STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Agent Richard07, Apr 18, 2013.

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Grade the movie...

  1. A+

    18.8%
  2. A

    20.6%
  3. A-

    13.2%
  4. B+

    11.1%
  5. B

    7.9%
  6. B-

    4.1%
  7. C+

    5.7%
  8. C

    5.0%
  9. C-

    3.5%
  10. D+

    1.5%
  11. D

    1.6%
  12. D-

    1.3%
  13. F

    5.7%
  1. ConRefit79

    ConRefit79 Captain Captain

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    Why hide his people in torpedoes when he knows Marcus wants a war? Doesn't seem like a safe place to me.
     
  2. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Did you want to see it in real time, stretched over about six hours?

    I assumed the 72 were intended to soft-land, just like Spock's tube in ST III, and so that Khan's people could infiltrate the Klingons from the ground?

    And then Kronos would be Khan's new colony world. Or so Marcus thought he'd led Khan to believe.
     
  3. Amaris

    Amaris Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    He didn't know they were in torpedoes until Kirk told him the exact number. From that, Khan deduced what, or who, was inside of them.
     
  4. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Agreed. It's just a figure of speech people. Obviously we realize that this IS Star Trek, because it's got the freakin name in the title and it's an official Paramount movie.

    But just like many people (including me) felt the SW prequels didn't feel like the Star Wars we knew and loved, this movie didn't really feel like Star Trek to many of us.

    It felt more like just another mindless, over the top action movie... that just happened to have phasers, Klingons, and giant starships in it.
     
  5. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I had to look up woobie. Are you actually saying Khan is a woobie? Okay I can see there is a woobie spillover from Sherlock but not having enamored myself with that character I'm woobie-less for this man.
     
  6. Hober Mallow

    Hober Mallow Commodore Commodore

    Okay, I just saw the film Friday. It's a typical big dumb Hollywood action film, but that's all I expected so I can't say I was disappointed. It's like Transformers; check your brain at the door and just have fun. The theater wasn't too full, but we went pretty early.

    Things I liked:

    *It was better than the last film.

    *Benedict Cumberbatch. Actually, he's mostly the reason I went to see the film. It was a bit disappointing he didn't say most of his cool lines from the trailers, but whatever. I thought he was a good Khan. No one can top Montalban, but Cumberbatch wasn't trying to, he just did his own thing and it worked, I think. Just as no one can top Jack Nicholson as the joker, but you can have a guy like Heath Ledger play the Joker his own way so that people don't even compare the two.

    About halfway through the film, I came to the realization that Cumberbatch should have been cast as Spock. After two films, I still just can't see Zachary Quinto as Spock. He looks a lot like a young Nimoy, they've got him in the Beatles hair, but it just doesn't work for me. Quinto doesn't do subtle very well. His passive-aggressive stuff is over-the-top. All Nimoy had to do was stand there with a twinkle in his eye. Cumberbatch could have handled the subtleties better, I think. They could have given him pointy ears but otherwise kept his look as Khan. There was mystique to Spock in TOS Quinto just doesn't capture but Cumberbatch could have.

    Anyway... the point is I liked Cumberbatch.

    *The effects.

    *The Klingons. Although I wouldn't have minded if they'd made them even look fiercer, more alien.

    *The Praxis shout out.

    *The mirror "Wrath of Khan" stuff. Or, at least, I liked the idea. I'm not sure it was all that well executed.

    *Nimoy. Yes, it was an almost pointless cameo, but... well, it's Nimoy. The woman sitting behind me summed up my feeling. As soon as Nimoy's face appeared on the viewscreen, I heard behind me, "Yay!"

    Things I didn't like:

    *Quinto's Spock.

    *The God-awful Orci/Kurtzman dialog.

    *More a criticism of all modern action films -- I hate how they're structured around set pieces. A movie written as so many set pieces makes for sort of a -- for want of a better word -- flat movie experience. Build up, action, come down; build up, action, come down; build up, action, come down. Action film producers don't seem to even think in classic screenplay structure anymore. You don't have the same slow build up to plot points, the peaks and valleys which draw you into the story and hold you. Now, movies are often begun with ideas for cool set pieces before there's even a story. It's a trend I don't like.

    I took my dad, and he had a good time, and Cumberbatch was good, and it's always nice to see the Enterprise on the big screen, so overall it was fun time. But I don't plan to ever watch it again on DVD or BD.
     
  7. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Wow. Call me dumb, but I've never tried clicking on the numbers in an online TrekBBS poll before. Now I can see which members of the board voted which way!

