Of course it's not like in TOS yet (though at the beginning of the first season, it was a bit like that) but you can see it has the potential to get there, even with slightly changed characters.
At that point in the movie, I was ready to watch their first adventure and suddenly, the movie was finished! The frustration!

 

I just recommended it to a whole bunch of people. One girl I recommended it too saw me the other day and told me she wants to learn more about Star Trek. She loved the movie. I was pleased.

J.

 

Woo-hoo. XI is the new gateway Trek.

 

I originally posted this as my first post in the "rebirth" thread. But I think that this is the right place for it. - TrekSan.

Speaking as one of the "Old" Trekkers...... I think the NuTOS has a shot.
This is my first post so if the uberMods feel it needs to be moved elsewhere then so let it be written, then let it be moved...

From the opening scene, canon is out the window. Time travel is an old ST standby but at the end the timeline is normally restored thus making the boo boo all better. Not Now.

I like Canon. It allows the creation of a shared universe and allows other creators to get involved without mucking it up. That is one reason why the movies and TV series' have lasted so long and so well.

But, by leaving the movie as it was, all the canon is gone. McCoy likely will never save (or not) Edith. Spock isn't gonna ponfar all over Vulcan either. This movie actually paves the way for a ST:NuTOS without canon issues. They can boldly go places etc. Why the exceptionally young Capt JTK could discover the Borg since Scotty now knows Transwarp works.

On the movie itself, weaving opinion and possibly flawed logic.

Plot.
- Time Travel. Old standby. Almost ho hummed it and went for the second large popcorn.

Characters.
- I liked em all. But, I am one of the guys who are willing to suspend disbelief and cut some slack. Shatner will always be JTK, but the new kid does a great job on his own. Hope the Orion Girl comes back. She's hot.

Special effects.
-- Not the TOS Enterprise. I heard a lot of people in the audience complaining that the NuTOSEnterprise wasn't right. Those are purists. I know that TOS had buttons and sliders and levers. That was a logical progression from the 1960's tech. These FX were a logical progression from todays tech. I liked it. I really liked Archers enterprise where they tried to make it look less advanced than JTK's.

-- Imploding Vulcan was cool. Besides. Too much of ST was based on Vulcan. Now they will focus on something else.

Canon - Covered Above.

Logical Flaws.
- Spock /Uhura? What changes in the timeline fracture caused them to hook up. JTK was changed due to birth and a lack of Kirk Sr in his life. But, was there a relative on the Kelvin that somehow didn't point Spock or Uhura in a direction that originally avoided thier getting all hot and bothered.
- Chasm in Iowa? No way. I lived in Iowa as a kid. Was this an aftereffect of Xindi Superweapon?

-- Military Structure: I personally served 22 Years on Active Duty as a US Marine. So anything off about the military gets me quick. Here goes. Please help me if you can. This is the only flaw that can possibly turn me off.

Ages: 17 Checkov / Sulu were way too young to have gone thru the academy and been commissioned. Noting the uniforms, they were not cadets.

The Ranks all out of alignment w/naval tradition. Spock was a Commander while Uhura and Kirk were cadets. While it makes great Movie, it would not work in real life. Even being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor equivalent would only bump JTK ONE RANK. There is no way that command of Star Fleets newest ship would pass from Pike to Kirk based on a cadet who got lucky and showed some natural ability. I've personally mentored Marines with natural skill so as to fast track them. But, there is no track as fast as what was seen at the end of the flick. Part of JTK's greatness was how his experiences as a junior officer shaped him to become SF youngest captain ever.

- Escape from black hole: 1 drop "red matter" implodes a planet but a huge sphere of it only makes a small hole the enterprise can escape from?

Questions: - Assuming history was stable up to Kelvins destruction, what happened to crew? Not every member of SF would have been affected by the change. See the uhura spock question above.

Oh, and what happened to the moon by Vulcan? It was a moon that the TOS Spock was hiding on right? No planet should have sent the moon reeling or sucked it into the hole created etc. Would love to figure this out.

Likely that was too much for a first post. Off to work, great to meet y'all.

 

A stone quarry that left a bigger hole after 300 years of use?

The red matter only makes a "hole" with available mass--Narada much smaller than a planet, so more "red matter + smaller mass" = less strong gravity well? (just speculating within the bounds of the story--I don't often try to work out "real science" with Trek).

"Vulcan has no moon"--Spock to Uhura in early TOS (exact episode escapes me).

The writers have said (and this is how I "read it" anyway before reading their explanation) the visual representation of Vulcan's destruction as depicted in the mind meld is meant figuratively rather than literally. It is how Kirk processed the information in a way that made some sense especially as it was his first meld (and how melds work is unclear, at best). I will grant the film is not as clear about this as it could be, but since the literal visual image did not make sense to me, I simply imagined something very close to what the writers later said was their intention.