Giving Kelvin another chance

[Ricky]

I loved Beyond. Loved it. I think I could confidently say I think it's the best Trek movie by a wide margin actually.

It's the other two I'm dubious of.

All this ruminating has coincided with a very busy week at work. Mid-term tests so I'm off my feet and up early everyday. So no time for movie.

It's gonna get watched at latest over the weekend. By which I mean the first.

 

[Ricky]

Movie. First movie.

 

[Campe]

I really enjoyed them the first time around. I just rewatched 2009 and Into Darkness as my wife and I were fighting Southwest Airlines trying to take a brief trip up to Chicago for a baby shower this past weekend. (We won, but after three delays and a cancellation. Wished I would have downloaded Beyond... could have watched that too.) I still find 2009 to be the best of the bunch, but I have to say Into Darkness has not aged well for me. It's gone from a 4/5 to a 2.5/5 since its come out. I can't even really articulate why. It just doesn't "feel" right to me.

 

[Ovation]

I really enjoyed them the first time around. I just rewatched 2009 and Into Darkness as my wife and I were fighting Southwest Airlines trying to take a brief trip up to Chicago for a baby shower this past weekend. (We won, but after three delays and a cancellation. Wished I would have downloaded Beyond... could have watched that too.) I still find 2009 to be the best of the bunch, but I have to say Into Darkness has not aged well for me. It's gone from a 4/5 to a 2.5/5 since its come out. I can't even really articulate why. It just doesn't "feel" right to me.

Ah well. I like it better each time I watch it and it has dethroned all other Trek movies. As for Beyond, I like it well enough but it’s far behind the other two in my personal list.

 

[Lance]

I had been burnt out on the Trek franchise for quite a while due to the sheer mediocrity of the brand in the 90s and early 2000s. Kelvin Trek made me love Star Trek in general again.

This was pretty much my experience too. I'd been a massive fan for a long time but was feeling so many bad vibes about the franchise by 2002 that honestly I never even watched Star Trek: Enterprise on first run. It was such a deep level of burn out with where the franchise was going. I greeted the news of Trek '09 with trepidation (*another* quasi-prequel? With time travel? Snore) and resolutely refused to go watch it. But on a long plane trip across the pacific it was one of the options on the in flight entertainment, and I figured, what the hell, I'm stuck in this seat for 16 hours I might as well. And I was hooked. I might have watched it twice. And it reinvigorated my interest in Star Trek as a whole. I rewatched TOS the first chance I got and I was a fan all over again. I even got around to finally watching ENT and really enjoyed it.

So yeah, I love all three of those movies. They aren't without faults, but they're all good hearted, perfectly cast, and a lot of fun. And were absolutely responsible for my falling in love with Star Trek all over again.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I think I was in the same boat as @Lance and @Kor above, since my childhood was one long marathon of TNG, DS9, and VOY. By the time ENT came around I couldn't be bothered, and then Star Trek disappeared from my life completely. I mean, I'd watch the movies from time to time, or caught an episode on SpikeTV here and there, but the love was gone... only a feeling of nostalgia.

So when '09 was announced and that AWESOME teaser trailer came out I was fully on board. Even as more and more information came out and production images and the underlying feeling that 'this isn't really what I was expecting...' I was excited. I saw '09 three times in the theater before I decided that, okay, it was a popcorn movie and wasn't what I was necessarily looking for, but it was damn entertaining. I wasn't too hot for ID but BEY was excellent. It was a much better 'Star Trek' movie than '09 was, but having it be more traditionally 'Star Trek' was kind of a reminder that it still wasn't what I was looking for. But they were definitely movies I'd watch multiple times.

While I won't say that the Kelvin movies were responsible for reigniting my love for Star Trek (that honor goes to DSC and the litverse) it certainly re-opened a lot of the old love letters I keep in a shoe box.

Anyway, I kinda wanna watch '09 again.

 

[Campe]

Ah well. I like it better each time I watch it and it has dethroned all other Trek movies. As for Beyond, I like it well enough but it’s far behind the other two in my personal list.

Cool by me. I'm glad you find enjoyment in STID. Its not that I don't. It's that it's lessened. The great thing about opinions are that we all can have our own.

Thankfully, we're not the Borg.

 

[Kor]

STID is a hot mess, but I like it anyway. I find it very entertaining.

