• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Grade the movie...


  • Total voters
    796
JJ Abrams has tapped into the zeitgeist of our times. He identified that the audience wanted films that were faster paced, like Star Wars, and that films like the older Star Trek ones might be viewed as slow. So, the last film and this new are an admixture of Star Wars and Star Trek. They have found a winning formula.
 
JJ Abrams has tapped into the zeitgeist of our times. He identified that the audience wanted films that were faster paced, like Star Wars, and that films like the older Star Trek ones might be viewed as slow. So, the last film and this new are an admixture of Star Wars and Star Trek. They have found a winning formula.

A dose of fantasy mixed with a lot of swashbuckling adventure and a little introspection on the side, just to keep things neat? Yeah, that sounds about right.
 
Was that Praxis or are people just assuming it was? I saw the film a second time and heard no mention of it.

The novelisation mentions Praxis, but not as the destroyed moon. It just seems to refer to those as a lesser bunch of "moonlets".
 
Famous, and probably your last, words.

No, my last words will be something along the lines of: "Why don't you put down that chainsaw and we'll just snuggle?"

Once you've watched Sherlock you'll want to do more than snuggle him.

I want to do that now!

Still, I meant to start watching Sherlock last night, but became very busy with family stuff. It will definitely have to be tonight, though. I'm getting antsy to see how good this show is.
 
I like to have that layer to Star Trek, and I was surprised after '09 that JJ-Trek tried that. I thought he thought it was "too high-brow."

No, he said, IIRC, that he got taken to the 1979 world premiere of ST:TMP at the Smithsonian Institute as a kid, and wondered why "Star Trek" had to be so boring, and why it wasn't as much fun as the first "Star Wars" had been.
 
I like to have that layer to Star Trek, and I was surprised after '09 that JJ-Trek tried that. I thought he thought it was "too high-brow."

No, he said, IIRC, that he got taken to the 1979 world premiere of ST:TMP at the Smithsonian Institute as a kid, and wondered why "Star Trek" had to be so boring, and why it wasn't as much fun as the first "Star Wars" had been.

To be fair, to a kid, Star Wars vs. Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn't even a fair comparison. :lol:
 
i gave it an A as well but i still can't believe people gave it an F but those must have been the ten most die hard Trekkie fans. :confused:

No, we diehard Trekkie fans all voted A+.

To be fair, to a kid, Star Wars vs. Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn't even a fair comparison. :lol:

May I remind you that most TOS fans said the same as JJ at the time: "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was long and boring, and why it wasn't as much fun as the first "Star Wars" had been?
 
You know what gets to me.. people complain that JJ Trek is "too much like Star Wars" because it's full of action. And people complain about the prequels, particularly TPM because it is too slow and bogged down in politics!
 
J. Allen said:
It's okay to feel disappointed. You can overcome these hurdles with your newborn baby. All it takes is time and good will.

Well, I'm giving the kid another shot. About to watch it again. :techman:
 
I was seven years old when TMP came out. My mother took me to see the film. By that point, she had been a fan of the show for thirteen years. I loved the movie, and I still like it now.

After reviewing the documentaries that were available with the first movie, I will be seeing the second film again and judging it by the criteria for success that they set for themselves. I don't think I am capable of judging the film by any other means.
 
You know what gets to me.. people complain that JJ Trek is "too much like Star Wars" because it's full of action. And people complain about the prequels, particularly TPM because it is too slow and bogged down in politics!

Despite being a massive "Star Trek" fan, and having only an appreciation of "Star Wars" (I only saw "The Empire Strikes Back" in a cinema because I'd been buying "Starlog" magazine to get "Star Trek" news; I caught "A New Hope" when it premiered on TV a few months later), I went to the midnight screening premiere of "The Phantom Menace".

Imagine my shudder when I read this:
"Turmoil has engulfed the
Galactic Republic. The taxation
of trade routes to outlying star
systems is in dispute.

