Can you really claim not to understand how someone might dislike lens flare from an aesthetic perspective? Even JJ's wife complained to him about it.
20 most Cringeworthy Scenes in the New Trek films???
- Thread starter xavier
- Start date
Can you really claim not to understand how someone might dislike lens flare from an aesthetic perspective? Even JJ's wife complained to him about it.
I think there's a bit of a difference between 'dislike' and 'cringeworthy'.
This is the most misunderstood scene in the film. Everyone thinks Kirk is just being a dick. He's not. He's making an obvious show of it because he philosophically disagrees with the test, which is spelled out in the next scene between him and Spock. He wasn't trying to get away with it — he was making a point, which is why he is over-the-top.
Last edited:
-1. His obnoxious behavior during the simulation is completely unprofessional and does not serve to make his philosophical point. The philosophical point strikes me as a rationalization anyway; his real motive seems to be a desire to show off.
The Kobayashi thing has been debated to death. JJ Trek presents it similar to Matthew Broderick's hacking in Wargames.
In Trek II, Kirk makes it clear that he only changed the program so that it was possible to win, not to make the test into a complete cakewalk. While in both cases it's cheating, Prime Kirk comes across as someone who believes everyone deserves a fair chance to win. Nu Kirk feels entitled to win. Big difference, and it makes Nu Kirk a less sympathetic hero.
Having played a lot of videogames in my life, there is something known as "cheap shots", especially in arcade games, meant to eat your quarters. Cheap shots will get you even if you are the best player on the planet. There's physically no way to avoid them based on the mechanics of the game. That's what I think the Kobayashi Maru employed, and Kirk removed them, and then proceeded to follow the optimal strategy to beat the simulation, which still required a high degree of proficiency.
In Trek II, Kirk makes it clear that he only changed the program so that it was possible to win, not to make the test into a complete cakewalk. While in both cases it's cheating, Prime Kirk comes across as someone who believes everyone deserves a fair chance to win. Nu Kirk feels entitled to win. Big difference, and it makes Nu Kirk a less sympathetic hero.
Having played a lot of videogames in my life, there is something known as "cheap shots", especially in arcade games, meant to eat your quarters. Cheap shots will get you even if you are the best player on the planet. There's physically no way to avoid them based on the mechanics of the game. That's what I think the Kobayashi Maru employed, and Kirk removed them, and then proceeded to follow the optimal strategy to beat the simulation, which still required a high degree of proficiency.
Arrant nonsense.
In TWOK, Kirk's solution is presented with smug satisfaction - he's showing off for the young Saavik. No one ever asks why some cadet would be rewarded with a commendation for cheating.
The scene only works if the audience never asks that question either.
I'd agree that he felt entitled to win -- at first. But then the beginning of Into Darkness has Pike actually calling him out on that sense of entitlement. Kirk brags about his command record, but as the movie goes on and the stakes get higher and deeper, and as his crew's body count starts to grow, he eventually gets to a more mature point, even taking responsibility for what could be their destruction, and then sacrificing himself to save the ship. By the end of the movie, his speech is about memory, honor, and duty -- three things that typically don't come from those who haven't really earned anything.
There are only two things I found disappointing about NuKirk's Kobayashi Maru test:
-Kirk wasn't outright stated to be commended for original thinking. Nobody dared cheat on it before, so that has to elicit *some* sort of reaction anyway. He took the test several times and failed. It was only after those failures that he started thinking unconventionally about the test itself. "Cheating" couldn't have been easy if it meant three straight losses to get there.
-the debate between Kirk and Spock was cut short by Nero's attack. This debate should have really shown Kirk's thinking and rationale for the test, rather than cut to the age-old trope of something more pressing abruptly interrupting the scene.
Nope. Scratch that.
Yep. Kirk is pretty smug about it in TWOK.
The smugness and his comeuppance for it are in fact his character arc in TWOK, or at least a key part of it.
The main drawback to the ST09 portrayal is that cocky, snot-nosed kids are, for some, not really super-compelling as Main Hero in an action movie. (Maverick from Top Gun being an exception... or actually, not.)
Yet, nuKirk's smugness and arrogance was part of his character arc in INTO DARKNESS.
It wasn't enough that we had Spock Jesus rising from the dead, now we have Kirk Jesus but with less fanfare.
Next it will probably be McCoy, since they already foreshadowed it with him getting his arm caught in the torpedo. And there's that xenopolycythemia thing from the Prime universe.
Next it will probably be McCoy, since they already foreshadowed it with him getting his arm caught in the torpedo. And there's that xenopolycythemia thing from the Prime universe.
What about Scotty Jesus in TOS?
I have regular polycythemia. The Fabrini can't arrive soon enough.
I'd be quite happy if it was McCoy. He's been criminally underused in the Abrams' movies, and I like watching Urban in the role.
I hope Ben Burtt is back for 3.
That's possible too.
Or, they could do a spin on The Deadly Years, where only Chekov is affected by the aging disease, and he briefly turns into Walter Koenig.
Similar threads
