The Official STAR TREK Grading & Discussion Thread [SPOILERS]
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Kirk: "Would you mind not finger fucking in public? It's offensive."
It's Finger fucking good.
Kirk: "Would you mind not finger fucking in public? It's offensive."
It's Finger fucking good.
Kentucky Fingered Chicken...
This was more or less what happened with me. As many here know I had said I would not pay to see movies of this type before this particular film was ever announced. I worked at a movie theater a couple of years ago while being laid off and still know a couple of people there so I get to see movies for free from time to time.
Many of my pre-conceptions about the film were wrong as far as the story itself and the motives of some of the characters. I was thrilled to see that I was wrong about Nimoy's Spock being the character Abrams was referring to when he said somebody dies.
Visually, this movie is excellent. But then, for $150m with a C level cast I figured that it would be. And SOME of the casting is better than I figured it would be... Urban in particular.
There's some decent action in the film (though nothing really earth shattering) and a good bit of humor (bordering on spoof territory at times).
Having said all of that, I find the story itself a combination of disturbing (with respect to what appears to be the message) and rather weak.
The weak part first. Abrams said going into this project that he wanted to make a film for people who weren't fans as much as were. Fair enough. But, I found myself asking a couple of things after seeing the movie... would I have found a couple of the things in the movie as easy to swallow as I did if I'd never known anything about Trek. Would Chekov's problems with the computer have seemed as funny? Probably not. But, even more is the last minute or so of the film.
The closing moments of the film have the entire crew aboard the Enterprise... everybody in their familiar positions. And, I ask myself... is there ANYTHING in this movie that lends itself to that outcome? Kirk, in particular.
I mean, consider the course of events surrounding his character in the movie for a moment. He never finishes the academy in this movie... on academic suspension. Failure #1. He gets his tail kicked on the drilling platform... saved by Sulu while clinging for dear life on an edge (for the second time in the movie). Failure #2. He tries to save Sulu at the end of that sequence, they both end up saved by Chekov. Failure #3. He gets tossed off of the Enterprise for insubordination. Failure #4. He gets chased down by a big critter which, in turn gets eaten by a bigger critter. Old Spock saves him from that one. Failure #5. He manages to save Scotty in a humorous but pointless skit with the pipes. Success #1. He assumes command of the ship after Spock steps down on the basis that he had been named First Officer by Pike. Would be fine except that he, himself, had already been relieved of duty. The chair should have gone to Sulu, Scotty or Uhura. He and Spock head over to Nero's ship. Kirk goes after Pike. Gets his tail kicked again but manages to kill the Romulan. Spock, on the other hand, is the one who actually saves the day and defeats Nero.
So, again, I ask myself... why do we accept Kirk being in that chair at the end of the movie? The only good reason is because we expect it. The story, itself, lends us to an entirely different conclusion.
Other things about the movie that I find weak is the premise that Vulcan needed to be saved. Vulcans are as advanced if not more so than the Federation itself. The notion that a race so advanced would have no clue that they were being attacked and would sit there and die believing it to be some natural phenomenon is pretty difficult to swallow. At a minimum, they would have evacuated the planet. More than likely, they would have attempted to destroy the drilling platform.
My big issue with the movie, though, is the overall message. The movie is racked with one failure after another for the lead character. The most severe of which is, obviously, failing to save Vulcan. The message of the movie seems to be one of the end justifying the means. That, somehow, 6 billion people (and Spock's own mother) dying is an acceptable trade-off for Kirk and company getting control of the ship. If that sounds like a message that Roddenberry would have supported to anybody I'm not sure what franchise they've been watching for the last 40+ years.
I realize as much as anybody that even the fans of Trek had grown tired of reset buttons and such. But, they are as much a part of Trek lore as the characters themselves. The moment you introduce time travel into this film you essentially accept that time is going to get mucked up and it will be up to the crew of the ship to fix it.
By mid film, three characters in the film know how the timeline is supposed to go... Nero, Old Spock, and Kirk (by virtue of Spock's mind meld), yet neither of the two good guys thinks it's important enough to fix, which, they could have done with a couple of small changes at the end.
Overall, I think the movie had potential to not only do what Abrams wanted (which it obviously has) but retain some assemblance of the traditional as well. It didn't need to be the either-or situation that it became.
So, ultimately, I guess if I cared more about great visuals and decent action than I did about a story that makes sense and has an actual moral message consistent with the franchise's history, I would probably like this movie. Otherwise, it's pretty lacking.
In the end, I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
That would have better been left unsaid. Leave the personal digs alone, please.
Hmmm... got stuck in your chair too?
