Moments that really made you cringe or disliked

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by startrekrcks, Aug 27, 2009.

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  1. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I just checked some screencaps of Trekcore. The room is clearly a fully built stage, with steps leading down to the conference table. Probably filmed on a soundstage, but yeah, that's how they do it. There are framed pictures of planets on the walls, and even some sort of entrance with white glass doors with the Starfleet logo on it, and 3dimensional letters saying "TO BOLDLY GO..." above the doors.


    LOL, you can even see someone sitting in the dark behind Kirk when he says "let them die." Is it Valeris? Would be great.
     
  2. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Actually, the briefing room at Starfleet Headquarters set was not filmed on a soundstage. It was a redress of the interior of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.

    And while it was not a completely blank set apart from the table, it was an extremely dark, minimalist set with a very theatrical air to it, designed to draw your eyes away from the background and towards the actors and the table. And there was as little detail to the background as they could reasonably put there in a film.
     
  3. Shazam!

    Shazam! Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That's the worst defence ever. I could just as easily say that about any 'popcorn movie' that you may have disliked.

    If people have fundamental issues with the movie they're not gonna be turned over by someone saying they should enjoy it for what it is. They saw what it was and they disliked it.

    Also, as if Star Trek being reduced to popcorn movie status is a good thing.
     
  4. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It is if it resurrects Star Trek from the dead, which is what ST09 did.
     
  5. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    No, I think it's the ADC who announced the Admiral's entrance ("Ladies and gentlemen...the C-in-C.").
     
  6. Wynterhawk

    Wynterhawk Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    The whole running gag with "Bones injecting Kirk, with terrible results". And as mentioned above, Uhura having to take her clothes off at all. I think that scene could have played just as effectively without that.
     
  7. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    BLASPHEMY!! Zoe Saldana naked is an objective good! :evil:
     
  8. Flying Spaghetti Monster

    Flying Spaghetti Monster Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The source is the DVD commentary track.
     
  9. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I'd have rather guessed they filmed the Khitomer conference in that Church.

    But whatever, what I see on the DVD on screen clearly negates:
     
  10. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Commander Red Shirt

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    I don't believe that TeutonicNights meant to imply an oversight, just bizarre thinking on the part of Abrams and his production team.

    Although that is an example of cheap and/or frugal production design, and is hardly the most inspiring set dressing in the world, it's never struck me as especially incongruous. The sparsity of the location works in the scene's favour, and connotes something of the stuffy, rote-like way the decimation of the Klingon Empire is discussed, and the manner in which Kirk is matter-of-factly told he's to be the Federation's "first olive branch". In short, it brings forward ideas and establishes a certain mood, making it good for the scene and good for the film. Also, the meeting feels somewhat hastily-assembled and secretive, which the small, unassuming room gives a measure of credence to. Finally, a note about that table: in its sleek, polished blackness, the table suggests something about Starfleet's refined nature, as well as dominating the centre of the room and lending the scene an ominous, funereal air (greatly supported by the film's Shakespearean title and Cliff Eidelman's dark main theme).

    For all my issues with Nicholas Meyer, he had some good people around him for TUC and steered the ship well, and he even taught this then-eight-year-old some interesting words and phrases (including the aforementioned "olive branch"), as well as concepts pertaining to history and racism, which I remain grateful for, so maybe this is just sentiment talking. On the other hand, I do think the scene you've drawn attention to is far more artfully done, being a sobering thing in service of the film's plot and hemmed themes, rather than the overblown engineering scenes in STXI, which primarily, to my way of thinking, exist to accentuate the film's very antithetical (not to mention anachronistic) "steam punk" look, and to provide chintzy, soda-pop thrills, which might put bums on seats but tend to degrade the artistic property they've been welded to.

