Absolutely. This movie wasn't just aimed at ST fans. It was aimed at J. J. Abrams fans, at Zachary Quinto fans, at Zoe Saldana fans, etc. Most people go to a movie for its actors, or sometimes its filmmakers, not for its genre or franchise.
Should novels set in the JJVerse rectify the film's plot holes?
- Thread starter EJA
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Absolutely. This movie wasn't just aimed at ST fans. It was aimed at J. J. Abrams fans, at Zachary Quinto fans, at Zoe Saldana fans, etc. Most people go to a movie for its actors, or sometimes its filmmakers, not for its genre or franchise.
Granted, I like the cartoons that actually resemble the comics (X-Men, Silver Surfer), but add to the list of the myriad hugely popular things I don't like; I find the Bruce Timm style of animation to be utterly contemptible. I'm not gonna argue that as being objectively "right," but I, personally, can't watch it without getting severely annoyed.
But, when I wrote that I thought it was less likely that a Star Trek TV show was happening anytime soon, I was referring to a live-action show. So the likelihood of a cartoon happening is completely irrelevant to that suggestion.
True. The smart director is one who knows he's not the only intelligent, creative person in the room.
But he was raised on Vulcan, so the Vulcan culture would likely have a greater effect on him. (It's not like there were any human girls for him to make out with in high school.)
Well, I thought the culmination of his journey in TMP was a lot more valid, because it took a long time to get there. Here, he basically starts out at that point. It's been a while now, so maybe I've just forgotten, but did they ever show him being rigidly emotionless or overly Vulcan? Because, if not, that isn't even a character arc, that's just establishing your character as being something significantly different from the TV show (not the movies) on which this movie is based.
Yeah, stardates. I don't remember what point I was making, either.
So just take them out, since they aren't even actually using "star" dates. Maybe some fans would complain, but it would probably be proximal to the number who are already complaining about this.
Thank you, I do.
(In case it takes out the quote again, what that's referring to is, yes I do know, as an aspiring director, that it's effective filmmaking to hit people on a visceral level.)
So, since we've both agreed on the obvious point, I'd like to try to understand why that hit people on a visceral level. Because that's the part I'm having trouble with.
(I understand and accept that my reactions to movies are different then a lot of peoples', but I am making an effort to try to bridge that gap.)
It's not wrong to make the statement boldly, but people such as Mr. Cox are talking about it like it was a genius thing to do. By that logic (following your analogy), it's like saying "Whoa! Kirk survived! That's brilliant!"
Who are these "people" you're talking about? If you mean me, then man up and say so. If you don't mean me, then why talk about them when replying to my posts? I think we're having a nice little thought-provoking debate here, in a fairly civilized way. There's no reason to lower the quality of the discourse by constantly insulting the intelligence of some invisible "third-people."
Now, as to the point itself, Jarod's point was that it is possible to create a romantic mood in other ways than kissing. Stating that it worked in this movie (according to the general reaction) doesn't contradict that assertion.
Yes, which is why, two sentences later, I said, "This would certainly have accomplished the objective of showing that there was more alien about him than just pointy ears and slanted eyebrows." (Emphasis added.)
I have never at any point been arguing about the turbolift scene. I'm not speaking for anyone else, but I have only ever been talking about the transporter scene.
But by the time of the transporter scene, it was already clear that Uhura fancied Spock more than Kirk (to the audience, if not to Kirk). And besides, it was clear to me that Kirk wouldn't end up with Uhura, because he ends up the Captain, and I don't think even here, they'd have such fraternization between captain and crew.
I wasn't suggesting that the struggle happened too fast, I was suggesting that there was no struggle in the first place.
Yes, from a results-oriented perspective, it was absolutely the right decision (or, certainly not detrimental). But there are other perspectives. If we only considered movies according to their box office results, the Oscars would just be decided on accounting sheets.
Well, I may have gotten lost somewhere in the 500+ posts, yeah. And it has been a year since I saw the movie, but I thought the majority of the hot-and-heavy kissing stuff was on the transporter?
Anyway, that's what I was always talking about, so I guess maybe we do agree after all.
The misconception is that it would have been passionless.
