Comments From Someone Who Has Seen Into Darkness

[InklingStar]

Based on what I've seen/read thus far, my guess would be that it rates lower as a Trek film because Kirk spends very little screen time:
a) on the bridge of his ship
b) in a starfleet uniform
Although the same could be said of most of the previous Trek films... they are always going rouge, against orders, etc.

Going rouge? Like Worf did when he joined DS9?

Seeing Kirk and crew disobeying orders and hijacking the Enterprise in their civilian outfits was pretty shocking in TSfS because it was so different than what came before. In the series and the two movies thus far, we rarely saw Kirk out of uniform. With the new rebooted crew, however, we have not yet had a chance to see them in uniform; we have not seen them doing routine missions. Having them out of uniform and going rogue now does not have the same impact it did back in the 80s.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

are always going rouge, against orders, etc.

Going rouge? Like Worf did when he joined DS9?

Maybe "going rouge" is a new ST euphemism for "getting red-shirted".

 

[Christopher]

With the new rebooted crew, however, we have not yet had a chance to see them in uniform; we have not seen them doing routine missions. Having them out of uniform and going rogue now does not have the same impact it did back in the 80s.

And with a movie coming out only once every 3-4 years, routine is not something we can expect. We've seen little in the way of routine missions in the Trek movies, usually at the beginning of the film and quickly interrupted by other events -- the routine training cruise in TWOK (which was far from a routine TOS-style mission for the ship), the Grissom's routine survey of Genesis, the Excelsior's 3-year survey of gaseous anomalies (which sounds like a mind-numbingly dull way to spend three years), and the E-E's first-contact mission with the Evora (itself not quite routine since normal first-contact protocols had been accelerated due to the Dominion War and the need for allies). We have never yet seen a Star Trek movie that was just about the Enterprise exploring a new planet or happening across a discovery while on its regular patrol. Which goes with what I said earlier, that Star Trek movies do not fit the usual mold of Star Trek stories very well.

In this case, the initial mission to Nibiru seems to be an attempt to portray the crew on a sort of mission-of-the-week, though it's one that diverges from routine in its own way and has consequences later in the film.

 

[donners22]

^ That's a good point, and it's a hard one for them to address. At least the other films had the backing of the years of episodes (most viewers wouldn't have seen every episode, but if they had enough interest to pay money for a Trek film, they'd likely have caught a little bit of it) and the familiarity built up between the cast members.

I read something in the plot synopsis about the Enterprise crew being the only family Kirk has, and I wonder how on earth they can manage to convey that. Not only do they have very little time to establish the relationships, he's gone from being an upstart cadet to captain - frankly, I'd imagine there'd be a degree of resentment from those who were leapfrogged. Something which I would take for granted with the original cast and characters doesn't ring true with this one.

 

[F. King Daniel]

"Exploration of the human condition" is nothing but trekkie cant; it's generally come to mean characters taking one another's emotional temperatures and debating the obvious at length before coming to the "moral conclusion" that will reassure the audience that they're thoughtful and discerning.

I'm afraid I have to agree. Trek's a well meaning show, but it's morals are pretty much on par with Stan's "I've learned something today..." speeches at the end of old South Park episodes.

IMO Star Trek (the original series, at least) holds up as a fun action-adventure in space with likable characters. And that's what most of the classic movies and the 2009 one delivered in spades.

 

[Flake]

What was the moral conclusion of 'The Doomsday Machine' ?

Trek will not concern itself with morals when it is just trying to be fun, entertaining and action packed whilst looking cool and appealing to all

 

[Shazam!]

"Exploration of the human condition" is nothing but trekkie cant; it's generally come to mean characters taking one another's emotional temperatures and debating the obvious at length before coming to the "moral conclusion" that will reassure the audience that they're thoughtful and discerning.

I'm afraid I have to agree. Trek's a well meaning show, but it's morals are pretty much on par with Stan's "I've learned something today..." speeches at the end of old South Park episodes.

IMO Star Trek (the original series, at least) holds up as a fun action-adventure in space with likable characters.

Is there no room for both?

 

[Christopher]

What was the moral conclusion of 'The Doomsday Machine' ?

Something that would've been more evident to viewers during the Cold War than to viewers today. The term "Doomsday Machine" was coined by a US strategist in the 1950s. To quote Wikipedia:

RAND strategist Herman Kahn proposed a "Doomsday Machine" in the 1950s that would consist of a computer linked to a stockpile of hydrogen bombs, programmed to detonate them all and bathe the planet in nuclear fallout at the signal of an impending nuclear attack from another nation. The key aspect of the doomsday device's deterrent factor is that it would go off automatically without human aid and despite human intervention, providing a highly credible threat that would dissuade attackers and avoid the dangerous game of brinkmanship that brought the United States and the Soviet Union closer to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. With a doomsday device on the planet, neither side would suspect the other of launching a sneak attack in attempt to destroy the opposing country's infrastructure before they could retaliate.

