3 Likes, 3 Dislikes, 3 Surprises, Overall Reaction

Likes:
1- Kirk, Bones, old Spock and Scotty were all kickass.
2- TOS vibe throughout the film.
3- All the smallTrek references.

Dislikes:
1- A rather fluffy and lightweight plot.
2- The Chekov character was way too silly.
3- The uniforms did not look nearly as good as I hoped.

Surpises:
1- How awesome Pike was.
2- That Vulcan was destroyed and Spock's mother died.
3- How much old Spock was in it.

Overall Reaction: A fun movie that needed a better plot but rocked in characterization. Definately a set up for future movies and I hope they come.

 

Likes:
1. The constant winks at canon -- partiuclarly Scotty and McCoy's lines.
2. I liked their uniform shirts.
3. Very funny.

Dislikes:
1. They left Vulcan blown up. What the hell?
2. Vulcan architecture didn't seem...Vulcan. I'd expected more simplicity and less skyscrapers.
3. The enemy ship seemed too...unbelievable.


Surprises:
1. Spock/Uhura.
2. The future is...dirty. The TV shows and movies presented an Earth that was clean, but here we see an Earth and a Federation that seem far too much like today for comfort.
3. Vulcan again.


Overall Reaction:
Very funny, overall enjoyable...but I felt dirty walking out the theatre with the Vulcan and altered timeline questions. I'd like a sequel to set them straight. How can the Federation lose its second-most important planet?
===================

On a personal note, I was sitting in an audience that was mostly Trekkies, judging by our shared reaction to winks at canon, and I really enjoyed it. The McCoy lines especially drew laughs.

 

You disagree that Hollywood picks which films to make based on which ones will likely make the most money?

So, why, exactly, do you think they're making films? Artistic merit? Fun? What?

I'd think that if you held such a minority view, you'd want to explain it. But you still haven't.

 

Likes:
1. New Aliens
2. No Reset Button
3. Spock and Kirk, I really liked their takes on the characters

Dislikes:
1. Design of Nero's ship - seemed odd for the sake of odd
2. Car scene at the beginning - didn't really give me anything that the bar fight didn't cover.
3. Overall timeline for Nero - I'm not crazy about the "waiting 25 years" and knowing when Spock was going to emerge

Surprises:
1. Scotty's Introduction
2. Kirk's promotion
3. Seriously - space skydiving?

Overall:
I really really liked it - I'm not a huge fan of the TOS - but I loved all of these characters, the references to the show, and the fact that they just went for it - I'm really excited to see where they take the franchise next.

 

Likes
1. The characterizations. Overall everyone did a great job of bringing these characters back to life. With one exception: Uhura, but even her I really, really liked for reasons not much to do with her character.

2. The interaction with Spock/Kirk/McCoy. Whish there had been more of it.

3. The look of the bridge worked for me. I'm not in love with it, but it worked.

Dislikes
1. The use of a distillery for the engineroom/engineering sections. I've came more to terms with it and "rationalized" it but overall it just looked like it was. A distillery.

2. The product placement.

3. The rape of can-cont.

Surprises
1. The detruction of Vulcan.

2. The death of Spock's mom/Amanda.

3. The main theme over the end credits being so well done.


Overall Reaction
Loved it. I can "cope" with the canon violations so forth and just accept this as a new universe. I wish it had been "truer", I see no need to destroy Vulcan and have the crew being fresh cadets now running the flagship, but I can cope with it and move-on.

 

Hollywood is not one omniscient entity which "puts out" Serenity and "falls back" on Terminator... Like any other business, Hollywood plays a game of "trial and error"... but that was not the point of my initial post...

It's an industry like any other, with tens of thousands of individuals involved. Projects are proposed, developed, written, and produced. The success of a project depends upon a multitude of things... the writing, the marketing, the public awareness/perception, demographics, franchise, and a hundred other variables...

And before you jump on me, I am VERY aware of the distictions between market viability and critical artistic acclaim (of which the new Trek film has, REMARKABLY, seemingly achieved both...!)