My impression is that someone like Eric Bana or Bruce Greenwood is more well known by the public than James Chromwell, Anthony Zerbe or Donna Murphy. And who the hell is Tom Hardy anyway*?
* yes, I know he played Shinzon, but who the hell is he?
There are some major logic flaws with the film...
Why send a one hundred and eighty year old Ambassador on a mission to save the galaxy? Were there no qualified, younger pilots available?
Why send a beach-ball sized container of 'Red Matter' when only a single drop is needed to collapse a star? That's like saying you only need one stick of dynamite to open a door... but here's an additional six million just in case the first one doesn't work.
Ungraduated cadet to captain of the flagship. Not just a command... but command of the flagship.
Why not send a message warning Earth about Nero from Delta Vega? There's a Starfleet installation there with a big-ass satellite dish sitting outside.
Does the Jellyfish not have a self-destruct mechanism? Spock Prime delivered armageddon to the 23rd century when he surrendered to Nero. Hell... he should have unleashed the 'Red Matter' right then to ensure no one would be able to use it for destructive purposes. Destroying himself and the Narada in the bargain.
There were elements of the film I liked, but it was really nothing more than a big, dumb, summer popcorn flick.
Then the bigger question is where do they go from here? How do they outdo themselves next time? Because they've set the expectation that this version of Star Trek is about things that go BOOM! Judging by Transformers 2, the follow-up to Star Trek is just going to be bigger, louder and unfortunately dumber.
In fact, I saw it with a friend, and he thought when the ship was getting sucked into the black hole at the end, that it would come out the other end and be back in the old universe (he didn't consider the effect that would have on any sequels). So, I see what you're saying, but I guess I'm just overestimating the average moviegoer's intelligence again.
I think that's kinda what I was trying to say. Those people were the ones who would have known not to expect the status quo already.
Hold on, let me get this straight...you care more about the throwaway naming detail in this movie because it was less important?
I think what he was saying is that since it was put in there for the sole and express purpose of pleasing the fans, it should've been something that actually took into account fans' rigorous attention to detail.
(Not that I care, mind; that's another thing I didn't even notice until I read about it here. Seems I missed most of the easter eggs.)
Well, speaking for myself, I'm just arguing the nitpicks for intellectual stimulation. What I didn't like about the movie was the characters.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
That may be how you decide to see a movie but for me it's usually the story that catches my interest. If I were going because of the actors or the filmmakers I wouldn't have seen NuTrek. I wasn't familiar with the vast majority of the actors except in name recognition. I 'm not a fan of Hero's although I've heard people say that they like Quinto's character in it. And I've seen some of Abrams work before but I'm not what you would call a fan.
My objections to the fils are many. Some parts I liked, other I didn't. One a scale of 1-5 I'd give it a 3. Hardly make it look like I hate it.
Being a long time Trek fan, I was interested to see a new spin on it. Some of the actors did a great job. Karl Urban was born to play McCoy. Others just didn't work for me. Scotty came across very poorly. The character did have some great comic moments in the prime universe but a combination of the script and the actor made him come across as a one note comic relief.
The biggest problem with the characters I had was with Kirk. I didn't find him likable at all. I was reminded of the reboot of the James Bond franchise. The story was great but the charm of the character just wasn't there. I was hoping that as the movie went on I'd see more of the essence of Kirk appear but it didn't to my eyes. Kirk is much the same at the end as he is at the Academy. Years ago, I worked for 7 years as a bartender. One thing I learned was that the way a person behaves while drunk is usually the closest to their true self. I really didn't like Kirk in the bar scene and I didn't see substantial change in the core of the character at the end.
I didn't feel that Kirk earned the command of the Enterprise. He got it because Pike likes him and was a friend of his father. Pike got him into the Academy on less than one days notice. He told us that Kirk was brilliant but we didn't see why he would say that. Show us, don't tell us. When McCoy snuck Kirk onto the ship, Pike responded by making him First Officer. And at the end, he gave him the ship. Of course, there had to be more to it than that but we didn't see it. What we saw was Pike giving Kirk everything he had.
