Is a Galaxy-Quest type movie the best way to restart Star Trek?

[TheArsenal]

Exactly - poor writing. We are told in one of several rather clumsy exposition scenes that Kirk is a "genius repeat offender" - but we see no evidence of his genius - though we do get good evidence of the repeat offender, rebel-without-a-clue side of his character, making his cocky "I'll do it in three" and the Three Years Later card feel unsatisfactory.

No. His ability to quickly and accurately put together seemingly random facts - the Klingon transmission Uhura picked up, the lightning storm by Vulcan, the lightning storm the day of his birth, the lack of Federation ships return transmissions, and use these facts to determine they were under attack and save the Enterprise from certain destruction, showed his intellect in the most important manner possible: as it directly relates to command decisions.

Earlier we are shown a brief glimpse of his intellect when he accurately describes Uhura's linguistic field to her ("talented tongue").

He reprograms a test designed by the one of the more intelligent Vulcans; Vulcan being a planet stuffed with caves full of intellectual heavy weights. No mean feat.

Then there's the correct command decision making process involved in the whole saving the Earth bit.

There's only so many times you're going to shown his mental capabilities in a film which had this much to do.

They showed us he's a genius where it mattered: command.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

...Ebert's, who just said it was space opera, and the science was baseless.

All true.

Yes. However, if the worst thing that can be said about this film by an objective third party is that it's just light entertainment, I'm fine with that because that's all I was expecting.

 

[polyharmonic]

I'll just say that the way the movie was cut and written, its hard to take the world of JJAbrams Startrek vision "seriously". What I mean by "seriously" is simply that its hard to imagine JJAbrams suddenly turning around and making a sequel that will be dramatic and moving rather than just fast paced, kid-friendly, action-packed, thin plot, loose writing and more or less "mindless" like a Michael Bay movie or such.

Abrams vision is sort of analogous to the "Batman & Robin" vision or the chessy Batman TV series vision of the Batman franchise. Not quite THAT silly but more in that vein than anything else.

There's nothing wrong with such movies and I watch and enjoy such movies. Just realize that with the direction JJAbrams took, expect the sequel to continue to have contrived plots full of forced gags and more or less parody treatment of the concept of Startrek and its characters.

Again I'm not saying that's necessarily "good" or "bad". But simply understand that with Abrams vision now the defacto Startrek that this is what the franchise has become. Like it or not, that's what it is NOW.

 

[polyharmonic]

I take it you've not seen many episodes of the various Star Trek series then.

I will completely agree about the holes, coincidences, and contrivances of the plot. Yes, other Trek films have them too, this one just has a whole lot more.
:
With the exception of a few episodes (throughout all the series), and a few very well written Trek novels, Star Trek is (by and large) not serious SF.
:
Watch TOS again. There's an ass-load of silliness and ridiculousness. Same goes for all the other series and movies.

Okay I shouldn't have written "serious SF" because you are using the term in a way that I didn't intend. What I really mean is a movie whose story takes its premise and concept in a "serious" manner. And yes that doesn't mean it can't have comedy or light moments or even entire episodes that are like that. And yes there are lots of episodes and movies that are silly and ridiculous. And of course there are movies like Voyage Home which is basically a family fun comedy.

But the piling on of lots of gags and jokes, the comedic jester farce of some of the characters, the glossing over of Vulcan's destruction, Spock throwing Kirk off the ship, cadet->captain stuff, just the general tone and loose writing gave ME a feel that ST09 is more comedy and parody-esque than a movies that treats the central concept and premise of Startrek and Starfleet themselves seriously and basically pokes fun of itself instead.

Not saying that's good or bad but that seems to Abram's vision going forward. And now that I've seen ST09, I know to expect another comedy-esque parody-esque type movie in the sequel if I care to watch it.

 

[Squiggy]

Abrams vision is sort of analogous to the "Batman & Robin" vision or the chessy Batman TV series vision of the Batman franchise. Not quite THAT silly but more in that vein than anything else.

With the exception of Batman and Robin detroying a franchise, being universally panned by critics, and killing Joel Schumacher's career...yeah...Star Trek is pretty much like Batman and Robin.

 

[polyharmonic]

Abrams vision is sort of analogous to the "Batman & Robin" vision or the cheesy Batman TV series vision of the Batman franchise. Not quite THAT silly but more in that vein than anything else.

With the exception of Batman and Robin detroying a franchise, being universally panned by critics, and killing Joel Schumacher's career...yeah...Star Trek is pretty much like Batman and Robin.

I'm sure you're being sarcastic but ironically what you're saying is actually more or less true.

There's no question that Startrek is a huge success and Batman and Robin was a big flop. But other than that there are a lot of analogues. Batman and Robin flopped largely because the studios wanted it to be campy and light and kid-friendly just like the TV series. Schumacher even said himself he was under pressue to do so and preferred to do something serious based on "Batman: Year One".

