I can't see the necessity of bringing him into it, so why not leave Mr. Bush (and recent real-world politics generally) outside the forum where they belong?
How was Nero's anger going to save Romulus?
- Thread starter Xerxes1979
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I can't see the necessity of bringing him into it, so why not leave Mr. Bush (and recent real-world politics generally) outside the forum where they belong?
Saquist
Commodore
That only applies to the 79 episodes of TOS. In the subsequent movies Nichols, Takei, Doohan, and Koenig had the same top billing as Shatner, Nimoy, and Deforest. It was the movies that everyone on the TOS cast was a full ensemble and it was in the movies where they became important.
As for this movie wasting time on them, what time? The whole movie was Kirk - Spock - Kirk - Spock - Kirk - Spock - Uhura and Spock make out - Kirk - Spock - Kirk - Spock Prime - Spock - Kirk - Repeat. Sulu has a sword fight, Chekov says wictor wictor, Scotty complains about being stranded on a Federation outpost and that's bloating the movie?
Okay.
The time scale is the only difference between "selective breeding" & genetic engineering.
ETA: At the time of writing "Space Seed" gene shear technology didn't exist in real life yet, nor had th ehuman genome been mapped - of course the writers would have to approach their story telling re "superior" humans with the lens of 1960s view, not with 21st Century real world science that we now have.
You mean Nero took out the future threat to Romulus and JJ didn't have the cameras rolling?
OK, for some reason every starship in the 24th century seems determined to fly into black holes at the drop of a hat, despite presumed warnings from their navigation systems. However since we know that the gravitational gradient of a black hole is the same as the star it replaced*, except when you get really close, I'm still not sure how Nero got the Klingons to actually fly well inside the star so that when he turned it into a black hole they were too close to the event horizon to get away? Wouldn't he be better off using red matter as a warhead for his missiles, assuming it could take the acceleration?
* Perhaps very slightly more pronounced if the red matter somehow creates its own significant gradational field (which it must if the Enterprise was being pulled into the one engulfing the Narada).
Reminds me of my dad.
Funny, I got the same impression as Nero for the most part. Though he did have character and a clear sense of purpose, what he didn't have alot of was DEPTH, or a very detailed and elaborate background or a meaningful point of view. I would wish for more depth and perspective as well, but then I've said the same thing about Kruge and especially Chang over the years.
I think you should go back and count the amount of screen time Nero actually got. I believe you'll find he got somewhat less than Kruge but slightly more than Chang, and nowhere near as much as Soran or Ruafo.
That was certainly the case for TOS, but six feature films billed the entire bridge crew and expanded their roles considerably. Uhura shows an unexpected flash of character with her "You're gonna sit in the closet!" scene, Chekov gets to have a ceti-eel eat its way out of his brain and then get chased around an aircraft carrier, Scotty gets to sabotage a whole starship and get away with it, Sulu gets to fly a helicopter and gets his own command... by TUC, they were an entire team, not just window dressing for a trio of good friends.
Alot of the old timers certainly grew up on TOS, but those of us who ARE familiar with TOS know the movies even better, and STXI reflects the latter dynamic more than the former.
I know, and I'm referring to the comic books. But even then, it's the same question: how much depth would Magneto have if he had been killed by the end of the movie?
I don't know. Ask Rick Berman.
Technically, neither does genetic engineering. It's a pretty optimistic projection for EITHER concept, especially 1970s level knowledge. But we can assume Khan might be the result of a controlled eugenics experiment dating back at least a hundred years earlier (when genetic engineering did not yet exist, but Eugenics sure as hell did).
Red matter black holes clearly do not work that way and produce CONSIDERABLY greater gravitational pull than the object that created them. That pull seems to build up over time and increase with intensity over a matter of minutes; by the time the Klingons would have realized what was happening it would have been too late to escape.
You mean Nero took out the future threat to Romulus and JJ didn't have the cameras rolling?
OK, for some reason every starship in the 24th century seems determined to fly into black holes at the drop of a hat, despite presumed warnings from their navigation systems. However since we know that the gravitational gradient of a black hole is the same as the star it replaced*, except when you get really close, I'm still not sure how Nero got the Klingons to actually fly well inside the star so that when he turned it into a black hole they were too close to the event horizon to get away? Wouldn't he be better off using red matter as a warhead for his missiles, assuming it could take the acceleration?
