Is Star Trek 2009 overhyped by desesperate Trek fans?

[CoveTom]

^ For the most part, I agree. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying that I fear it won't be done because of preconceived ideas about what a Trek filml needs to be in order to work. TVH was really the last Trek film that 'broke the mold' in that regard, so to speak, and I just don't see them doing it again anytime soon.

But, I could be wrong. J.J. Abrams certainly has clout right now, and maybe he'll want to make sure the films are diverse.

 

[Zeppster]

Before the film came out most Trek fans were at best cautious about the film and not sure if it would be a success. A lot of fans were pissed off that this was going to be a reboot for canonical reasons. The hype came from the reviewers and people that saw the film that weren't all really big Trekkies and they loved it because it's a good movie. It's not about hype it's about being a good movie.

 

[Captain Randy Hall]

I may be playing the devil's advocate here. But I got the feeling that a lot of Trek fans, including me, at some point, are overhyping the movie in desperation.

A lot of us, thought or at least worried, that Star Trek as a TV/Movie franchise was now death for a couple of years. Enterprise didn't have the same commercial success than preceding series, while the recent movies didn't either. Star Trek have been around almost every year since 1987, its incredible in television history. It felt realistic to expect tptb (executives) to put Star Trek to rest for a couple of years. Maybe even something like 10, 15 or 20 years.

Now here come the big surprise. They announce a new Star Trek movie, headed by a director on the rise (JJ Abrams). Already at that point its beyond our wildest dreams. Its not about the quality of the product anymore, its about the survival of our beloved franchise. We don't mind if Star Trek have become only a brainless action blockbuster movie anymore. Average Trek is better than no Trek. Sure the movie have many faults, but we dont care. Star Trek is alive and its a commercial success!

Is it the right signal to send? Thats is Average Trek is better than no Trek.

I must admit that somehow I feel the same way. The franchise needed a commercial success at that point. But I got another signal to send. Now that the introduction of the rebooted characters is over. I wish the next Trek movie will have a stronger storyline.

Believe me, if we thought the movie stank to high heaven, we'd let J.J. know about it! Anyone remember the "Is Brannon Braga evil" discussions? Trek is a broad enough concept that it can be shown in many different ways. The best thing was giving the film a pace more like 24 and Prison Break than other shows.

No complaints here.

 

[brandnewfan]

Interesting...I actually was accused of overhyping it a bit by some non-Trek fan friends of mine. But I've seen it 3 times, and it's been a few weeks now since it came out. I still think it's the best Trek film to date. I also feel that the new cast has literally replaced, in my eyes, the original series cast....not that the original actors weren't great in themselves....rather that the new cast was just dead-on perfect (again, in my view) so much that the new cast may even portray the characters slightly better.

 

[Cdr MacDuff]

Believe me, if we thought the movie stank to high heaven, we'd let J.J. know about it!

Sure, I don't doubt it, but if the movie had a empty main storyline with no depth at all and a lame 2 dimensional villain with dubious motives. Would you let JJ know? Hence my post. In which I never said the movie stank to high heaven. I'm just not overhyping it.

 

[theFirebottle]

Believe me, if we thought the movie stank to high heaven, we'd let J.J. know about it!

Sure, I don't doubt it, but if the movie had a empty main storyline with no depth at all and a lame 2 dimensional villain with dubious motives. Would you let JJ know? Hence my post. In which I never said the movie stank to high heaven. I'm just not overhyping it.

No, you're shitting all over it because you're pissed that other people have different opinions than you -- not only that, but it's a lot of other people and they're doing a pretty good job of explaining why they liked it. So you've got it into your head that you have to balance out the appreciation by making overblown and exaggerated criticisms.

Could the plot have been deeper? Eh, maybe. Nobody's ever going to stop churning out pretentious art-house films with profound and obscure philosophical messages buried under hours of slow panning shots without any soundtrack, though, so there's no need for a Star Trek movie to take up the slack on that front.

Could the villain have benefited from not having so much footage left on the cutting room floor? Probably, but then another group of inveterate whiners would be pissing and moaning about how long and unwieldy the movie was. Or if they'd cut out footage of Kirk, Spock, McCoy et al, there'd be complaining about how the villain took up too much screen time in order for the director/writer to unnecessarily spell out what's going on.

