Paramount Confirms TWO Star Trek films currently in the works!

[F. King Daniel]

That's an insulting way of putting it. I'm disagreeing with what the movie was trying to portray. The fact that it differs from what I wanted is the whole point. Come on, that's how criticism works. We're not slaves to storytellers. We're not required to like everything they feed us. We're allowed to say when we think something was a bad idea.

You were saying Into Darkness ends with a tacked-on Wrath of Khan revenge rip-off whereas myself and others feel Khan's final act fits this version of the character and what was established by the movie.

Which is mercenary and shallow and anything but a defense of a crude practice that undermines the quality of movies. Appealing to the lowest common denominator is nothing to celebrate.

I liked the movie, and thought that sequence was breathtaking. Does that make me "lowest common denominator"?

 

[David cgc]

While we're on the subject, Damon Lindelof had something interesting and a bit disturbing to say about the ending sequence in STID.

“Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world. And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world—you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that.

“It sounds sort of hacky and defensive to say, [but it’s] almost inescapable. It’s almost impossible to, for example, not have a final set piece where the fate of the free world is at stake. You basically work your way backward and say, ‘Well, the Avengers aren’t going to save Guam, they’ve got to save the world.’ Did Star Trek Into Darkness need to have a gigantic starship crashing into San Francisco? I’ll never know. But it sure felt like it did.”

 

[Hey Missy]

Into Darkness' climax is actually a poor rehash of Star Trek:
In ST09, the Enterprise is falling into the gravity well of Nero's black hole and they have to eject the warp core(s) to escape.
In ID, the Enterprise is falling into Earth's gravity and they have to (literally) kick-start the warp core to escape.

 

[M'Sharak]

... and Alice Eve's infamous underwear shot (which, I might add, was in every trailer) ...

Only in the International trailer #1, I believe. The magnitude of the reaction to that one glimpse of Carol Marcus may have made it seem as if it appeared in every trailer, but there really were several trailers for Into Darkness in which that particular half-second of footage was not present.

 

[fireproof78]

While we're on the subject, Damon Lindelof had something interesting and a bit disturbing to say about the ending sequence in STID.

“Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world. And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world—you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that.

“It sounds sort of hacky and defensive to say, [but it’s] almost inescapable. It’s almost impossible to, for example, not have a final set piece where the fate of the free world is at stake. You basically work your way backward and say, ‘Well, the Avengers aren’t going to save Guam, they’ve got to save the world.’ Did Star Trek Into Darkness need to have a gigantic starship crashing into San Francisco? I’ll never know. But it sure felt like it did.”

Unfortunately, this is a major trend in Hollywood.

Into Darkness' climax is actually a poor rehash of Star Trek:
In ST09, the Enterprise is falling into the gravity well of Nero's black hole and they have to eject the warp core(s) to escape.
In ID, the Enterprise is falling into Earth's gravity and they have to (literally) kick-start the warp core to escape.

Um, no. But, thanks for the surface level analysis.

 

[Firebird]

While we're on the subject, Damon Lindelof had something interesting and a bit disturbing to say about the ending sequence in STID.

“Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world. And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world—you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that.

“It sounds sort of hacky and defensive to say, [but it’s] almost inescapable. It’s almost impossible to, for example, not have a final set piece where the fate of the free world is at stake. You basically work your way backward and say, ‘Well, the Avengers aren’t going to save Guam, they’ve got to save the world.’ Did Star Trek Into Darkness need to have a gigantic starship crashing into San Francisco? I’ll never know. But it sure felt like it did.”

So, he admits the scripts he works on are shit, but Hollywood made him do it? Christ, I detest Lindelof.

 

[David cgc]

Um, no. But, thanks for the surface level analysis.

I thought it was a little bizarre that they both redid the Vulcan jump sequence (even having Kirk call out it was basically the same thing except horizontal instead of vertical), and the Enterprise-rising-from-the-clouds shot.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Into Darkness' climax is actually a poor rehash of Star Trek:
In ST09, the Enterprise is falling into the gravity well of Nero's black hole and they have to eject the warp core(s) to escape.
In ID, the Enterprise is falling into Earth's gravity and they have to (literally) kick-start the warp core to escape.

I thought it was "The Naked Time" ending all over again with a huge budget.

 

[Commishsleer]

Into Darkness' climax is actually a poor rehash of Star Trek:
In ST09, the Enterprise is falling into the gravity well of Nero's black hole and they have to eject the warp core(s) to escape.
In ID, the Enterprise is falling into Earth's gravity and they have to (literally) kick-start the warp core to escape.

I thought it was all pretty interesting and exciting. It was nuKhan I had the problem with. From the colour of his skin to the fact that I had no sympathy for him and his despicable actions throughout the movie. By the time he had forced the sick girl's father to kill himself and 30 other people I had no empathy for him. And if Marcus had killed his "family" then maybe he was right to keep another 72 of these maniacs at bay.

 

[Smellmet]

Yes, but that's the deranged, desperate Khan of TWOK, and my whole thesis is that that's a radically different character from the Khan we saw in "Space Seed." The Khan of STID is mostly more consistent with the "Space Seed" version, until the final act where the writers contrive to make him more like the TWOK version. And I don't buy that conversion. It took 15 years of horror, hardship, and loss to transform the debonair, calculating world conqueror of "Space Seed" into the raving obsessive of TWOK who has nothing to live for but revenge. I don't accept that the Khan of STID -- who's closer to the original version, because he was only awakened from the Botany Bay less than a year before -- could make that transformation so quickly.

