Simple Question: Do You Like The Reboots?

[BillJ]

Those are simply a list of all the things I didn't like about the first ten minutes; whether you can argue against them really doesn't change anything. I was asked what I disliked about it, and I answered.

Not really an argument, much of it is curiosity.

Sometimes people take an automatic dislike to something without really thinking it through. Like disliking the Narada because it doesn't look like a Romulan mining vessel. Even though we've never seen a Romulan mining vessel in the prior seven-hundred hours of Trek.

Though Star Trek: Countdown is an interesting tale leading up to the first film.

 

[Greg Cox]

Then again, I confess I have no idea what's wrong with Uhura's uniform in that photo. She's missing some stripes or whatever? That's not something I ever noticed while caught up in the movie.

Well then, you're obviously not a "true fan."

Hey, I'm writer, not a costumer!

As long as Uhura has a red miniskirt and go-go boots, I'm good.

 

[eyeresist]

I suggested that the new film (2009) was, essentially, Star Wars with a Star Trek themed overcoat.

Everything from the plot (a simple farm boy destined for greatness), the sound design, the weaponry (hell, the intense continuous energy beam of a phaser is one of the most iconic images in all of Star Trek and has been forsaken), particular scenes (compare and contrast the bar-scene with the cantina scene)

Kirk is nothing like Luke Skywalker.
Sound design - new/updated, not actually SW sounds.
Weaponry - trivial.
Bar scene nothing like the cantina scene, except it's a bar. (OTOH the bar scene in TSFS was a deliberate SW rip-off).

All the fatal flaws you've pointed out are either incorrect or utterly trivial. Certainly in comparison with the movie's issues of script logic and tone.

 

[Cromwell]

Not really an argument, much of it is curiosity.

Sometimes people take an automatic dislike to something without really thinking it through. Like disliking the Narada because it doesn't look like a Romulan mining vessel. Even though we've never seen a Romulan mining vessel in the prior seven-hundred hours of Trek.

Though Star Trek: Countdown is an interesting tale leading up to the first film.

I actually enjoyed the film the first time around, for what's it's worth, though I'm willing to admit that, having soured on it, I tend not to give it the benefit of the doubt.

All the fatal flaws you've pointed out are either incorrect or utterly trivial. Certainly in comparison with the movie's issues of script logic and tone.

Except, those weren't "the fatal flaws". I was responding to the Star Wars comparison... what would be the necessity of brining up the poor script logic?

For context, this was part of my initial comment.

I prefer my science fiction to be slow-paced, cerebral and nuanced. There's room for action, of course, and intrigue (hell, I love the Dominion War arc more than anything else) but the context has to be well built and engaging.

If I were to be honest all the little nitpicks I have (about the Supernova, Delta Vega, the Orion Girl, the Uniforms, the Sound Effects, Nero, the Poor Lead, the Black Holes and the Red Matter, the Product Placement, the Enterprise's Construction, the Academy, the Insignia and so on and so forth) could be tolerated on their own, but when taken together they become impossible for me to ignore.

That said, I thought Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban were good casting choices.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Why?

I just like the acting and I'm a sucker for that kind of 50s/60s setting... Oh... you mean, the other thing?

It's just one mored thing I can add to the list of reasons why I don't like the film. As I said before, I less and less inclined to cut it any slack.

And There was no number attached to Generations through Nemesis either. Or no subtitle for Rocky Balboa. So again I'm confused by what you think this proves.

You shouldn't be confused. It's called "Star Trek". What's the obvious implication? That this isn't just the next instalment.

They used the title of the TV show as the title of the newest film.

Well, without watching it through again (and just reading through the transcript), I could list a number of things. Again, each one taken on its own could be tolerate, explained away, or whatever, but they're hard for me to ignore when taken together.

Also, these things (apart from 2, 4 and 7), only started to bother during my second viewing. I didn't think about them the first time around.