Insults aside (and, I'm assuming that I fall into the "cheapskate" category IYHO), had I actually liked the movie I would have bought a ticket and seen it again. Then again, had it been anything other than a movie with "Star Trek" in the title, I probably wouldn't have seen it the first time... gratis or otherwise.
I enjoyed the movie, i really want to see it again just to be able to give a good critique of what i felt worked, and what i felt didn't.
Anyone got 10 bucks I can borrow?
Anyone got 10 bucks I can borrow?
Very disappointed. Pike, Spock and Chekov were pretty good, McCoy was OK, but the story was too simple and I didn't like Kirk's insubordination (they have a ready room so that there aren't debates on the bridge). Disappointed in Ryder's cameo and Nimoy was hit-and-miss; he should have obviously recognized that Kirk was probably too young to be good friends with him. Nero's ship was cool but his motivation was weak given that his world could have been destroyed without Spock accidentally contributing. What was he doing for 25 years? I would have preferred that the Federation actually did become somewhat corrupt and reprehensible, and perhaps that he had regular time travel ability (the ENT forum suggestion that he was Future Guy).
I also wonder if this film wiped out the other timeline; both the alternate-universes and the single-changed-universe theories are possible. I certainly would have preferred it to have been an ordinary prequel in the existing timeline, just having the Enterprise be an established ship rather than on its maiden voyage.
I also wonder if this film wiped out the other timeline; both the alternate-universes and the single-changed-universe theories are possible. I certainly would have preferred it to have been an ordinary prequel in the existing timeline, just having the Enterprise be an established ship rather than on its maiden voyage.
TJinPgh, Kirk got the chair in recognition of 2 things:
1) he saved the Earth. That's a biggie.
2) When everyone in the command stuff wanted to do one thing, Kirk followed his gut instinct and said, "No, we need to do this instead", and he was proved to be right. In a commander, that is more valuable than all the spit and polish and by the rules you can name.
It was also pointed out by Bob Orci in the Q&A thread that the time between the destruction of the Narada and the ceremony at Star Fleet where Kirk is commissioned is a little vague, so he could have completed whatever he needed to, with the recommendation of Spock and Pike, to become Captain. That's how I'm reading it, I'm fine with that.
1) he saved the Earth. That's a biggie.
2) When everyone in the command stuff wanted to do one thing, Kirk followed his gut instinct and said, "No, we need to do this instead", and he was proved to be right. In a commander, that is more valuable than all the spit and polish and by the rules you can name.
It was also pointed out by Bob Orci in the Q&A thread that the time between the destruction of the Narada and the ceremony at Star Fleet where Kirk is commissioned is a little vague, so he could have completed whatever he needed to, with the recommendation of Spock and Pike, to become Captain. That's how I'm reading it, I'm fine with that.
If that's the biggie, then you prove my point. Kirk didn't save the Earth. Spock did.
The fact that Spock was able to make his plan work in no way suggests that doing what he had been told to do would have failed.
Read: "We wrote a story that's full of holes so whatever you can come up with to get this thing to make sense works for us."
To each his own and I'm glad you enjoyed it. And, if that were the only example of weak writing in the movie I might go along with it. But, it's not.
Ultimately, though, as weak as I believe the story was, the biggest flaw with the movie continues to be the message. The unfortunate part of it is that it's a flaw that could have easily been corrected by simply changing the ending of the film. The rest of the film could have remained the same.
A
Amaris
Guest
You're making a lot of sense. We're having this same discussion in The Neutral Zone, but everyone is being far more egalitarian. Everyone's viewpoint is accepted there, and no one is derided for thinking in the minority, or being different. Check it out. Seriously, we do need a lot of good thoughtful people there.
J.
You're making me cry.
So if you get three intelligent Trek XI posters to go to TNZ, that'll raise the number of smart people there to two, right?
A
Amaris
Guest
You're making me cry.
So if you get three intelligent Trek XI posters to go to TNZ, that'll raise the number of smart people there to two, right?
There are a plethora of intelligent posters in The Neutral Zone. It is with great consideration that I always make the offer.
J.
13 days after the release of the movie and being a trek fan from 1980 i'm more dissapointed with the fans than with the movie itself. I don't understand why so many fans liked this movie. Are the impressive visual effects and meaningless action the only things that remained from trek? And nobody noticed the holes in the plot? Where is the famous roddenberry's vision? Now all that we want is a lot of people fighting each other and starships blowing up? abrams made a movie that is more like starship troopers than trek. And the fans like it???!!! I can only hope that this will not be the death of star trek as we knew it allthough i'm afraid that this what will happen.
A
Amaris
Guest
Come join our Trek XI thread in TNZ. We're discussing it right now. I just made the rebuttal that perhaps it is unwise for fans to jump the gun in calling this a great movie, and while some disagree with me, we're making headway.
J.
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