The Ultimate 2016 Star-off: "Star Trek Beyond" vs. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"
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Beyond gave us a memorable character in Jaylah. Rouge One I didn't find any characters memorable at all. Because of that, I went with Beyond.
Beyond.
Rogue One has some points going for it. It's more adventurous than Beyond in a few of it's ideas and visuals, but it's let down by pacing issues, weakness in character, and a number of lazily used cliches. Beyond is pretty consistently entertaining, I was able to connect to and enjoy all the crew, and I never felt like rolling my eyes at any plot points.
(I was also originally going to say that Rogue One probably has higher highs than Beyond, but then I remembered that the Beastie Boys scene has never failed to bring a giddy smile to my face every damn time I've watched it. So as cool as the Vader scene is, I have to give that point to Beyond as well)
Rogue One has some points going for it. It's more adventurous than Beyond in a few of it's ideas and visuals, but it's let down by pacing issues, weakness in character, and a number of lazily used cliches. Beyond is pretty consistently entertaining, I was able to connect to and enjoy all the crew, and I never felt like rolling my eyes at any plot points.
(I was also originally going to say that Rogue One probably has higher highs than Beyond, but then I remembered that the Beastie Boys scene has never failed to bring a giddy smile to my face every damn time I've watched it. So as cool as the Vader scene is, I have to give that point to Beyond as well)
Really ?
It was liberally sprinkled with WTF moments, had a pretty weak premise and was still hamstrung by some less than stellar cast.
I had high hopes as Pegg wrote it. On leaving, I sent a friend a one word review - ' Drivel'.
?When I found out where they got the name for the Jaylah character I was like
It's close. I put them both in the 'Pretty good' category.
Beyond has more flaws but it also had some more cool stuff of its own about it. It's the first reboot movie that feels like Star Trek and the first that used the ensemble instead of just being about Kirk and Spock. It was a lot more visually imaginative.
Rogue One is a movie that feels like how I imagined the Star Wars universe to be based on the original trilogy. It was emotional seeing the story of all the people who made the events of A New Hope possible, also unique in watching a movie fully expecting a 100% casualty rate. Just like The Force Awakens, it's still living completely in the creative space of previous movies. Beyond gets the edge because it had a personality of its own.
Beyond has more flaws but it also had some more cool stuff of its own about it. It's the first reboot movie that feels like Star Trek and the first that used the ensemble instead of just being about Kirk and Spock. It was a lot more visually imaginative.
Rogue One is a movie that feels like how I imagined the Star Wars universe to be based on the original trilogy. It was emotional seeing the story of all the people who made the events of A New Hope possible, also unique in watching a movie fully expecting a 100% casualty rate. Just like The Force Awakens, it's still living completely in the creative space of previous movies. Beyond gets the edge because it had a personality of its own.
When I found out where they got the name for the Jaylah character I was like
What's that have to do with liking a movie or not?
Names come from everywhere. Star Trek has a history of having fun with the names they come up with that have a meta context (Jeffreys tube, Sha Ka Ree, Nagillum and K'Tesh just off the top of my head). But they have nothing to do with the story.
I really don't get the complaints that Beyond isn't "Trek-like".
If you strip away the special effects, it's basically a TOS episodes mashup.
You get the Enterprise visiting a Starbase with a Commodore, going on a mission in a strange cloud, landing on an unexplored planet, meeting an alien warrior lady and fending off a former Starfleet captain gone mad and his crazy plot, all the while promoting a message that cooperation and friendship is better than conflict.
It literally can't get more Trek-like than that...
If you strip away the special effects, it's basically a TOS episodes mashup.
You get the Enterprise visiting a Starbase with a Commodore, going on a mission in a strange cloud, landing on an unexplored planet, meeting an alien warrior lady and fending off a former Starfleet captain gone mad and his crazy plot, all the while promoting a message that cooperation and friendship is better than conflict.
It literally can't get more Trek-like than that...
I agree the anachronisms in Beyond were a bit much.
But I loved the idea of having the enemy be thousands of small ships instead of one big ship.
Jaylah looks like an albino Asari.