1. Why does Nero's ship look like a weird space monster? Isn't it supposed to be a civilian mining vessel?

It's the first Romulan mining vessel I've ever seen. Do you have a picture of a previous one for comparison?

2. Why does the Captain refer to the Star-date as being "2233.04"? What's the point of even calling it a star-date if it's just a truncated version of the Gregorian Calendar?

Stardates are made up numbers.

3. Why don't any of the Romulans look like Romulans? Aren't they supposed to be from the twenty-fourth century?

Pointed ears. Slanted eyebrows. Is there something else that defines "Romulan"? Not bowl cuts or shoulder pads, I hope ( shudder)

4. Why does the USS Kelvin only have one warp nacelle? Isn't that a very risky design choice?

Because some ships do. Saladin Class (TWOK)

Why would it be dangerous?

5. Why does the insignia of the USS Kelvin look almost exactly like the insignia of ship that hasn't even been built yet? Is that Starfleet standard? If so, why?

Because it's the insignia of Starfleet, as intended by the people who created Star Trek. The non arrowheads are an error.

Non Enterprise personnel wearing the arrowhead ( Court Martial)

6. Why would you keep a heavily pregnant mother aboard a starship? Shouldn't she be back home on Earth or, at least, on some sort of safe, well-staffed, facility that isn't stationed dangerously close to the Klingon Neutral Zone?

Depends on how close the ship is to Earth or a base and when she got pregnant.

In the future pregnant women aren't delicate little flowers and Starship medical bays are equipped to handle them. (See O'Brien,Kieko and Troi, Deanna)

7. What are all those weird-looking aliens? Why haven't I seen any of them before? Did those races all just decide not to participate in Starfleet after a few decades?

Star Trek is full of one off never seen again aliens. The rec deck scene in TMP is full of them. So is Journey To Babel and any group scene in the films.

8. How can a torpedo manage to damage a ship's auto-pilot function but not it's navigational computer? What's the difference between inputting something manually and inputting a pre-programmed string of commands?

I guess the key words are manually and pre-programmed.

9. Why is Nero a psychopath? Aren't Romulans supposed to be devious, cautious master strategists? Why are these Romulans acting like deranged violent thugs?

Home planet blown up. Wife, family and culture dead. That might make someone snap.

Romulans can be lot of things. Ask Worf about them.

10. Why are hundreds of people following the commands of someone who is clearly a psychopath?

In the real world millions of people follow pyschopaths. In Star Trek people follow psychopaths like Khan and Shinzon

11. If Nero is as much of a psychopath as he clearly seems to be, why doesn't he destroy all of the fleeing shuttles and escape-pods? Can twenty-third century shuttles move faster than his vessel?

(If it's so crippled that he can't go after them, then how does it get repaired? Who would be willing to repair a ship commanded by a weird psychopath who has nothing to offer in return?)

You answered the first part in your second.

Why can't the Romulans repair their own vessel? Being a mining ship often far from anywhere they probably don't stop in the local repair shop.

12. Why, exactly, can't Kirk abandon ship? Isn't there a point at which it becomes impossible to evade enemy fire due, purely, to the proximity between the two ships? What is he doing? Will the ship stop moving forward if he leaves?

As good an explanation as any,

The Uniforms? They're probably the closest of anything in the film to the original.

What rank is Uhura? Lieutenant.

You could tell from that picture? Or, do you mean to say that the relevant characters just all happen to know her rank? If so, then why do the male characters all need ranks on their sleeves?

What rank is Marla? Or, do you mean to say that the relevant characters just all happen to know her rank?

Kirk has no rank insignia through most of the film even though the computer lists him as a lieutenant.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Answers.

I don't mean to seem rude or evasive but I don't think us going back and forth over this would make for a good discussion.

Those are simply a list of all the things I didn't like about the first ten minutes; whether you can argue against them really doesn't change anything. I was asked what I disliked about it, and I answered.

It was really to catalogue my nit-picks (I'm that sort of person and, yes, it does damage my experience of the film).

