Will he get that promotion to Security Chief? Or only a cracked jaw? 
"Cupcake"
- Thread starter Trevacious
- Start date
How so? By trying to start a conversation with a pretty girl? As I said elsewhere:
"People harping on the bar fight should cut Kirk some slack--he wasn't being particularly rude to Uhura, just persistent (and, with the games women run, oh, 123% of the time, persistence is required) and the Star Fleet guys came up and started trying to intimidate him with no real provocation. Indeed, that's what fans should be concerned with: four cadets took turns beating up a single civililan, one of them seemingly intent on beating that civilian to death, and yet at least two of them are still in Star Fleet, one of them posted to the explicit flag ship. The lot of them should have been dishonarably discharged and served a year or two at the 23rd century equivalent of Leavenworth. That they aren't establishes Star Fleet as little more than a cadre of thugs."
In short, Cupcake should not still be in uniform--unless, of course, it's a bright orange jump suit.
"People harping on the bar fight should cut Kirk some slack--he wasn't being particularly rude to Uhura, just persistent (and, with the games women run, oh, 123% of the time, persistence is required) and the Star Fleet guys came up and started trying to intimidate him with no real provocation. Indeed, that's what fans should be concerned with: four cadets took turns beating up a single civililan, one of them seemingly intent on beating that civilian to death, and yet at least two of them are still in Star Fleet, one of them posted to the explicit flag ship. The lot of them should have been dishonarably discharged and served a year or two at the 23rd century equivalent of Leavenworth. That they aren't establishes Star Fleet as little more than a cadre of thugs."
In short, Cupcake should not still be in uniform--unless, of course, it's a bright orange jump suit.
Cupcake will rise through the ranks and become "one of Starfleet's most highly decorated officers." Which really means he will go rogue, start phasering the natives/simulating the third reich/go bonkers and shout at Spock, and Kirk will have to beat him down.
As you point out, especially that last jarhead who kept beating into Kirk's face until Pike blew the whistle (pun intended) on the fight. For godsake, that kind of pounding directly to the nose and head could result in an epidural or subdural hematoma, both of which can cause severe trauma and death. They didn't simply aim to misbehave. They, as you say, were out to kill a man.
Kinda scary so few people have commented on this. If we trekkies can swallow such behavior in our idealized, pseudo-utopian miliatry men, what does that imply about America and--
--Nah, best not to go there.
--Nah, best not to go there.
I guess people take different things away from that scene - I thought there was a point where Kirk's somewhat drunken focus shifted from picking up the girl to picking a fight with some Starfleet guys. "Cupcake" and company might have backed off when Uhura discouraged them if Kirk hadn't amped up the level of vulgarity and direct challenge to them; I really thought it played as if he were looking for a fight at that point.
Speaking of bar fights, the incident in the movie reminds me of an Aaron Gwyn short story that appears on the Esquire website:
http://www.esquire.com/fiction/fiction/the-gray-aaron-gwyn-042409
http://www.esquire.com/fiction/fiction/the-gray-aaron-gwyn-042409
It's only natural that a guy with NuKirk's--and, arguably, TruKirk's--temperment is not gonna take kindly to intimidation. And I've mooted my theory elsewhere as to how he may have been trading on his father's name; for all we know, he has a reputation in that bar and those cadets have wanted to kick his ass for a while. None of that changes the fact that he was a civilian and that the brutality of the beating was murderous.
I thought it was a fairly typical Hollywood bar fight where the level of violence and brutality is not to be taken too seriously. These things are choreographed and filmed for maximum visceral impact, not realism. The characters involved rarely suffer the kinds of injuries you would expect from such altercations and always seem to recover from them virtually overnight. Regardless of how it looked, I don’t think the Starfleeters were actually trying to kill him; he walked away with little more than a bloody nose and a bruised lip.
Thanks for providing that link. That story was pretty damned good.
That's a valid point. The fights in the Rocky movies would kill most boxers in RL.
I thought at least one of those red shirts would be used later to introduce us to their stereotypical fate 
They should have revealed that Cupcake's actual name was Finnegan 
As would most movie martial arts fights. As a martial arts student, I'm constantly amused by fighters who suffer arm breaks, knee breaks, round-kicks to the head, etc, and they just shake it off and fight on. In the real world, fights where those types of moves are not "against the rules" tend to be very brief and very decisive.
Hollywood is its own kind of alternate reality universe.
"Guard #2" in TSfS was played by Douglas Alan Shanklin, while "Burly Cadet #1" (otherwise known as Cupcake) was played by Jason Matthew Smith (see photo here.)
