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.
Why wouldn't they have that character's arc come to a resolution? So they can show it in greater depth, of course. I don't understand why the idea seems so bewildering to you.
I don't find it bewildering, I'm simply explaining why there was nothing wrong with the choice they made instead. Sure, they
could have chosen to do a three-movie series that was all about Spock's journey toward reconciling his human and Vulcan sides, but that wouldn't have been a
Star Trek trilogy, that would've been a Spock trilogy. It wasn't the filmmakers' mission to do a trilogy that centered primarily on Spock's journey. As I said, in an 80-hour television series, there's room to explore a variety of character arcs, but in a 6- or 7-hour film series, you have to pick and choose your focus. And it was not their choice to make Spock's duality the overarching focus of the entire 3-film series. He's one of the lead characters, sure, but he's just one character in an ensemble of seven.
And as I said, they made the decision to make each film stand on its own and come to a conclusion, rather than just being a fragment of a single stretched-out story chopped into three pieces. I consider that an entirely valid creative choice.
They wouldn't even have to leave the character arc unresolved, they could have simply showed more of a "stiff" Spock in this film (though he could still be a bit looser than Prime, according to taste). Then, if they started (and ended) this character arc in the second movie, there would actually be a status quo to diverge from, instead of (to my perception) basically starting out in a divergent state.
The whole point of this movie was to diverge from the status quo ante, to show that this isn't the same old ST anymore but something that can go in a fresh direction. So there's no reason to leave the change in the status quo until the
next film.
As you said, this is only a couple hours worth of movie. He's connected with Kirk, reconciled with his father, and in a relationship (all of which one could still do without outward emotionalism, as Sarek demonstrates). Wouldn't that be enough character growth for one movie? I think that if they had established a Spock who was undergoing a greater struggle to exert control over his emotions, then it would've had more meaning when he found that balance in the next film.
Maybe that would've worked too. But that doesn't mean the way they did it instead was wrong. Different creators make different choices, and if every creator had to justify "why" they made every choice they made, it would be paralyzing to the whole creative process.
There is one flaw in your logic. Just because they're not wasting their time here on this thread, doesn't mean they aren't wasting their time on equally (or more) banal pursuits. And yes, interacting with real human beings can be just as pointless as this.
I wasn't attempting logic. I was attempting wry sarcasm.
But I wasn't thinking about following the movie on the internet, moreso the traditional marketing stuff (entertainment show coverage, interviews with the actors, Burger King merch), which would make it clear at a passing glance that this is (at the very least) a new cast of hot, young actors, and not the bald Captain and his waistline-expanding first officer.
Which doesn't translate to realizing that the storytelling approach will be radically different. I mean, Joel Schumacher recast Batman twice, but that didn't make for the same kind of radical change that
Batman Begins made.
Pardon the redundancy, as this has been a long thread. I think you may have addressed this issue, but I still don't understand; if it's the general audience that isn't familiar with Star Trek, doesn't use the internet, doesn't follow movie news, etc., then how would they know that Vulcan being destroyed or Spock hooking up with Uhura is significant?
Because it's not the all-or-nothing, binary issue you claim it is. Most people aren't
intimately familiar with
Star Trek, most people don't keep track of
Star Trek movie news years in advance, but just about everyone knows the basics: there's the womanizing captain named Kirk, the cool, logical spaceman named "Dr." Spock, the guy who says "He's dead, Jim," the people in red shirts who always get killed, and they say stuff like "stardate" and "warp factor" and "phasers on stun" a lot. So it's absurdly naive to claim that the general public would never even have
heard of Vulcan or of Spock's unemotional nature. That's like assuming most people seeing the recent
Sherlock Holmes movie would've been unaware that Holmes had a sidekick named Watson or lived on Baker Street. There is such a thing as cultural osmosis. We all know general information about a lot of pop-culture phenomena that we've never directly experienced. (Or that we've only intermittently experienced. Plenty of people have been casual viewers of the Trek movies without being Trek fans or following the news about new movies in advance.)
Joe Moviegoer doesn't give a rat's ass if Vulcans are supposed to be intimate by finger touching...
But you could take that to the point of justifying not having him act Vulcan at all. And that's a bit hyperbolic, but the point I'm trying to make is that if he's an alien, but doesn't do alien things, then he's just "Joe Spacegoer" with pointy ears. I guess that might be what Joe Moviegoer wants, but I don't have to like it.
I feel it necessary to reiterate a point that I don't think is being given the consideration it deserves. If they'd gone the Vulcan way in those scenes, that would've made those scenes
about Spock. But they weren't, at least not exclusively. They were about
Uhura. Let's not be '60s cavemen here and focus exclusively on the male character with the female being just an appendage. Uhura was the initiator of that entire interaction. The purpose of that plotline wasn't just to give Spock some action, it was to empower Uhura and make her an important, active character in the film rather than just a glorified switchboard operator. She was the one with the agency in the turbolift scene and the transporter scene, the one taking the initiative to push her way through Spock's reserve and connect to his emotional side. So naturally she did it
her way, by kissing, rather than subordinating herself to the man's way of doing things.
So focusing solely on Spock's outlook or cultural preferences in those scenes is overlooking the dominant half of the equation. If there's one thing J. J. Abrams doesn't do as a rule, it's reducing female characters to the subordinate partners in relationships.
Humor. It is a difficult concept (especially in prose). My apologies.
