Did the Kelvin movies sometimes lean too close to parody?

My impression of Beyond's Spock is ... no.

With the possible exception of Uhura, Spock would have let any (and all?) of the crew die in the volcano, or any other circumstance, to avoid violating the PD.

Credit where due, he would have followed his oath.

My theory is whatever Losira/computer use to send the Enterprise a near thousand light-years away was still there (lingering subspace conduit?), and the Enterprise as following back to the planet.

Which accounts for the the unusual covering of distance for a given period of time.

nu-Khan made it in less than one minute.

What does god need with a starship? Better question would be, what do Humans need with starships anymore.

 

Not beaming in to toxic environments? Exploring stars and other stellar phenomenon? The fact that several (if not all) belligerent powers in nearby space have them?

There are lots of reasons. Just because one guy can do it doesn't mean that you can beam a whole crew there.

 

Protective equipment. Stargate had their people travel to planets wearing chemical warfare gear, and sometimes spacesuits.

Beam a ship.

Beam a photon torpedo.

 

Stargate also had starships.

There is no precedence for that ability for Starfleet. Otherwise, Voyager's trip would be quite short.

 

Ask Scotty, after almost dying he knows.

 

And I just thought of making a thread asking if Spock had any true friends by the end of beyond apart from Uhura who is actually his lover than just his friend. this is one of the reasons the tv shows are better. we got to see these characters in R&R moments a lot. Movies..not so much

 

Very nicee high five!

 

I don't honestly think he's that cold, as I think it's easier for him to face the idea of his own death than facing the death of other people he is failing to help, especially those he knows or, worse, he cares about.... that was, IMO, the sense of part of his arc in the movie too
that said, this would legit make a great dilemma for him in that movie if, indeed, things were reversed and he had to choose between violating the PD and saving Uhura without having the option to take her place.
Interestingly, she'd probably ask him to let her die too or similarly-wise, if posed with the dilemma of saving her or their captain, or her and other people, she'd ask him to sacrifice her..and it would be interesting to see her acting as the vulcan there while he actually struggles and can't do what logic dictates him to do. Hopefully, she wouldn't need to truly die to make a point and challenge Spock and Quinto's acting in that sense, but I generally like when movies kind of put certain characters into no-win scenarios where they need to question everything they'd believe true before because of the unpredictability of life. And I think with characters like Spock, that conflict kind of writes itself effortlessly. He plays with our expectations and suppositions about him but in the end, he's unpredictable too. Maybe even more than the human characters.

 

I was about to say-that is largely part of the film itself.

 

I do understand the sentiment the OP is alluding to. As a strong fan of Dr Who for many years, my feeling at times about the 21st century version to begin with was that it did much the same thing, almost as if it was trying to head off at the pass criticisms about the old show by baking those elements in with a 'post modern' eye, having characters point them out before the audience can, etc. And while that rationalizes it, I also feel that it shows a certain contempt for the classic material that leans perilously close to parodies like Galaxy Quest or (ironically, he says knowing the back winds of online fandom ) The Orville.

In the case of Trek '09, it was often in the feeling that it was trying to not be 'too' Star Trek. Which is subjectively a good thing for a movie that wants to capture an audience outside of the baked in Trek fandom... but I can sure see how it would leave some Trekkies with a feeling that underneath it all there's someone who's implying something about the reputation of the franchise that we'd all rather not admit...

 

Funny, I thought it was about the Star Trekiest Star Trek movie they'd ever made.

But then, I watched the thing every week on NBC when it was just a TV show.

 

I agree. To the point where seeing the 2009 movie was what brought me back into the fold of fandom, after I'd become a little jaded about Trek following my lacklustre reactions to season one of Enterprise turned me off. Seeing that 2009 movie on a flight to Vancouver, I loved it so much and it got me back in touch with these characters and it encouraged me to seek out and rewatch the whole of TOS for the first time in decades and from there I was all in (even eventually catching up with the rest of ENT ), so for me, these movies were my gateway back to loving Star Trek again.

All I'm saying is I can kind of see the OP's perspective too.

 

I had the same sort of experience. Except I was never into Trek at all before the 2009 movie. I had seen a few episodes of Next Gen that bored me out of my mind. After I saw the 09 film, I went back and watched TOS and the TOS films. I have slowly been working my way through all the series. I am now very very slowly, working on watching Next Gen all the way through. It still falls as my least favorite of all the series, which is probably why I saved it for last.

 

I wonder if the JJverse characters would even work if there was no prime TOS character history to lean on. A lot of the reason JJtrek worked depended on the viewers having an established understanding / liking for the original roles.

