One Year Later: Star Trek Into Darkness

I don't know, I think there's room for all types of fans across the spectrum of casual to obsessed. As long as a fan doesn't go out of their way to piss on another's parade as it were - live and let live.

I do feel some fans have literally lost the ability to just plain "enjoy" though - as they become more and more bogged down in meaningless minutiae.

 

YEA!!! BOX OFFICE GROSSING!!! FRESH TOMATOMETER!!!

I think these discussions would be infinitely more interesting if we didn't have to have so many posters bring up box office receipts, tomatometers, the fan polls that ranked STID as the worst ever (it isn't, as bad as it tried to be ), ect. It gets so utterly boring when that's all fans of this film bring to the table. Fresh tomatometers and huge box office results aren't gonna convince me that ATTACK OF THE CLONES isn't a bad film.

 

I doubt anything said here is going to change anyone's mind, regardless of what side they're on.

 

Um, even by Rotten Tomatoes site standards, AoTC DOES come across as a bad film:

Attack of the Clones: Critics: 67% / General Audience: 60%
source:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_ii_attack_of_the_clones_3d/

STiD: Critics: 87% / General Audiance: 90%
source:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_trek_into_darkness/

Just saying...

 

The results say "fresh". My main point is that bringing up box office results and tomatometers are becoming such a cliche in these forums, even you resort to it by measuring CLONES and STID, missing the point I was trying to make!

You'd be surprised. I know someone who thought GOLDENEYE was an awful film and had reasons that were perfectly valid, but one poster laid out his own perspective that was a very unique take on the flick, so unique that it gave that someone a new perspective on how to view the film and from then on he started to like it and eventually love it because of how well the film holds up just from viewing it from a different perspective. This was at a James Bond forum where box office results and tomatometers were rarely ever brought up when debating over the quality of a film.

 

Yeah, that stuff in the Klingon scenes had me wondering if the Klingon version of Ewoks were about to jump out from behind the buildings.

 

And I will hunt you down, screaming "E Plebnista!" all the way.

As for myself, I still love Into Darkness, and it's frequently switching places with ST09 as my favorite Star Trek film.

 

Loved STID when it came out. Love it still. Looking forward to the next film directed by Orci. And I'm a fan of TOS old-timer!

 

Hadoken!!!!!!!

Howdy, Balrog. (I used to love the Street Fighter games myself...always played as Chun Li, God love her leggy goodness. )

 

Abrams's Klingons are alien and intimidating, something that the oldTrek version never really managed.

 

The only Klingon that I honestly thought was intimidating in seven-hundred plus hours of Trek prior to Into Darkness was Kang from "Day of the Dove". I liked Kruge and Worf and Chang, but they just weren't intimidating in the least.

 

Any movie above 60% on Rotten Tomatoes is fresh, so Clones made it with only 7% to spare. That said, both 67% and 87% would be passing grades on an exam, but I'd take the 87%. (By the way, "Days of Thunder" was 39% on RT.)

It's no big deal if someone didn't like STID. Really. Though I guess they would think the discussion would be far more interesting if RT and the box office and other positive things that show the movie was popular weren't brought up, because they remind those who didn't like it (not that there's anything wrong with that) that they are in a minority. A rather small one, too (not that there's anything wrong with that).

STID is my favorite of all the Trek movies. Watched it with my daughter a couple of nights ago. There are some eyebrow raising moments in it, but all the weaknesses any movie contains will be apparent on the eighth or tenth viewing. (Look for the pterodactlys flying around in the background of the beach scene in "Citizen Kane".)

 

Of course not.

It's awfully silly of people to try to prove there's something wrong with it because they didn't like it, though.

 

I like The Dissolve, but the writers there (especially the guy who wrote this piece) have had a bone to pick with the movie since the site launched, so positioning this as a revised take one year later strikes me as more than a tad disingenuous. They weren't crazy about the movie when it came out and still aren't. That's really all there is beyond the same collection of negative posts about the movie from online (which always have hyperbolic titles to generate the most page views)

 

Bingo.

 

Some people love to hate. No biggie...

 

You're falling victim to it too by bringing DAYS OF THUNDER now. What was the point of that? To prove that critics like STID more? I know that Tony Scott flick is a terrible movie, I watch it because it's unintentionally hilariously bad ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMhmoyKdziU ). Same with TOP GUN, especially. Heck, I think 67% is extremely generous for CLONES.

I don't think there needs to be any reminding that it's popular and those who are critical of it are in the minority. Everyone is well aware of that (well, almost). What makes it annoying is that it shifts the discussion away from the film and onto the "people like it" topic. It's what BigJake calls a diversion. It feels like a cheat. How much more interesting would a discussion of the film be if you were to just talk about the film itself and its own merits without factoring how popular it is? If you want to talk about it's popularity, I'm sure there's a thread about it. Like... This one! Strange as that sounds. But I'm sure there are plenty of ways to talk about what makes it good or bad and how both can be perfectly valid.

My point is that often when someone brings up tomatometer or box office in almost any thread here, it's usually done as a way of ending the discussion over something like whether the script is actually any good or not, or at least comes off as such (especially with a smarmy smilie face just to rub it in). Is it totally off base to say that a film can have a bad script actually come out good in spite of that said script? Orci and Kurtzman's other films get heavily criticized and of all the films only the three films (that were directed by Abrams) have a "fresh" rating. What is it that makes these three films stand out from all the other ones they're credited to? I always point to Abrams and the cast. The high marks I will give the films is that Abrams brings energy into his flicks (contrasting the utter bore that is NEMESIS) and that he brings a cast together that has great chemistry. I can believe that people enjoy these films mainly because of those aspects and I can't blame them. I like them too, I just think the scripts are very underwhelming, but not everybody is critical over things like insane plot contrivances, because in the end they're swept by Abrams' direction and the camaraderie of the cast.

Or you could just dismiss my entire post with snark, smilie faces, box office results and tomatometers. Do it. DO IT!

 

Aggregates of critical scores and audience evaluations are not absolute proof of anything, but they do form a presumption in favor of the hypothesis of quality (when favored) or the lack thereof (when a film is roundly rejected). I have no special love for STiD, but I must acknowledge that critical and audience approval puts more pressure on my side of the argument.

Box Office returns are a much weaker measure (for reasons I've discussed elsewhere) and offer a much more tenuous variety of presumption, but still offer evidence to consider.

 

I sometimes get the impression, that the people who hate the film, have seen it more often than the people who liked it.

 

Don't take it as an impression, they do exist. They're called masochists. Or fans of NEMISIS.

Buh-dum-boom!