"Hoping to resolve the matter
with a blockade of deadly
battleships, the greedy Trade
Federation has stopped all
shipping to the small planet
of Naboo..."
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
 
I actually love The Phantom Menace. But I'm not going to argue if anyone thinks taxation is a dull subject for a movie. I thought it was pretty cool, as a wider background to what the separatists wanted.

Very hilarious when you read people's "oh noes, it's star wars" comments about JJTrek :lol:
 
I decided to go see it after all. And it turned out to be a giant, steaming pile of holy crap that was really damn good possibly great WTF I was not expecting that. Which is weird, because this was stylistically and tonally very similar to Trek '09, which I hated. Yet STID somehow...worked, even with it's problems. Abrams' and co. brought moralisitc speachifiying and clumsy political allegory back, and damned if that didn't make it feel like the Trek I remember, only better. :D

Something I don't recall seeing anyone comment on: the humor was much better this time around. Gone were the punchline driven gags and dumb "huge hands"-styled physical Komedy (!!!1) and in its place was more character-based humor. Kudos to the team; I really appreciated it.

I suspect the story is going to come unraveled in my memory the longer I think about it, but as of right now, fresh out of the theater, I'm satisfied in a way I wasn't after seeing the prior film. So. Yeah. Movie good. I liked it.
 
SO when Kirk is in the meeting he is looking through photos of the scene of the "archive" destruction. He zeroes in on Khan and sees he is picking up a duffel bag out of the wreckage. Someone else told me this must be the transwarp beaming device. My question is.. what was it doing in the wreckage? Khan had to travel to the scene of the wreckage after using a patsy to do his dirty work, surely a silly thing to do unless he has a reason for it. Was he there to pick up the duffel bag? Why would the duffel bag be just lying in the wreckage unwrecked?
 
But since when is the Star Trek property an action property?

Since about 1966, I'd say. ;)

Seriously, though, the movies have always been a bit more action-oriented. The only one that has any exploration is V, if you can believe it.

JJ-Trek brings it up "We can't have another Nero-style attack. We need to keep people safe, and I will do that by making us strong!" But there's no counter-argument except to put those words in the hands of the antagonist and we are supposed to instinctively think he's wrong.

I don't think it was meant to be felt as wrong by the audience because the antagonist held that opinion. Kirk seemed to agree with him in the beginning and it was still wrong.
 
But the decision is kind of WTF and I kept wondering why the hell everyone and their dog gets a trial, but Cumberkhan doesn't. Because he's TEH EVULZ. He did save Kirk's butt and got shot in the back for no good reason, but he's evulz and deserves to serve time as a (super)human popsicle.

Maybe Khan did get a trial - we just never saw it. :shrug:

Maybe. I didn't get the impression, however, and just mentioning something of the sort would have made me happy. In all honesty I don't think they bothered.

Well, at least they didn't kill him.

Ah, something else I liked about the film: THEY GOT SEATBELTS ON THE ENTERPRISE! And about time, too.
 
I have about 10 that say that Star Trek had a restricted budget and was losing money to the point that Paramount tried to sell it to Gene Roddenberry, but it was too expensive for Roddenberry to purchase (about 150,000 dollars). It wasn't a wanted property, despite it having ratings that would make it the number one television show on television today.

IIRC, Paramount tried to sell "Star Trek" back to Roddenberry in the early 70s, but he didn't think that it was a good investment at the time and it would have taken all his savings. After all, it was now a dead series and no longer in production.

And then it went into syndication, and endless early prime time repeats, where it finally built its huge audience.

"Restricted budget" doesn't mean shoestring budget. It was still a very expensive series to make.
 
Forgot to say: I gave the movie a "B".

I thought it was entertaining and that there weren't many things that bothered me. There's some "Trek" in there, after all, so that's good for me.

The movie doesn't seem to be on its way to making huge money, however, which is dissapointing. The more money it makes, the better the odds of CBS thinking a series would be a good idea. I guess it won't happen for a while. :(
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top