Did you actually think your list would go unanswered? That people wouldn't point out why they're wrong?

It's a Star Trek board, we're that sort of people.

 

[Last Redshirt]

To be honest, I don't, but I recognize that they've brought the franchise back from basically death. I feel like the reboots are a shadow, a pale facsimile, of what Trek actually is, and that they're just kind of pretending to be so.

There's also the very simple explanation, being that I didn't enjoy them. Parts of 2009 were pretty good but overall wasn't too fun for me, and Into Darkness was just bad.

 

[Warped9]

One of the charges that often gets thrown at dissenters is: we're just against anything being changed or we're just against something new and want everything to stay the way it was.

Not true for a lot of dissenters.

A reboot was inevitable. Reboots are always inevitable. Many characters and franchises have been rebooted over the years--some sccessfully and many not. Of course your mileage may vary depending on your tastes on which succeded and which didn't.


Daniel Craig's Bond and Christian Bale's Batman are both reboots of pre-existing characters. And, speaking for myself, I think they were vast improvements on much of what came before. While I have some reservations I'm also not bothered by Henry Cavill's rebooted Superman.

So here we have three very well known and very popular franchises rebooted and overall I think they did quite well by them. They managed to update the materiel without losing much of the original appeal.

Now individuals will find different things to like in a property and so opinions can vary on how well a reboot works greatly dependent on whether the new materiel brings in things you like while retaining a portion of what you liked originally. And this is where we get into arguments where you have one group arguing the new work resonates with the original and dissenters arguing that there just isn't enough recognizable along with the new for it to resonate for them.

I do agree with some posts upthread that I was indeed predisposed to dislike the Trek reboot. But not because it was a reboot which I, and many others, understood was inevitable. I was predisposed because with every tidbit that was being released about the (then) forthcoming film I was disappointed.

The first major disappointment was the nuEnterprise design. It was an immediate turnoff. If it had been a completely different and original never-before-seen design it probably wouldn't have turned me off to the degree of seeing Matt Jefferies' original concept contorted into something I found ugly. The original design was well balanced, well proportioned, clean and majestic in design and presentation. It was perfectly symbolic of all the things TOS was meant to represent. The nu design telegraphed an idea that it was throwing away all those things. It was a truly disppointing moment when I first saw it.

I also agree that the first 10-20 minutes of the film completely turned me off as I was seeing nothing whatsoever that resonated with the Star Trek I admired so much for so many years.

So we haven't even really gotten going with this film and already it's a huge fail in my eyes. And nothing throughout the rest of the film convinced me otherwise. It was an exercise of one WTF after another.

I admit to being predisposed to dislike it, but I've been predisposed to dislkie films before and after viewing came away impressed with a positive opinion. But that didn't happen this time around.

I was predisposed to be critical. I did not expect to come away feeling contempt.

Yes, I mean contempt.

I not only disliked the film I was disgusted by it. For all the criticism I could heap on latter day Trek on television and film that pales with the scorn I have for JJtrek.

I can bypass a lot of things I disliked about JJtrek by just citing one other example: the character of nuKirk.

New actors come along and bring something of their own (as well as the writers and directors) to give new life to old characters. Daniel Craig's Bond is not the Bond we've seen several other actors portray before, but he is still recognzably James Bond. Christian Bale's Batman is unlike what has come before, but he is still Batman (and I'm referring to character rather than costume). The same with Henry Cavill's Superman. In each case they still retained elements that I found appealing originally so many years ago.

But Chris Pine's nuKirk is not just a reinterpretation of William Shatner's Kirk. Shatner's Kirk was flawed yet still heroic and likeable. Pine's nuKirk is not only flawed, but he's not heroic and he's not likeable. Shatner's Kirk was a man I could admire. Pine's nuKirk is someone I wanted to punch in the face for being such a shitty little punk.

Shatner's Kirk was a character that earned his position and his accolades. Pine's nuKirk was a portrayl of a little shit that gets rewarded for being lucky rather than having earned it.