* Perhaps very slightly more pronounced if the red matter somehow creates its own significant gradational field (which it must if the Enterprise was being pulled into the one engulfing the Narada).
Just because their name was listed at the beginning of the movie didn't really make them important. Like, Chekov didn't do one notable thing at all during the first movie. He just manned his station. He got more to do in the next movie, but then Sulu just filled his shoes. All these characters went through some of the movies without having any good moments at all, and that's fine because that's what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to be background noise that occasionally pops up into the foreground at the expense of the other minor characters.
In this movie, they all had a moment, which was nice, but it typically comes at the expense of something or someone else when you try to cater to an ensemble.
The point isn't how much screen time he has versus everybody else, it's what they make with that screen time. Even though Chang was a bit over the top and silly, I feel like he's much more memorable than Nero. Better use of time.
Uh, yeah it does. That means they're no longer " background players " but the " supporting cast ". If they were background characters, their name would be thrown in the credit roll.
There was a whole lot of nothing going on in that movie, tbh. What did McCoy do in that movie? Rock a beard? Say some sarcastic things? Stand around and look fabulous in that equally fabulous white uniform?
Illa and Decker were the stars of that movie.
I really disagree with you. It was Chekov's actions in STII that set Kirk up in the trap. It was the collaborative efforts of Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov that help Kirk get McCoy to Genesis to recover Spock's body in STIII. The emphasis of those seven individuals working on those missions in STIV are what defines what makes it such a classic; it brings out the best of everyone in their quest to save the world and get back home.
Then we have V, but we all know that's just Shatner stroking his ego all over that film.
VI sends off the cast in a big way - everyone has a moment to contribute and shine.
I do not know how you did not see all of that in the films. Really, I don't.
What expense? What else could they have done with it? How many more scenes did we need of Spock slitting his wrists or Kirk dangling off of some ledge? I think the movie was pretty efficient in shoving it in our face that this was Spock's movie and he was emo and sad and his mommy died and he was boning Uhura and hated Kirk while our fearless soon to be Captain kept getting his ass kicked in every other scene.
Seriously, I love to have the copies of these movies you've watched.
Yet for as much as some of their names were in the beginning, some of them still performed the background role. Just being added to the opening credits doesn't necessarily mean that they'll have anything good to do.
I did see those things, but I saw an equal or greater amount of them saying, "Aye, sir," "photon torpedos ready," and "warp speed," without doing much else that was substantial. I already said that when one got the spotlight, another was shoved into the background, and I think the only exception for that which was done well was Star Trek IV, and possibly Star Trek VI. The rest of the movies did not do the ensemble.
Um, develop Nero?
At any rate, it's a common defense of any criticism of the movie. If someone asks what Nero was doing for 25 years, apologists say, "There wasn't time to focus on that because they had to develop all the characters." It's like one of the most common rebuttals.
McCoy is a useless character. His only purpose is to be the human conscious on Kirk's shoulder to balance out Spock's logic. Plotwise, McCoy is completely useless. He stands around and says offbeat sarcastic comments. He does nothing for the movies except give an audience a chuckle, breaking the 4th wall sort of speak.
The only characters that carry any weight in the movies are Kirk and Spock.
As for the rest of the movies not doing the ensemble? STIII was all about friends coming together and risking it all to save their best friend. That wasn't an ensemble? That movie pretty much established the importance of Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu.
The movie was not Nero vs Spock and Friends. Nero was a plot device used to bring Kirk, Spock, and the crew of the Enterprise together. He was a plot device to get Spock to deal with his humanity earlier than his counterpart. He was a plot device to get Kirk to mature and become the Captain we all know and love.
Nero was never designed to be a character of importance, he wasn't designed to be a reoccurring, and Nero was never supposed to be a character we cared about. I have to agree with newtype_alpha when he says that Nero had received more development than Chang, who pretty much spent that entire movie reading Hamlet and Macbeth.
Star Trek is Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov. The movies established this and this reboot continued that legacy. They all deserved their 5 minutes of screen time (because that's pretty much what it was). Anything less would have been an insult.
The characteristics of red matter black holes seem, like most other things in the movie, seem dependant on the requirements of the plot at any given point. Obviously some red matter black holes start out with, or as you say build up to having, enormously greater gravitational strength than the matter they consume (e.g. the Narada’s destruction). But we don’t know that there was any sort of rational ratio involved that is dependent on the quantity of ordinary matter pulled in. It may be that red matter, when detonated, produces a gravitational field, the strength of which, follows a bell shaped curve in the absence of conventional matter and is just a kick start mechanism otherwise. Any such speculation is thrown into doubt by the varying amounts of red matter deployed of course. Or so it appears to me.
