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One and Done: Improve the movie with one suggestion

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.

This! This would have made Kirk's promotion to Captain make so much more sense.
 
I really do wonder how much the Writer's Strike ultimately interfered with the film, and I sometimes think people forget that it occurred.

Not that much I'm betting. Filming went on as normal. Anything that was that important or needed changed possibly could have been done when the strike was over.
 
Yeah, there's never been any indication that the strike affecte the film, except for one story from the picket line about Abrams telling another writer that he'd come up with a line of dialogue on the set that he couldn't use because it would have violated the strike.

IIRC the unusable line was McCoy saying to Kirk "Well, Jim, after serving for six years on other starships including the Farragut, here you are back at Command to receive a formal commendation for saving Earth back when you were a cadet. Damn all bureaucrats and red tape."
 
^ :lol: Damn strike.

It's a shame he didn't work in something about the mind meld sequence being figurative.
 
If the story about that McCoy line is true, I'm glad it wasn't in the film because I think it really would have been a "WTF?!" moment, and would have left me scratching my head at the end.
 
I would change two things:

1. Nero would be played by Sting.

2. Spock's name would be changed to "Spunk".
 
The USS Kelvin and its guts would look nearly identical to the TOS Enterprise. The same pastel painted plywood looking interior. Identical orange glow-y hubcap on the warp nacelle. Music from the original series would play over the establishing shot of the Kelvin. It would even open with Robau doing a Log Entry. And then they run into the Narada and everything gets blasted all to hell. That's my favorite part of this idea. Lovingly recreate something so many people are familiar with and then destroy it.
 
Pastel painted?

Are you sure that's what you meant?

TOS Enterprise was many things colorwise but I don't think pastel was one of them.
 
The USS Kelvin and its guts would look nearly identical to the TOS Enterprise. The same pastel painted plywood looking interior. Identical orange glow-y hubcap on the warp nacelle. Music from the original series would play over the establishing shot of the Kelvin. It would even open with Robau doing a Log Entry. And then they run into the Narada and everything gets blasted all to hell. That's my favorite part of this idea. Lovingly recreate something so many people are familiar with and then destroy it.


You just ruined the only thing people universally agree on here (see: First 10 Minutes thread) in a fashion I find truly cringe worthy.



-Withers-​
 
Pastel painted?

Are you sure that's what you meant?

TOS Enterprise was many things colorwise but I don't think pastel was one of them.
They definitely weren't pastel colors -- much bolder than that.

The real problem with that idea, however (and that has been suggested here before, more than once) was that the writers at one point actually were toying with the idea of destroying the Enterprise and were told "don't do that":

Kurtzman: [...] At one point, we were bandying around the idea of destroying the Enterprise mid-battle.
Orci: That was actually the only time the studio even put the brakes on us. "Please don't destroy the Enterprise." We said "Okay, you're right. Vulcan, fine. Enterprise, no."
I think that reaction from the studio would probably have been extended to a ship which looked just like the TOS Enterprise; even if it were to be represented as a different ship, it would have been nearly the same, symbolically, and the studio knew it.
 
I think that reaction from the studio would probably have been extended to a ship which looked just like the TOS Enterprise; even if it were to be represented as a different ship, it would have been nearly the same, symbolically, and the studio knew it.
If they had made the Kelvin look exactly like the TOS Enterprise my complaint would have been "How the hell did Starfleet go from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory to the inside of an Apple store in 20 years?" It would have been visually ridiculous. I'm glad the studio said "No" to blowing up Enterprise though. That would have been silly (as the intent would be to garner an emotional reaction about a ship people wouldn't be invested in enough to care about really. There's been no series featuring that particular Enterprise so blowing it up would have been... pointless.)


-Withers-​
 
As an artist I sometimes use pastel chalk when I want to add color. Everytime I watch TOS andsee he walls of the ship I think "I have that exact shade of blue in my set."
 
In the bar fight scene Kirk gets in a groin kick at the end, instead of being beaten totally helpless.

