ST09 critics, why don't you like it?

[Warped9]

Here is the sounding board for the critics and dissenters of Abrams' film. Here is where you can state why you don't like the film.

Please be as clear as you can and don't pull punches. That said, just saying "It sucked" isn't a reasonable criticism. Please try to articulate what you didn't like.

Also, will the film's fans please let the dissenters have their say and not argue. Allow the dissenters to speak freely.

My idea with these twin threads is to try to air both sides and hopefully clear some unfair generalizations away.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Dont we have a million threads covering this ( and the other side) with punches not pulled? Whats to be accomplished here? (and there?)

 

[Withers]

Wouldn't the converse of the other thread be asking the critics why people who liked the film liked it?

I understand the point of the other one but this one... I feel like this is every thread that has ever been made by anyone who has something they object to about the film. "Why they don't like it" is in the title of half of the threads in this forum. Why post it here?

-Withers-​

 

[Warped9]

Wouldn't the converse of the other thread be asking the critics why people who liked the film liked it?

I understand the point of the other one but this one... I feel like this is every thread that has ever been made by anyone who has something they object to about the film. "Why they don't like it" is in the title of half of the threads in this forum. Why post it here?

-Withers-​

Because as I said in the other thread this forum is brimming with those stating why they liked the film. But if you feel so strongly about it then feel free to start such a thread.

 

[The Wormhole]

It just wasn't that good a movie. Oh sure, it has entertainment value and prevents boredom for two hours, but that does not make it a good movie. It's basically a generic dumb action flick. It blends in with all the other popular movies but does not in any way feel like Star Trek. There are also various other concerns regarding story logic (Kirk's rapid promotion, the whole Nero being idle for 25 years thing) but the bottom line is, it was not a good movie. It catered to the lowest common denminator of the moviegoing audience and it was not really Star Trek.

I'm sorry if you think that's an elitist Trekkie viewpoint, but that's who I am and that's how I see it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Wouldn't the converse of the other thread be asking the critics why people who liked the film liked it?

I understand the point of the other one but this one... I feel like this is every thread that has ever been made by anyone who has something they object to about the film. "Why they don't like it" is in the title of half of the threads in this forum. Why post it here?

-Withers-​

Because as I said in the other thread this forum is brimming with those stating why they liked the film. But if you feel so strongly about it then feel free to start such a thread.

Its also brimming with people who didnt like the film and have clearly stated why. Pick a thread and dive in.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It just wasn't that good a movie. Oh sure, it has entertainment value and prevents boredom for two hours, but that does not make it a good movie. It's basically a generic dumb action flick. It blends in with all the other popular movies but does not in any way feel like Star Trek. There are also various other concerns regarding story logic (Kirk's rapid promotion, the whole Nero being idle for 25 years thing) but the bottom line is, it was not a good movie. It catered to the lowest common denminator of the moviegoing audience and it was not really Star Trek.

I'm sorry if you think that's an elitist Trekkie viewpoint, but that's who I am and that's how I see it.

Whats "really Star Trek"? I think the answer to varies from viewer to viewer.

Oh sure, it has entertainment value and prevents boredom for two hours, ... It's basically a generic dumb action flick

Thats pretty much very Trek film from TWOK on.

 

[TOS Purist]

It catered to the lowest common denminator of the moviegoing audience and it was not really Star Trek.

First off, I LOVE your avatar.

Second, I agree totally with what you said. It wasn't even meant to be real Trek, which is one of the reasons I hated it. They didn't make ANY of the characters even remotely similar to their "real" (TOS) counterparts (not counting their names or ethnic identity). Kirk was nothing like the TOS Kirk. Spock...was a mess. Uhura was a bitch. I know, I know, there's the whole "alternate timeline" excuse, but that's one of the things I hated about the movie. If they wanted to use their brains and make a great, intellegent movie (but still fun and action-packed, like TOS episodes), they could have done that. But you have to remember that "Star Trek 2009" was written by the same low-brow idiots who brought us the "Transformer" film travesties.

Not only was the whole concept flawed, but I HATED the way it looked. I always say that if you change the look of something, keep the spirit the same, and if you change the spirit of something, keep the look the same. They did neither, and there was no reason to change the way things looked as much as they did. Honestly, besides the uniforms, was there ANYTHING in that film that was recognizable as TOS? For example, is there any aspect of the way the film looked that you could see it and say, "Oh yeah, that's TOS." I'm not saying that the sets had to look exactly the same; sure, it would have been awesome if they had worked from the TOS sets and "amped them up" for the big screen by adding details, that we could just say were always there but we just couldn't see them on TV. And the crappy thing is that Abrams led us along, claiming that very same thing - although the finished product (when finally revealed) was horrendous.