    Honestly, what you've come out with isn't even a good example. The STVI briefing scene can't really be compared with STXI's engineering scenes. A much better comparison is with STXI's scenes at Starfleet Academy; specifically, the scenes in the auditorium featuring Kirk. Now, not only are you talking about a similar fictional place belonging to the same fictional organisation, but a place with barely any set dressing that has a similar function in real life (i.e. as a formal place of meeting/discussion). I'm talking about Long Beach City Hall, located at 333 W. Ocean Blvd, CA. This was digitally extended by a VFX house, but done so thinly that it's blatantly the same interior, and even contains a noticeable visual artifact, where, if I had guess, the real-life central podium wasn't painted out correctly (the artifact I'm talking about is a faint blue square just in front of the stair rail, which persists as the camera pans up to Spock, exactly where the podium should be, for the duration that the relevant area of floor is visible). Here:

    http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y178/0Cryogenic0/?action=view&current=lbc_vs_stxi.jpg

    Very little in Star Trek is inherently "realistic", by accident or design. But there is something in Star Trek, especially in regards to the Enterprise, that aspires to verisimilitude -- that is, the quality of seeming to be real or true. While no-one can say for certain that a mass of water pipes is inherently less realistic than power conduits and bulkheads, it is an affront to ST's clean futurism to include something so visually discombobulated, OTT and so recognisably "20th Century"-like, especially in the heart of the series' flagship vessel, which has always existed as a synthesis of optimism and rationalism, and as a symbol of high technology partnered with high mindedness. The appearance of fluorescent lights, painted walls and beams, pipes with nuts and bolts, and characters being accidentally beamed inside a network of pipes, with a tedious and simplistic Saturday matinee-esque action dilemma, seriously goes against the flow (pardon the pun) of what ST is and should be about.

    You said it yourself (as bolded): films and plays are different. Production design is a critical component of motion picture making, and if someone in the movie industry thinks it isn't, then they're in the wrong business. Theatre plays give primacy to the written word and the way it's manipulated into drama; films give primacy to the frame and the way it's assembled for visual narrative. There is a world of difference between the two. Unfortunately, few film-goers credibly understand this, and even some filmmakers don't really get it. Production design can, and does, make all the difference.

    Could "Lawrence Of Arabia" have been filmed in a grocery store? Should the astronauts in "Apollo 13" have been wearing togas and leotards? Would it have been OK if Peter Jackson just used a piece of Blu-Tack for the One Ring in "The Lord Of The Rings"? For sure, these are extreme examples, but extreme examples prove the rule. The best filmmakers take production design very seriously, going to great lengths to get it right, from costumes and sets, to props and lighting. I couldn't imagine watching David Fincher's "Fight Club" without all that grubbiness, etched into the walls, the floors, the doors, the ceilings, the tables, the chairs, the actors' faces, why, the film grain itself, or "Lost In Translation" without the urban wonder of Tokyo, embodied in its clean streets, its twinkling signs, its modern architecture, its density, its complexity, its strangeness and its beauty.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2009
  11. trevanian

    trevanian Rear Admiral

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    The TUC conference table is an ingenious and cheap solution for a movie that had more money problems than can easily be dealt with here (though it does come up again a couple paragraphs down.)

    You could probably cut the new movie the same slack ... if Abrams brought it in for 60 mil instead of 150-160 (not counting the interest charges that accrued during the months that the film sat finished and unreleased.)

    As is, you really got to wonder where the money went. ILM? ILM gets an insane amount of money (they got a third of the budget on MUMMY, and I've heard closer to half the budget on some more recent high cost flicks), but percentagewise that is way off from what they used to get ... TWOK ultimately cost about 12-13 mil, and 3 of that went to ILM. Later on, it escalated. ILM's price was so distressing to Par that they originally cancelled TUC because they wouldn't spend another 2 mil to have ILM on it ... but then when the producers suggested doing the whole film w/o ILM (like TFF), Par relented a bit, though production had to trim another mil off the budget anyway to get greenlit AND get ILM (though only for most of the work, since matte paintings and most animation went to MatteWorld and VCE and some other companies.)

    The production design on the new one seems shameful to me, on a lot of levels.

    The cheapness of shooting a brewery PLUS not redressing it significantly (just putting black garbage liner on the floor would slick things up a bit, it did for my super8 flicks when I shot in working environments.)