That is the prime (
) reason I had problems with the film. Yes, there were a lot of minor things as well but they were distractions. The nitpicks as some have called them are a symptom of larger issues with the movie. It was lazy storytelling all through. And that is something I don't like being handed for my admission fee. With a budget of $150 million and no huge salaries to eat up most of it it should have been a better story than it was.
I don't think that's a misconception so much as a fact. There are several reasons already listed here by several people why the kiss was better. I am ecstatic they decided not to try to make a passionate finger touching scene - it would have been comical to me and nonsensical to anyone who hasn't seen a lot of Trek.
No it isn't, because you're wrong to assume the distinction is meaningful. As I said, it's about whether the studio is interested in making more money from a successful franchise by doing a television tie-in. And the answer is demonstrably yes. Bottom line, studios are interested in TV tie-ins to successful movie franchises. The fact that some of those tie-ins are animated has no bearing on the likelihood that others will be live-action, because it's still money in the bank either way.
Spock has been in Starfleet, whether the Academy or the active service, for eight years at the point in question. That means that for the past eight years, just under 1/3 of his life at this point, he's been just about the only Vulcan around and has been surrounded by human cultural influences. And he was raised by a human mother who probably spent far, far more time with him than Sarek did. I think it's a mistake to underestimate the importance of human influences in Spock's life. Spock acted ultra-Vulcan because he chose to, not because he was unacquainted with human ways. Indeed, most of his apparent difficulty understanding human idiom and behavior always struck me as a pretense, a case of protesting too much.
To each his own. I found the film's portrayal of Spock to be very effective. Yes, it was a distillation of the longer journey he took in his original incarnation, but that's exactly what I'd expect from a movie reboot. That's what retellings of classic stories do. They distill the essentials. Heck, it took the movie Spider-Man only two films to end up with Mary Jane as his lover and confidante, whereas it took the comics' Spider-Man over 20 years' worth of stories to reach that point.
And it's not as if a 2-hour movie has time to delve into Spock's journey to the extent that 80 hours of television do. Maybe they could if that had been the entire story, but they had a lot of other stuff to establish too. So naturally they focused on the single thing that was deemed most important for the movie, which was establishing the relationship between Kirk and Spock.
Exactly why there's no harm in doing it this way. Come on, even the casual audience that this movie was aimed at is probably aware that Star Trek uses stardates. It's like what Greg said about the Enterprise -- they expect to see the saucer and nacelles, and the details don't matter. Similarly, they expect to hear "Captain's log, stardate so-and-so," and they really couldn't care less about the so-and-so as long as it's a four-digit number with a decimal after it. But if you don't use the word "stardate," that would feel wrong to them.
I think Greg did a good job explaining why it was important to hit viewers with the unexpected. He's right -- the public perception of the Trek film series was that it was an overlong, repetitive, specialized thing with limited general appeal. It was very important to state emphatically that this was not more of the same. It would've been foolhardy in the extreme to believe the audience would simply "expect" it to be new and different enough to be worth their attention.
No, it's nothing like that. Because the argument I made about expectations wasn't really valid at all. Greg made a much better point that I failed to consider: that general audiences would very much have expected an eleventh ST film to be more of the same. You were wrong to say they would expect it to be new, and I was wrong to accept that premise and try to concoct a counterargument based on its validity.
That's exactly my point. Jarod seemed to be claiming that his point about romantic moods in general contradicted the point that the kiss worked in this particular scene. I'm saying it doesn't, because a general argument and a specific argument are two different things.
Well, that's news to me. The rest of us have been discussing the turbolift scene. Apparently there's been a miscommunication.
Well, that's you. Before the film came out, there were extensive Internet rumors about Kirk sleeping with Uhura. They were started by the initial brief trailer clips of Kirk with Gaila, with some people unable to tell that the woman in Kirk's bed was green-skinned rather than brown-skinned. But the fact that they assumed they saw brown says a lot about their preconceptions and expectations. Half the Internet was jumping to the conclusion that Kirk was jumping Uhura. Which was why it was such an effective surprise to have Uhura actually hooking up with Spock instead.
I'm sorry, I'm laughing out loud at the implication that Oscar decisions have any remote correlation with the quality of a movie.
