One and Done: Improve the movie with one suggestion

[Withers]

“Nothing is so great someone somewhere won't hate it... and vise versa.”


I'm not sure who said that but whatever the case that's a pretty fair approximation of what we have going on over this film, right? Okay, so we all know there are people who love it absolutely and find nothing wrong with it at all whatsoever. (They exist.) We also know there are people who hate it and find pretty much nothing right about it. (They exist too.) In the middle are the rest of us who have our lists of things that made it great and, conversely, things that made it bad. So my idea for a thread was, regardless of which side of the fence you are on, to name the one thing that could have made this movie better.


If you liked it, what was the one thing it was missing that could have made you love it? If you hated it what one thing would have made you hate it less or even like it?


I, personally, fall in the middle and don't regard this film as the savior or the damnation of the franchise. I enjoyed it... but I had a lot of problems with it too. So the one thing that would have moved me from the the “meh” camp... was the villain.


Why does Star Trek have such a hard time producing decent movie villains? They manage it on the series so why do they botch it more often than not in the films? In my opinion they've managed to get the villain character right three times; Kahn, Chang, and the Borg Queen (and she just barely makes the list.) The rest of the villains range from 'Whatever, necessary evil' to straight up 'Emo kids pose more of a threat' villains. Nero struck me as suffering from some sort of mental deficiency. They just had to give him a fanboy ship (ya know, weird and creepy looking, armed to teeth, able to kick ass and take names blah blah blah) and tattoos... it was all very forced, including his motives.


So, for me, the one thing they could have changed to move me from the “meh” to the “It's gold!” camp was the villain. Hopefully for the next film they'll have someone with a little more gravitas as the villain. (If you're a Lost fan it's clear that group of people knows how to put a decent villain together. See: Elizabeth Mitchel as Juliet in her first season.)

What about you?

-Withers-​

 

[Kelso]

I'd change it so that drunken Kirk was a former Starfleet officer who left the service after some big Farragut-style disaster. Pike encourages him to re-enlist and go through three years of command school instead of wasting his potential.

 

[shapeshifter]

I would not have approved the Enterprise design as is. Bleech!!!

 

[Nerys Myk]

Time jump at the end "X years later".

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Zoe Saldana: Full Frontal Nudity.

 

[Geckothan]

Less retarded story with less silly plot points.

 

[DonIago]

Good to see this thread's already about blasting the film rather than positive suggestions...

Sigh.

While I feel the movie is clearly overrated, I think fans owe a lot to it for making Star Trek "cool" again after years of decline, and I wonder how many would -really- prefer there be no visual franchise left at all.

Here's a simple one - I wish the set design had been better/that they'd had a bigger budget to use for it.

 

[Amaris]

Zoe Saldana: Full Frontal Nudity.

This is a terrific suggestion.
My own is similar, except it also involves a nude Rachel Nichols as Gaila, and a fifth of Romulan ale.

 

[Kirk1980]

New writers and director.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'd have banned all the whiny little people who are still crying about the brewery, the look of the ship, the supernova and everything else from ever getting to see it. Didn't like it? Fine. Still going on about how "wrong" it all was 10 months later as if your life depended on it? Begone!

 

[Pauln6]

I liked the film too, although there were a number of small changes I would have made. I don't think they would have made the film more or less enjoyable overall for most people but could have made it more internally consistent and a bit more enjoyable for me personally. Because they are small tweaks, I can't cite just one though. Overall, I would argue that instead of changing established Trek tech/science/protocols to fit the plot they should have changed plot to fit the Trek tech/science/protocols.

This is a summary of the tweaks I'd have made:

1. Make the movie less sexist by featuring more women in more diverse roles. Have some women involved in the bar fight, injure Number One at Vulcan to make way for Spock and Kirk, involve T'Pau in the evacuation of Vulcan, use Rand in the transporter scene and save Chekov for the sequel.

2. Kirk buzzes past the Enterprise in spacedock while on a transport as a teenager. I know this has been done before but his rebel without a clue image can be established without the the motorcycle rider without a helmet 'cos I is rough and tough' scene and building the ship on Earth makes less sense.

3. Establish a realistic transit time to and from Vulcan of about a day at high warp - this gives the Narada a realistic time to overcome ships and planetary defences while drilling to the core of a planet, which should not be a simple or speedy task.

4. Establish in a line of dialogue that the Narada suffered damage from the Vulcan planetary defences to justify its slow pace to Earth later on but don't forget how warp speed works - if the ships are too slow it will take weeks to reach Earth.