    The glare/glare/everywhere is ludicrous for a working environment, esp a ship's control area where people work off info read from displays.

    The one great design notion of the new film -- making the future look like the work of Saarinen, such as the TWA NY air terminal -- becomes the biggest foulup, since the results don't look like Saarinen or inspired by Saarinen, but instead look like people with bad taste THINKING they are evoking Saarinen and missing by a mile (from what I read at trekmovie, apparently the ent exterior and the bridge are supposed to evoke Saarinen .. go rent THE TERMINAL and see if there is any pleasant similarity ... if you find it, congratulate yourself, because you're seeing something that I don't think is there.)
     
  12. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Seems to me that the design aesthetic that led to choices like breweries serving as filming locations for engineering and lens flares was an aesthetic that held that the future should have more of a "used, working class, down to Earth" feel to it.

    I think they took it too far with the idea of using a present-day brewery to represent engineering, but I understand the aesthetic and enjoyed its employment elsewhere in the film.
     
  13. trevanian

    trevanian Rear Admiral

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    Yet that seems at odds with the whole 'future is so bright' excuse for lensflares, and the cosmetic look of the bridge, and the utterly useless look of the corridors. Instead of an interesting hodgepodge, just schizophrenic design. And Saarinen is as far from used working class as you can get.
     
  14. Jax

    Jax Admiral Admiral

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    Pike saying Fed is a peacekeeping armada when it should of been Starfleet.

    Lack of explanation about the sun going Nova in Prime Universe causing so much damage.

    thats about it.
     
  15. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    What's at odds with "the future is bright?" Is there some sort of conflict between the idea of a bright future and a future that has a used, working-class feel to it? Does having a better future mean that every piece of machinery is going to look shiny and fresh out of the factory?

    Pardon me. Are you seriously criticizing the corridors for being insufficiently utilitarian? It's a corridor. It's not like the corridors on the Enterprise-D did all that much.

    I thought it was an interesting hodgepodge, even when I didn't like the brewery redress.

    I rather liked the way they combined the two, actually. Even when an individual set was one I didn't like -- I agree with the criticism that engineering should look more technologically advanced than it did, and should not look like a brewery -- I felt that there was an interesting combo of futurism and a sense of things being used and down-to-earth. I love the fact that Kirk rides a motorcycle to a shipyard where a spaceship is being built. I love the fact that they use hangers that look no different from what we have today to house and launch shuttlecraft. I love the fact that it looks like the engineers on the Enterprise and the Kelvin actually get their hands dirty and don't just spend all day pressing a touch-screen computer console.

    That pissed me off, too. It's like equating the United Kingdom with the Royal Navy.
     
  16. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Kirk being exiled in an escape pod on an ice planet.

    I mean... wtf? First of all... wtf?! Second... why didn't they just beam him into the Starfleet outpost where he could be guarded? Why... nevermind... wtf...


    Spock's great plan of creating a black hole to suck up a supernova... seriously, bad science.
     
  17. PhasersOnStun

    PhasersOnStun Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Sure, I enjoy the scene myself, it's very dramatic.

    But the point is that when you look at some people's comments who take umbrage with the brewery, their main beef is its "lack of realism."

    I've been in many corporate meeting rooms, some rather hastily arranged and completely confidential. Trust me, in real life, secret meetings don't have mood lighting. :)

    So back to the brewery, it was a look Abrams wanted. That's what I was trying to get at. So in my initial post, while I only quoted a bit of TN's comment, I was also answering this:

    I don't think JJ was assuming that people were unintelligent, I think he made an artistic choice, he liked the look. That doesn't mean anyone is obligated to agree with him, but it wasn't like, as you say, using blu-tak for the One Ring.

    As a lifelong goth/industrial musician who has three friends currently in a popular Los Angeles area steampunk band, I am pretty well versed on the steampunk aesthetic. I can assure you that filming in a brewery is not steampunk. :) He would have had to add a lot of Victorian dressing—there is nothing Victorian about a mid-50s American brewery. The animated movie "9" is a good example of sci-fi steampunk made today. Whatever design aesthetic JJ & co. were going for, I am very confident that steampunk isn't it.