And the thing is, the only people who care about the way something looks is the fans. The precious "non-fans" that they tried so desperately to appeal to don't care what the sets look like. All the average moviegoer cares about is what happens ON the sets. Hell, they could have used sets that looked exactly like the ones from TOS, and as long as they had the same amount of fighting, punching, and explosions (and shaky-cam), the average moviegoer wouldn't have liked it any less. They aren't going to not take the film serious if the Bridge doesn't have a red floor, or endless spotlights, or pointless glass floor-length computer terminals in the middle of the Bridge. So why add those?

If only they had applied the same design aestetic that they used for the uniforms to the rest of the film.

 

[The Wormhole]

[They didn't make ANY of the characters even remotely similar to their "real" (TOS) counterparts (not counting their names or ethnic identity). Kirk was nothing like the TOS Kirk. Spock...was a mess. Uhura was a bitch.

The problem I had with the characters is that the movie presented caricatures of the TOS cast. Most notably Scotty was strictly a comedic character here and Chekov's reversal of Vs and Ws was overdone. McCoy being a hypochondriac was unnecessary as was Space Samurai Sulu. It's as though the writers simply copied aspects of the characters while ignoring the essence of the characters. In TOS, Scotty was actually a serious character who just happened to also be funny. Chekov's VW reversal was not focused on until Trek IV, which is partly why the Nuclear Wessel thing is so memorable. McCoy may have been in your face in regards to his concerns, but he never went on like he did in the shuttle to the Academy. And aside from The Naked Time, there was no indication that Sulu was into swords.

The sad thing here is that the actors themselves were fine and probably could have done a decent job portraying the characters had they been written better than they were.

Honestly, besides the uniforms, was there ANYTHING in that film that was recognizable as TOS? For example, is there any aspect of the way the film looked that you could see it and say, "Oh yeah, that's TOS." I'm not saying that the sets had to look exactly the same; sure, it would have been awesome if they had worked from the TOS sets and "amped them up" for the big screen by adding details, that we could just say were always there but we just couldn't see them on TV. And the crappy thing is that Abrams led us along, claiming that very same thing - although the finished product (when finally revealed) was horrendous.

And the thing is, the only people who care about the way something looks is the fans. The precious "non-fans" that they tried so desperately to appeal to don't care what the sets look like. All the average moviegoer cares about is what happens ON the sets. Hell, they could have used sets that looked exactly like the ones from TOS, and as long as they had the same amount of fighting, punching, and explosions (and shaky-cam), the average moviegoer wouldn't have liked it any less. They aren't going to not take the film serious if the Bridge doesn't have a red floor, or endless spotlights, or pointless glass floor-length computer terminals in the middle of the Bridge. So why add those?

In light of everything that did get changed for the movie, the fact they kept the uniforms so similar was just jarring and looked really out of place.

And in regards to the bridge, it was just a terrible looking set. It was flashy just for the sake of being flashy.What makes things worse is that Abrams and his Cohorts actually know how to do a decent starship bridge. The Kelvin bridge was actually a far better rendition of a traditional Starfleet bridge done for a modern movie screen than the nuEnterprise.

 

[Geckothan]

Absolutely ridiculous story.

 

[Warped9]

One complaint (I'm only offering up one at this point) is that I felt it was something of a half-hearted reboot. If they had really gone whole hog and side-stepped the whole alternate timeline shtick with a "Spock Prime" and just did a reinterpreted Trek that was roughly analogous to the TOS era then I might have been inclined to be somewhat more forgiving. But to me it felt as if they wanted to be both connected to TOS and divorced from TOS simultaneously. They wanted to be "not your grandfather's Trek" and yet not gutsy enough to really go the distance.

I have to agree with an earlier poster who said he didn't think it was a good movie. Setting aside the Trek aspect of it I, too, thought of it as just another silly action flick. The characters were caricatures of the familiar roles and without any of the genuine warmth of the originals. The '80s films got away with a lot of silliness I didn't really care for because of the strength of the cast in their familiar roles. It was their charm that lifted the materiel above what it was most of the time. But ST09 (for me) didn't have that because the characters were not the familiar ones but in name only.