This concept showed up in a lot of fiction over the next few decades, most prominently in Dr. Strangelove. It was part of the fear of global destruction that people lived with every day. And I'd say the moral of the Trek episode of that name was that a doomsday machine was a terrible idea as a society's only hope of avoiding cataclysmic war -- that it was really just a continuation or culmination of the drive to destruction rather than an antidote for it. In short, the planet-killer was an allegory for the bomb. Kirk even explicitly said so in dialogue, complete with a big melodramatic music sting to drive it home to the audience.

Granted, "war is bad" is not a very complicated moral. But frankly the superficiality of "The Doomsday Machine" is why I think it's an overrated episode, and not a good exemplar of TOS's intelligence as a whole.

 

[CaptainDave1701]

Her friend gave it 3 stars out 5 as a Star Trek movie, but 4/5 as a normal movie.

I find that there's no better indication that something is fundamentally wrong with a series than when something like this is said.

A good movie is a good movie is a good movie. If you have to make a bad movie in order to make good Star Trek, something is very wrong with Star Trek.

Nobody is saying that. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Let's use a somewhat facetious example. Say they decided to make a prequel Sopranos movie, but turned it into an action thriller with a hot young cast. It may be a spectacular movie, the best action thriller of the year, but despite having the same setting and characters (at least in name and superficial characteristics), it's a bad Sopranos movie.

I'll give it a 9 but you can't dance to it.

 

[Flake]

TBH I realized the whole cold war and 'MAD' thing after I posted

STID will have some form of moral on a par with Doomsday Machine that terrorism is bad or something

 

[Aike]

Regarding Khan, in a Swedish magazine called "Film på Bio" they called the villain Khan, and didn´t mention the name John Harrison at all.

This magazine is distributed by the largest cinema chain in Sweden.

But of course, they might just their info from the IMDB, which didn´t mention Harrison until recently.

 

[BillJ]

And that's a sad commentary on the moviegoing audience.

I don't think so. For what theaters are charging for tickets now, I want big, memorable "event" films especially from properties like Star Trek. We have seven hundred plus hours of the franchise grappling with the "Moral of the Week", I want something more when putting out cash to go see something at the theater.

I think Rick Berman really didn't understand this when making the TNG films.

 

[Flake]

Rick Berman probably did understand but never got the budget to do what he wanted because only the Trek fanbase would watch at that point, unlike the early/mid 80s and now.

 

[BillJ]

Rick Berman probably did understand but never got the budget to do what he wanted because only the Trek fanbase would watch at that point, unlike the early/mid 80s and now.

Budgets seemed to be in-line with mid-range films of the same time and were higher than the TOS movies except for TMP. Berman was a TV producer and it showed in the movies he was in charge of.

 

[Flake]

Trouble is, it was a mid-range budget of say $30-$60 million but you immediately subtract at least $10 million for paying Spiner and Stewart...

Already by 1994 sums of $100 million plus where being spent on movies (True Lies) and even in 1991 $94 million went on Terminator 2.

 

[BillJ]

Trouble is, it was a mid-range budget of say $30-$60 million but you immediately subtract at least $10 million for paying Spiner and Stewart...

Already by 1994 sums of $100 million plus where being spent on movies (True Lies) and even in 1991 $94 million went on Terminator 2.

But Schwarzeneggar was routinely pulling in $15-20 million for those films and the producers/directors were able to still make capable big screen movies. Hell, Shatner/Nimoy were eating up huge chunks of the TOS film budgets with their "favored nations" contracts and Bennett, Meyer and Nimoy were also able to make decent looking big screen films.

Berman just had a too much of a TV mentality on the first three films even hiring TV writers/directors to make them.

 

[RAMA]

This is a good sign and an indication the studio has made the right decisions. It should be a good movie first.

RAMA

 

[Ryan8bit]

3/5 as a Star Trek movie? If that's in comparison to the rest of the movies, that's pretty bad. I'm not sure how you could really compare it to anything else.

 

[Christopher]

^As discussed above, it could be in comparison to Star Trek on television. And it is just one person's opinion, of course. One person's 3/5 is another's 5/5 and another's 0/5.

 

[cbspock]

4/5 sounds good to me! I'm a lifelong, die-hard Trekkie, and to me the idea that a film needs a separate ranking "as a Trek movie" is elitist BS.

^That's not how I interpret it. A lot of Trek fans take points off for continuity discrepancies or differences in tone and style from what they're used to. It sounds to me like they're saying it's more enjoyable if you don't dwell on such issues.

In my experience, it usually involves talk of Gene's Vision(TM) and how Abrams' Trek spends too much time being fun and exciting and not enough time reciting the pretentious nonsense of The Next Generation.

I agree TNG was FILLED with pretentious nonsense, all the pontificating by Picard. The original series was able to do more episode styles than the TNG cast because in TOS, characters were allowed to have flaws. TOS could tell a morality tale, or have a msg and have fun at the same time. I find TNG to be the most dated out of all the series, with its moral equivalence BS. TNG had some really good episodes as well but by the time they got to the movies, they changed the dynamics of the characters to make Picard some sort of lame action hero which he never was on the show.



-Chris