My Grievances of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

This begs the question as to why it needed comment...

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

And unless I'm missing something, he used the phrase incorrectly, anyway. And so did you.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

In classical usage "begging the question" (Latin: petitio principii, "assuming the initial point") is a kind of logical fallacy whereby an argument is assumed to be true without any evidence other than the argument itself. It doesn't mean “to raise the question.” "Beg" doesn't refer to the statement being made, but indicates that the fallacy raises a question.

“Gene must have written that script before he died," begs the question "When else could he have written it?"

 

Absolutely, but that's a completely different situation. You're talking about a captain who, at that point, has very successfully commanded the SF flagship for years, and who is already a living legend. And you're talking about leniency in punishment, not extreme generosity in rewards. It's always easy to make excuses for people who've saved your life, but that doesn't mean you automatically assume that their 1 great success is proof positive that you can trust them completely with the most important thing in your possession.

In ST09, Kirk is a not necessarily well liked cadet (it seems like Pike is the only person who sees anything in him at all) who, through breaking a lot of rules, happens to save Earth. Worth a commendation? Certainly. Worth a promotion? No doubt about it whatsoever. Worth instantly putting him in complete control of the most important starship in the fleet when he hasn't even graduated the academy yet? No. Who in their right mind would ever even think of doing that?

Batman does have superpowers. He has all kinds of ridiculous weapons and armor *that no one else has access to*. A superhero stands fully apart from the world he defends, representing something extremely unique, often created as much by pure luck (like inheriting Wayne Enterprises) as by determination. Kirk is just a starship captain, just like any other starship captain. He went through Starfleet Academy and took all the same classes as every other starfleet officer. There is nothing whatsoever to differentiate him from Pike or April or Janeway except for his choices and his character. He becomes a legend because he is extremely successful, even saves a lot of lives (sometimes planets), but that doesn't make him a superhero, just an extremely successful starship captain. (Who incidentally wouldn't be half as successful as he was without his equally impressive crew)

All of which applies even moreso to Iron Man.

Calling a man 'Captain America' in order to use him as a propaganda tool is hardly the same as putting him in charge of a battalion with no proof that he has any idea what he's doing. In fact, Tommy Lee Jones - the only military voice in the movie - writes Rogers off from the very beginning, and even after the big rescue (which is months, at least, possibly a year or more after he became Captain America), the only authority Cap is given is over a small team of soldiers brought together to infiltrate Hydra bases - which is, not coincidentally, exactly the one thing which Cap had undeniably proven himself capable of doing.

Arguing with energy beings would seem to qualify all Star trek captains and a good number of their crewmembers as well. Sisko punched Q, who might as well be a god as far as such things ever exist within Star Trek. Also, I don't think Kirk was the only star trek character to ever take some kind of energy blast and stay standing. Does that make all of them superheroes?

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

That's nice. Still Rogers went from recruit to an officer holding the rank of Captain without any of the intermediate steps.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

That's because Private America just didn't have the same ring to it.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

And that's entirely irrelevant to my point, because the problem with Kirk's promotion is not the jump in rank, it's the ridiculous jump in level of responsibility. Rank is nothing but a title, very easy to throw around as long as it doesn't come with actual responsibility.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

True.

Though as I said earlier, in the comics Rogers remained a Private through the whole war. He did get back pay for the time he spent on ice. Would have been more he had a commission.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

No one wanted to watch Lieutenant Kirk do maintenance checks of the plasma vents. They wanted Captain Kirk in command of the Enterprise.

There are simply no other considerations here.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

And my point is Rogers had a similar jump in rank and responsibility. He goes from recruit to propaganda tool to leader of an elite team of commandos. We've no real idea how big that team expanded to. It might have been more than just the initial group by the time Rogers was iced. A Captain in the Army is usually in charge of Company, which could include a couple of hundred men. Also the missions the team was sent on were vital and important to the War effort. So that's an increase in responsibility as well. Much more than punching "Hitler" and dancing with show girls.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

There's no reason they couldn't have had that without the idiotic ending of Kirk being instantly placed in full official command of the enterprise. The wonderful thing about a battlefield promotion is: it's temporary (just like Riker in BoBW). And killing Pike to provide Kirk full ascendancy to the Captain's Chair (after actually having something resembling Starship experience) would've still provided the perfect opening to the second film.

And, if that wasn't good enough for the writers, then they should have just sucked it up and started Kirk with a higher rank than 'Cadet on Academic Suspension', no matter how desperate they were to show his Kobayashi Maru test.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

All of which came gradually, not 'overnight'. ST09 takes place across a time span of a day or two, Captain America takes at least a year, probably more. And even if he got a full company to take on his important missions - it's still not close the same level of responsibility as being the captain of the starfleet flagship, a position requiring a massive amount of *independent* leadership beyond simply the ability to improvise during planned missions, not to mention the endless technical considerations necessary for commanding a ship in such a hostile natural environment.

Not to mention the fact that Rogers was handpicked for the responsibility and passed his training with flying colors, while Kirk hadn't even graduated from the academy yet and already had a disciplinary record. These are not even remotely comparable situations.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

Yes, he was fresh out of the Academy, but, he had the rank of Lieutenant already, so it's not like he went from Ensign to Captain and they did address the greenness of Kirk in the second movie, when they took the rank away and made him earn it

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

Yeah but you arguing how realistic this situation is. Forget that TOS Kirk got in to so much trouble before he was a legend. You take any living real life hero the equivalent of Kirk in STIII there is no way he or his crew gets a slap on wrist for:

Violating direct orders, STEALING A SHIP, sabotaging another, breaking someone out of Federation custody, assaulted Federation officers, held a Federation officer at gun point, and went to a forbidden part of the galaxy.

Obviously all for good reason, but people leak files today and they do prison time.

Only in Trek or in a super hero film can the protagonist do these things and get away with it.

Do you think the Avengers are going to be in prison or debt because they destroyed most of New York? Of course not they stopped a threat to the planet and were rewarded. That is just movie logic.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

I thought they did a fairly decent job.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

Excellent point. "Movie logic", in the vast majority of all stories presented on film in the past 100+ years, supersedes "real life logic"--as it should. Especially in movies already set in fantastical worlds. It's not really a hard concept to grasp.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

They did.

I love how people think film writers have the final say on what makes it into a movie, much less the story.

We'll just ignore the studio wanting "X", the budget dictating what you can and can't do, the SFX house's limitations, the director wanting "X", actors having their input, and various producers all wanting "X".

No, no, the writer has all the power.

Very simple: Orci was right. You think you can do better? Do better. But do so within the same confines of requirements and restrictions that he and his writing partners had to work under. And make it a mass-market appealing film worth pumping several million dollars into making.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

I don't know...

Now that I think of it, maybe a movie about a Lt. Kirk earning his stripes, inspecting warp conduits, scrubbing sonic showers, doing desk work at a starbase outpost, pulling third-shift watch in auxiliary control - THAT might have been JUST the kinds of 'realism' the Abrams movies needed. Forget all this fun space adventure and character story crap. Give me the REAL military experience, JJ!

Then maybe... MAYBE by the 8th or 9th Abrams Trek movie, Kirk could have a chance. Perhaps he could captain a laundry ship.

ACTION!

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

Don't forget about him snitching on Ben Finney! Gotta have some character growth.

 

Re: My Greivences of Nutrek. What makes me a hater...

They could make a whole movie about Kirk being hazed by Finnegan. Act III could be about Kirk finding a bowl of cold soup in his bed.

My gosh! It practically writes itself...