It has been cited often enough that previous films and episodes have had logic flaws of their own, and that is quite true. Many around here are already quite familiar with my criticisms of arguably the most popular of Trek films, TWoK. But again TWoK succeeds (to an extent) because of the cast's performances and a decent balance of drama and action and appropriate touches of humour. But ST09 struck me as in the mold of very contemporary action flicks where hyper-paced action and f/x are pretty much all it's got going for it. The moment you really start to think about it the holes start piling up fast and furious.

One of the things I loved about TOS was what I saw as layering. Even being very familiar with each episode I somehow always managed to find something else to appreciate. An episode could be enjoyed strictly for its sci-fi visual spectacle and adventure. And then often enough a story could be enjoyed for the performance of the cast. And then it might be enjoyed for some conceptual idea that was being explored. And it might be enjoyed for some added tidbit that fleshed out the setting a little more. And then there'd be something else, and something else, and something else... And to similar extent this is why I get some enjoyment out of some of the films because I can see something else there that has just enough resonance with what I loved about TOS. And this is also true of some TNG and DS9 episodes I've liked along the way.

But I don't get that with Abrams' film. To me it looks barely passably familiar and yet I see next to nothing of what I loved about the original subject matter. In all fairness it's difficult to say what I'd think if Abrams' film was my very first exposure to Trek.

It's also been often said that dissenters dislike some things just because it's new. There may be people like that, but I can say for myself that I've seen new versions of things that I think a distinctly superior in some way or another over their predecessors. I like Peter Jackson's King Kong. It doesn't invalidate my appreciation of the original 1933 film, but I think Jackson fleshed things out better and gave Kong something he didn't have before: genuine character and perhaps even a soul. And he crafted a genuine connection between Ann Darrow and Kong where none existed before. I like Casino Royale and Daniel Craig's portrayal of Bond. The whole Bond world has been updated and it feels right the way it hasn't really since the early 1960s. And in some ways it's better. Live-action Batman has never been done as well as recently with Chris Nolan at the helm. Even the 1989 film, which was a huge step up, isn't on the same level. And Batman in animation has never been done as well as with the early '90s TAS. I'd also argue that Superman is being done better in animation than he's ever been done live-action.

TOS had its failings and missteps. But what I generally remember of TOS is that it often tried to aim higher. And that's a big complaint I have of Abrams' film. I think they took the cheap and easy way rather than honestly trying to go for something that, while looking different and updated, still resonated with TOS at its best rather than TOS at its most mediocre or worst.

I run the risk of offending some with my next remarks, but in all honesty I have to say them. My observation of many who have liked this film (and I'm referring to first hand observations and not just readings posts here) are that it appeals on a superficial level. Most of the people I've encountered don't have that deep an appreciation of TOS as some of those I've seen here on this board. Most enjoyed it in a generally straightforward manner of lightly engaging entertainment. And so Abrams' film has just enough to remind them of what they got out of TOS.

But for me it's not enough. I do see something deeper in TOS and that's the expectation I bring to anything new connected to Star Trek. And that is where I feel much of this film falls down. It's ambitions were very modest to say the least. I look at every aspect of the movie and see where it could have been done much better, and I'm not referring to just slavishly adhering to what TOS already did.

 

[CaptainStoner]

Absolutely ridiculous story.

It was. There were a lot of things I liked about the film, but ultimately it suffers from stupid writing. There's a lot I can give a pass to. Chubby nacelles, lens flares, budweiser engineering, Sulu's katana. Kewl and/or cheesy stuff, but none of it would have mattered so much with a better story.
My main criticisms were:

a) lack of emotional impact to the destruction of Vulcan. cut scene? I felt almost nothing, except a vague feeling of helplessness from Nimoy Spock. But even his reaction seemed muted.
b) Nero, his crew, and yet another fanboy villain's ship.
c) Insta-Captain!(tm) Just add cadet, water, and stir!
d) Scotty was a total miss for me.
e) nuKirk meeting Nimoy Spock. I wonder, did they even try to write a plausible way of this happening? They might as well have had Kirk rescued by a unicorn, who then brings him to Spock.
f) just the fact that this was yet another Trek film where they had to stop the bad guy from killing a planet or its people. Does nothing else ever happen in space anymore?
g) I can understand avoiding technobabble, but did they even try to explain this going through black holes business? You use red matter, I guess.

Even with all of this, it's not that I don't like the movie. Like Kirk having a bridge thrown on top of him, and then his body left for animals to snack on, it was...fun.