But I loved the idea of having the enemy be thousands of small ships instead of one big ship.
Jaylah looks like an albino Asari.
Indeed. My dad and I went to see Beyond and he couldn't help but talk about all the little nods to TOS that he enjoyed and notice. It really gave me a better sense of what he enjoyed in TOS when it first came out.
I saw Rogue One twice within 10 days of release.
I saw Beyond on opening day and have had no inclination to re-watch it at all.
One left me feeling enthused and invigorated about where the franchise could go. The other left me feeling very little indeed.
Hugo - RO all the way
I saw Beyond on opening day and have had no inclination to re-watch it at all.
One left me feeling enthused and invigorated about where the franchise could go. The other left me feeling very little indeed.
Hugo - RO all the way
As a Star Trek fan I have to say that 'Rogue One' is the better movie, it far exceeds anything Beyond did. I watched Beyond once. I watched Rogue One twice.
Beyond is a run of the mill action movie with a few character moments here and there but that doesn't make it a great Star Trek movie. Just a perfunctory one.
Beyond is a run of the mill action movie with a few character moments here and there but that doesn't make it a great Star Trek movie. Just a perfunctory one.
I really enjoyed Rogue One, but all of this can easily be said of that movie as well.
Change the setting to earth and it's just a WWII movie with science fantasy dressings, very basic in almost every way (plot, characters, etc).
Again, I still really enjoyed it.
If you're replying to me, I said Beyond wasn't stylistically "Trek-like". And if you don't "get" that, well, consider:
- Classic Trek has offices of reasonable sizes and comfortable decor. Beyond has an admiral's office in a dark, cavernous space with huge pylons, because that's so extreeeeeme!
- Classic Trek has mostly ordinary/calm editing rhythms. The nuTrek movies zip by at a breakneck pace, often overtly cheating time (as when Into Darkness layers a uniform change and time jump over the course of a shipwide audio briefing), and feature ultra-rapid action cutting, because that's so extreeeeeme!
- Classic Trek tends to not reference pop culture from the past few decades. Beyond makes the Beastie Boys a plot point, because hip-hop as a weapon is kewl and extreeeme!
-Classic Trek, when it has subtitles, tends to have ordinary, unobtrusive ones. Beyond has animated subtitles with morphing characters, because that's kewl and extreeeme!
- Classic Trek tends to downplay the transporter-as-magic by having its subjects stand still even in the 24th century. Beyond says "fuck it, brah, two people can be flying through the air in different directions, only graze each other's fingertips after the shimmering has started, and they'll be totally fine, yo, because our transporters are kewl and extreeeeme!"
- Classic Trek tends to not build action sequences around motorcycles for no discernible reason, or feature characters slipping over cliffs and hanging on to life by their fingers. It's usually not kewl and extreeeme that way.
Note that all these observations are not inherent artistic criticisms. All three nuTrek movies are stylistically very different from pretty much all the Trek that came before, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. (Nemesis had a few moments of pushing the stylistic envelope, true, but the new movies took it all the way to eleven.) I myself tend to dislike all these kewl and extreeeme stylings, and find them mostly antithetical to Trek's spirit, but that doesn't mean I don't consider these movies effective action thrill ride flicks. (Though I do think Beyond fails even at that, whereas Trek XI is a pretty rousing rollercoaster ride.)
One can argue that Beyond "feels like a classic Trek adventure." I strongly disagree, but hey, people feel differently about different things. To say, however, that the latest three Trek movies aren't a significant stylistic and aesthetic departure from the vast majority of prior Star Trek is, IMO, objectively untrue.
I'm currently rewatching TOS, last episode I watched was Arena, which is 10 minutes of dodging mortar fire, 10 minute starship chase and a 30 minute fist fight with a space lizard.
That is the '60s equivalent of an "action thrill ride" with the budget and technology that was at their disposal at the time.
Beyond's basically doing the same thing, but with current trends and standards. I get that you might not like the way they make movies these days, I'm not a fan of fast cut action scenes myself, but to say that big offices and subtitles are "antithetical to Trek's spirit" is a bit of a stretch...
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