In fact, isn't it a sign of clever writing when the creator deliberately tweaks the accepted "rules" of writing and/or film making, which is what makes certain films stand out from the crowd... and succeed at the box office?
What Amazes Me
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In fact, isn't it a sign of clever writing when the creator deliberately tweaks the accepted "rules" of writing and/or film making, which is what makes certain films stand out from the crowd... and succeed at the box office?
I've always regretted using my free double pass to the sneak preview of Bill Cosby's "Leonard Part 6" one Sunday morning, even though it came with a free sausage sizzle afterwards.
Do you mean like specifying a qualification such as "I think" - meaning it is a provisional opinion subject to update or outright correction?
You mean like specifying a qualification such as "what I've seen" - meaning that there may be worse examples that my limited reference group does not include?
Did you miss "errors per minute" in which I meant to exclude common criticisms (such as music and acting) with which I do not agree, but also consider myself unqualified to judge?
I intended "plot holes" to refer specifically to contradictory, nonsensical, and miraculous events and dialog, qualifying my scope of criticism to these domains.
What additional scope definition would you like? Do you believe that you and other apologists for the film provide the accuracy, level of evidence, and qualification you expect from others?
Since it is not "literally, the worst two hours" I " have ever spent as a viewer", and I would point out that if you are going to object to a "literal" reading of a statement, you should quote accurately or risk being judged dishonest.
Now, if a reader is only unable to perceive within my carefully qualified statement a blanket condemnation, then the conclusion about my lack of experience you propose would seem plausible. Although your premises are wrong, you miss my carefully spec'd limits, and you mis-state my position, it turns out that my film experience is woefully inadequate compared to many, although I did own 2 video stores in Dallas at one time, specializing in anime and SciFi.
Agreed.
Argument from apathy. If you don't care, why spend time whinging at others objections and sniping at people who do care about such things? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Probably true.
One certainly can argue for Enron, 9/11 hijackers, Bernie Madoff and Hitler were similarly clever in their respective, non-box office spheres. However, I don't think we normally regard "cleverness" as one of the more significant metrics for assessing their overall results, do we?
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I-Am-Zim
Captain
In your opinion. Others feel differently.
Yep.
Ooo! Let me try!!
Crew 1: You should see this! It looks like a lightning storm!
(Makes sense since the Kelvin is practically in front of the storm to the point where the lightning is being reflected off the hull. But later...)
Captain Robau: Report?
Crew 2: Still out of visual range.
Captain Robau: Fire all phasers!
(Torpedoes are heard being fired which the Kelvin does not have)
Captain Robau: Damage report?
Crew 3: Warp drive has been knocked out! Never seen anything like it!
(After more harsh bombardments later, the warp drive still functions. Why not use the Impulse engines?)
Crew 3: Weapons are offline!
(Not five seconds later, Kelvin is still firing it's pulse canons and phasers, even after more devastating blows)
Officer: How the hell did that cadet beat your test?
(....really? What gives you the impression he did anything? The simulator's lights went out, no one knew what was going on, Kirk wasn't doing anything in the simulator that would cause it to happen, and you actually think he beat this test?)
(From the script when Nero and crew are escaping Rura Penthe)
Nero: Ayel, the wait is over.
(Later)
Ayel: What are your orders?
Nero: We wait(?). We wait for the one who allowed our home to be destroyed. That's what we've been doing for the past 25 years.
(So the wait is not over?)
Ayel: And once we've killed him?
Nero: Kill him? I'm not going to kill him. I'm going to make him watch.
(If by 'make' him watch, you leave him on a dangerous hostile planet and hope he lives long enough to see the destruction of Vulcan, which isn't really making him do anything since he could, I don't know, NOT watch Vulcan get destroyed?)
Pike: Cadet, do you speak Romulan?
Uhura: Uhura, All three dialects.
(Later)
Uhura: Sir, I'm not picking up any Romulan Transmissions, or any other transmissions.
(So the whole entire point of knowing the Romulan language is rendered pointless. Even more so since the Romulans speak perfect english)
(The Enterprise takes one hit from the Narada)
Sulu: Weapons are powerful sir! We can't take another hit like that!
(The Kelvin was able to still function even after two direct hits, but the Enterprise, the brand new flagship of the Federation is doomed if it takes two?)
NuKirk: What kind of combat training do you have?
Sulu: Fencing.
(Sulu's non-fencing Katana and fighting style on the Drill is NOT associated with fencing)
NuKirk: Did you bring the charges?
Olsen: Oh, yes! I can't wait to kick some Romulan ass!