I could go on about the style of the film that never stopped grating on my nerves, but the two examples I've cited above are perfectly symbolic of what turned me off about these films. They're representative of the thinking (or lack there of) or difficient thinking behind them.

TOS was a wonderful balance of enthusiasm and intelligence. The key word is balance. It had gobs of visual appeal and the excitement of adventure balanced with an overall decent dose of intelligence guiding things along. Yes, it stumbled, but it got far more right than it got wrong. It was the product of adults with an adult perspective while spiced with elements of being young-at-heart. And I really think that is part of TOS' long lasting appeal and part of why it still manages to resonate with new viewers born long, long after the show ceased production.

JJtrek is all energy with next to no evident intelligence. It might well be made by adults, but they are displaying an adolescent mindset. There is little to no evidence of a reasoning mind behind the materiel. It displays a focus on change for change's sake and an unyielding preoccupation with flash and loud noises. It's akin to kids banging on pots and pans just to make a racket, but with no thought put into it other than that.

JJ turned Trek into a noisy and nonsensical action movie--a type of film I lost what little interest I might have had long ago. It isn't just the changes he made to the subject matter, but also how he chose to execute it. So he annoyed me on two big counts.

TNG was a reboot of familiar Trek, and while I didn't initially care for it I could still see a measure of value in it. Ditto with DS9.

But I don't see anything like that in JJtrek. All it gave me was a migraine.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Did you actually think your list would go unanswered? That people wouldn't point out why they're wrong?

It's a Star Trek board, we're that sort of people.

Let him have his 12 angry straw men!

 

[Greg Cox]

I also agree that the first 10-20 minutes of the film completely turned me off as I was seeing nothing whatsoever that resonated with the Star Trek I admired so much for so many years.

Interesting. I wonder if one's reaction to that opening is some sort of litmus test? Some of us loved it and thought it got the movie off to a terrific start. Not just because of the action and spectacle, and because it had a fresh new look and feel, but because it delivered an emotional punch as well. My eyes actually misted up a few times.

But apparently it's actually a turn-off to others?

Go figure.

 

[Nerys Myk]

O

I also agree that the first 10-20 minutes of the film completely turned me off as I was seeing nothing whatsoever that resonated with the Star Trek I admired so much for so many years.

Interesting. I wonder if one's reaction to that opening is some sort of litmus test? Some of us loved it and thought it got the movie off to a terrific start. Not just because of the action and spectacle, and because it had a fresh new look and feel, but because it delivered an emotional punch as well. My eyes actually misted up a few times.

But apparently it's actually a turn-off to others?

Go figure.

George and Winona saying good bye was pretty emotional.

Can't imagine someone not like it. Life, death, bravery,sacrifice. Very Trek to me,

 

[fireproof78]

O

I also agree that the first 10-20 minutes of the film completely turned me off as I was seeing nothing whatsoever that resonated with the Star Trek I admired so much for so many years.

Interesting. I wonder if one's reaction to that opening is some sort of litmus test? Some of us loved it and thought it got the movie off to a terrific start. Not just because of the action and spectacle, and because it had a fresh new look and feel, but because it delivered an emotional punch as well. My eyes actually misted up a few times.

But apparently it's actually a turn-off to others?

Go figure.

I agree with you. I love the opening, and I cry at the end when George says "I love you." It gets me right were I live. Also, Robau is my favorite captain now.

As for nuKirk, I don't like him but I am fascinated by him. I get that he is not likable or heroic at first, but he is a microcosm of what I see my generation being. He isn't reaching for his full potential, not going for the Roddenberry ideal but wasting it. So, we get to see him become his full potential due to Pike's influence.

I get that it isn't for everyone but every "inconsistency" from Prime Trek as an opportunity to explore the changes caused by Nero's incursion.

Speaking of Nero, he is one of the most fascinating villains from a psychological point of view, as well as a lesson in contrast for Spock.