5. Beam Kirk to the brig of the starfleet outpost on Delta Vega with Rand to supervise him so he can be released by Spock Prime who has already been working with Scotty to modify the transporters for longer range warp speed transport (to get onto the Narada). The scene between Kirk and Spock can play out the same but it is less contrived than stumbling across him in some random cave and the reduced time frame if you remove the trek across the snow lets them beam back to the Enterprise while she is still relatively close by rather than light years away. Janice has to make a choice to follow orders or support Kirk, thus setting her up for her future role as his gal friday.

6. Use the cgi beast when Kirk has to go outside to work on some kind of power conduit that has failed (been chewed etc). Put Keenser in a red shirt here...

7. Transport Kirk and Spock across to the Narada with some security guards, including some women (see above). Tactically beaming over on their own is such a poor decision. It isn't necessary to kill every guard either, some can just be injured.

8. No snogging on the transporter pad while on duty.

9. Establish a line of dialogue to clarify the nature of the supernova and red matter with some plausible made up phenomena that isn't too complicated for the divvies even if this is just an explanation that (as was suggested on another thread) alien technology used to extend a star's life malfunctioned and then exploded in some kind of faster than light shock wave.

10. Show Enterprise attempting to rescue Nero's crew at the end (but unable to do so due to gravitational forces). If you really want Kirk to kill the crew then show Nero preparing to detonate his engines in the hope of taking Enterprise with him. The summary execution of helpless enemy combatants is a rather nasty scene that needs to die.

11. Promote Kirk to Lt-commander and give him a commendation. Set him up as first officer on a ship with a cocky, 'I'll be back' line. Spock Prime acknowledges that he is back on his true path and show him becoming captain of the Enterprise a few years later in the opening scene of the sequel.

I think those are the main changes. Nothing too great but I would have scratched my head less often.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'd have banned all the whiny little people who are still crying about the brewery, the look of the ship, the supernova and everything else from ever getting to see it.

Hey, their money funds the sequel just like ours. Let's not cut off our noses to spite our faces.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I'd change it so that drunken Kirk was a former Starfleet officer who left the service after some big Farragut-style disaster. Pike encourages him to re-enlist and go through three years of command school instead of wasting his potential.

I like this idea. It would still fit within the movie's storyline without the need to severely alter the scenes before and after Pike's pep talk at the Iowa Bar.

 

[M'Sharak]

I'd have banned all the whiny little people who are still crying about the brewery, the look of the ship, the supernova and everything else from ever getting to see it. Didn't like it? Fine. Still going on about how "wrong" it all was 10 months later as if your life depended on it? Begone!

Come on, let's stick to improving the movie and not get into trying to fix the fanbase.

 

[Sabataage]

Put an Andorian somewhere. Anywhere. Bridge officer on the Kelvin, one of the Admirals in Kirk's tribunal, a random crewmember walking past for only a second.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Mr Arex! This film would have been slightly better if the great Mr Arex were in it.

Here's hoping for the sequel...

 

[Warped9]

Two things. Firstly If they really had to have the whole familiar gang together then they could easily have done it while still doing a reboot.

First: ditch the Starfleet Academy lite sequences, because make no mistake that hoary old idea that's been floated for years finally got put to the screen albeit in something of a drastically abbreviated form.

Second: Start off with transfer of command from Pike to Kirk and the beginning of the 5-year voyage. At that point you start seeing the frictions between Kirk, Spock and McCoy. It's a reboot so you can sidestep Gary Mitchell, Dr. Piper, Elizabeth Dehner and even Lee Kelso if you want. If you absolutely must then you can shoehorn in some occasional flashbacks for extra character backstory.

Third: Now you can insert Nero and his badass ship appearing from the future. I'm sure you can shoehorn a Spock Prime in there if you really have to.

Setting the story at this point clearly establishes an alternate continuity without hammering us over the head with it. There, without really trying this thing makes more sense already and without trying to put across quite as many logic flaws (although I'm sure Abrams and company could think up more )

 

[T'Girl]

Gaila, have her wear GREEN lip stick.

Brief lines:
------------------------------
Spock: "While I'm down on the surface, beam up as many people from Vulcan as you can, use all transporter rooms, pack the corridors."
-----------------------------
KIRK: (Doesn't say) "You got it. Arm phasers, fire everything we got."
-----------------------------
Spock: "Have Lt. Kirk ejected from the ship."
Guard: "In a escape pod sir?"
Spock: **cough** "Yes. Of course. In a escape pod."
-----------------------------

 

[Kirk1980]

Warped and T'Girl, nicely done posts all

 

[F. King Daniel]

You're 100% right about Vulcan, T'Girl - they should have been constantly beaming random Vulcans off the surface from the second they realized what Nero was doing.