My initial contention was with the poster's concept of "Hollywood" as a greater-than-though, single universal, penultimate entity that makes and breaks the end all, be all of what the unwitting public can and should appreciate: A single, unified force that is capable of making decisions on what could, should, and would be liked by the public. "Hollywood" (of which I am a part, though I live and write in NY) is a vast conglomeration of writers, directors, actors, crew, editors, producers, and more...

I didn't mean any offense (other that the initial sardonic jab, I must admit)---but having been writing for film/tv for quite some time (and no, I won't give any details, I joined this bbs to talk about Star Trek, not the film industry [my bad], and no, I've not done anything "big" like Trek" or BSG... my writing has been mostly cable network Discovery Channel, MSNBC, Discovery Channel, TLC stuff... [admittedly, I aspire to write for such great projects as Star Trek...])

But honestly, no offense was intended, but I was a bit taken aback at hal9500's post, as it's an issue that I deal with daily, and which consistently drives me crazy...

Oh---and as to your jibe about the "q" vs. "g" typo, when you type at 80+ words a minute, there are many more kinds of typos than where letters fall on the keyboard. There's also how the mind perceives letter shapes, word forms, sounds, typography, and syntax. Just an FYI. EVERYONE makes typos... You do too... unless they're predominant, let's not make an issue, okay?

 

Well, I disagreed with hal9500 and then you accused me of "erroneous thinking, and just plain naivity." And now you say that you disagreed with hal9500 as well.

So I guess there are 3 sides to this coin, but damned if I can figure out what they are.

All I know is, I agree with what you just wrote, but you're the one that attacked me, so there must be something I'm missing about what I said.

I can't argue back any more since, like I said, I pretty much agree with what you said.

Also, you don't seem to take a lot of time to notice who's saying what around here. That was some other guy, yet you're addressing me about it, as if I had anything to do with it.

If you want to do everything in one post, that's cool, but mention the right names instead of just saying "your jibe" to the wrong guy.

I'm starting to wonder if every other post you made had these issues and if, perhaps, some of the things I thought you were saying to me were actually meant for other people. It would certainly explain a bit.

 

Likes:
Urban's McCoy
Daddy Kirk, Space Hero
Greenwood's Pike

Dislikes:
From Cadet to Captain in a heartbeat
Handing the flagship to a green crew. Where are the seasoned veterans?
Spock Prime's Exposition

Surprises:
Vulcan go boom.
Amanda go boom.
Spock/Uhura go elsewhere.

Understanding this is an alternate timeline, I still wish things that were generally assumed (age of the Enterprise, Captain April, etc.) could have been honored. However, I loved the film and am excited about the future of the franchise.

 

Likes:
1. Karl Urban rocked the joint. Easily the guy most comfortable with the legacy and not afraid to do a bit of light imitation.
2. The humor (Except for the puffy hands. Sigh.)
3. Pike. But I'm a Greenwood fan anyway.

Dislikes:
1. Silly promotions left and right.
2. The goofball 20th century factory they call engineering.
3. The nose-thumbing at "doing the right thing" at the end. I bought into the "the ideals are what's central and we've preserved that" marketing. Well, mercy for a helpless opponent - no matter how evil - is one of Trek's highest ideals ("Arena" anyone? That single act is why I became a fan at age 9.) Kirk cracking wise with Spock and then ordering to fire away even though the enemy was virtually dead made my blood run cold. Plus, sticking around to do that almost got them killed. They could have said, "Have it your way," and split. But they didn't. [On my second viewing I couldn't actually see the E firing anything, though. Maybe Kirk changed his mind but they left the quote in to satisfy the trigger-happy demo. Who knows.]

Surprises:
1. The Kirk family death/birth scene. I didn't think I'd be misty-eyed before the title even appeared! Jennifer Morrison and Whats-his-face were phenomenal.
2. Spock/Uhura. The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, huh, Sarek?
3. Chris Pine.

Overall reaction:
My first viewing was muddled with lots of "Hmm. What's that?" and "Ooooo. Shiny!" and "WTF?!" The second time I was able to sit back and enjoy the ride. I'm still kinda pissed about my Dislike #3, and wish they'd done more to assure me this was a parallel universe and not a restart of history (the characters behaved like it was the latter). But on the whole I'm pretty happy with the re-imagining of my favorite show ever. With the origin stuff out of the way, the sequels should be even better.

