Comments From Someone Who Has Seen Into Darkness

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Aike, Apr 13, 2013.

  1. InklingStar

    InklingStar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Going rouge? Like Worf did when he joined DS9?

    Seeing Kirk and crew disobeying orders and hijacking the Enterprise in their civilian outfits was pretty shocking in TSfS because it was so different than what came before. In the series and the two movies thus far, we rarely saw Kirk out of uniform. With the new rebooted crew, however, we have not yet had a chance to see them in uniform; we have not seen them doing routine missions. Having them out of uniform and going rogue now does not have the same impact it did back in the 80s.
     
  2. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Maybe "going rouge" is a new ST euphemism for "getting red-shirted".
     
  3. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    And with a movie coming out only once every 3-4 years, routine is not something we can expect. We've seen little in the way of routine missions in the Trek movies, usually at the beginning of the film and quickly interrupted by other events -- the routine training cruise in TWOK (which was far from a routine TOS-style mission for the ship), the Grissom's routine survey of Genesis, the Excelsior's 3-year survey of gaseous anomalies (which sounds like a mind-numbingly dull way to spend three years), and the E-E's first-contact mission with the Evora (itself not quite routine since normal first-contact protocols had been accelerated due to the Dominion War and the need for allies). We have never yet seen a Star Trek movie that was just about the Enterprise exploring a new planet or happening across a discovery while on its regular patrol. Which goes with what I said earlier, that Star Trek movies do not fit the usual mold of Star Trek stories very well.

    In this case, the initial mission to Nibiru seems to be an attempt to portray the crew on a sort of mission-of-the-week, though it's one that diverges from routine in its own way and has consequences later in the film.
     
  4. donners22

    donners22 Commodore Commodore

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    ^ That's a good point, and it's a hard one for them to address. At least the other films had the backing of the years of episodes (most viewers wouldn't have seen every episode, but if they had enough interest to pay money for a Trek film, they'd likely have caught a little bit of it) and the familiarity built up between the cast members.

    I read something in the plot synopsis about the Enterprise crew being the only family Kirk has, and I wonder how on earth they can manage to convey that. Not only do they have very little time to establish the relationships, he's gone from being an upstart cadet to captain - frankly, I'd imagine there'd be a degree of resentment from those who were leapfrogged. Something which I would take for granted with the original cast and characters doesn't ring true with this one.
     
  5. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'm afraid I have to agree. Trek's a well meaning show, but it's morals are pretty much on par with Stan's "I've learned something today..." speeches at the end of old South Park episodes.

    IMO Star Trek (the original series, at least) holds up as a fun action-adventure in space with likable characters. And that's what most of the classic movies and the 2009 one delivered in spades.
     
  6. Flake

    Flake Commodore Commodore

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    What was the moral conclusion of 'The Doomsday Machine' ?

    Trek will not concern itself with morals when it is just trying to be fun, entertaining and action packed whilst looking cool and appealing to all :)
     
  7. Shazam!

    Shazam! Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Is there no room for both?
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Something that would've been more evident to viewers during the Cold War than to viewers today. The term "Doomsday Machine" was coined by a US strategist in the 1950s. To quote Wikipedia:
    This concept showed up in a lot of fiction over the next few decades, most prominently in Dr. Strangelove. It was part of the fear of global destruction that people lived with every day. And I'd say the moral of the Trek episode of that name was that a doomsday machine was a terrible idea as a society's only hope of avoiding cataclysmic war -- that it was really just a continuation or culmination of the drive to destruction rather than an antidote for it. In short, the planet-killer was an allegory for the bomb. Kirk even explicitly said so in dialogue, complete with a big melodramatic music sting to drive it home to the audience.

    Granted, "war is bad" is not a very complicated moral. But frankly the superficiality of "The Doomsday Machine" is why I think it's an overrated episode, and not a good exemplar of TOS's intelligence as a whole.
     
  9. CaptainDave1701

    CaptainDave1701 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I'll give it a 9 but you can't dance to it.
     
  10. Flake

    Flake Commodore Commodore

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    TBH I realized the whole cold war and 'MAD' thing after I posted ;)

    STID will have some form of moral on a par with Doomsday Machine that terrorism is bad or something :p
     
  11. Aike

    Aike Commander Red Shirt

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    Regarding Khan, in a Swedish magazine called "Film på Bio" they called the villain Khan, and didn´t mention the name John Harrison at all.

    This magazine is distributed by the largest cinema chain in Sweden.

    But of course, they might just their info from the IMDB, which didn´t mention Harrison until recently.:guffaw:
     
  12. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Admiral

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    I don't think so. For what theaters are charging for tickets now, I want big, memorable "event" films especially from properties like Star Trek. We have seven hundred plus hours of the franchise grappling with the "Moral of the Week", I want something more when putting out cash to go see something at the theater.

    I think Rick Berman really didn't understand this when making the TNG films.
     
  13. Flake

    Flake Commodore Commodore

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    Rick Berman probably did understand but never got the budget to do what he wanted because only the Trek fanbase would watch at that point, unlike the early/mid 80s and now.
     
  14. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Admiral

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    Budgets seemed to be in-line with mid-range films of the same time and were higher than the TOS movies except for TMP. Berman was a TV producer and it showed in the movies he was in charge of.
     
  15. Flake

    Flake Commodore Commodore

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    Trouble is, it was a mid-range budget of say $30-$60 million but you immediately subtract at least $10 million for paying Spiner and Stewart...

    Already by 1994 sums of $100 million plus where being spent on movies (True Lies) and even in 1991 $94 million went on Terminator 2.
     
  16. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Admiral

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    But Schwarzeneggar was routinely pulling in $15-20 million for those films and the producers/directors were able to still make capable big screen movies. Hell, Shatner/Nimoy were eating up huge chunks of the TOS film budgets with their "favored nations" contracts and Bennett, Meyer and Nimoy were also able to make decent looking big screen films.

    Berman just had a too much of a TV mentality on the first three films even hiring TV writers/directors to make them.
     
  17. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    This is a good sign and an indication the studio has made the right decisions. It should be a good movie first.

    RAMA
     
  18. Ryan8bit

    Ryan8bit Commodore Commodore

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    3/5 as a Star Trek movie? If that's in comparison to the rest of the movies, that's pretty bad. I'm not sure how you could really compare it to anything else.
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^As discussed above, it could be in comparison to Star Trek on television. And it is just one person's opinion, of course. One person's 3/5 is another's 5/5 and another's 0/5.
     
  20. cbspock

    cbspock Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I agree TNG was FILLED with pretentious nonsense, all the pontificating by Picard. The original series was able to do more episode styles than the TNG cast because in TOS, characters were allowed to have flaws. TOS could tell a morality tale, or have a msg and have fun at the same time. I find TNG to be the most dated out of all the series, with its moral equivalence BS. TNG had some really good episodes as well but by the time they got to the movies, they changed the dynamics of the characters to make Picard some sort of lame action hero which he never was on the show.



    -Chris