Jim Kirk would be proud.
Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND
- Thread starter Khan 2.0
- Start date
Jim Kirk would be proud.
Hmm... You know, I bet a lot of fans were surprised when news first came out that Bibi Besch wouldn't be in The Search for Spock. It would just be continuing the tradition for Carol Marcus to vanish from the sequel without explanation.
so let me ask the obvious question "Will we see lens flare in 'Beyond'?"
The delta is actually made from suede - texture is a big thing in genre movie costumes these days, I'm assuming to compensate for the digital format's lack of film grain. Any slight imperfections in workmanship would probably not be noticable on screen, unless the item is a "hero" piece, i.e. featured prominently.
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You know, while it's kind of cool that they have a bunch of uniforms in Starfleet, there sure are a LOT of them. I'm surprised there aren't different uniforms for different departments. Perhaps there are for different ships? Or a uniform to walk down the hall? And one for sitting? One for standing?
Seriously though, will we see the wraparound variant in Beyond? Casual uniforms? Away team uniforms? So many questions from that patch... just about uniforms.
I'm still trying to figure out how you're supposed to know what rank female officers are. They have no braids on their sleeves!
I wonder how much freedom Pegg and the other writer had and how much of the script is their own story from start to end.
The thing that concerns me the most, either way, is the characters: I'd hate it if the next movie ignored their arc from the previous ones. When there are big changes in the creative team the risk is high..it's like someone writing a fanfiction about their story: it might be great but it could also be a mediocre nonsense.
While I'm not in love with her character because we saw little of her, the thought they might have dropped Carol is a bit concerning tbh. After all, the end of stid made it a point she is part of the crew now and she is featured in the comics too. If they ignore that part of stid, then they might be as lazy with the rest too. It seems, also, that there can never be more than two female characters in the movie.
And from the vibes I get from Pegg, I wonder if Uhura's role will also be severely scaled back to make it all about the boys. He's too biased about the guys and him admitting he doesn't know how to write 'for women' gives me 'guilty conscience' vibes as if he already knows people won't like the way the female characters are written in his movie.
I guess I have to wait and see.
You know, while it's kind of cool that they have a bunch of uniforms in Starfleet, there sure are a LOT of them. I'm surprised there aren't different uniforms for different departments. Perhaps there are for different ships? Or a uniform to walk down the hall? And one for sitting? One for standing?
Seriously though, will we see the wraparound variant in Beyond? Casual uniforms? Away team uniforms? So many questions from that patch... just about uniforms.
I'm still trying to figure out how you're supposed to know what rank female officers are. They have no braids on their sleeves!
Some do. Some don't.
You know, while it's kind of cool that they have a bunch of uniforms in Starfleet, there sure are a LOT of them. I'm surprised there aren't different uniforms for different departments. Perhaps there are for different ships? Or a uniform to walk down the hall? And one for sitting? One for standing?
Seriously though, will we see the wraparound variant in Beyond? Casual uniforms? Away team uniforms? So many questions from that patch... just about uniforms.
I'm still trying to figure out how you're supposed to know what rank female officers are. They have no braids on their sleeves!
Some do. Some don't.
Well, it helps that people address them by their rank
I suspect he will be trying hard to address his weakness in this respect. At least I hope he writes her better then Orci and Kurtzman. I wasn't keen on her character in either of the first two. Particularly ITD - it felt like she was being written primarily as Spock's girlfriend rather than the strong independent woman that I feel Uhura should be.
Female Starfleet officers don't discuss this matter with outsiders.
Ah, is it something to do with 23rd century human women having scoured the universe to hunt down and destroy all the slacks?
Unlike their "inter-officer" romances. THAT they want to yap about all the time, including ship emergencies.
And strong, independent women can't be in relationships? Maybe it was Spock who was being written as Uhura's boyfriend. I think she came across as the stronger one in that partnership, because she was the one who pushed Spock to confront his grief and work through it rather than just wallowing in avoidance bordering on a death wish. She was also the one who stopped Spock from killing Khan. Strength isn't about how hard you can punch people, it's about how well you master yourself, and can help others do the same. Uhura was far stronger than Spock in STID. Without her guidance and balance, he would've gotten himself and Kirk killed.
Erm, I never said that. Of course they can.
I still see this as different to you. What I see from the same scenes is Uhura being relegated to being the stereotypical emotional support for the hero (not that I'm a fan of how Spock is developed in ITD either). Yes, emotional strength is important, but to me it comes across as her being there just to enforce the Spock developments.