Since Batman->Batman Returns->Batman Forever, the franchice was more or less moving in a campy, kid friendly direction. Supposedly the studios felt more campy and cartoonish and juveniles was the way to go to make it have even greater mass appeal especially to children. But Batman and Robin went a bit too far.

The opposite seems to be case with Startrek. ST and trekkies have been so parodied and considered largely nerdy and geeky. ST also was oversaturated with so many shows and two bad movies in a row. Non-trekkies felt it Trek took itself too seriously. So by moving into the more juvenile campy route, it is enjoying massive success.

Whether you enjoyed or hated the movie, I don't see how anyone could claim ST '09 wasn't campy and juvenile and childish for the most part.

Its just that Batman and Robin failed because it moved in the campy childish direction when fans wanted it to be a story that treated the premise seriously.

OTOH, it appears that ST'09 succeeds because it is moving Trek in that campy childish direction. The studios simply got it right this time with ST where they got it wrong with Batman and Robin in terms of the direction those franchises respectively needed to go apparently.

 

[TheArsenal]

Whether you enjoyed or hated the movie, I don't see how anyone could claim ST '09 wasn't campy and juvenile and childish for the most part.

Not sure whether you're serious, or are not clear on the definition of "campy". I choose to believe you're taking the piss.

 

[Opal1]

Whether you enjoyed or hated the movie, I don't see how anyone could claim ST '09 wasn't campy and juvenile and childish for the most part.

I don't know... there's nothing childish or campy about losing your mother (or in Kirk's case, his father) due to horrific circumstances.
I didn't expect to see something like that in the movie...

So I guess it's all a matter of perspective...

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Another vote for "taking the piss" right here.

 

[polyharmonic]

Whether you enjoyed or hated the movie, I don't see how anyone could claim ST '09 wasn't campy and juvenile and childish for the most part.

I don't know... there's nothing childish or campy about losing your mother (or in Kirk's case, his father) due to horrific circumstances.
I didn't expect to see something like that in the movie...

So I guess it's all a matter of perspective...

I'm not saying the movie is 100% campy or silly or juvenile or whatever the best word is to describe it. I did, however, say mostly. The opening scene was fine. It was for the most part serious compelling and moving. But unfortunately the opening scene you describe represents the best and very small part of the overall movie. It was however dwarfed by too many scenes of stuff like:

- Kirk as a boy almost driving off a cliff with the robot like cop chasing him, pointless scene
- Kirk acting like a juvenile jackass during the Kobayashi Maru test
- Uhura portrayed in an overly emotional, less than professional manner (like where she pouts to Spock about wanting to be on the Enterprise)
- Uhura and Spock making out in front of Kirk in public while Kirk looks on (seems kind of like a high schoolish scene to me)
- Chechov's ridiculous accent intentionally done to be funny (old Koenig had an accent but it was to show Startrek was a diverse organization not be make fun of his accent IMO)
- Sulu and Romulans sword fight which just looked ridiculous to me
- Scotty beamed into the water pipes just for laughs
- McCoy chasing Kirk around injecting him while Kirk has these bloated hands
- Blowing up Vulcan and killing 6 BILLION people and glossing over it; other than perhaps Spock Prime down on Vega Delta, nobody seems to be too worked up about it
- Kirk being promoted from cadet to captain when the notion itself seems retarded and furthermore nothing in the film convinced me that Kirk was little more than the punk he was at the beginning (that he truly deserved being captain regardless)
etc etc etc

A few of these scenes are tolerable. But too many of them piled on was just a bit much. And I didn't find the gags to be funny in a clever way but rather "silly". There's humor because the situation is naturally funny (Scotty beaming them right in the swarm of Romulans when he said he'd beamed them to a quiet area was one that wasn't overdone and over the top like the others) and then there's very forced attempts at humor. A lot of these scenes just felt TO ME juvenile and made the film overall TO ME have a "campy" juvenile film to it.

Again, you're right the opening was anything BUT. Still it was a very small part of the movie.

On another note, it's quite strange that more than 80% rated STXI "above average" or even "excellent" on this board yet it's those who don't like this movie who keep opening one thread after another about their opinion...
Is that really necessary?

If there's 80% of people who rated the film excellent then there's 20% that didn't. There's not even 20% of threads devoted to "hating". I don't see how there are tons of people opening thread after thread devoted it to it. I'm looking down the list of threads for the past couple of pages, where are you seeing this???

 

[Butters]

Again I'm not saying that's necessarily "good" or "bad". But simply understand that with Abrams vision now the defacto Startrek that this is what the franchise has become. Like it or not, that's what it is NOW.

Until another production crew has their crack of the whip.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Abrams vision is sort of analogous to the "Batman & Robin" vision or the chessy Batman TV series vision of the Batman franchise. Not quite THAT silly but more in that vein than anything else.

With the exception of Batman and Robin detroying a franchise, being universally panned by critics, and killing Joel Schumacher's career...yeah...Star Trek is pretty much like Batman and Robin.

You know I love you, right ?

 

[Squiggy]

Oh yeah. That's what daddy likes.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Keep it coming then... especially when I'm not drunk.
Which is not now.