On Second Thought....

[BillJ]

User ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are about as useful as YouTube comments. If you're viewing a page for a movie after the movie has come out you're not part of the general audience. You're most likely a fan and that's why almost every movie on Rotten Tomatoes has a positive user rating. Even After Earth is sitting at near 40% positive with a 2.9/5 rating.

I agree that Into Darkness was well received by general audiences, but the user ratings on that site should be ignored.

So you have 230,000+ fans who enjoyed the movie then. Which, to me, gives even less credence to those fans who say Abrams and Company are ruining the franchise.

But, I really haven't seen a bad review of the Abrams films outside of fan sites. So it seems we're down to some die-hards that are mad because we aren't getting more from the same people who brought us Insurrection and Nemesis.

 

[Kelthaz]

User ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are about as useful as YouTube comments. If you're viewing a page for a movie after the movie has come out you're not part of the general audience. You're most likely a fan and that's why almost every movie on Rotten Tomatoes has a positive user rating. Even After Earth is sitting at near 40% positive with a 2.9/5 rating.

I agree that Into Darkness was well received by general audiences, but the user ratings on that site should be ignored.

So you have 230,000+ fans who enjoyed the movie then. Which, to me, gives even less credence to those fans who say Abrams and Company are ruining the franchise.

And Transformers has 4,000,000+ fans with an 85% rating. That's like 20 times better than "Into Darkness". Clearly, that proves that the Transformers franchise is not ruined at all. You're trying to use popularity (derived from a very unreliable source) to discredit arguments from people who dislike the films. That's kinda rude. Popularity is completely irrelevant unless we're talking about the films from a business or financial point of view.

 

[Kemaiku]

The fact remains, a rather tiny minority of people are making the film an issue at all, and they all seem to be Trek fans, and on examination of their "arguments", there is a strong undercurrent of passive aggressive hate at the idea of a reboot at all.

And a stubborn insistance on not actually discussing anything, but rather taking large swipes at those movies and those who liked them. Making older Trek out to be a victim of "unintellgent masses" who can't appreciate it's "message", that it was some perfect pinnacle of story writing.

All the while ignoring the steaming pile it had become and how basically void of anything but cheesy rehashed nonsense it was. It's inevitable cancellation and need of a reboot to be viable to anyone but a tiny group of rabid "fans" who surprisingly don't seem to get very much right about the show they rewatched so much.

 

[BillJ]

And Transformers has 4,000,000+ fans with an 85% rating. That's like 20 times better than "Into Darkness". Clearly, that proves that the Transformers franchise is not ruined at all. You're trying to use popularity (derived from a very unreliable source) to discredit arguments from people who dislike the films. That's kinda rude. Popularity is completely irrelevant unless we're talking about the films from a business or financial point of view.

Do you have any proof that Rotten Tomatoes is an unreliable source? What exactly qualifies as a reliable source?

I'm not trying to discredit anyone's coherent arguments about the quality of the film. What I'm trying to do is show the whiny "Star Trek never did that" and the ones who claim "Abrams and Company are ruining the franchise" some perspective. I've said it at least a hundred times before and I'm sure I'll say it a hundred times again: Star Trek Into Darkness IS NOT a perfect movie, it has flaws but is damn fun to watch.

 

[siskokid888]

^This is the major point of the discussion. Like you pointed out earlier (I believe), there are many variations on the Trek theme, from TV shows to films to comics to novels to web series, and I have enjoyed them ALL. They all represent different visions of Trek and, in my opinion, they are ALL valid, even if I didn't like some of them. Roddenberry's idea was, I believe, to say "here is the general outline. Now, fill it in". And different writers, directors, producers, and actors have filled in the lines differently. I'm not saying everyone has to like all of it. But to summarily dismiss someone's vision or interpetation of Roddenberry's universe as "destroying Trek" is, I think, off base.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I'm not saying Trek is being destroyed, but I am not happy with the state of quality these films bring. The Pierce Brosnan James Bond films were very popular, but plenty of fans still criticized them for being subpar compared to what came before. Just becoming another generic action franchise, and I feel it's repeating here with Trek.

 

[Franklin]

I'll take advantage of this thread to bring up a couple of things I hadn't thought of before (on second thought), and I don't remember being posted here that occurred to me when I recently re-watched STID.

1. Just an observation. The stuff floating in the air like confetti in the scene where Khan attacks Starfleet HQ and in the scene on Kronos. Nice touch. Added visual texture to the scenes. Real weather.

2. What happened to the two "undercover" redshirts with Kirk, Spock, and Uhura on Kronos? Were they killed in the fire fight? Have I still missed the moment where they're shot or stabbed by a Klingon? If they died, this is historically important for the new universe, because it would mark Kirk's first two redshirt deaths.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

They survived, or at least one of them did. You can see "Cupcake" appear well after Khan was brought in his cell.

 

[BillJ]

I'm not saying Trek is being destroyed, but I am not happy with the state of quality these films bring. The Pierce Brosnan James Bond films were very popular, but plenty of fans still criticized them for being subpar compared to what came before. Just becoming another generic action franchise, and I feel it's repeating here with Trek.

I don't think that Star Trek under J.J. Abrams is becoming a generic action franchise. But they have ratcheted up the action, which makes it more in line with TOS than the later spin-offs on that count. Some people will like it, other won't. I'm not surprised as I've yet to see 100% of Star Trek fans agree on anything.

But... if it was becoming a generic action franchise, it would still be better than most of the last ten years of Berman's run. In my opinion.

 

[Franklin]

They survived, or at least one of them did. You can see "Cupcake" appear well after Khan was brought in his cell.

Ah. Thanks.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

But... if it was becoming a generic action franchise, it would still be better than most of the last ten years of Berman's run. In my opinion.

DS9 is so much better, but I do agree that after that show ended it went off the rails. ENT picked up in its later seasons, but as they say, too little too late. When it comes to VOY and these new films, it's just a matter of them being bad on different levels, rather than one being better than the other.

 

[BillJ]

DS9 is so much better, but I do agree that after that show ended it went off the rails. ENT picked up in its later seasons, but as they say, too little too late. When it comes to VOY and these new films, it's just a matter of them being bad on different levels, rather than one being better than the other.

Deep Space Nine had some really outstanding episodes. But overall I felt its ratio of good-to-bad episodes was the worst of any of the series.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Really? I thought it was the most consistently good of all the shows, right above TOS (I'd rank it higher, but S3 really went through a bad batch). Unlike all the spin-offs, it actually has a solid start, though nothing great compared to what came after.

 

[BillJ]

Really? I thought it was the most consistently good of all the shows, right above TOS (I'd rank it higher, but S3 really went through a bad batch). Unlike all the spin-offs, it actually has a solid start, though nothing great compared to what came after.

Just way too many episodes that felt like filler.

But I'm proud that the Star Trek universe has room for all kinds of stories, even the ones I don't particularly like.