The Official STAR TREK Grading & Discussion Thread [SPOILERS]

[bismarck_1892]

Seriously, I was never this "crazy" but I'm mad and I'm done. I thought that people would not agree on this forum with the view. But I thought someone should say it because no one else was. I'll stick to whats already been made. Its far better then what I saw today.

[Koinek]

Cookie?

[DarthPipes]

Aragorn wrote:

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I really enjoyed this movie. A fun ride. Don't know if I'd say it was better than my personal faves -- First Contact and The Undiscovered Country (I was way too young when I first saw Khan to understand it or appreciate it, I suppose).

Was Diora Baird actually in this movie? I don't remember seeing her anywhere.

I think she was the Orion that Kirk was banging.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Okeydokey, bye; have fun.

[miraclefan]

Have fun storming the PARAMOUNT PICTORES CASTLE!

[Borgminister]

No refunds--thanks for contributing to the success of Star Trek!

[Kaziarl]

Actually the altered timeline is perfectly explainable with other star trek references. But I already posted my example, so I invite you to go read it.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Borgminister wrote:

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No refunds--thanks for contributing to the success of Star Trek!

Oh, you are so right. He did buy a ticket, so he did his part sponsoring the sequel.

[Hober Mallow]

bismarck_1892 wrote:

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I seriously hope this film fails and that there would be no more.

Sorry, bro, but that ain't gonna happen.

"Star Trek" is on its way to a huge opening weekend.

Paramount's reboot of the classic franchise grossed between $7 million and $8 million from Thursday evening and midnight shows, according to knowledgeable industry source. That's bigger than last year's "Iron Man," which sold about $5 million of tickets on a comparable Thursday opening and went on to make $102.1 million by Sunday.

More notably, one person with access to box-office data said today that "Star Trek" had already sold about $3 million worth of tickets by this morning. That's twice as big as "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which opened to $85 million, at the same point last week.

However, given the franchise's devoted base of hard-core fans, sales for the earliest shows don't necessarily mean the movie will go on to be as big as "Iron Man." But it's now looking very likely it will warp past tracking that indicated it would make between $65 million and $75 million.

Even distribution executives at competing studios, who usually remain nonplussed about competitors' performances, were uniformly impressed by the early returns.

I've been a fan since TOS, and I couldn't be happier with the idea od a reboot.

[bismarck_1892]

miraclefan wrote:

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Have fun storming the PARAMOUNT PICTORES CASTLE!

Don't intend to storm anthing. But I regret seeing the film. I don't literally want my money back by the way.

In any case, I thought the film was okay but because its a reboot I'm simply not going to go with the flow.

I like my trek the way it was not the way they will make it.

I'm actually suprised that more people don't feel the same way. I guess everyone is so starved they will eat anything.

Don't mean to pick a fight. Just feel that it was not necessary to destroy fourty years of Trek to make a great Trek movie.

[miraclefan]

bismarck_1892 wrote:

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Don't intend to storm anthing. But I regret seeing the film. I don't literally want my money back by the way.

I'm actually suprised that more people don't feel the same way. I guess everyone is so starved they will eat anything.

1. If you don't really want your money back, why did you name this thread ''I want my money bcak''? 2. If everyone is so ''starved'' for trek does that mean if ENT premired last year instead of 2001, ENT would be a ratings hit & nobody would complain about the canon problems?

[lawman]

thesadpanda wrote:

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This perspective always mystifies me. I've heard it a lot recently since I'm a Spider-Man fan too and there was just a big continuity change in that universe too.

You're talking OMD/BND? That got me to drop Spider-Man like a hot rock.

Star Trek episodes are just stories -- they were always fictional, they never really happened at all. Now, Nero's time travel erased some of the events of TNG in the FICTIONAL universe, but it's not as if the reruns and DVDs are going to disappear into thin air. You can still watch them an enjoy them just like you did before.

I'm not trying to belittle your feelings. I can see you feel bad about this. I just don't understand why it seem so hard to like the new Star Trek universe and keep loving the old one too. Why does it have to be an either-or choice?

Well, here's the thing. Sure, in story terms, the original Trek universe (with all its old stories) "still exists." But the prospect of ever seeing any new stories set in that reality, at least on screen, has now been reduced to essentially nil. Sure, there can still be novels and comics, at least in theory... but the film production dollars will go to this "alternate reality." And the more popular it becomes, the less likely we'll see even the spin-off material set in the original reality. So to a very real extent, this version of Trek succeeds only at the expense of the original.

Ethros wrote:

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Well again as I said yesterday, the time travel element isn't the main reason I didn't enjoy it. The main reason is I myself just found it boring. Scenes that were meant to be action packed and exciting simply didn't work for me. I wasn't invested in the characters and the plot became far too predictable and by the numbers.

Yeah, that sums it up pretty well. Anyone familiar with action-film formula could see how this movie was going through the paces.

thesadpanda wrote:

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I think it was consensual.

Sad, but true. Ultimately, Star Trek is what the franchise's owners say it is, and they cheerfully consented to Abrams remaking it in his image. That's showbiz for you, emphasis on the "biz." All that really says, though, is that the owners value Trek for very different reasons than the fans do.