(Why? What's your beef against the Romulans? And did anyone notice that Olsen isn't really carrying anything? His suit looks as plain and vacant as Kirk and Sulu's. Where are the charges? Are they pencil sized? If they're pencil sized and there are many of them (charges=plural=more than one charge), why give them all to one person?)
Sulu: Olsen had the charges!
NuKirk: I know!
Sulu: What do we do?
NuKirk: This!
(They pick up the Romulan guns and shoot at the evil drill. Geez, is Sulu really that dumb? If you gave him a candle and a box of matches, he'd probably not know what the two have to do with each other.)
Uhura: The jamming signal's gone. Transport abilities are reestablished.
Chekov: Transporter control is reengaged, sir.
*Viewscreen shows "Trans-Online"*
Crew 4: Transporters are operational.
(Congratulations Uhura, your role of answering phone calls has been reduced to the position of alerting us on what we already know)
Spock: *To Uhura* Alert Vulcan Command Center to signal a planet-wide evacuation, all channels, all frequencies.
Uhura: Spock, wait! *leaves her station*
(...Vulcan has minutes left, Spock orders Uhura to contact Vulcan and evacuate as many people as possible and she leaves her station... We're in the middle of a planet wide disaster, she's supposed to be the best communications officer there is and she LEAVES HER STATION!)
NuKirk: What would an angry future Romulan want with Captain Pike?
Sulu: As Captain, he does know details about Starfleet defenses.
(Pike is one stupid Captain. Not only does he come up with a stupid plan to help Vulcan that *shock* fails, he gives himself up to the Romulans knowing that if they somehow did get the information from him that the Federation would be defenseless. And why would the Federation have a defense system like that where you can simply turn them off and not reactivate them? Well, I don't see him having a long career *Pike is promoted to Admiral* GOD DAM*****!!!!)
NuKirk: Acting captain Spock has marooned me on Delta Vega, in what I believe to be a violation of Security Protocol 49.09
(Kirk, you disobeyed direct orders from your superior officer, verbally harassed him in front of the entire crew and physically assaulted with the intent to harm two on-duty officers. You are in no position to argue about protocols.)
NuKirk: Going back in time, you changed all our lives.
(No he didn't. Spock didn't know the red matter would do cause both him and Nero to travel back in time, he didn't know what Nero would do, and he sure as heck didn't affect your life directly. Everything that's been changed happened because of NERO!)
NuKirk: Coming back in time, changing history, that's cheating.
(For crying out loud. Spock didn't change history! It was Nero! EVERYTHING that happened before Prime Spock arrived was out of his control and understanding.)
Uhura: I hope you know what you're doing, Captain.
(What makes you think he knows anything? For all you know, he just insulted and provoked your boyfriend AGAIN and you're ok with that?Why? Why aren't you demanding an explanation to Kirk's very obvious lack of common sense?!)
*Nero just lost the red matter, the drill is destroyed and everything he planned for is in ruins. He decides not to kill Kirk, goes to the bridge and....*
Nero: Open a channel!
Romulan: Yes sir!
Nero: Spock! I knew I should have killed you when I had the chance!
Spock: I hereby confiscate this illegally obtained ship and order you to surrender your vessel. No terms.
Nero: That ship, take it out!
Romulan: Sir, if you ignite the red matter-
Nero: I want Spock dead now!
(Yes, Nero decides to stop killing Kirk so he can tell spock his regrets. If you wanted him dead now, why not just tell us while you were strangling Kirk instead of running up to the bridge to just talk to Spock?)
Nero: What's he doing?
Computer: Ambassador Spock, you are on a collision course.
Nero: FIRE EVERYTHING!
(Uh, sir? Why don't we try capturing him again? It worked the first time. That way you can kill Spock with your bare hands, get the red matter back AND continue on your mission to destroy the Federation.)
*All the missiles are destroyed and the Jellyfish is still coming*
Nero: *silent*
(Uh, full reverse? Move out of the way? Fire again? Capture him? At least that god awful Shinzon said hard to port!)
Phew, I can go on all day.
Well done! The sad thing is, you probably could cite about 20 more dumb lines or continuity errors. It was a fun film but it was a VERY dumb film. It is quite scary that so many people didn't even spot even the really basic errors or just don't care. Still, lets be honest, by Hollywood standards the film is still probably in the top 30% of 'intelligent' scripts! Standards aren't high... 
I can handle dumb films. I can even praise dumb films. My main gripes with this movie is that I didn't care about anyone or anything. I hated NuKirk, I hated NuUhura, I hated the story and I hated the attempt at making this film something that it wasn't. I just can't think of anything about this movie that would make me like it overall. I do like somethings it did, but the weight of it's problems definitely outweighed the weight of it's strengths.
Wrong. I sniped at the writers for having been successful for writing movies that were not subtle, in opposition to your apparant belief that they are.
