Star Trek 2009-11 years later

Heh, "contrived coincidences" is the hallmark of all Trek movies.

 

I had a bad case of Real Life on Wednesday, and I didn't want to post anything on Thursday due to it being April 1st (and I didn't want anyone thinking I was pulling another April Fool's Joke), then I unexpectedly got invited somewhere this Friday Night, and just got home.

So I've left Beyond hanging in the middle for three days. So I'll pick that up where I left it off tomorrow. The Enterprise is destroyed, the crew is on the surface of the planet, and that's where I am. But my opinion of that film hasn't changed and it hasn't even been five years yet. So there's not going to be anything Earth-shattering or Galaxy-shattering in my observations.

 

Just in the last few weeks I have seen or heard a lot of comments from people who came to like Star Trek or only like Star Trek from these kelvin movies (literally just heard a scientist say this a few hrs ago in fact), and 11 years later, this first movie is still a joy to watch.

Interesting note, this movie was in the top 12 best-selling Discs list for a long time, it actually was released just before sales started decreasing, and made $200 million from their sale alone! That's a lot of latinum!

RAMA

 

I remember it was in theaters for months and months

 

It was and that was quite a nice feeling in itself, as was seeing the cast promoting it across all the media. After most of the TNG movies sashayed in discreetly only to slink away shortly after, seeing Trek everywhere was like your team winning the cup or something. It was a very positive time to be into Trek.

 

Yeah, for the first time you could kinda be proud to be a trekkie XD

 

Well, I've always been proud to be a Trekkie but it was nice to be proud without people laughing at you because of it You know, colleagues, friends.......family

 

yes definitely had that feel at the time and also continued for ID . before then the only movie that really had that same breakout feel was FC and TVH (although that was more of a comedy)..the rest were all sort of 'for the fans only' (id even include TMP and TWOK in that category really)

 

Loved all the Kelvin movies when they opened. Still do.

 

Haven't seen them in a while; think I last watched the first movie after Beyond hit Blu-Ray. And then got sidetracked from my trilogy marathon. However I still insist it's a great movie, almost up there with The Voyage Home and The Wrath of Khan.

Into Darkness is two-thirds of a good, or perhaps merely decent, movie. Literally the first two acts. Even minus the third act though it lacks the potential to be a great film, because it's already three movies that can't decide on which one to be.

Beyond is only one-third of an unrealized movie that ranges anywhere from great to merely decent (impossible to say). But again, it is literally just the first act of the film that is great. If you completely erased acts two and three, maybe you have the possible start of a great film.

 

I still love the film. In fact, I just fired it up for the first time in a year, and the intro still gives me chills, it's so very well done.

 

I was testing a new spatial audio (basically, fake surround setting) feature on some earphones last night and cued up Into Darkness. Was only planning to watch the opening Nibiru scene (sufficient to test the audio feature) but ended up watching the whole thing. Still my favourite of all Trek movies (and I still maintain Spock's "KHHAAANNN", within story context, is more relevant than the original shout from Kirk--fight me if you disagree ).

Would love to see many more with this cast. But I'll take what I can get (even if that's only what's already been done).

 

But we still love him for it.

 

And to think Meyer is credited with eliciting Shatner's least hammy performance (in Trek at least). Guess he had him let it all out in one moment.

 

Trek had been comatose for years before this film came along. Boy, what a shot in the arm it was. Easily the high point of the Trek franchise this century.

 

Still one of my favorite Star Trek movies. It's also made my top 20 film list.

 

Watched it a few days ago with my wife and she loved it. She’s seen spots of TOS and she was really excited to see kid-Kirk and kid-Spock plus the whole origin angle. She was very surprised and happy to see Nimoy show up as well.

One thing that’s quite strange to see is how much bigger some stars have become since 2009. The likes of Pine and Saldana. More so though to see Hemsworth in a bit part and not using his deeper Thor voice.

What’s weird as well is at the time, Quinto was hot stuff due to Heroes, whereas now he’s relatively obscure.

I found it dragged a little in places for me, the worst being when young-Spock dumps Kirk on Scotty’s planet. That is one hell of a nasty decision on Spock’s part. Fuck the Brig. Throw him out and… maybe he will be okay? By himself? On a planet full of carnivorous monsters?

It struck me as well that things that might have once bothered me as a fan (ships being built on the ground, beaming from one side of the universe to the other) just went straight past my wife. She was invested in the characters and the story. Something all of us could learn from sometimes.

Her verdict:

“It’s 13 years old, but that’s still a good movie. It wasn’t slow, it was funny but not stupid and it had a great cast. I don’t know much about Star Trek but I know I liked what I just watched”.

As for me… Well I can’t disagree. I wouldn’t want all Star Trek to be like that, but one of the strengths of Star Trek is how many different boxes it can fit in whilst still retaining its’ core identity.

Note - This post was typed on a phone with a broken screen. Apologies for any typos. I did it carefully, but still the post is barely legible through a network of spider-web cracks… :-(

 

I am going to disagree on this and I think as a person of color, this does show a lot of white ignorance and white privilege that is so often talked about and at times people can be very genuinely ignorant off.

Please note that I am not calling you racist, far from it. what I am saying is you may not know how the history of black characters or other people of color where on screen in the 1910s-1980s, thus leading to racial ignorance and the privilege of everything that white characters got by default in the 60s.

the idea that spock/uhura or kirk/uhura or mccoy/uhura or another white male or leading mainstream male character, (who are still white by 90%) as a couple made no sense is not a fair and true analysis because in the 60s, interracial couples and dating was not a common stable thing as we see now, so we cannot judge spock and uhura in the kelvin timeline based on tos, a time where any relationship uhura would not have been allowed.

Uhura was a ground breaking character, yes. but she was still a step further in bringing black women to the big screen or small screen. while Uhura place in tv is iconic. she is no Olivia Pope on ABC Scandal, played by Kerri Washington in the 2010s or even Michael Burnham from Star Trek Discovery and trust me, I am no fan of Burnham because (discovery) I think is a bad show, however star trek having a woman who is the most important being in the universe that everyone loves and admire is still a high moment for black woman in tv. uhura was not even close to that

Whoopi Goldberg was right when she said it was cool not to see a black woman play a servant, be that as it may Uhura's role was still severely limited and frankly, very unrealistic now if we judge it from the 2000s eye.

In the history of tv and films , have you ever seen a woman like Uhura who is that beautiful, feminine, sexy, classy, good at her job not become at least the love interest of one of the leading men on the show? name a show or movie we know when that ever happened? unless all the leading men are written as gay, it is just not possible for uhura not to attract men, because she is physically appealing and seem to have a good heart.

So I very much disagree that uhura and spock never made sense in a new era. giving the content of the kelvin movies and how all the characters were portrayed, it makes sense that someone is attracted to uhura out of the main leading leads of the films. (Kirk, Spock, Mccoy) this was 2009, interracial couples have been very much accepted in the public domain of film and tv, thus opening the door for women of color characters like uhura to be considered a love interest to another central important character, which was not the case in the 1960s. that door was still closed.

Also triva: when uhura kissed kirk in TOS, the southern states in the usa got so mad, they switched off the episode and complained. That was a kiss for like 10 sec based on brainwashing, now imagine tos trying to actually make kirk and uhura date after the kiss? this will not have been possible in the 60s.

Sigh....it was a very dark time in USA history and I wish people would start applying that to the conversation whenever they talk about Uhura from TOS to Kelvin because a lot about that time affected the choices made on the show.