    Honestly, I never would have thought for a second that any sort of ship can be made without pipes of some kind. That's not to say that an engineering deck needs brewing tanks. :) But water is a physical substance, and it needs to be moved in some sort of physical vessel from point A to point B. As the saying going, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." It might have been more "Star Trekian" to have the pipes painted white, inside the walls, glowing blue with force fields around them, or otherwise "cleaner." But one way or another, the water needs to get from point A to point B physically, and personally I have absolutely no problem with the idea that the water will be carried in tubes/pipes that are exposed.

    Especially if you consider that Starfleet is probably balancing a sort of aesthetic beauty with getting this ship spaceworthy and launched ASAP, it would make sense that when presented with the choice of requiring an extra crew to work extra hours to "tuck in" the water pipes or just leave them exposed in the bottom of the ship and save three weeks or so, the choice would be made to save time.

    Ultimately, it's up to the individual viewer to decide if any given set design/dressing works for them or not. For example:

    In the ST:TOS episode "The Enemy Within," there is a little Yorkie (or some other small dog) very obviously put in a cheesy "space dog" suit. Its head is exposed in what looks very clearly like a hole cut in the mask. The suit is so unwieldy that the dog is never seen walking by itself, only held or in a box. But the suit works for me. It looks "good enough" and the actors do a fine job of earnestly reacting to and discussing this obviously silly looking unicorn dog that I have no trouble at all with space dog.

    OTOH, STVI also has space dogs; on Rura Pente, there are larger dogs with three fangs running guarding the prisoners. These are clearly dogs wearing muzzles. It's a more "realistic" costume in that the dogs are mobile. But something about the complete lack of jaw motility pulls me right out of the scene. I would actually have preferred it if they simply wore cheesy looking spiked hat, instead of a super-cheesy muzzle. To this day, as much as I adore STVI as a movie, I can't look at those dogs without cringing.

    I certainly don't expect others to prefer 1966 space suit dog over 1991 space muzzle dog. Nor do I expect others to agree with me that the super-cheese muzzle was enough to pull them out of the scene. But for me, it was.

    And back to the brewery. :) I totally understand anyone pulled out of the scene. But it didn't pull me out.
     
  18. number6

    number6 Vice Admiral

    If people didn't already know it was a brewery, I don't think anyone would have noticed.

    Most of the poeple who have issues with this film fall into one of the following categories:

    1. They never saw it in the theatre.
    2. They were skeptical from the outset.
    3. They didn't want this film to be made by Abrams in the first place.
    4. Were already thinking it was going to suck no matter what.
    5. Are already upset that any changes to the design/uniforms/eye color were made.
    6. Are upset that this wasn't a straight reboot.
    7. Are upset that this was a reboot.
    8. Are upset that the film makers didn't adhere to every bit of continuity established.
    9. Are upset that this film doesn't look EXACTLY like the TV show.

    Therefore the "cringeworthy" aspects of the film can easily be chalked up to preconceptions. Most of these "cringeworthy" moments happened onscreen with numerous Trek films and episodes without so much as a peep..

    Then the lensflares.. If lensflares make you that upset, why do you bother leaving the house or turning on your TV?
     
  19. Flying Spaghetti Monster

    Flying Spaghetti Monster Vice Admiral Admiral

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    actually some people (like myself, who liked much of the film) had to severely rate it lower because of the plot holes, and, particularly, for the weakest villain motivation in all Trek, especially when they hyped a good villain.
     
  20. trevanian

    trevanian Rear Admiral

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    1. The future bright thing sounds like lip service to 'technology unchained,' GR's thing about tech being so good that things can just look nice ... function can be fit into any nice form. THAT is entirely counter to the Abrams engine room.

    2. The corridors don't make any sense. Center junctions? No useful wall areas? There are threads here going back a year or more on the corridor suckiness.

    3. If you can handle the 'starship built on earth' angle happening in the STAR TREK universe (ANY star trek universe), then I'm talking to somebody who is not from my neck of the woods. So I'm through.
     
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