 

3 Likes:
Great effects, made trek look very Sexy
Humor that was actually funny and not corny
Casting, when it came to the crew I felt almost all the cast were better except for Pike who I would say was equal to the original, and Spock and McCoy who I would say are close but no cigar

3 Dislikes:
The fact that in effect this movie erases four out of the fives shows and all the other movies from ever having ahppened.
The recasting while maintaining it's the same continuity and universe,
The fact that this bothers me, makes me sound like a whinny fan, because these are small things like getting the uniforms right, or the warp nacells, I think these are very significant changes.

Seriously, I felt they should have just done a straight reboot and said we are re-imagining the whole series over, like they did with Bond, or BSG or hell, even King Kong. Just call it a remake for crying out loud.

Instead, in trying to placate the fans, the instead pissed me off by saying, guess what, all those shows you saw, never happened and never will. That was so unecessary. Plus I think recasting in the same continuity is hard to pull off convincingly. The big three I believed, the others were not good prequel casts. I think they were good reboot casts, but it's not the same.

One more big dislike, the whole save the Earth plotline has been done to death in the movies, from V'ger, to the wales, to the Borg, to Shinzon. Just reminded me why the tv series of Trek is always better.

Surprises:
Vulcan and Amanda getting it
Spock and Uhura
Beatie Boys.

Again, I hate to nitpick, I did enjoy the movie, but I feel a straight reboot would have been better. Or a way in which the original timeline could have been preserved. But destroying the original timeline makes me feel like they killed all the Trek I loved and erased it from history. I was born in the 1980s, so I always loved TNG more, and only looked at TOS passingly, except for the even number movies, which I liked.

 

Likes:

1) Bruce Greenwood's Pike. Very different than Jeffrey Hunter's edgy, mildly depressed Pike. Ended up being my favorite character in the film, really.
2) Karl Urban's McCoy. Having them not screw up McCoy was crucial to me, and short of cloning DeForest Kelley, I don't think they could have made a better choice.
3) Simon Pegg's Scotty. Just a total hoot.

Dislikes:

1) Uhura/Spock romantic subplot, Uhura/Kirk rivalry. Spock doesn't make out when there's work to be done, unless there's some virus/spores/whatever in play. And Kirk is The Captain, even if he's not Captain yet. Nobody with one or fewer bars on their cuff gets to argue with him and stay on his bridge. Ever.
2) If they really wanted a break from the old canon, they should have imploded Earth as well. Would've made for a nice "Earth is gone, but humanity will survive" moment, and given some real urgency for our continued expansion into space.
3) Whoever fitted Leonard Nimoy's dentures should have done a better job.

Surprises:

1) That I actually liked the film! I was expecting this movie to be so removed from what I love about Star Trek that I'd walk away disappointed even if I somehow managed to enjoy it at face value. But, as one of the people in the test audience for "The Cage" back in 1964 said...
2) I actually felt like I was flying through space, in a way only Star Trek has ever been able to do.
3) That so many ships have those bowels with staggered, irregular platforms over deep, fatal-to-fall-in pits, and that so many people are willing to fight in them. For once, I'd like to see a fight to the death in the galley or something. Wait, was this actually a thinly-veiled complaint? Oh well...

Overall reaction:

I enjoyed this non-stop, action-packed thrill ride™ totally in spite of myself, with some reservations. I would've preferred that all the early scenes of young Kirk being a total screw-up be replaced with, well, talkiness. Especially after the Destiny trilogy, I find myself believing that Star Trek would be better served in print, or at least, something more longform than a 2hr movie. I see a book adaptation by Alan Dean Foster will be coming along next week, and I'm eager to see if he comes up with a good explanation as to why the destruction of the Kelvin so completely changed the course of history (I can understand why it screwed up Kirk, but it seems that all of Starfleet was set back in the wake of this event). On the other hand, the Kelvin scene reminded me just how much of an impact Trek can have in the visual realm.

 

Likes

1. The cast, especially Greenwood and Urban.
2. The little introductions for each character.
3. Most of the humour.

Dislikes

1. The illogic of Kirk's promotion and the long-range beaming.
2. The frantic cuts in action scenes.
3. The cliche of a boy growing up without a father turning into a troublemaker.