Also, "irrational motives" does not equal "dubious motives". Nero went crazy. Sure some people might act rationally and think stuff through, even if they saw their whole planet get 'sploded. The vast majority of people, even non-human people, would simply not be able to react in a sensible manner. Going utterly bugfuck insane is probably one of the more rational reactions to something as unthinkable as an entire planetary civilization vanishing in the blink of an eye. The problem with Nero's motive is that no viewer can really comprehend what it would be like to watch an entire civilized planet die in an instant, so they can't put themselves in his place. If my planet got sucked into a singularity or eaten by a supernova while I watched, I'd be lying on the floor a gibbering wreck incapable of speech.

 

[Cdr MacDuff]

Believe me, if we thought the movie stank to high heaven, we'd let J.J. know about it!

Sure, I don't doubt it, but if the movie had a empty main storyline with no depth at all and a lame 2 dimensional villain with dubious motives. Would you let JJ know? Hence my post. In which I never said the movie stank to high heaven. I'm just not overhyping it.

No, you're shitting all over it because you're pissed that other people have different opinions than you -- not only that, but it's a lot of other people and they're doing a pretty good job of explaining why they liked it. So you've got it into your head that you have to balance out the appreciation by making overblown and exaggerated criticisms.

Could the plot have been deeper? Eh, maybe. Nobody's ever going to stop churning out pretentious art-house films with profound and obscure philosophical messages buried under hours of slow panning shots without any soundtrack, though, so there's no need for a Star Trek movie to take up the slack on that front.

Could the villain have benefited from not having so much footage left on the cutting room floor? Probably, but then another group of inveterate whiners would be pissing and moaning about how long and unwieldy the movie was. Or if they'd cut out footage of Kirk, Spock, McCoy et al, there'd be complaining about how the villain took up too much screen time in order for the director/writer to unnecessarily spell out what's going on.

Also, "irrational motives" does not equal "dubious motives". Nero went crazy. Sure some people might act rationally and think stuff through, even if they saw their whole planet get 'sploded. The vast majority of people, even non-human people, would simply not be able to react in a sensible manner. Going utterly bugfuck insane is probably one of the more rational reactions to something as unthinkable as an entire planetary civilization vanishing in the blink of an eye. The problem with Nero's motive is that no viewer can really comprehend what it would be like to watch an entire civilized planet die in an instant, so they can't put themselves in his place. If my planet got sucked into a singularity or eaten by a supernova while I watched, I'd be lying on the floor a gibbering wreck incapable of speech.

The only one shitting all over lame excuses here is you. You could write a complete dissertation about it and it wouldn't change anything.

 

[theFirebottle]

The only one shitting all over lame excuses here is you. You could write a complete dissertation about it and it wouldn't change anything.

I can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

You could write a complete dissertation about it and it wouldn't change anything.

I can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

Game, set and match.

 

[scarab]

No. A shrunken fanbase can't move a movie past 200 million dollars, especially this quickly. People have heard the movie is good from friends and family and they're going to see it. I, for one, am glad.

 

[Rackon]

I became a fan of Trek in 1966.

I loved TOS, flaws and all. I liked the movies through IV, although TMP was a bit of a trial. I wasn't a huge TNG fan but mostly enjoyed it. Ditto Enterprise, except the final season. Didn't like Voyager. Enjoyed several Trek novels. Devolved into a casual fan during TNG movies, which left me cold.

I was hoping XI would be a good film.

But I wasn't desperate.

I wasn't worried, or even cautiously optimistic. The fate of Trek wasn't in my hands. It was in JJ Abrams' hands, someone whose TV series I admired but whose films I did not.

What would be, would be.

So I stayed spoiler free and just went to see it on opening night like thousands of other people, not knowing what to expect, only striving to keep an open mind, to go with the experience.

I LOVE it. Yup, I enjoyed the heck out of it. I'm old enough to know what I like - and I like nuTrek. Flawless it is not. It is not the movie I would've personally made. But it is a wonderfully entertaining and well crafted film, great fun, with a tremendous cast of young actors. I want to see more. I wanted to see more of their adventures the second the movie ended.

FYI, I'm not that easy to please.

That's just how I felt about XI.