I would note that the quick end to Vulcan seems to necessitate a fairly large consumption rate but not necessarily a higher than normal gravitational pull. Normally those two would go together but we are talking red matter here so who knows?
Any sensible commander is going to stay a respectful distance from a star so the first problem is how absolutely enormous such a black hole would have to be to produce a dangerous gravity gradient. Your "CONSIDERABLY" might have to be several orders of magnitude bigger than the original star! The second problem is that turning a star into a black hole does not exactly produce a precision weapon. It would be very easy to misjudge the timing and for the Narada to end up trapped as well (as per the Enterprise which should have known better). In fact if the Narada is anywhere near the Klingons, all bets are off. The Narada’s going to warp would have to be timed perfectly or the Klingons would just follow suit, not to escape the black hole (so there is no need for them to realise what’s happening) but because they were attacking Nero. And remember, Nero is said to be a simple miner and thus has no experience of cutting edge red matter and no time to experiment with its characteristics. Don't tell me Spock left the data sheet in an unencrypted file?
You would prefer to give Nero--who is destined to be killed by the end of the movie--more character development than Chekov, Sulu and Uhura, who are not only destined to headline the next movie but were also memorable characters in their own right before Nero was even conceived?
That would be like cutting the big fight at the end of Rock-IV in half just to give Drago more lines.
And it's correct. Nero is the only character in the story who DOESN'T need to be developed. This is because the movie isn't about Nero, it's about the people who have to KILL Nero.
If you're going to go to the trouble of having a personal villain whose actions drive a big chunk of the plot, I think it's kind of a good idea to actually have that villain be a three-dimensional character with decent motivations rather than a poorly-written, one-dimensional piece of cardboard.
Otherwise, you might as well go the TMP/TVH route and not have a personal villain.
It's usually a good idea. But it isn't always necessary, or even possible. It depends on what kind of story you're trying to tell, and if you're not trying to tell a symmetric story with two sides to the conflict then the villain only needs enough development to make a plausible threat.
More to the point, some villains become increasingly silly the more you attempt to explore their motivations. All the character development surrounding the Borg Queen and the Picard/Data/Queenie love triangle didn't make the Borg more interesting. And by and large, a deeper look into the motivation of Shinzon for wanting to destroy Earth would have almost certainly been counter-productive.
I asked this question before and I'll ask it again: would Jaws have been a better movie if the shark had more lines?
As it stands, STXI took the TSFS route and used a disposable villain. That worked pretty well there as well, since the story wasn't really about Kruge anyway and was actually focussed on Kirk's effort to return Spock to his body.
OTOH, V'ger actually DID turn out to be a person in the end; the mystery surrounding who and what V'ger is and turned into is part of the appeal of the story. We don't know, and we're not MEANT to know, we can only guess.
A sequel should have little bearing on this movie. No movie should make a cardboard villain because of expectations of a possible sequel.
Also, it's not as if Chekov or Sulu really even had any development, just time spent on jokes about them.
But beyond being a reboot, it is also a PREQUEL. Which means that TOS/TMP cast is being reintroduced for the first time here. In such a situation a one-dimensional villain is infinitely preferable to a one-dimensional protagonist.
Anyway, it bears repeating that most of Nero's character development and background would have been explored through the Rura Penthe scenes and material related to it. Abrams' crew spent a considerable amount of time developing that material and apparently removed it strictly for time constraints; they literally had to choose between keeping in Nero's development or editing out OTHER character moments for the sake of brevity. Ultimately, they decided that Nero could afford to miss out.
Anyway, it bears repeating that most of Nero's character development and background would have been explored through the Rura Penthe scenes and material related to it. Abrams' crew spent a considerable amount of time developing that material and apparently removed it strictly for time constraints; they literally had to choose between keeping in Nero's development or editing out OTHER character moments for the sake of brevity. Ultimately, they decided that Nero could afford to miss out.
Which is considerably more than Nero got, if you think about it.
I think they finally figured out that the Rura Penthe detour didn't make sense within the context of the story they were telling. YMMV.
^ Possibly true, but if anything it would mean the producers thought Nero was ALREADY getting too much focus and excluded that scene to avoid derailing the plot.