 

[Cromwell]

They used the title of the TV show as the title of the newest film.

... and why would they do that?

What rank is Marla? Or, do you mean to say that the relevant characters just all happen to know her rank?

She's a Lieutenant. The fact that she's been given the wrong uniform looks like an oversight (haven't seen "Space Seed" in a while, so it might be explained). Is the fact Uhura (on of the main characters) has no rank, nor a place for any rank to go, an oversight?

Is it forgiveable?

If you like the film, it probably is. But I, already, dislike the film, so it isn't. It's, as I've said before, just one more thing that adds to my inability to enjoy the film on repeat viewing.

Kirk has no rank insignia through most of the film even though the computer lists him as a lieutenant.

He isn't wearing his uniform for a large portion of the film.

Did you actually think your list would go unanswered? That people wouldn't point out why they're wrong?

I tried to communicate the fact that it's beyond the point. Most of the things on my list could be; explained away, tolerated, forgiven, whatever. For me, however, they can't.

For example, I'm immediately struck by how irrational Nero is acting because I already know what comes later in the film (a very poor and illogical explanation of his motivation and back-story).

It's a Star Trek board, we're that sort of people.

I'm not trying to tell you why you shouldn't like it, I'm trying to explain why I don't like it. And, no, most of the things in the first ten minutes do not constitute the biggest reasons.

Let him have his 12 angry straw men!

How exactly am I straw-manning anyone?

 

[Warped9]

One you like something in general it's not too hard to rationalize away most inconsistencies. When you don't like something then all the little mistakes loom even larger. They mighn't be the major reason you don't like something, but they certainly add to your discontent.

 

[mos6507]

Kirk is nothing like Luke Skywalker.
Sound design - new/updated, not actually SW sounds.
Weaponry - trivial.
Bar scene nothing like the cantina scene, except it's a bar. (OTOH the bar scene in TSFS was a deliberate SW rip-off).

You're on the losing end of this argument. Even JJ Trek proponents concede that nuTrek is more Star Wars than Star Trek, for the very reasons cited. They just don't mind it.

There was a bar scene in TOS (Trouble with the Tribbles). Disregard the bar scenes and there are still more Star Warsisms in nuTrek than you can count. What makes Kirk Luke-like is his special-birth, his adolescent whininess (Luke was very whiny in the early scenes of ANH) and a sense of "destiny". The Joseph Campbell stuff belongs in SW and not Trek.

 

[Greg Cox]

One you like something in general it's not too hard to rationalize away most inconsistencies. When you don't like something then all the little mistakes loom even larger. They mighn't be the major reason you don't like something, but they certainly add to your discontent.

Exactly. Wrath of Khan is full of plot holes and coincidences and continuity lapses. Planet of the Apes depends on Charlton Heston never noticing that the apes speak English. Aliens depends on them leaving nobody behind on the mothership just in case they get stranded on the planet . . . .

Doesn't matter. They're still great movies so you completely forget that stuff when you're caught up in them.

It's when you're bored and dissatisfied anyway that your mind wanders and you start nitpicking the movie . . . .

 

[lurok]

+1

 

[martok2112]

Or when one goes in fully prepared and intent on hating something right off the bat.

 

[Greg Cox]

Or when one goes in fully prepared and intent on hating something right off the bat.

Or at least with adversarial attitude. "All right, I'm expecting to be disappointed. Prove me wrong!"

Again, not just a Star Trek thing. I've met fans who actually seem to regard movie-going as a combat sport played against Hollywood, where you score points for every flaw you find in the movie, and feel vindicated if the movie lives down to your worst expectations.

"See! I told you it was gonna suck!"

 

[IrishNero]

All valid points. There isn't a single movie made that you cannot poke holes through, if that is your goal from the outset. Plot conveniences are used in most movies and few franchises offer more opportunities than that of a SciFi nature (easier to convince an audience of time travel or some advanced doo-hicky when the reasoning and the underlying science seems semi-plausible).