Crouching Tiger is excellent, so you should definitely watch it eventually anyway!
Spoilers STAR TREK: SECTION 31 - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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This was for sure signed and all that before she won, but after she won I assume the conversion to a film is a combination of her having MANY more options now AND them wanting to save cash however possible.
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Best example for me was the introduction of that Deltan woman, and her death two minutes later, and everyone making sad faces.
That was clearly intended to be a big twist after a whole episode.
In my opinion this movies' biggest sin is wearing the "Star Trek" label. Because nothing looks & feels anything like it. But without it, it would make a very entertaining, trashy SyFy original-style b-movie, and one of the better made ones at that, to watch late at night when at home alone with a beer & a bag of chips and have some mindless fun.
Yep. Every review I’ve read has been completely impartial and honest. About 90% of them are giving negative reviews and providing pointed explanations as to why they feel that way. They’re not just making shit up to ‘shill’ or competing with other reviewers. That’s just delusional nonsense.
Yep, good example. The who "whodunnit" was several episodes of material too.
One of the most unforgivable elements of this is it was a spy movie without much spy shit.
Act 1 establishes a bunch of operatives, each with their own specialty. You have a shapeshifter, a honeypot, a nano-alien who can get inside tech and disrupt it, and a big dumb guy who serves as a heavy. Along with a head guy who doesn't do much other than glower and punch hard, and a Starfleet minder who has no clear role.
The characters with the strongest established skills have zero payoff. The honeypot tries to use her skills on a single character for half a second before she gets vaporized. The big dumb guy crashes through walls, and kills no one. The shapeshifter only shapeshifts for gags, and never uses his skill for anything plot-related. And the guy who can hack tech does do it, but only for the bad guy. The two characters with the most boring/ill-defined skillset survive to the end of the movie. The best we get to see them use their skills is in a theoretical montage of how they plan for an heist to go down, which Georgiou scuttles for something far, far more boring and direct.
And that's Act 1. Act 2 is not spy shit, since it's just the motley crew trying to figure out who is the traitor. And Act 3 isn't spy shit, because what the characters end up doing (teching the tech, and punching bad guys hard) is the exact same stuff you could see in any action-focused episode of Star Trek.
Though very different, in some ways it reminds me of the critical failure of Marvel's Secret Invasion - another supposedly espionage-related project which completely forgot what makes paranoid spy thrillers fun.
Act 1 establishes a bunch of operatives, each with their own specialty. You have a shapeshifter, a honeypot, a nano-alien who can get inside tech and disrupt it, and a big dumb guy who serves as a heavy. Along with a head guy who doesn't do much other than glower and punch hard, and a Starfleet minder who has no clear role.
The characters with the strongest established skills have zero payoff. The honeypot tries to use her skills on a single character for half a second before she gets vaporized. The big dumb guy crashes through walls, and kills no one. The shapeshifter only shapeshifts for gags, and never uses his skill for anything plot-related. And the guy who can hack tech does do it, but only for the bad guy. The two characters with the most boring/ill-defined skillset survive to the end of the movie. The best we get to see them use their skills is in a theoretical montage of how they plan for an heist to go down, which Georgiou scuttles for something far, far more boring and direct.
And that's Act 1. Act 2 is not spy shit, since it's just the motley crew trying to figure out who is the traitor. And Act 3 isn't spy shit, because what the characters end up doing (teching the tech, and punching bad guys hard) is the exact same stuff you could see in any action-focused episode of Star Trek.
Though very different, in some ways it reminds me of the critical failure of Marvel's Secret Invasion - another supposedly espionage-related project which completely forgot what makes paranoid spy thrillers fun.
This is not a visit to the Lost Era, it's a continuation of the TOS era. TOS has always been about 300 years ahead of us and this movie continues the trend.
- TOS was on in the 1960s and took place in the 2260s.
- The movies took place in the 2280s and Generations took place in 2294.
- Based on the stardate, Section 31 takes place around 2323.
- Anyone from TOS or the first seven movies who are still alive could appear in a follow-up should there be one. They wouldn’t need to be recast or need aging make-up.
- Now I'm wondering how Georgiou managed a stardate reset upon her return.
- TOS was on in the 1960s and took place in the 2260s.
- The movies took place in the 2280s and Generations took place in 2294.
- Based on the stardate, Section 31 takes place around 2323.
