The Official STAR TREK Grading & Discussion Thread [SPOILERS]

Some of the wider shots were iffy, in that it was implausible that such a sprawling facility would or could be contained within a starship, but the basic aesthetic worked well enough.

 

Well, that's the convenience of using a plot device you never bother to explain in any meaningful detail!...

Great first post, Flemm, and I agree with a lot of your assessments (although I'd perhaps knock the grade down a point or two for "The Look": the production values were great, but IMHO the cinematography was eccentric, and the design aesthetic was wildly inconsistent.)

While the film isn't without redeeming qualities, though, what outweighs all the rest for me is the problems (as you acknowledge) with the story. Without a strong, well-written story at the center, all the pretty pictures and good acting in the world will amount to nothing. All else being equal, saying it's not thought-provoking is a criticism, a very serious one, there's no way around it. The most important take-away from your review, IMHO, is this: "I should not have to turn off my brain to enjoy a Star Trek movie, quite the opposite."

A lot of people seem to be defending it on the basis that it's impressive-looking and exciting. And for the most part, it is. But so what? What does all that amount to without a good story? It's all visceral thrills, no brain.

Nope and nope, and I never noticed him saying anything about having saved Romulus, either.

Couldn't agree more with this. (Except that not every other Trek film is as badly plotted as this one. It really was worse than most.)

You liked that? Not being able to see the old one any more is really not a selling point for me. To make it one, the new version would have to be better than what it's replacing, and this movie sure didn't make a case for that.

Well, first of all, that's the last thing Star Trek should be trying to be (indeed, that "Star Wars" flavor is what many of us were fearing from Abrams from the start). But second, even on those terms, it really didn't manage to be enjoyable. Some people seem to think story logic and plausibility are optional features in summer movies, but I've never understood that POV.

 

Loved the characters...the f/x were awesome, and the movie never dragged. I'm looking forward to seeing these characters together again for a sequel or sequels...

What I hated was that the entire history of all this crew from the TV series, TWOK, through to TUC was just wiped out!!!

Yes, the possibilities are endless now, BUT, am I the only one who's terribly upset about this??!

No more Vulcan...no more Romulus??? I'm not taking this very well...

 

hmm did you say vats

tubes??

 

Beautiful! You found the pics I had been looking for also.
I should have thought to look at Trekcore.

J.

 

The Romulans are still there in this universe at this point in time.

 

Those vats look nothing like the brewery vats we saw in the movie.

Those tubes are less invasive. Here we can see the actual walls, and they are well covered. In the movie, pipes and tubes are everywhere, not just embedded into walls.

 

So, I liked the movie as a big bombastic action movie but unfortunately it didn't really tread any new ground. But I think that's fine - I'm sure it was written to establish the characters and the new actors rather than try to tell any new interesting stories and I'm okay with that. I also don't mind that it was very similar to ST2 - at least it was better than Nemesis, which tried to do the same thing.

I guess the Trek fan in me just doesn't understand why the reset button wasn't hit. I mean, I don't want them to hit the reset button - but the way time travel has been used as a catchall solution to any problem in Star Trek (save the whales!), I felt that they needed to introduce a real reason why these characters wouldn't try to do their best to stop Vulcan from being destroyed.

The other thing is just the anime convention of having kids with extraordinary abilities being promoted to positions normally filled by adults. I guess I don't really know my TOS history, but it seems almost preposterous that a cadet would suddenly become Captain of the flagship of the fleet, regardless of his exceptional showing on this one particular mission.
Given that people HATED HATED HATED Wesley Crusher, I can't understand how anyone would let this go.

But oh well, as a reboot, I'm fine with it. I don't care enough about Trek nowadays to worry about timelines and whatnot. As long as you can tell a decent story, I'm fine with it.

That said, I would rather that this movie led into a new TV series than a new movie franchise. I guess it's too much to ask, given that they'd probably make more money with a trilogy than a new series, but I think television suits Star Trek more than film... especially because Star Trek shouldn't be about the space battles and on film, it's almost unavoidable that the ship will be forced to fire phasers at some point or another.

 

The Enterprise is a big damn ship. Surely you don't think what you see here is all of Engineering?

J.

 

Read my latest reply in my other thread about the tubing, I agree with you on having tubes in engineering, I just think it was overdone.

 

^ Replied. Plus, we need to focus this somewhere. I hate having to cover two locations on the same subject.


J.

 

All I can say tonight....is HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!1!@#!@!!! Abrams.......FUCKING EXCELLENT!!!

More tomorrow, I am wiped.

 

I'd much rather have movies like this than a new TV series, right now.

 

I agree

Movie land is better IMO, bigger budget, bigger stories, less drawn out

 

Glad you loved it. My reaction is the same to yours.

Agreed! Plus they have more time to flesh out a script, rather than trying to write a new one for each week.

J.

 

Hey, what's up with the "phasers" ?

They are now disrupter style instead of beam weapons!

 

I'm okay with that, though. I liked the changeup, because even though phaser beams are pretty cool, a short burst uses less energy and can still do great damage.

J.

 

I think most of us agree that the backstory and time travel plots were poorly explained and executed. But that really only made up a small part of the overall story.

The MAIN story dealt with Kirk and Spock and their respective journeys, and the meeting of the original Enterprise crew. I thought that was all handled quite well.

The Nero/time travel stuff was just a backdrop to all that (although I agree, I wish it was handled better).