How do you know 'Space Seed' Khan won't take desperate measures when cornered? Just because he wasn't shown in a scenario like this doesn't mean the character is not capable of it, which he clearly is, and I'd say his situation is pretty desperate at the end of STID.

And I don't care how you rationalize it in-story, the destruction scenes in San Francisco were totally gratuitous disaster porn, part of a tiresome and distasteful trend of excessive and 9/11-evoking sequences of mass urban destruction in action movies that year (see also Man of Steel and R.I.P.D.). That's not about Khan. It's about Hollywood and its excesses, and the failure of STID's filmmakers to rise above them.

How would you have ended the film, everybody kisses and makes up?

 

[fireproof78]

I thought it was all pretty interesting and exciting. It was nuKhan I had the problem with. From the colour of his skin to the fact that I had no sympathy for him and his despicable actions throughout the movie. By the time he had forced the sick girl's father to kill himself and 30 other people I had no empathy for him. And if Marcus had killed his "family" then maybe he was right to keep another 72 of these maniacs at bay.

I think that was the larger part of Marcus' motivation was trying to put a lid on his mistake. Of course, it all went horrible wrong.

But, yes, I felt little to no sympathy for Khan. But, the performance was still interesting and enjoyable.

 

[David cgc]

How would you have ended the film, everybody kisses and makes up?

Perhaps, and I realize this is a radical proposal, orchestrate a final confrontation consistent with Khan's prior goals and methods. Or, even better, don't use Khan, don't go for the double fake where it turns out that John Harrison isn't the real bad guy only to find out, wait, actually he was the real bad guy like we originally thought, and have Admiral Robocop be the real villain, and make the final confrontation a race against time to expose Marcus's conspiracy before some sort of apocalyptic attack on or by the Klingons under false pretenses that will lead to galactic war.

I don't have the time to more fully rewrite Star Trek Into Darkness so that it doesn't constantly make the worst possible decisions to pay off the best possible setups. It's my least favorite movie precisely because it starts strong and just makes the wrong decision at every possible point. At least TFF, INS, and NEM (and whatever others you care to dislike) are consistently mediocre, and don't try to trick you into thinking you're about to see a much better movie than you are.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

But Admiral Marcus was the real villain, or so I thought. CumberKhan was actually a kind of antihero who was being forced to do the Admiral's bidding, because the Admiral was holding his people hostage. Khan had secretly hid the supermen in the torpedoes as a hail-Mary means of getting his people out from the Admiral's control. For some reason, the Admiral decided to stick with the idea of using the torpedoes with the supermen in them even after learning of Khan's attempt to use them to smuggle his people out. Khan crashed the Vengeance into SF out of revenge, because he thought his people had been blown up.

Of course, the story was very convoluted, and I could be off; it's been a while since I've watched it.

 

[Malaika]

Benedict's character wasn't super bad, and like I said before and others also did before me, he wasn't the real villain. I just wish he wasn't Khan but just John Harrison, someone linked to Khan but not him.

Thinking about it, it would've been cool to have a strong, ongoing bad guy that has some sort of role in all the movies, and maybe in the end he wasn't the real villain. I'm not a big fan of the whole different bad guy in every movie formula even though I understand it.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't have the time to more fully rewrite Star Trek Into Darkness so that it doesn't constantly make the worst possible decisions to pay off the best possible setups. It's my least favorite movie precisely because it starts strong and just makes the wrong decision at every possible point. At least TFF, INS, and NEM (and whatever others you care to dislike) are consistently mediocre, and don't try to trick you into thinking you're about to see a much better movie than you are.

I can't agree. NEM started out strong, and interesting and just disappointed me all along the way. Culminating in a highly disappointing third act.

While I agree that not having Khan as Khan and just John Harrison would have been more interesting, I also take the position that Admiral Marcus' is the true villain until the third act, and that Khan is a Mcguffin throughout the first parts. He presents as a instigating event, with Marcus orchestrating his own plan.

Now, finishing the film with a larger threat to galactic peace rather than Earth would be more enjoyable. But, I don't think they made the worst possible decisions and the pay of Star Trek Into Darkness, while not perfect, is still very good.

 

[pst]

Thinking about it, it would've been cool to have a strong, ongoing bad guy that has some sort of role in all the movies, and maybe in the end he wasn't the real villain. I'm not a big fan of the whole different bad guy in every movie formula even though I understand it.

you know, if these movies had been released every 2 years instead of 3-4, we probably could've had something like a continuing story with recurring characters. just imagine what they could've done if there'd been spinoffs or a TV series. but when you only release 3 films in 9 years and the TV side wants to compete with you rather than build a consistent world, this is where we end up.

 

[Phoenix219]

Star Trek ID should have just been a 13 episode JJ Abrams TV show, with all the twists and turns and big reveals getting the proper buildup.

 

[Khan 2.0]

with the news of the possible TNG mini series that probably means no chance of any TNG in QTs Trek..?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Likely just Trekmovie over thinking it for clicks, but Tarantino Trek may feature the Kelvin cast afterall... Click!

I wonder if Tarantino's Trek might be along the lines of Logan, in as much as it exists in its own little pocket universe, using many of the same actors but selectively cherrypicking continuity (i.e. Days of Future Past definitely didn't happen)

 

[Danlav05]

with the news of the possible TNG mini series that probably means no chance of any TNG in QTs Trek..?

I still want my nuPicard with a thick French accent