Orci & Kurtzman on plot holes
- Thread starter Thrawn
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Its not a fan thing. I like to watch movies which makes sense, with clear character motivations and have good storylines. Its the difference between a great movie and an average one.
That would make sense except that the writers are on record as saying that the jump in Starfleet tech is due to reverse engineered technology from scanning the Narada. So, I guess, in this film universe, they can get a damaged 747 running.
Keep in mind that the writers aren't going to be doing the "Get A Life" stick at a fan event.
Obviously there was some important things they wanted to accomplish (reset timeline at Kirk's birth), and everything else is more-or-less handwaving. The 25 lost years was an obvious flaw in the storyline, but IMO five minutes of screentime would not have fixed it. From the film's standpoint, it's actually better that they just ignored it.
Obviously there was some important things they wanted to accomplish (reset timeline at Kirk's birth), and everything else is more-or-less handwaving. The 25 lost years was an obvious flaw in the storyline, but IMO five minutes of screentime would not have fixed it. From the film's standpoint, it's actually better that they just ignored it.
That's a good way of putting it.
I got the feeling from this movie that they'd worked all of this out, knew the reasons behind everything, but simply removed a lot of the infodumping for the sake of streamlining the movie. And most of the cuts they made really feel like good ones to me; I'd much rather just watch Pine and the other actors' reactions during the Kobayashi Maru than get a cut off to another scene explaining how it happened, for instance.
Or, to put it another way, the movie suspended my disbelief well enough for me to accept that "how it happened" was explainable, even if not explained, and let me just concentrate on the character arcs. Where I think this movie really just sang.
This interview still doesn't address what I thought was the biggest plot hole: Why was the Federation's primary fleet engaged in the Laurentian system instead of responding to Vulcan's distress call?
That seems like the single most important question that was not addressed in the film.
"Star Trek XI" is simply the 736th episode in an ongoing series that involves time travel. It is not ignoring any past episodes; it is continuing the story of Spock, and all of his memories are still intact as he continues to live out his life in this new timeline, just as Lt. Yar continued to live in the new timeline after "Yesterday's Enterprise," and Picard continued to live in the new timeline after "Star Trek Generations," and Admiral Janeway continued to live in the new timeline in "Endgame."
Many previous episodes have dealt with changing the past. Nothing new happened in this movie that hasn't been shown in half a dozen other "Star Trek" episodes. It is neither a prequel nor a re-boot. It is simply another alternate-timeline-resulting-from-time-travel story.
I thought "Battlestar Galactica" stood on its own, and ended pretty much how I expected it to five years ago (although I had predicted dinosaurs, but I wasn't too far off).
I really don't need any interviews or podcasts with the writers to enjoy these series.
Obviously, some important scenes were lost in editing, and I think a three-hour director's cut of "Star Trek XI" on DVD would be even better than the theatrical release. (Unlike "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," which can only be improved by making it shorter.)
Obviously, in all movies, the editors get paid to delete a bunch of important stuff that the writers were paid to add in. (Everything in a script is important to the writers.) You can't blame the writers for that. It happens in all movies. Very seldom do the editors say, "This movie's too short. Let's make up some more scenes!"
There are many episodes of "Trek" where I would like to talk to the writers and editors and ask them what the heck they were thinking (e.g., "The Alternative Factor"), but this movie came out pretty well and pretty much stands on its own.
If people are confused by time travel, then they should not go to see this movie, or "The Terminator," or "Back to the Future," or any other time travel movie. Whether the writers personally explain it to them wouldn't make much difference.
That seems like the single most important question that was not addressed in the film.
You are making the mistake of comparing this to "Casino Royale" or "Batman Begins," which ignore all previous films in the series and start an entirely new series.
"Star Trek XI" is simply the 736th episode in an ongoing series that involves time travel. It is not ignoring any past episodes; it is continuing the story of Spock, and all of his memories are still intact as he continues to live out his life in this new timeline, just as Lt. Yar continued to live in the new timeline after "Yesterday's Enterprise," and Picard continued to live in the new timeline after "Star Trek Generations," and Admiral Janeway continued to live in the new timeline in "Endgame."
Many previous episodes have dealt with changing the past. Nothing new happened in this movie that hasn't been shown in half a dozen other "Star Trek" episodes. It is neither a prequel nor a re-boot. It is simply another alternate-timeline-resulting-from-time-travel story.