Millions of people enjoyed also XI, some Trek fans, many not, and word of mouth has pushed this film up to nearly $200 million. Trek fans alone couldn't have got that done, hysterical or not.

 

[Rackon]

The only one shitting all over lame excuses here is you. You could write a complete dissertation about it and it wouldn't change anything.

I can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

That is...logical.

 

[CptGarth]

Not Hype! I started watching stratrek at age 5 in 74'. You might say I was worried they would ruin it. Not a chance. Even with the timeline change,I enjoyed it very much,so much so I went and seen it a second time. I didn't do that with the other movies. I will go see it a third time just because it looked sooo good on big screen. I hope the movies to follow or series are just as good.

 

[Lord Garth]

I think it's overhyped in the sense that people spent two or three years discussing, arguing, or whatever about how pro or con they were. Makes sense since this was the project that would make or break Star Trek's return as a TV/film franchise but, in the end, it was just a movie.

Outside of these circles, Star Trek has gotten great word of mouth, and it's converting quite a few people but to them it's just a good movie, it's not a matter of life or death of the franchise to them. They don't care about the franchise. They take Star Trek one production at a time, and they're either with it or they're not.

 

[perigee]

Ahh.. this takes me back to the good old days, when TNG, after seven whole years of practice, came out with the most in-depth, sterling character pieces of all time: Generations.

That was the one where the old coot wanted to go inside some sort of space silly string that grants wishes, so he spent 70 years building some kind of something so he could jump inside and go to Disney World.

Picard fell into the silly string, where he had a French Provincial Christmas with Tiny Tim, then went to Kirks house and they rode horses out of the silly string so they could beat up the old coot. We also met Mr. Tricorder. And Worf wore his frilly shirt in the water.

Then we have a 300-meter piece of starship fall out of the sky, completely uncontrolled("Helm control is offline!"), without flipping over and over in a death spiral, and mash a 20-mile furrow across a planet without killing everybody or smashing to a million pieces as it ground along its merry path.

I'll tell you, after lighting candles in front of my TV for seven years in honor of the bestest, deepest Star Trek that's ever been, I was in awe of the cinematic brilliance I beheld. Surely, the seven hard years of practice had paid off in the best villian, storyline, science and character development ever seen in Star Trek. How this new, pretender film could have hoped to compare, from a standing start, to that kind of long term preparation and canon expertise is beyond me.

So you can easily see why this film offends me. Deeply.

I cry daily.

The fact that Generations only made 129M adjusted proves surely that this upstart is overhyped.

 

[indranee]

Ahh.. this takes me back to the good old days, when TNG, after seven whole years of practice, came out with the most in-depth, sterling character pieces of all time: Generations.

That was the one where the old coot wanted to go inside some sort of space silly string that grants wishes, so he spent 70 years building some kind of something so he could jump inside and go to Disney World.

Picard fell into the silly string, where he had a French Provincial Christmas with Tiny Tim, then went to Kirks house and they rode horses out of the silly string so they could beat up the old coot. We also met Mr. Tricorder. And Worf wore his frilly shirt in the water.

Then we have a 300-meter piece of starship fall out of the sky, completely uncontrolled("Helm control is offline!"), without flipping over and over in a death spiral, and mash a 20-mile furrow across a planet without killing everybody or smashing to a million pieces as it ground along its merry path.

I'll tell you, after lighting candles in front of my TV for seven years in honor of the bestest, deepest Star Trek that's ever been, I was in awe of the cinematic brilliance I beheld. Surely, the seven hard years of practice had paid off in the best villian, storyline, science and character development ever seen in Star Trek. How this new, pretender film could have hoped to compare, from a standing start, to that kind of long term preparation and canon expertise is beyond me.

So you can easily see why this film offends me. Deeply.

I cry daily.

The fact that Generations only made 129M adjusted proves surely that this upstart is overhyped.

 

[cmdrbolly]

Ahh.. this takes me back to the good old days, when TNG, after seven whole years of practice, came out with the most in-depth, sterling character pieces of all time: Generations.

That was the one where the old coot wanted to go inside some sort of space silly string that grants wishes, so he spent 70 years building some kind of something so he could jump inside and go to Disney World.