Granted, the film fails the Bechdel Test -- it has more than one named female character, but they don't interact and their plotlines are about supporting men. So, yeah, they could do better. But that doesn't mean Uhura's portrayal is as bad as many people assume. You want "relegated," watch TOS and all the "Hailing frequencies open" lines. At least the new Uhura is a participant in the core group of characters, rather than a marginal player in the background.
That's how I felt about STID's handling of Uhura - she was fine, but could have been better.
I don't mind the Unura/Spock pairing, and I defended it in 09. But in STID, it did feel like most of her scenes revolved around worrying about Spock. Which are fine scenes to have, but it would be nice if there was also a few more 'stabbing Klingons in the balls' scenes to balance it out.
I also liked Carol in STID. Yes, I rolled my eyes a bit at how shameless the underwear scene was. But I found her pretty likeable as a character, and it was nice to actually have a weapons expert who the crew (a) listens to, and (b) gets to do something useful with said weapons.
That sounds more negative than I meant it to. It's just that every franchise should keep trying to top the last instalment, you know? Nothing's perfect.
I don't mind the Unura/Spock pairing, and I defended it in 09. But in STID, it did feel like most of her scenes revolved around worrying about Spock. Which are fine scenes to have, but it would be nice if there was also a few more 'stabbing Klingons in the balls' scenes to balance it out.
I also liked Carol in STID. Yes, I rolled my eyes a bit at how shameless the underwear scene was. But I found her pretty likeable as a character, and it was nice to actually have a weapons expert who the crew (a) listens to, and (b) gets to do something useful with said weapons.
That sounds more negative than I meant it to. It's just that every franchise should keep trying to top the last instalment, you know? Nothing's perfect.
Yeah, I don't hold much truck with the Bechdel Test anyway. It has some good points, but I don't think the two would necessarily need to interact to pass my own, personal, non-scientific test as feeling like positive examples of women on screen.
True, it's just that I see that as at least progressive for 60s TV audiences, but the new ones as being behind the times for the 21st century.
And I really dislike the idea that the way for a female character to be strong is to fight and hurt people. Violence isn't strength. It's sexist in itself to insist that the only way women can be "strong" and "equal" is to conform to stereotypical male behaviors. If we really valued equality, we'd celebrate men being nurturers and caregivers as much as we celebrate women being fighters -- and vice-versa. As I said, I think that Uhura talking Spock down from violence in the climax was a greater expression of strength than Uhura fighting with Klingons was.
It's not meant as an absolute arbiter of an individual project's worth; it applies more in the aggregate, for assessing how an overall body of works handles inclusion. An individual film can "fail" the test yet still portray women well (e.g. Gravity or Pacific Rim), or can technically pass it yet still not be woman-friendly (e.g. Showgirls). But if the majority of films fail the test -- and they do -- that points to an overall failure of representation.
And it can be useful for making a point about an individual film, as long as one uses it advisedly and with the understanding that it's not meant to simplify the discussion to a mere binary question, but rather to contribute to a discussion involving numerous factors.
Yes, I think they made a mistake by treating this as an alternate timeline where the basic characters and fundamentals of the world were the same, because that means perpetuating unfortunate things from the original, like a core cast with only one woman, the miniskirt uniforms, etc. If they'd done a full reboot, they could've gender-swapped a couple of characters, made the cast more diverse, etc.
The ironic thing is, J.J. Abrams's track record is mostly very female-positive. Every TV show he's personally created or co-created except LOST (and one failed pilot movie) has had a top-billed female lead -- Felicity, Alias, Fringe, Undercovers. His Mission: Impossible III was the first film in that series to handle its female lead well (or to give its male lead an actual personality, for that matter), and its climax was gloriously subversive of conventional gender roles in action movies. And Kurtzman & Orci have a relatively good track record in that respect too, having been producers on Xena: Warrior Princess, writers on Alias and M:I:III, and co-creators of Fringe and Sleepy Hollow (which has a top-billed male lead, but one of the best female leads on TV today).
So really, one would expect these creators to be handling female characters better. The problem is that they've been too faithful in adapting a 1960s series that didn't handle female roles all that well. (Well, better than a piece of misogynistic drivel like The Man from UNCLE, but worse than something like The Avengers or even Get Smart).
This is is probably one of the best arguments I have heard for a full reboot rather than the alternate universe.
I also agree that, despite criticisms, Abrams was actually pretty faithful to the tone of TOS and that bled over in to some of the sillier elements too.
I found Uhura to be an interesting character, but there was certainly more that could have been done. But, I would not say that she was relegated to just a support character, beyond the fact that she is in a relationship with Spock and wants to address her concerns in that relationship.
Finally, I thought the scenes of her in ID with the Klingons and with Spock at the end were impressive displays of calm under pressure. As Christopher pointed out, there is more to strength than just punching a guy.
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