No arguments there. Roddenberry, the writer of such turkeys as The Omega Glory, was not a fantastic writer. But he was a fantastic producer, and I'm really not sure how this is relevant to the point anyway.
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Withers
Captain
17 pages later and I might be able to bring this thing full circle- I could do basically the same thing you did to just about anything in the science fiction genre that involves space ships, faster than light travel, aliens and/or the future. It isn't hard to do. The point is that I don't want to do that because I want to enjoy what I'm watching- not hate it. Seemingly, by focusing on minute details (like what constitutes fencing and the orders Nero didn't give) and being so obviously and deeply perturbed by them, you're declaring loud and clear that you want to dislike this film. You're not alone in that approach to it. This board has a handful of very vocal people who all go at it the same way.
And that's what amazes me.
(C'mon, that was no easy task.)
-Withers-
I'm sure. Jeyl, I-Am-Zim and BurntSynapse are sure. Hey, it's possible there might be only five of us (probably not, though), but you would still be wrong asserting there was only one.
At the risk of seeming disloyal to BurntSynapse's position (even though, as he pointed out, this wasn't exactly his position), I have to say I think this is pretty funny. (Not in a sarcastic way, I mean like agreeing with it.)
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What a coincidence. I wanted to like this film to. I didn't want to hate it. It was my most anticipated film of the whole year! But you know, it just wasn't really good.
I'll save you the trouble. I don't want to dislike the film, I DO dislike the film. There. Be amazed.
I have to say, I won't be shocked if no one else is bothered by this, but it's a real pet peeve of mine when writers use what you might call a "cut-and-paste line," something not used in common daily interaction, that sounds really dramatic, but also might sound familiar, probably because it was famously featured in some other movie.
"You should have killed me when you had the chance," of which the above line is an obvious variant, is my cornerstone example of the cut-and-paste line. I've heard this line simply too much. It was very dramatically delivered by Magneto in X2, but imdb features it as parts of memorable quotes for five movies (not even including X2), the earliest of which was "Above the Law" (1988) starring Steven Seagal. The variant quoted above is on imdb from some other movie (not Star Trek), and "You Should Have Killed Me When You Had the Chance" is apparently now the title of a song by A Day to Remember. I'm quite sick of hearing it; I thought it was quite brilliant as delivered by Ian McKellan, but its dramatic value in my mind has been absolutely destroyed through severe overuse.
I can understand if someone else isn't bothered by this. It's certainly not the main, driving reason that I didn't like the movie. I won't be surprised if someone else raises the point that different people might say the same things now and then. But I really don't think that Nero would say something like that because he thought it sounded cool when Magneto said it. There are so many lines these days that are just "what a tv/movie character would say in this situation" and not what a real person would say. I'm sorry if you feel like I'm being way to anal about it, but I'm a writer, it bothers me.
Yeah, that was a bit of a tangent. I'm done now.
Withers
Captain
It is really troubling that you guys cherry pick parts of quotes and get away with it so often. If you're going to quote someone you should quote them. Cutting something in half alters the intent.
That's what I said.
I gather that you've established an opinion of the movie and that said opinion is very low. You've made that abundantly clear. What I'm talking about is that because you cite such trivial details as such big deals the likes of which cannot be over come, one gets the impression you never had any intent but to dislike it.
It was kind of a let down for me too. But when I watched the movie I wasn't outraged at the notion of Uhura leaving her post or Olsen not actually having any charges on him and you were. I got hit by the big stuff (fire everything, strange-ish looking Enterprise, blackhole = time travel etc) but I looked past it and managed to see another decent Star Trek flick and leave it at that where as you have essentially campaigned that these infinitesimal little details sank the ship.
If you really wanted to like it (if you ever really wanted to like it) you would seemingly forgive these tiny details that don't add up the way you do for the Trek you like.
That's what I said.
I gather that you've established an opinion of the movie and that said opinion is very low. You've made that abundantly clear. What I'm talking about is that because you cite such trivial details as such big deals the likes of which cannot be over come, one gets the impression you never had any intent but to dislike it.
It was kind of a let down for me too. But when I watched the movie I wasn't outraged at the notion of Uhura leaving her post or Olsen not actually having any charges on him and you were. I got hit by the big stuff (fire everything, strange-ish looking Enterprise, blackhole = time travel etc) but I looked past it and managed to see another decent Star Trek flick and leave it at that where as you have essentially campaigned that these infinitesimal little details sank the ship.
If you really wanted to like it (if you ever really wanted to like it) you would seemingly forgive these tiny details that don't add up the way you do for the Trek you like.
