Moments that really made you cringe or disliked

If only the above statement were true.

Anyone who believes that this movie was well written is just deluding themselves, as "the flaws of the many far outweigh the flaws of the few, or the one".

Hopefully, JJ will be busy with other projects as his directing style leaves little to be desired. As for the writers, I wish they could be jettisoned out of the nearest airlock.

 

Well said, Cryogenic.

 

The destruction of Vulcan.
Vulcans are now reduced to basically nothing in the Federation. No more stories like Amok Time.

Spock' s Rampant Emotions
Uhura and Spock locking lips in full public display. T'Pol in Enterprise got hammered by fans for un-Vulcan like behaviour but Spock's just totally Wicked now!

 

Thank you, Jarod.

I may have gone over some of the same ground, but I tried to present new observations rather than merely repeating old ones (or, if I repeated old ones, I tried adding something extra).

It's a new day, so I'll resume. Another one that really bugs me is the Kobayashi Maru scene. Now, yes, this one has already been raked over the coals, and in this thread, also, but I want to focus on one part: the apple.

First and foremost, why is Kirk allowed to bring an item of food into a serious test? The scene presents it as the most natural thing in the world, not least because the Starfleet extra asks, "Is he not taking the simulation seriously?" before the apple is actually shown, in response to Kirk acting theatrically indifferent to being targeted by the Klingon war birds, and not because he brought a piece of fruit into the test -- implying one of two things: no-one noticed or no-one cares (both of which are slightly disturbing, not to mention absurd).

Then there is the fact that Abrams is clearly quoting a scene from TWOK (another clumsy, yet still vastly superior, film), but one-dimensionally. In the Nicholas Meyer picture, Kirk's apple-chewing is not only a sign of bravado, nor even a way to quench hunger (valid for the lying-low, biding-time scenario of II, but not really for XI's much simpler and less protracted circumstance), but a clear religious allusion, given that Kirk is in a place reminiscent of the biblical construct of Eden, which was created by a GENESIS device, and that Adam and Eve were punished for eating from the Tree Of Knowledge (an apple has come to symbolise the "forbidden fruit", even though it was not adequately described in the original text) -- the allusion here is simple but powerful: Kirk will be punished for his arrogance/defiance; while Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden for contravening the word of God, Kirk will lose his best friend to his worst enemy, the penalty for his presumptuousness, and be forced out of his paradisaical mindset and into a new frame of suffering and death.

Unfortunately, in STXI, Kirk is just, y'know, chewing an apple. There is no real subtext. It's a sign of his disregard for the "no-win scenario" and little else. Time and again, Kirk is proven right, while his superiors (or inferiors, I guess) lack the brains and the balls to actually take appropriate action, and Kirk succeeds not through mettle, perseverance or radical insight, but because he steamrolls over a mountain of incompetency to emerge "A1". In many ways, the apple-chewing is a motif; a motif that expresses the true measure of this film's cliche-ridden, superficial recapitulation of ideas already done better by other people in better movies, in a more astute and learned past.

 

I'm with you!

 

Damn. I think you just summed Trek XI up in one sentence.

I generally try to avoid falling into the trap of thinking stuff from the past is better because it's old, but the movies Hollywood is making these days are terrible. Just awful, to the point that when an essentially competent movie like District 9 comes along, we have reviewers and audiences praising it like it's some kind of magic. I fail to understand the praise given to Trek XI, especially the folks who rank it--god help me--as the best of the Trek movies.

 

[Bold in above quote for reference] Ah, yes... The fallback position comes out. "I don't like the movie so I will insult the intelligence of anyone who does." Unfortunately, such statements tend to call into question the intelligence of the person stating it.

 

Neither attitude adds to the discussion.

 

Those "monsters" on Delta Vega. Shudders.

 

I'll agree on the big creature that chased Kirk into Spock Prime's cave. That thing looked too much like a monster out of a HALO game and wasn't terribly believable for the most part.

 

I think one monster would have been sufficient.

 

One of these days you will surprise me by being impartial. Naw, I'm just deluding myself.... so I shall take my leave of you in this thread.

 

I just found the scenes to be highly superfluous. I liked the movie better if I ran to the lady's during those scenes.

 

There were many superflous scenes, most notably the car sequence and the monster chase. The Kobayashi Maru also had no impact on the story. The attack would have happened, the cadets would have boarded the ships. Kirk could have easily been assigned to the Enterprise, alternate timeline and all (which would have spared us that cringe-worthy swollen hands stuff). And in the end of the movie it was never ever mentioned again or referred to in any matter. Only that short line "time travel is cheating", but they could have cut that one then easily, too.

 

I'd contend that the opposite is true, in terms of understanding this version of Kirk's character.

It demonstrates his absolute refusal to accept the 'no-win' scenario; firstly by showing the fact that where every other cadet just takes the test once, 'fails' and moves on, not only does he take once, he takes it twice (something which seems to escape a few people's notice, or deemed irrelevant), which is probably how he learns that the scenario itself is rigged.

After figuring that out, he shows the Academy what he thinks of such a test (whether or not the purpose of the test that Spock tells him even occured to Kirk already) by rigging the test so that he can win. When brought up on charges of cheating, he declares that cheating is exactly what the test does already, it's just that he's engineered it to favour himself instead of the opposite.

Unfortunately, the attack cuts short any final resolution on what the hearing over the incident may of had. For all we know, this argument could be what the PrimeKirk used when found out and gotten him the commendation for 'original thinking'...either that or the commendation is the best thing they could come up with in terms of resolving the situation.

 

A moment where i cringe is when the computer on the Jellyfish warns Spock that he is on a collision course and if the red matter ignites the ship will be destroyed.

i'm like, duh~

 

Saw it again on a plane the other night. The only thing that still rankles is the Delta Vega reference. I think it bugs me more because they were trying to do something for the fans, and screwed it up. It's like if a friend heard I liked anchovies, and thought, "Oh, I'll make him an anchovie smoothie!"