Surprises

1. The way there were actually some genuinely emotional and moving scenes amidst the action (the opening, Spock facing the Science Academy, etc)
2. Spock's appearance. Didn't really think about it as I watched, but it still struck me when he arrived.
3. The reaction it has got.

Overall

Not flawless, but certainly enjoyable.

 

It would have been quite apt if they had REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"...

 

Looking over this thread, I dont understand the need to attack those that didnt like the movie. Everyone has their own opinion, so why gang up on someone that doesnt share your views?

Likes

1. The entire new cast. Everyone did a great job.
2. The new Enterprise design.
3. The movie's sense of fun.

Dislikes

1. The plot holes
2. Shaky-cam action scenes
3. The part with young Kirk driving the car...just didnt do it for me.

Surprises

1. That the new cast did so well.
2. Amanda's death.
3. That I liked the movie as much as I did.

Overall a great flick. I've got two more viewings planned, one in IMAX...Cant wait!

 

Like:

1. Cast was mostly good. The acting was good and my issues with them really come down to some of the characterisations, particularly Chekov.

2. Looked pretty. Too much glare but the bridge looked futuristic, ships looked good, planets looked good. Is this the first time we see a futuristic Earth city? I know we see San Fran a bit but its usually in the background so you can't make too much out.

3. The two silence in space moments were good.

Dislike:

1. Waste of money getting an actor of the calibre of Bana and then given him such a piss weak character as Nero. I expected a lot more of the character and wanted to see a memorable villian and it has nothing to do with Bana's acting, which was fine. He simply did not have the screen time or exploration necessary for me.

2. Flagship seemed to be crewed entirely by cadets and then in the end they give a cadet the ship. They could have named the movie, Star Trek: Red Squad (reference to the DS9 episode, "Valiant")

3. We missed out on seeing most of the power of the Naranda. Would have loved to see it paste the Fed fleet and/or the Klingon fleet.

Surprises:

1. The TV spots showed some fairly crucial moments. I felt no suspence over the attack on Earth because they showed the drill bit falling into the sea.

2. Spock and Uhura. I did know of it before I saw the movie thanks to a review that mentioned that she was Spock's love interest in the movie.

3. I was surprised old timeline Spock survived and remained in this new alternate timeline. I really thought he would give his life to end the threat of Nero or that he would return back to his timeline to just ram home that the old continuity is still going.

 

Yes, really, how presumptuous can you get?

Likes:

1. The character interaction rocked, especially the Kirk/Spock and Kirk/McCoy scenes. The actors had the characters pinned down. Awsome.

2. The score. It was majestic. Love it to death.

3. The lack of deus ex machina. Thanks a lot, JJ, you are now officially my new best friend.

Dislikes:

1. That the film ended too soon.

2. That Olson bloke. Honestly.

3. That tickets are so damn expensive.

That's it. I could list a hundred more likes, but those were the most important ones. The film rocks, Star Trek lives.

 

Kirk cracking wise with Spock and then ordering to fire away even though the enemy was virtually dead made my blood run cold.
See, I didn't have a problem with that at all. Nero had to be destroyed. What if the red matter black hole brought them back in time again? Then Nero would have the chance to try to destroy Vulcan again. Kirk simply couldn't take the chance.

 

Likes

1. Pine was awesome - Long Live Kirk!
2. Uhura and Spock romance - nicely done, terrific acting
3. Three is not enough to name the number of likes

Dislikes
1. Gotta wait 2 years for the next one.
2. Nero could have used more development.
3. Better explanation as to how a cadet becomes a Captain (I'd like to beleive that his ability and the fact that Starfleet just lost a whole bunch of captains in that battle over Vulcan might have prompted the promotion but an explanation would be nice!)

Surprises
1. Vulcan!
2. Spock and Uhura.
3. Spock Prime showing up where he did.

 

With someone mentioning the silence in space moments as favorites, I feel I have to add that I think the sound design in this film was beyond awesome. Without any hubris, just common sense, we're looking at Star Trek's first Oscar nomination since 1996 here. Those silent moments gave me chills, as did the earth-shaking warp speed sound. "Let's punch it" indeed!