There are major logic flaws with most films, including most Trek films. TWOK is the most logically incoherent Trek movie I've ever seen, but people still like it. People don't go to movies for logic, they go for emotional and visceral stimulation.
Spock has spent decades building trust with the Romulans, so if the Vulcans had something the Romulans needed, I can't think of anyone better qualified to bring them together. And he has an illustrious record as a scientist and starship officer.
More to the point, Spock did it because he's one of the heroes of the story. Why was Spock the one telepath in the galaxy who seemed to hear V'Ger's call? Why was Spock the only person on the ship who could get the mains back on line in the Mutara Nebula? Why was Spock the one who happened to have a religious-fanatic brother? Why was Spock the one who arranged peace talks with the Klingons after Praxis? It's because audiences won't be interested in a story about someone they've never heard of doing those things. They want to see stories about Kirk and Spock.
Because J. J. Abrams likes big red liquid orbs as a visual image. He used the same kind of imagery on Alias. It was never explained there either why it had to be a big hovering red ball of liquid.
Cadet holding lieutenant's rank. And Saavik's evident graduation between TWOK and TSFS indicates that the Kobayashi Maru simulation is something of a final exam for seniors about to graduate. Some time did elapse between the climax of the film and the promotion ceremony; probably the cadets graduated in the interval.
The Narada was jamming transmissions. That's why Starfleet didn't know what was happening at Vulcan until they got there. This is clearer in the novelization.
I think it was more because it had a good focus on character. Like I said above, I just saw Terminator Salvation and the hollowness of the characters is startling there. This film's plot is implausible and full of holes, but its character work is rich and engaging. Which is pretty much what people tend to say in praising TWOK.
Not in my mind. Whenever things were going BOOM in this film, the attention of the filmmakers was emphatically on the characters and how they were affected emotionally by the consequences of the BOOM. Unlike in Terminator Salvation, where the BOOM was clearly of far more interest to the director than the characters were.
Agreed. But this film just went above and beyond making itself look dumb.
I agree that Spock is a star of the franchise and needs to be front and center. But in this instance it seems realllly forced. It was like they had a checklist of things they wanted to do and did it whether it really made sense or not.
Just another piece that totally throws me out of the film. He likes big red liquid orbs and they're going to be there whether it makes sense or not.
But we don't know this for sure. Also we never receive any resolution on the academic inquiry.
How exactly? I remember that the drill itself causes a disruption in communications and transporters. But I remember that the Vulcan High Command was able to get a message off... presumably after the drilling starts.
CHEKOV: (on monitor) Soon after, Starfleet received a distress signal from Wulcan High Command that their planet was experiencing seismic actiwity.
This was while the Enterprise was en route to Vulcan. So presumably Nero had started drilling at this point to cause the seismic activity.
I do think that it was cast well aside from Saldana and Pegg who I think were just plain wrong for the roles.
But how are they going to 'up the ante' in the next film without coming across as silly? Like I said in my previous post... I just have nightmares of this coming off pretty much like Transformers 2.
Sorry, after seeing Terminator Salvation there's no way I can agree with that. I don't mean to come down so hard on that film, but it's a sterling example of what really constitutes a big dumb action movie. ST XI doesn't fit the bill because it has a strong focus on character and considers it more important than the action. So I just can't call it dumb compared to the majority of action blockbusters out there.
Well, they had to use Spock Prime as a way of passing the torch and giving the imprimatur to the new version of ST. So while I think you're overstating it, it is true that they had certain requirements they had to meet and it required some contrivances. That's true of most movies.
Humanoid aliens don't make sense. Telepathy doesn't make sense. What matters most is whether the characters make sense.
There's no question that this is the weakest part of the film's logic. I mean, why would Chekov even mention a "lightning storm" in the Neutral Zone in the same briefing as a disaster on Vulcan, and why would Kirk make a connection between them? It's so much more coherent in the novelization, where the distress call is a fake, a smokescreen by Nero, and Kirk and Uhura recognize a Romulan accent in the distress signal recording.
But this is how movies are, as I said. The culture of Hollywood demands relentless pacing, and exposition and story logic are considered expendable. I'm sure this film would make a lot more sense if more of the expository material from the script had been left in. But movies today just don't consider plot coherence a priority.