Picard fell into the silly string, where he had a French Provincial Christmas with Tiny Tim, then went to Kirks house and they rode horses out of the silly string so they could beat up the old coot. We also met Mr. Tricorder. And Worf wore his frilly shirt in the water.

Then we have a 300-meter piece of starship fall out of the sky, completely uncontrolled("Helm control is offline!"), without flipping over and over in a death spiral, and mash a 20-mile furrow across a planet without killing everybody or smashing to a million pieces as it ground along its merry path.

I'll tell you, after lighting candles in front of my TV for seven years in honor of the bestest, deepest Star Trek that's ever been, I was in awe of the cinematic brilliance I beheld. Surely, the seven hard years of practice had paid off in the best villian, storyline, science and character development ever seen in Star Trek. How this new, pretender film could have hoped to compare, from a standing start, to that kind of long term preparation and canon expertise is beyond me.

So you can easily see why this film offends me. Deeply.

I cry daily.

The fact that Generations only made 129M adjusted proves surely that this upstart is overhyped.

Best post ever.

 

[goran'agar]

Ahh.. this takes me back to the good old days, when TNG, after seven whole years of practice, came out with the most in-depth, sterling character pieces of all time: Generations.

That was the one where the old coot wanted to go inside some sort of space silly string that grants wishes, so he spent 70 years building some kind of something so he could jump inside and go to Disney World.

Picard fell into the silly string, where he had a French Provincial Christmas with Tiny Tim, then went to Kirks house and they rode horses out of the silly string so they could beat up the old coot. We also met Mr. Tricorder. And Worf wore his frilly shirt in the water.

Then we have a 300-meter piece of starship fall out of the sky, completely uncontrolled("Helm control is offline!"), without flipping over and over in a death spiral, and mash a 20-mile furrow across a planet without killing everybody or smashing to a million pieces as it ground along its merry path.

I'll tell you, after lighting candles in front of my TV for seven years in honor of the bestest, deepest Star Trek that's ever been, I was in awe of the cinematic brilliance I beheld. Surely, the seven hard years of practice had paid off in the best villian, storyline, science and character development ever seen in Star Trek. How this new, pretender film could have hoped to compare, from a standing start, to that kind of long term preparation and canon expertise is beyond me.

So you can easily see why this film offends me. Deeply.

I cry daily.

The fact that Generations only made 129M adjusted proves surely that this upstart is overhyped.

Haha amen brother, amen...the perfect answer to all those people who say this movie is shallow and lacking in a plot...
Only trek 2 and 6 had a plot better than this film....and pleeeasseee let's not dwelve into first contact. That film's plot was more akin to this one...time travel and a whole lot of action..probably why it was the highest grossing trek film after the motion picture (inflation adjusted) and also the most popular in the trek fanbase

For some individuals, if it's not a berman-braga monstrosity, it's not trek

 

[TheGodBen]

Haha amen brother, amen...the perfect answer to all those people who say this movie is shallow and lacking in a plot...

While Generations was ultimately a failure in its plot, I am at least willing to credit Moore and Braga for what they were trying to do, similar to how I feel about TMP. And Moore and Braga both admit that it was a mistake for them to write the movie at that time because they were too young to fully understand the themes they were trying to explore. The reach of the film exceeded their grasp, and the list of things the studio forced them to add didn't help matters. But they dreamed high and they made an attempt, I can respect that.

Personally, I don't get the impression that Trek XI was trying to be much more than a good action flick, and while it was extremely competent in creating a film to entertain a mass audience I can't respect it in the same way.

 

[Cdr MacDuff]

I don't think other Trek movies having bad plot would be a good reason to have a bad one in this movie too, even if it were true. Thats part of the point I'm making here. One good thing about this movie is the budget and its production value. I think the next movie will also be a sci-fi action movie thats why I compare it to other action movie such as Matrix, Batman Begins. Which had better story and drama.

I think most people on this thread agreed the plot didn't have much depth, but still enjoyed the movie nevertheless. I think its because the "main" plot wasn't the real main storyline. The story was more about the reintroduction and interaction of the new rebooted characters. Which was well handled, I must say.

I like Abrams other works like Lost and Fringe. So I'm fairly confident the next movie will have a bit more meat on the drama, mystery and social commentary side. I think the next movie will need that since the novelty of reintroducing the rebooted characters will be gone this time around.