Oh, and lose the frickin' lens flares.
 
I really liked the film and most of my tweaks would be little fanwanky scifi and military nerd things, but why not:

1) A line of dialogue that suggests the Narada was being repaired and refit in those long 25 years (since people seem so obsessed with this mystery.)

2) after their confrontation, Spock first orders Kirk to be thrown in the brig. When McCoy informs him that the brig was destroyed in the attack, Spock says "Very well" and the next shot is of the escape pod being launched. (My reasoning - marooning seemed a little daft as a first resort, even for young angry Spock.)

3) the planet Kirk lands on is announced to be T'Kuht, sister world of Vulcan. (Just as fanwanky as Delta Vega, plus it actually makes some modicum of sense!)

4) Spock recalls how the Hoban star threatened Romulus (not the whole galaxy). While he was on the way with his ship, the Romulan military attempted its own solution - which resulted in the warp-speed shockwave we see in the film. (it would be foolish to include the technobabble in dialogue, but I would have used the VFX for subspace weapons, thereby ensuring some ubergeek could earn cred by comparing screenshots to INS.)

5) Others already suggested something along these lines, but I'd do it like this; when Kirk offers Nero rescue, the Narada reaches out with those big metal tentacles and tries to pull the ship in with it. (Come on, wouldn't it be nice if those things actually did something? Plus the visual is nice.)

6) I really would have preferred Kirk to be first officer under Pike, but I do sympathize with the studio's desire to make him captain. A little fig leaf would have been nice, though - perhaps the Starfleet brass do it on Spock Prime's specific recommendation. "Alright, we did what you wanted. Now, tell us about this V'ger thing..."
 
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I really liked the film and most of my tweaks would be little fanwanky scifi and military nerd things, but why not:

1) A line of dialogue that suggests the Narada was being repaired and refit in those long 25 years (since people seem so obsessed with this mystery.)

2) after their confrontation, Spock first orders Kirk to be thrown in the brig. When McCoy informs him that the brig was destroyed in the attack, Spock says "Very well" and the next shot is of the escape pod being launched. (My reasoning - marooning seemed a little daft as a first resort, even for young angry Spock.)

3) the planet Kirk lands on is announced to be T'Kuht, sister world of Vulcan. (Just as fanwanky as Delta Vega, plus it actually makes some modicum of sense!)

4) Spock recalls how the Hoban star threatened Romulus (not the whole galaxy). While he was on the way with his ship, the Romulan military attempted its own solution - which resulted in the warp-speed shockwave we see in the film. (it would be foolish to include the technobabble in dialogue, but I would have used the VFX for subspace weapons, thereby ensuring some ubergeek could earn cred by comparing screenshots to INS.)

5) Others already suggested something along these lines, but I'd do it like this; when Kirk offers Nero rescue, the Narada reaches out with those big metal tentacles and tries to pull the ship in with it. (Come on, wouldn't it be nice if those things actually did something? Plus the visual is nice.)

6) I really would have preferred Kirk to be first officer under Pike, but I do sympathize with the studio's desire to make him captain. A little fig leaf would have been nice, though - perhaps the Starfleet brass do it on Spock Prime's specific recommendation. "Alright, we did what you wanted. Now, tell us about this V'ger thing..."

As an addendum to yours, and probably many other suggestion I would say: Make the movie at least forty minutes longer.
 
The rules of the game are ONE suggestion to improve the movie. This ain't the Kobayashi Maru, so stop cheating!

My one suggestion: Change how/why Kirk ends up on Delta Vega. It was silly to throw him in an escape pod instead of just tossing him in the brig and forgetting about him.
 
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.


No. I hate this suggestion. I love Kirkbrashly saying "hit em with everything we got. Sure, Trek is all about optimism and hating your enemies, but this is also Krik, and you really want him to be as bad ass a character as when he starte d(even considering that he did try to offer to help). To do this suggestion would castrate the whole film.
 
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