Who do you think would've worked better? I think Saldana did a very good job. As for Pegg, he was very different from Doohan, but he was very effective as the comic relief.
From what I've heard in interviews, I think they're aware that they don't need bigger booms to up the ante. They're saying that now that they've gotten through the origin story, it's now time to deepen the exploration of the characters, like in The Dark Knight. The focus of the first film was on the characters and emotions, so that's what they're going to try to top in the sequel.
Very unlikely. Transformers 2 got underway during the writers' strike, so Bay had to construct the story on his own without help from any writers, basically just coming up with a bunch of action sequences. By the time Orci and Kurtzman were brought in, their job was simply to add dialogue and connective tissue to string together the "scenes" of Bay playing with his action figures and fireworks. That's why the plot of the film is so incoherent -- because the writers had no involvement until late in the process. And then another writer, Ehren Kruger, came in to do the final rewrite and added such poorly received touches as the racial-caricature Transformers. So very little of the film represents Orci & Kurtzman's work, and it's a situation where they had zero creative control.
The situation on ST is entirely different. The story is being broken from the start by a team of veteran writers who are also producers of the film, and that means they'll have far more creative control at every step of the way. Revenge of the Fallen is a case study in what happens when writers are absent from the development stage of a film. It's just not a situation that has any chance of repeating on ST XII.
I think your bottom line and mine are simply different. Your bottom line is that studios are interested in TV tie-ins. Mine is that they don't appear interested in live-action TV tie-ins. I think the fact that none have been made based on popular recent action movies can't be said to have no bearing on the discussion. I hope you're right, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Maybe he's spent the last eight years among humans, but before that, he spent his whole young, impressionable life among mostly Vulcans (and his mom). I think that would have a bigger effect on what he considers normal and what he relates to.
But, I don't know, a lot of it is just based on interpretations, because we only get a slight look at his past. It could go either way, I'll freely admit that.
Don't get me started on Mary Jane. I loved the Spidey movies, but I thought the whole "soul-mates" thing was just silly.
But everyone's signed on for three movies. Why do they need to show that whole journey in one?
They're aware of it, but would they care if it was gone? Would the Kelvin scene have been less effective if Robau hadn't said the word "stardate?" (In fact, I didn't even hear it when I saw the movie, what with everyone else talking. I had to look it up later just to see what all the flap was about.)
Heck, it's not important. I better let this one go, before I look like an even bigger nitpicker. You're right, there really isn't any harm to it. I think it's more about my interest in linguistic precision; that I'm annoyed by someone saying "stardate," and then saying the earth date, then I'm annoyed as a Trekkie. But it really isn't a big deal.
Interesting. I still don't understand why people wouldn't expect it to be different. But just because I don't understand something doesn't mean it isn't so (thank God!). But I do think that's saying a lot about the average moviegoer's intelligence level.
Okay, well I agree with you about that.
Wait a second. If half the internet was jumping to that conclusion, then how can you say they didn't expect this to be anything new? When you say "half the internet," I'm assuming you mean more than just uber-Trekkies who post on Star Trek message boards?
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm right there with you on that. But they're also not directly correlated to which movies made the most money.
Have I mentioned on this thread already that I thought Simon Pegg was fantastic? My personal favorite casting choice.
I didn't see Transformers 2, but that sounds a lot like what apparently happened with M:I2. Legend has it John Woo made a list of action scenes he wanted to film, and told Braga & Moore to write a story around it. Yeah, no writer can be held responsible for that. That's a nightmare.
Star Trek's first spinoff/sequel was an animated series. Then it went on to have four live-action sequel series. CBS knows that live-action is a proven model for Star Trek on television. There's no reason to believe that uniquely extensive precedent would be forgotten.
And if they did do a new animated ST instead, I wouldn't see that as anything to be disappointed about.
If I were telling a standalone, cinematic story about a character who's defined by a dual nature, if establishing that dual nature were an important part of defining who that character is to my audience, why wouldn't I have that character's arc come to some resolution of that duality? It seems a natural way to tell a story, and I'm bewildered by the idea that it would need to be specially justified.