    And hey, thumbtack! After all your misgivings of a few weeks ago, you loved the film enough to give it an A+. I'm thrilled you got there and that the trip was worthwhile.
     
  8. ConRefit79

    ConRefit79 Captain Captain

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    Well, at least have them head to Earth under power and loose power closer and be pulled down.

    I thought Khan said he assumed his people were dead when he got caught trying to hide them so he fled and later attacked SF. So that begs the question if he knows Marcus is itching for a war and wants untracable weapons, why hide your people in the same weapons Marcus is likely to use in a preemptive strike?
     
  9. Iamnotspock

    Iamnotspock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I didn't say there was anything wrong with it, but the two aren't the same thing. As for the SW comparison, anyone who feels like Lucas "raped (:brickwall:) their childhood with the prequels" perhaps needs to seriously cultivate a greater sense of perspective.
     
  10. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    The Immunity Syndrome had a space amoeba that had to be traveling at warp in order to eat multiple star systems over a few days. Obsession has a cloud that traveled at warp and there are plenty of other times that objects in Trek have moved far faster than they should be.

    So it might be time to unclench...
     
  11. stoneroses

    stoneroses Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I loved it. As watched seat 31, row BB screen 1 empire leicester square.
     
  12. ConRefit79

    ConRefit79 Captain Captain

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    Well, I have no way of knowing if you saw episodes 4 - 6 when they were first released, but we had a long long long time to wait. So you can imagine how much time we had to imagine what more Star Wars would be like. And then it didn't live up to our expectations. Don't get me wrong, there are some very cool aspects to the prequels.
     
  13. ConRefit79

    ConRefit79 Captain Captain

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    But those are fictional phenomena. A Super Nova is a known quantity. Now I understand they've retconned it to make since but that was not in the film. And while most people don't know about Super Nova's, I do. And as you'll see in previous posts my distaste for nuTrek is more deeper than the contrived plot devices they use to move the story.
     
  14. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Who is "we"? There are plenty of people who watched the OT when it came out and loved the prequels. If ROTJ came out today people would think it was godawful.
     
  15. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Awww, I'm recently home from the UK. Loved that theatre! Jealous!
     
  16. gornsky

    gornsky Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    I noticed my local JBHiFi has created a huge stand in the middle of the floor with all the Trek boxed sets prominently displayed, and all their DVD and BluRay shelves that had huge gaps in their collections have now been fully replenished and all versions of all Trek are now fully back in stock -- in high numbers.
     
  17. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    YAY!!!!! That makes me happy.
     
  18. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    So why can't the Hobus phenomenon be another fictional phenomenon that acts like a supernova in some respects but turns out not to be like all other supernovae?

    I'm not seeing the problem here.

    Did you really need a line in the film that says, "Captain, it acts like a supernova in some respects but it is not a true supernova"?
     
  19. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I've got to admit that I always hated that so much that in Tin Man I made a deliberate attempt to retcon it by having Data say "As no known natural phenomenon can travel at warp velocity, there are but two possibilities..."

    Yeah, I introduced a continuity error into canon on purpose. :lol:
     
  20. Lapis Exilis

    Lapis Exilis Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Please reread my post - I said quite clearly that STiD is definitely Star Trek. But it is Star Trek lacking anything cerebral. It's a perfectly fine story with perfectly good character motivations, but one of the things that tends to characterize the high water marks of Star Trek are the characters making decisions based on philosophical concerns. That, to me, is the defining difference between the universe of Star Trek and today's world - not that there's no poverty or war and everyone's happily living in Paradise, but that the characters engage with and are motivated by a higher order set of concerns, not simply personal and selfish ones like we regular mortals.

    OK - but thats an entirely different issue than what I was talking about. TMP has the characters making decisions because of their engagement with philosophical concerns. Abrams' Trek doesn't.

    Nothing, really. Except that it's part of a grand trend of skinning the symbols of various long running cultural tales and grafting them onto the same generic framework. Now we've got the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies which are just Sherlock flavored action movies, and Star Trek flavored action movies -but they're all just Hollywood action movies in the end. That's disappointing to me because part of what I've admired about the Trek franchise is its ability to do new things while keeping a unique identity. I believe Ubik said upthread - by making Star Trek flavored action movies, Abrams is playing it safe, working within a formula. It's an entertaining formula, but it doesn't take any risks or do anything that surprises. Maybe it's a consequence of my age, but I've now seen so many this or that flavored action movies that I find action movies boring.

    Creating new Star Trek fans may be one of their concerns, but it's not one of mine. I'd vote for seeing the franchise take a risk and possibly fail, rather than retread ground we've seen a hundred times.