Yeah I don't agree with those ratings. Into Darkness I'm happy to keep there but TWOK should be higher.
The only people I've ever heard complain heartily about ID are Star Trek fans. It just goes to show the slanted bias we have in evaluating our own franchise.
That's surprising. TWOK might need a slight bump but I love ID so I am happy to see that. Indeed. The sheer amount of hate levied at ID was impressive, if depressing, until Discovery came along, any way. But, yeah, I got to enjoy ID with my non Trek fan family members and they liked it a lot. Hate is overblown.
A non-fan buddy of mine counts ID and 2009 amongst his favorite "summer blockbusters" of the past decade or so, and revisits them often. Sometimes I think an element of fandom reacts negatively to anything that is obviously designed to this very end (attracting the non-fans), regardless of how entertaining they might otherwise find it to be. I think they view it as a threat to "our special little show" at times...
I tend to agree. I see a lot of this attitude that Star Trek is precious and special and that any attempt to expand the fan base by becoming a bit more entertaining is a disservice to the franchise. Also, I think that so many treat this franchise as so personality defining that allowing others in feels strange.
I will acknowledge that a lot of my issues with ST 09 are "fan gripes" and that aside from that it is a decent sci-fi action movie. But Into Darkness is just not good. I would say that even if it was some original property and not Star Trek. The first half or so is alright but the second half is just mindless action. I don't like any movies like that whether they be Star Trek or not.
TFF has a ton of problems, but Deforest Kelley is superb in it. Some of the lines are great too such as "excuse me, but what does .....god need.....with a starship"? Elevated by the line reading. As for STID, it got great reviews at the time and I think it's unfairly castigated. The whole argument that Enterprise couldn't go underwater was bizarre - Voyager literally flew in fluidic space. I liked it because it was allegorical like my favorite Trek Movie, which would be STVI. The movie acts as a metaphor for America’s descent into moral ambiguity following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The hunt for John Harrison is analagous to the search for Bin Laden and the debate about whether to launch photon torpedoes at the Klingon home world is relevant to then current debates regarding the morality of drone strikes. The film concludes with Kirk realising that he lost perspective following the terrorist attack on Starfleet. He then rededicates himself to science and peaceful exploration and begins the famous five year mission, to explore strange new worlds and to seek out new life. The title “Into Darkness” refers to the moral state of American foreign policy following 9/11 (fear, vengeance, anger, and violence) and the final scenes state that it’s time row back from this. But the Khan scream was terrible.
I think you're spot on. The first three films, whatever their respective faults and merits, are more mature and overall serious than what followed. Granted, TVH is a concerted effort to lighten up, and for what it is, it's fine. They just never went back to the maturity and seriousness of the first three. Maybe because the studio wanted the yuks, maybe because they felt the cast was too old and out of shape to be taken seriously at that point, or maybe it was a just the cast having a lark. But for all of the heaping praise TUC gets, it's got just as many gags as TFF. And a lot of them don't land. Chekov comes off as a simpleton, Nichelle of all people is hammy, and the background performers are overdirected to the point of ridiculousness. They seem to fall over themselves over-emoting to get attention from the camera, and Meyer has them crowding the background. "Comin' through! Comin' through!" Star Trek 6 feels almost like a parody of a serious Trek film. Which is a shame, because if the Nicky Meyer of 1982 directed it, it would have been crisp. But this was the Nicky Meyer of 1991 and everyone in the cast, as you noted, seemed too aware of themselves being actors in their last film.
I don't think the complaints were about whether or not the ship could go underwater. I think it's about WHY. The whole concept is really quite inane, given the circumstances. There's no reason for the ship to be there, other than cool factor. And that's fine...but I think if you're going to go for "cool factor" over logic, you need to be ok with taking some arrows.
As much as I like the film it definitely suffers from the rule of cool being applied. Probably owing to how many times they reworked the script to sort out the villain.
Abrams was at it again in TROS with the Star Destroyers coming out of ice this time. A scene just for the sake of showing some special effects off.
That pretty much defines much of Hollywood. I love film making but everything is in the name of experimenting with visual effects. At least it feels to me.
Well said. The studio did such a project for TMP on SD along with Robert Wise, I wondered how well "The Director's Cut" did in video sales? The results could be a reason why the studio hasn't done anything. Be positive, Vger23, the studio has their streaming service in 4k and will enhance to 8k, these movies will eventually get a remaster for HD viewing. Into Darkness was not a bad movie and movies should be judge by its own merit and not by comparison. The ratings are appropriate based on individual's independent view on THAT movie only. It was never a contest.
I never said it was a contest, just that in my personal opinion, 7.7/10 is about right for into darkness, and by that same metric my personal rating of the wrath of khan is at least a 9. The original point was that the kelvin films were not critically well received, which I disagreed with, pointing out that into darkness had the same IMDB score as the franchised supposed best movie. Granted the IMDB score is not the last word on this but I find it to be generally a decent enough guide.
Into Darkness was entertaining, except for those parts that were a bit annoying mostly because they didn't make any sense. Like why would someone kill himself along with forty colleagues when he could use the magic blood to save his daughter and then well, REFUSE to kill himself and forty colleagues!!! There are many better alternatives, like ask for the protection of his family by the police or whatever they have (assuming they have anything) and denounce Khan for what he was trying to do. That seems a lot better than becoming a suicidal mass murderer!!