And yes, they're signed to three movies, but it's not a trilogy in the sense of being a single overarching tale. It's three separate installments, three tales that each have to be complete stories in their own right. So naturally they didn't postpone the resolution of one of the key character arcs until the third movie. They resolved it in the same story that featured it, just as you're supposed to do when you tell a story. (It's a mistake to think that serialization automatically makes a story better. It often makes the individual installments weaker by reducing them to only fragments of a story. I've always felt that each installment of a serial needs to be satisfactorily complete on its own merits, even if it's part of a larger whole.)
Besides, as has been pointed out with regard to other aspects of the film, it wasn't the filmmakers' intent to copy what's already been done with these characters. It was their intent to show the characters and the world in a fresh light. This Spock is on a different journey from his predecessor. He's connected with Kirk at a significantly earlier point in his life. He's romantically involved with a human woman. He's lost his mother and his homeworld and is in profound grief, and that circumstance has led to reconciliation with his father a decade earlier than he achieved it in the Prime timeline. So it makes sense that the resolution of his human-Vulcan duality would go differently. It's not supposed to be the exact same character journey.
Because as Greg said, most moviegoers didn't follow the news about this film years in advance, didn't even hear about it until the ads started to show up, and so had no reason to think it would be anything other than just another Trek film like the ten before it.
Not at all. Just because they have better things to do than waste their lives on the Internet following detailed advance information on movies, that doesn't mean they lack intelligence. Perhaps just the opposite. I mean, are those of us frittering away hours on this frivolous debate really smarter than people who are actually spending their time going out into the world and interacting with real live human beings?
As Greg and I have already pointed out repeatedly, the Internet audience is one thing, the general moviegoing public is something entirely different and far, far bigger. The informed Internet fanbase is a tiny fraction of the audience that goes to see movies, the audience that a movie is made for. It's that general audience that would've expected a new Trek movie to be more of the same. It's that general audience that needed to be shown emphatically that this was a fresh and different take, that all bets were off.
Besides, Kirk hooking up with Uhura isn't that new. Everyone "knows" the stereotype that Kirk is a rampant womanizer, and there's a widely believed myth that he slept with everything in a skirt, even members of his own crew. So the idea of Kirk seducing Uhura wouldn't seem all that shocking to the general public, since it fits neatly into their (false) expectations about the man. But Uhura hooking up with Spock? That defies expectations in a far more substantial way.
How can there be facts about something that hasn't even been written or filmed?
No, I wasn't. Of course the kiss worked. My point has always been that the finger touching would have worked as well, which is why I was wondering why they didn't do it.
And since Orci gave the answer that the reason was Abrams thinking the movie's audience was basically stupid, my point is that they are very wrong about that.
If they had done it, would you have liked the movie? No. Same difference.
I can imagine pro reviewers saying, in print: "What was with all the bizarre finger stroking during the emergency beam-down scene?"
And your proof is...?
Movie audiences, taken as a whole group, are often not able to grasp many things about movies. When they hand out those little preview cards at pre-release screenings, production companies get back many bizarre comments, and often tinker with a movie at the last minute - "ST Generations" even went back and reshot Kirk's death after a preview screening - to attempt to ensure that more people in the audience will "get" what they're aiming at.
Some audience members are very intelligent; Orci wasn't insulting any one of them. I don't think he was insulting anyone, just stating a truism he's learned about the hard way. But he also knows that for a movie to be a huge box office success it's important that the movie is enjoyed by more than just a few highly intelligent members of each audience.
True for tv as well, and something I've come to understand better over time and keep in mind when evaluating popular entertainment. Often my instinct is to prefer a "less is more" or somewhat subtle and understated approach to storytelling, where not everything is explained in neon lights and I, the audience member, have to make inferences and deductions.
But the reality is, when writers and directers go this route, often the result is that people don't notice what is happening or don't make the necessary inference and just react with basically a big "WTF just happened?" or "That came out of nowhere and made no sense!" I see it all the time on this board for Star Trek episodes, which wouldn't even normally be characterized as subtle.