-Withers-
You know, I didn't really care about it myself, because I had seen his katana and stuff in the trailer, so I already knew he wasn't gonna be fencing, but one could make the point that there's a pretty significant difference between fencing (like, with foils or rapiers, etc) and any kind of fighting with a katana. It's about as minute as saying somebody practices tae kwon do, and then show them doing pro wrestling moves later on. Other than the fact that there's a long, pointy object involved (different kinds, though), there are really no similarities between what he does on the drill and fencing.
Not that I care, though.
And I would, but this film seems to be under the impression that I would want to actually root for these a**holes. They are the most unlikable characters I can think of. They're not nice, they always shout, they never apologize, they're arrogant as heck and I just want them all to die. No plot holes, no story inconsistency and no bad dialogue. Just characters that I don't care about.
Withers
Captain
I can't even believe I'm going to do this...
"Fencing" is just fighting with a bladed weapon. The originators of the art did so with spears and axes. You're thinking of Fencing very specifically (as in what Guinan and Picard did) and that is only one form of it (the traditional form.) He could have called it chanbara or Iaido I guess... but that would have ruined that little moment of humor where Kirk gives him the "Wtf? Fencing? C'mon man!" look since nobody knows what the hell either of those things are. "Fencing" conveys fight with a sword to the largest number of people in a fashion as accurate as was necessary for the scene.
But even if he had said something dumb like "I'm good with my hands," it would have been a minor detail the likes of which would not deter anybody who wanted to like this movie from liking it.
This, I'll take because I feel more or less the same way. I felt more or less the same way about the original cast too up in between TWoK and TUC. That's not a minor detail.
(Sorry for posting so often. I'm less than 50 away from Captain )
"Fencing" is just fighting with a bladed weapon. The originators of the art did so with spears and axes. You're thinking of Fencing very specifically (as in what Guinan and Picard did) and that is only one form of it (the traditional form.) He could have called it chanbara or Iaido I guess... but that would have ruined that little moment of humor where Kirk gives him the "Wtf? Fencing? C'mon man!" look since nobody knows what the hell either of those things are. "Fencing" conveys fight with a sword to the largest number of people in a fashion as accurate as was necessary for the scene.
But even if he had said something dumb like "I'm good with my hands," it would have been a minor detail the likes of which would not deter anybody who wanted to like this movie from liking it.
This, I'll take because I feel more or less the same way. I felt more or less the same way about the original cast too up in between TWoK and TUC. That's not a minor detail.
(Sorry for posting so often. I'm less than 50 away from Captain
) -Withers-
Since I've just been nitpicking for a couple posts, let me point that you're absolutely right about this, IMHO. If it was just a bunch of little details, then it would be silly to let those things ruin the movie. But I got hit by the big stuff, too, hard enough that it tainted, and eventually discontinued my ability to enjoy the movie. I really did try, though. I probably will again, because, even now, I want to like the movie. I used to hate the first Spider-Man movie, and I was finally able to get past all the small and moderately-sized problems with it, and just accept the fact that I didn't agree with their choices of actors and the other problems I had with it, and just enjoy the strong visuals and what parts of it were true to the mythos. I still think it could be possible to do that with STXI, but that won't change the fact that there were a lot of problems in it.
It's like, I love the Star Trek books co-written by William Shatner, but there are some things in there that are pretty ridiculous. But I live with them because the books entertain me. So, if someone makes a remark on the Trek Lit boards about problems that the books have, I can accept those as valid criticisms, because the books, while immensely entertaining, were also very imperfect.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that this whole discussion, while it may seem very negativist on my part, is actually my way of processing and working through the elements of the film I disliked and getting them out of my system, so that I may theoretically be able to enjoy it more in the future. Does that sound fair?
According to the Merriam-Websters online dictionary, the definition of fencing is "the art or practice of attack and defense with the foil, épee, or saber" [emphasis added]
I agree with you wholeheartedly there. Insofar as I think the line was inaccurate, it's just one of those silly little things that shouldn't ruin anyone's enjoyment of the entire film.
On the other hand, I believe the original basis of quoting this line was the assertion that a massive accretion of such silly little lines was a more viable reason to ruin one's enjoyment of the whole movie.
Not minor at all. And this, (I'd say without doing any real deep soul-searching), was my main reason for disliking the film as well. I can accept that it's an alt-universe and characters act differently, that's a part of life in a franchise. But when the different behavior is, in my purely subjective opinion, in stark contrast to the depth of character and heroic qualities of the originals, that does kinda spoil things a bit.
(Sorry for posting so often. I'm less than 50 away from Captain
-Withers-
Me too. I'm not trying to get promoted, I just apparently can't keep up with the discussion. (Sheesh, don't log on for one day, and three whole pages go by!)
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