 

Since there are people here (and a friend of mine too) who's first exposure to Trek was the movies and they became fans, the answer is yes.

 

Okay, loookng answer to the original question, ignoring the ongoing debate:

I think Star Trek (09) is actually the movie MOST venturing into parody/self-deprecation humour. It's also the one where it works the best - because the movie overall doesn't take itself too serious, it just wants to be a fun ride, it just has such a high "joke"-quota at everyone's expense, it's okay some of them went maybe too far:

• Kirk's big hands? I think that was fine. A bit silly, but it actually heightened the tension IMO, since it was stopping Kirk from communicating
• Bedding green women/being an overall frat-boy: I don't know. It was probably too much "What do people expect from Star Trek?" "Green women" "Here are green women!". But no real problem with it
• Engineer "Red Shirt" Olsen - that one was already IMO too much. His death was undercutting a dramatic scene by focusing attention on the meta-aspect.
• The "Scotty in the water-pipe leading to a chipper"-scene: they that shit was awful and should have stayed out of the movie.

Overall though, because of the tone of ST09 in general, these instances were fine.

The problem was in Into Darkness: Because there it was apparently unintentional. It undercut it's own intended seriousness.
The big, dramatic self-sacrifice scene. A heroic death. Spock coping with loss. And what did they do with it? Copied an Internet meme. I don't know, I burst out laughing at this moment happening. Not with the movie, like I did in ST09 (even when it was making fun at Star Trek, I still was with the movie there), but I was laughing AT Into Darkness. Like I normally only do at direct-to-video schlock when they fuck up the basics of cinematic storytelling. Had the movie tried to be a fun adventure story like the first one, it might have worked. But they were obviously trying to be serious about it - and it just felt like a comedy without jokes.

Star Trek: Beyond was IMO really the best with meta irony. Kirk ripping of his shirt, then having a huge drawer of shirts was both pretty meta, but also made sense in context (it's a uniform - he should have more than one!) and also, and this is almost genius - transported the larger THEME of that part of the move: The journey of the Enterprise became very repetitive for Kirk - every day another adventure, another uniform ripped, and the growing self-doubt of what he's actually doing. AND being a fun inside gag! That's great! Really, Beyond was really the best in the way it told it's story out of all the Kelvin Trek movies (that's why lots of people like it) - the biggest problem was really that the story itself ("stop Krall") was really, really mundane and the stakes felt like a big step back from the previous two.

 

I think the new movies have more or less hit the perfect level of humour. Especially Beyond. The only 'bad' humour I've seen so far was the unintentional stuff - laugh-groaning at Spock's 'KHAN!' and at Benedict Cumberbatch's scenery-chewing.

I've been into Trek since the mid-80s and pretty much gave up on it completely at the end of ENT S2, but the 2009 movie brought me right back into the fold. A lot of that was the fact it had a lightness and humour to it that I hadn't seen a lot of in the TV shows. Especially TNG, which I just found pompous and dull. If I was in Starfleet, I'd much rather be on Kirk's ship than Picard's or Janeway's.. Maybe that's a Starfleet evolution thing - earlier Captains were allowed to be more laid-back :-)

I understand why people think the use of 'Sabotage' in STB was silly, but I'd personally rather have that as the solution than ten minutes of talk about realigning the multiplexer in the transphase anti-matter inducer core, or other similar technobabble. I like Trek when it's about people, not technology, but YMMV.

I don't want Trek to become comedy, but I don't want it to take itself too seriously, either. It *is* the show that gave us Gangster Planet and tribbles, after all.

I loved the humour moments in STB. Especially the scene with the necklace / tracking device conversation. Pure gold :-)

 

This is totally off-topic, but: If you like the new movies, you totally should check out ENT seasons 3 and 4! (and actually the last episode of season 2, that starts the arc of season 3).

I always found it super fascinating how similar those are in style. But in a good, entertaining way! During season 3 the creative teams behind the scenes changed, and it's SO noticeable! Before that, the characters were all unprofessional idiots, but also still super stiff, and the plots felt like we have seen them a thousand times before. S3 and 4 aren't perfect, but suddenly the characters feel like real, actual people. It takes a bit to get going in S3, but once the story is in full gear, it's really super entertaining. There aren't as many jokes as in the nuTrek movies. But apart from that, the tone, style, visual aesthetics, character interactions, sense of adventure, danger and creature encounters and so forth feel a lot more like the nuTrek movies than, say, the new Discovery does!

 

Talking to someone here at work about this topic, and they just told me pretty much the same thing - that I should have stuck with ENT into season 3 at least. So I should probably give it another try :-)