- Anyone from TOS or the first seven movies who are still alive could appear in a follow-up should there be one. They wouldn’t need to be recast or need aging make-up.
- Now I'm wondering how Georgiou managed a stardate reset upon her return.
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I've read 3 bad ones and 4 good ones now. Decidedly mixed.
The bad ones mostly still seem to suggest the: "not Star Trek" angle and I have no time for those, with some subjective stuff thrown on the side.
Even some of the good reviews are missing the Trek themes apparent in it, so they either aren't aware or don't care.
This is the furthest off I've been with Trek reviews in decades, so it's puzzling.
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6.
A lot of promise was evident but it was poorly written. And the action was too frenetic. Plus we almost got some First Contact music, but not quite.
A lot of promise was evident but it was poorly written. And the action was too frenetic. Plus we almost got some First Contact music, but not quite.
I watched the movie without subtitles, I will watch it again tomorrow with subtitles, but I have to say this: The movie was terrible and people are saying Alex Kurtzman should go. I really want to ask: are there any good old-school Star Trek writers left in Hollywood? I don't think there are any. There is only one good old-school Star Trek writer: Ronald D. Moore, who has worked on DSP9 and TNG productions in the past and was a writer for 2 TNG movies. He later worked on the 2004 version of Battlestar Galactica. He also made For All Mankind for Apple TV Plus for Sony. He also works on the God of War TV show for Amazon for Sony. He also can't make Star Trek. Who's left? Nobody. The guys who will go to Paramount: Maximum J.J. Abrams and Simon Kinberg. They wouldn't go with anyone else.
This is me as well.
Managed to watch the full thing now and while I did find some enjoyment in the first act, mainly in how the characters are introduced, it quickly falls apart in act two, which felt like endless meandering on that empty mining planet for no reason. It seemed like every five minutes they made a new plan with a new objective, only to change that yet again five minutes later. It just got really boring really fast.
The final act felt a little more solid again and I’m glad there weren’t multiple fakeout endings like many movies these days like to do. It felt a bit anticlimactic to just have it end in a fistfight, but at least they didn’t drag it out. And to say something positive, I kind of liked the design of San’s angular ship, both inside and out. And while the design of the scow exterior is hideous, I really like that bridge set.
In terms of characters I liked Quasi and Garrett the most. And I gotta admit that towards the end there was some nice chemistry between Alok and Georgiou. The San/Georgiou relationship was interesting as well, but felt way too rushed and superficial. Would have been more interesting if it didn’t end up with her simply killing him.
So those are basically the positives. I thought the dialog was atrocious. The directing, camera work and editing was totally jarring and very on par with the quasi “movie” quality directing we’ve come to know from the streaming shows. The writing and plotting feels clumsy, with awkward voiceover info dumps and chapter titles that only serve to highlight what a jumbled mess the whole thing is.
All of that could be forgiven if only it wasn’t so damn boooring. Thank the gods that this was only a streaming movie and not a full season of a show. My biggest fear right now is that this killed the chances for more streaming movies, because they could do some interesting stuff with that format.
Moore is contractually unable to work for Paramount at the moment, but there are plenty of others who are free and still relatively young, like Naren Shankar.
They tried something different. They did not really succeed.
Star Trek designed for people who don't like Star Trek. A forgettable, predictable, Suicide Squad-wannabe generic Netflix movie.
The haters said this would be terrible. And they were correct. Honestly, great call from the haters.
Star Trek designed for people who don't like Star Trek. A forgettable, predictable, Suicide Squad-wannabe generic Netflix movie.
The haters said this would be terrible. And they were correct. Honestly, great call from the haters.
Eh, covert ops isn't really spy shit in this case, it's mainly Zero Dark Thirty. Each character's specialty is deserving of its own episode, but there are only 93 minutes and Georgiou co opts by bypassing some of their plans, showing her value and why she's the star. The Mission Impossible part was basically done before they bring the bad guy on.
This is another reason I want to see the cast in a series. They're all pretty charismatic and even Zeph has a story in there somewhere.
The man you mentioned is 60 years old, and if Paramount wanted to bring in someone other than Alex Kurtzman to lead Star Trek, they would want to bring in someone who has a good or bad reputation.
Generic is the lazy word I see thrown around today. Substitute: it doesn't look like Starfleet or starships so it's not what I wanted it to look like.
It's not generic because the scenery isn't what you expect. It is deliberately not those things. Variety is the spice of life as they say.