Kor

 

[Ricky]

STiD... I must have watched that in China through a streaming sight on a nasty old monitor once.

I mean, problems first and foremost. Benedict Cumberbatch has made a career out of playing the aloof autist. From Sherlock Holmes to Alan Turing to Khan. He's always playing roles that are ever so disconnected from humanity and that's alright for Khan... I guess were it not for the problem of casting an alabaster white middle class British bloke as a character called Khan Singh.

The fore and surname there imply a quite different ethnicity to me. And I know they Asianed up Ricardo for Space Seedo a bit but surely by the 2010s... I would have loved to have seen Aamir Khan in the part but Cumberbatch was very hot at the time the movie was made so it's him for no reason other than that he was relatively high profile at the time.

It's not that he isn't decent enough in the film. He gets the arrogance of Khan (something that's a tried and trusted part of his acting toolbox) but just... why couldn't we have had a bit of representation and have a part cast appropriately?

 

[fireproof78]

The fore and surname there imply a quite different ethnicity to me. And I know they Asianed up Ricardo for Space Seedo a bit but surely by the 2010s... I would have loved to have seen Aamir Khan in the part but Cumberbatch was very hot at the time the movie was made so it's him for no reason other than that he was relatively high profile at the time.

It's not that he isn't decent enough in the film. He gets the arrogance of Khan (something that's a tried and trusted part of his acting toolbox) but just... why couldn't we have had a bit of representation and have a part cast appropriately?

Well, Benicio del Toro was originally slated to play Khan, but that fell through and there was a casting scramble.

 

[Ricky]

Well that's just like scrambling in the cutlery drawer for your socks.

 

[Lance]

del Toro would have been quite good as a match for Ricardo, I think. In so much as anyone could be.

It's ironic that in 2013 Hollywood, they deliberately avoided casting Khan with ethnic actors over fears that it would be misconstrued as 'racial profiling', which was the reason they gave for recasting Khan as white... but here, only six years later, if they pulled the same trick in today's more woke world, they'd almost certainly be crucified for it.

 

[Smellmet]

I think Javier Bardem would have been a good choice for the role too.

 

[Kor]

I think Faran Tahir would have made a good Khan. But he was already Captain Robau!

Kor

 

[Ricky]

I read about Abrams and the issue of racial profiling which kind of makes sense for a Bush jnr era Star Trek but I think by 2013...

Cumberbatch might have made a great Nero. He could have made a great John Harrison actually if they'd just let him play another post-human rather than Khan.

I don't know. It's a major booboo. I don't hate Cumberbatch, though I do think his range is limited. I just don't get how the name Khan Singh fell onto the desks of the powers that be and that they somehow plumped for Sherlock... I seem to remember Takei being unhappy about it, though he doesn't like the Kelvin movies generally and they did backtrack on it but... it's just there as one of those things.

Also I really don't care if they sorted it out in a book. The fact it even needs explaining away somehow kind of highlights what a questionable decision the casting of BC was.

 

[fireproof78]

He is a genetically engineered human. That's all the explanation I need. I didn't need a book to figure out the line "John Harrison was a fiction created by your Admiral Marcus" indicated that there was some reconstruction too.

The Khan choice is odd to me, but it doesn't mar the film. I would have preferred John Harrison be John Harrison but the in movie explanation works just as well.

 

[Ricky]

He is a genetically engineered human. That's all the explanation I need. I didn't need a book to figure out the line "John Harrison was a fiction created by your Admiral Marcus" indicated that there was some reconstruction too.

Quite like this. A new face to go with the name and of different ethnicity to deepen the disguise?

Might just make it all easier to swallow. Might.

 

[fireproof78]

Quite like this. A new face to go with the name and of different ethnicity to deepen the disguise?

Might just make it all easier to swallow. Might.

Given that Khan in TOS was recognized by visual archives I would say it was most logical.

 

[Relayer1]

I was ambivalent after the first one - I enjoyed it but it was somewhat unsatisfying. I found Into Darkness worse and Beyond a further deterioration.

I've got them all on Bluray and have seen them several times, excepting Beyond which is still in the shrinkwrap.

Not a fan.

 

[Kor]

I could be remembering wrong, but I thought the original idea was that the character was just some rogue agent named John Harrison, but then word came from above that they had to make the character Khan. Does anyone else remember this?

Kor