I think the movie stood on its own, and as a longtime "Star Trek" and time-travel fan, I didn't have any major problems with it.
I thought "Battlestar Galactica" stood on its own, and ended pretty much how I expected it to five years ago (although I had predicted dinosaurs, but I wasn't too far off).
I really don't need any interviews or podcasts with the writers to enjoy these series.
Obviously, some important scenes were lost in editing, and I think a three-hour director's cut of "Star Trek XI" on DVD would be even better than the theatrical release. (Unlike "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," which can only be improved by making it shorter.)
startrekwatcher, if you were a film editor, then all movies would be four hours long.
Obviously, in all movies, the editors get paid to delete a bunch of important stuff that the writers were paid to add in. (Everything in a script is important to the writers.) You can't blame the writers for that. It happens in all movies. Very seldom do the editors say, "This movie's too short. Let's make up some more scenes!"
There are many episodes of "Trek" where I would like to talk to the writers and editors and ask them what the heck they were thinking (e.g., "The Alternative Factor"), but this movie came out pretty well and pretty much stands on its own.
If people are confused by time travel, then they should not go to see this movie, or "The Terminator," or "Back to the Future," or any other time travel movie. Whether the writers personally explain it to them wouldn't make much difference.
Personally I didn't care all that much about Jim Kirk's mum been on the Kelvin, but "alluded to" is a bit strong for that line. They could have just said, she was a passenger at the time when the Kelvin gets diverted or in the movie say that she is in Starfleet.
Yes, because travelling through black holes is all the rage in the 24th century. So are black holes now "wormholes"? I prefer to just believe Kirk did it for revenge, pure and simple.
I'd reason that such an analogy doesn't work.
As 1884 persons have know knowledge of how aviation works so, yeah, they'd be lost.
However, Romulans of the 23rd century would have *some* knowledge of how intragalactic travel works and it could be argued that by the 23rd century technology has grown so advanced it simply stops growing exponetially and slows to a crawl. Look at us, we've been using ICs for fifty years now. It may take him a while, but someone from 1960 should be able to figure out how a computer from 2000 works. Because the technology is pretty much the same.
Only that it would be pretty hard to find a non-destructive analysis method, using only 1960s technology, to even discern what this strange black block of plastic and silicon really does, and how.
S
Stone_Cold_Sisko
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That's not a plot hole. That's a contrivance. Actually pretty different things in a dramatic writing sense. A plot hole would be if they never put the line about the Laurentian system in the movie in the first place, and you were wondering "where the hell is the rest of the Federation's fleet??? why isn't anyone else helping?"
To be fair they did send like 7 ships or so, which is no small amount of starships. At least the Ent wasn't the only one sent like we've seen so often.
So why not cut the goddamn Hoth monster chase scene and leave some story in?
The only plot hole I care about (and that can't be explained away by cut footage) is Kirk and Scotty beaming from Delta Vega to the Enterprise. That was just a dumb oversight.
That capability may come back to bite them in the backside, I was thinking. They may need something less than Scotty's "miracle-worker" capabilities for the story sometime.
^^
How is their beaming from Delta Vega to the ship a plot hole? They set it up, they carried it through, and there they were, as planned; not a plot hole in any sense of the words. It may be a technological stretch, but at least they set up that Scotty knew how to beam across vast distances, and Spock gave him his own future self's equation for the 'at-warp' portion of the exercise. Of anything in the film, this was probably the best-covered contrivance. It's nothing compared to Kirk, Spock and Scotty all miraculously meeting up on a planet that was somehow moved from the edge of the galaxy to somewhere near enough to Vulcan to practically make it a moon.
How is their beaming from Delta Vega to the ship a plot hole? They set it up, they carried it through, and there they were, as planned; not a plot hole in any sense of the words. It may be a technological stretch, but at least they set up that Scotty knew how to beam across vast distances, and Spock gave him his own future self's equation for the 'at-warp' portion of the exercise. Of anything in the film, this was probably the best-covered contrivance. It's nothing compared to Kirk, Spock and Scotty all miraculously meeting up on a planet that was somehow moved from the edge of the galaxy to somewhere near enough to Vulcan to practically make it a moon.
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