Dark Journey wrote:

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Considering how deeply we have gotten into some very long, divisive, and often convoluted arguments about alternate timelines, parallel universes, canon, and continuity can't that in itself be proof that Orci, Kurtzman, and Abrams failed to create a really coherent motion picture that succeeded in presenting its story and its internal logic well? Once again I think this points out that the use of time travel as a plot device in Sci-Fi has really come to a dead end.

Not at all—time travel can still make for some great, fascinating, thought-provoking SF. It may well be at a dead end in terms of Trek, though.

ConRefit79 wrote:

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Last night someone asked what was the message of this film. I think it was on another thread. I could not come up with one right away. But after sleeping on it, I think they were trying to say major elements of the universe will unfold in a specific way. Meaning there is such a thing as a destiny...

The other message I think they tried to convey was, circumstances do not dictate your fate. He was a troubled kid and had no direction. Pike challenged him and he chose to better himself.

Well, that seems a little inconsistent. The first theme is simply awful, downright dispiriting. The second one is a lot closer to Trek's humanistic core, though. Philosophically, they all but cancel each other out.

Tai wrote:

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I feel silly. J.J Abrams pointedly said, "Purists, stay home." It was sound advice and I should have listened. But I told myself, "Tai, you're not a purist. Sure, canon and Star Trek lore is important, but if it means revitalizing the franchise, ensuring that Star Trek endures and bringing in a whole new fanbase... then it's alright to let some things slide."

I think this movie will make enough money to put a sequel into production. I think general audiences will embrace it as a fun summer sci-fi flick. I just don't think I can get on board. Not with this creative team.

The cast was wonderful. ...
The movie was awful because of the story.

Hear, hear. I couldn't have put it better myself.

Many of the plot flaws, shortcuts, and implausibilities you describe were the very same ones that prevented me from enjoying the story. (And I didn't get away with just $10.25 per ticket... I paid $17 to see the damn thing in IMAX. )

What I don't get is, why was Spock late to stop the supernova? And what difference would it have made if the "red matter" stopped the shockwave or not? What exactly would the planet Romulus have done anyway WITHOUT A STAR TO ORBIT? Of all the ships in the vast Romulan Star Armada there to witness the death of their civilization it was a bunch of terrorists (why were they terrorists in the first place?) on a mining ship that just happened to be on hand to pick up the failed ambassador, piloting their only hope? The whole sequence was just painfully bad.

Some of that (not all) was rationalized away in the prequel comic book Countdown. (Which doesn't help an uninitiated viewer of the movie, of course.) In particular, the star that exploded wasn't actually the Romulan home star, but another one—the explosion of which somehow grew in strength as it expanded and "threatened the whole galaxy." (Yes, that's so scientifically illiterate it beggars description, but that's how they set it up. If they wanted a star-system-level threat that propagated faster than light speed, a little imaginative SFnal thinking could have devised one—Diane Duane did it to great effect in her Rihannsu novels—but instead they took a cheap shortcut.)

Look, I'm not a purist. What I am though, is a fan of Star Trek. And as best I can tell the only thing this movie added to "Star Trek" was a rehash of the Nemesis plot and the creation of an alternate reality Enterprise crew where the only major differences are an uglier ship and the utter annihilation of the planet Vulcan... which in terms of the advancement of Star Trek lore, feels like a giant Fuck you.

Word.

T'Bonz wrote:

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What I don't get, is that Nero could have used his time and energy to destroy the STAR that fucked up Romulus.

So why did he go after Vulcan and Earth? He could have taken care of the star and theoretically, his wife and race would still be alive. No revenge needed, with his wife and race alive, he would have had no reason for it.

Yeah, but if he actually stopped to think things through then he wouldn't be a scenery-chewing Villain, and the story (allegedly) needed one of those. Of course, the heroes weren't much brighter. It's a classic "idiot plot"—it only does what the writers need if the characters act like idiots.

Barbados Slim wrote:

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The script was clever and entertaining. Pleasing purists is what made the franchise unbearable by the Bakula years anyway. I think they did a great job giving us fanboys something to hold on to while giving it a mass appeal. I, for one, want as many people as possible to enjoy Star Trek because that means sequels and more TV shows.

If "mass appeal" means more sequels in the spirit of this movie, I don't see how that leaves anything worth holding on to for fans.

[Squiggy]

JJ Abrams thanks you for your patronage.

[nx1701g]

bismarck_1892 wrote:

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Don't intend to storm anthing. But I regret seeing the film. I don't literally want my money back by the way.

In any case, I thought the film was okay but because its a reboot I'm simply not going to go with the flow.

I like my trek the way it was not the way they will make it.

I'm actually suprised that more people don't feel the same way. I guess everyone is so starved they will eat anything.

Don't mean to pick a fight. Just feel that it was not necessary to destroy fourty years of Trek to make a great Trek movie.

This was clearly - and marketed - to be a Trek series for nonfans (I won't argue against that). A few of the dedicated fans I know locally said that the film was ok but not one of the greats (averaged third behind FC and TWOK), but my nontrek fans who have seen it (I was amazed that there were a few who have already seen it) said that it was great. I noted this back during Nemesis' run too - nonfans seemed to like it more.

[bismarck_1892]

Squiggyfm wrote:

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JJ Abrams thanks you for your patronage.

You guys are all funny. I don't care about the money and the patronage the move was fine (for what it was).

"I want my money back" is a figure of speech. I regret seeing it though. I should have read the spoilers. Not because of the money. Lets have some perspective here its just a movie.

I am not happy with the new re-boot and reject it.