It's not a question of intelligence at all, I don't think, at least not mainly, but rather a question of the audience not always being very observant, and people only seeing what they want or expect to see. The fact of the matter is, for people to get what you're saying in any type of mainstream media, you often have to beat them over the head with it, spell it out, repeat it over and over. That can be headache-inducing sometimes for those of us would would prefer a more subtle approach, but it is, I think, a reality of trying to make a product with mass appeal.
Your comments about preview audiences reminded me of the one my mom and I did for Shrek 2 (I actually did it for Shrek 3 too) and after the movie when they passed out the survey there were a bunch of young girl who we could hear talking about how they should have left Fiona, and Shrek human in the end. So yeah there are alot of stupid people out there watching these kinds of movies, and you really do have to take them into account when you're making these kinds of blockbuster movies. (You wouldn't belive the crap I've had come across my register as a wal-mart cashier.)
Now, I know I haven't really commented on it yet, but the kiss in the turbolift was definitely alot better than doing the finger touch. It's an emotional moment, and I'm sorry but no matter how hard you try it just wouldn't have been anywhere near as emotional for the whole audience if they had done the finger touch. Sure we Trekkies would have gotten it, and been hit with the full impact, but I can almost guarentee you that the rest of the audience wouldn't have gotten it. I think that perhaps this is a case of "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." And this case the panicky, dangerous part would effect would have resulted in people not liking that scene. Sure it wouldn't have hurt the whole movie, but when you are making a movie you want every single scene to have the greatest impact possible. And if they did the finger touch, there are alot of people who would not have gotten that scene.
You have to keep in mind that when you are making a movie, you don't want to look at it all the whole time. When you are the pre-production and production phases you are pretty much just working scene by scene, and anything that effects those scenes and their impact has to go. You don't really look at the movie as a whole until you get farther into the post-production phase.
Now, I know I haven't really commented on it yet, but the kiss in the turbolift was definitely alot better than doing the finger touch. It's an emotional moment, and I'm sorry but no matter how hard you try it just wouldn't have been anywhere near as emotional for the whole audience if they had done the finger touch. Sure we Trekkies would have gotten it, and been hit with the full impact, but I can almost guarentee you that the rest of the audience wouldn't have gotten it. I think that perhaps this is a case of "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." And this case the panicky, dangerous part would effect would have resulted in people not liking that scene. Sure it wouldn't have hurt the whole movie, but when you are making a movie you want every single scene to have the greatest impact possible. And if they did the finger touch, there are alot of people who would not have gotten that scene.
You have to keep in mind that when you are making a movie, you don't want to look at it all the whole time. When you are the pre-production and production phases you are pretty much just working scene by scene, and anything that effects those scenes and their impact has to go. You don't really look at the movie as a whole until you get farther into the post-production phase.
I'm going to go with logic, common sense, experience with other movies... there are quite a few factors that make a kiss far better, much more passionate, and more HUMAN than a finger touch.
No, it's obviously not a fact - I was being sarcastic. Stop being so obtuse. These movies are made to be enjoyed by humans and evoke HUMAN responses from their human audiences. Joe Moviegoer doesn't give a rat's ass if Vulcans are supposed to be intimate by finger touching and you can't in good conscience tell me that scene would have worked with a finger touch. It'd end up as goofy as the sex scene from Demolition Man and that was intentionally whacked.
Even on this board, only populated by ST fans, there have been ST fans who've asked what the heck Saavik and Young Spock were doing with all the finger touching in ST III. I guess if you've never seen finger touching in "Journey to Babel", nor heard of pon farr from "Amok Time", and went into ST III knowing only that Spock had been Saavik's academic mentor is ST II, you wouldn't be anticipating anything like sexual foreplay between them in ST III.
Which is another thing. In JJ's movie, Uhura kisses Spock. Sometimes a kiss is sexual foreplay, but not always. What if Vulcan finger touching always meant sexual foreplay? (Makes "Journey to Babel" a bit cheekier!)
Another thing to consider is that Amanda chose to marry a full Vulcan man and mostly adopt the Vulcan way of life. Uhura is coming from a human background, and since she shares humanity with Spock, why would their sign of affection be a Vulcan one? A kiss much better suits the context of the turbolift and the transporter room scenes.