 

[Shaw]

From the out set I'm going to state that I liked the movie. I'm not a fan of the movie, I saw it twice in the theaters but still haven't gotten a copy of the DVD yet. Not having the DVD isn't saying much, I only have TWoK and Nemesis on DVD (and Nemesis was given to me). I liked it because I didn't go in expecting anything and I wasn't disappointed.

That having been said, I can tell you why it didn't grab me and hold my attention the way TOS or other films (like Avatar or Moon from last year) did... it lacked verisimilitude. It isn't a requirement of films (or TV series), and plenty of films (and TV series) have been extremely successful without making any attempts at having verisimilitude.

I see that as the makers not really caring about either the material or the audience, which is fine. I didn't go into the theater thinking they were taking the subject seriously, and I wasn't disappointed. There were other movies out this year that were serious about both the subject and the audience (as I pointed out, both Avatar and Moon), and I've invested a lot of my time in them and can't seem to get enough of them.

Like I said, I like the movie... but I was under no illusion as to what we were getting. And if the same people make the next one, I'm sure we'll get more of the same. And I'll most likely watch (and enjoy) them as well.

But make no mistake... there is a reason why I love TOS and why it is so enjoyable (and compelling) to revisit it over, and over, and over again for more than 40 years. And this movie had none of that. It isn't that movies these days can't have it (again, both Avatar and Moon have engaged me in ways similar to how I feel about TOS), it is just that the makers of the new Trek movie weren't interested in that type of film making.


With all that having been said... I'm not sure why TOS fans (who didn't care for the film) worry or care about any of this. Even if I had found the movie awful, I'm not sure it would have been worth my time to tell people what I thought about it (over, and over, and over again). Similarly, if I had loved the movie as much as any Trek before it, I'm not sure I would track down every descending view point and berate those posters who didn't like.

Basically... this wasn't a perfect movie. It wasn't perfectly good, and it wasn't perfectly bad. It seems to me that the extreme views are... well, extreme.

 

[Kirk1980]

I don't know...I think in the end, the worst crime it suffers from is...it is boring.

There's only so much the mind can take of 'spectacle' before thinking, uh, what about the rest of the film?

I like action Trek but only when there's a sufficient backlog of character to understand these characters as they go about kicking ass and taking names.

I don't know. To me, it just wasn't fun.

Yet I loved Sherlock Holmes.

I'm apparently insane.

========

ADDENDUM:

Shaw, the reason people feel obliged to say anything at all is just how much anger even the mildest of disagreements generates.

It's kinda sad that in a franchise which endorses the benefits of diversity, that divergent opinions get shouted down.

I think that's why Warped9 and myself and others have felt the need to comment as such.

 

[TOS Purist]

It's kinda sad that in a franchise which endorses the benefits of diversity, that divergent opinions get shouted down.

I think that's why Warped9 and myself and others have felt the need to comment as such.

Yes, and that's why I thank Warped9 for making this thread. Not only is it a "safe" outlet to really vent about the film, but I'm able to read what other people hated about the movie - which is reassuring and lets me know that I'm not alone out here.

 

[Jeyl]

ST09 critics, why don't you like it?

Oh, god. Where to start? If I had to pick the most general aspect of this movie that I want to rip apart are the characters.

KIRK: For starters, he's an a**hole. He has no ambitions, he has no intuition and, well, he has nothing outside his desire to sleep with the women. That's it. When I usually think of Protagonists, I think of them as characters who want to accomplish something. Not because they were dared to, not because someone else did it before, but because they want to themselves. Kirk wanting to go to Starfleet felt more like he wanted to show off at Pike than actually impress him, even going so far as to say "Four years? I'll do it in three." Why? Why does Kirk want to finish Starfleet Academy in three years other than to say he can? He never once expresses a desire to explore, go up into space and see the unknown.

He also comes up with the stupidest assumptions that make no sense. He believes Spock is incapable of feeling emotion, ok. Why he still holds on to that assumption after he witnesses Spock going through shock and aww in the Transporter room after witnessing the death of his mother is pretty ridiculous. Every other Vulcan was just standing there like a statue in comparison. How can you not see emotion going on there?

And those stupid Spock Prime exchanges that try in vain to connect his cheating aspect to the overall plot. "You went back in time, changed all our lives!" No he didn't. That was Nero. Remember? He's been doing it for the past 25 years. "Going back in time, changing things? That's cheating." You're right, but that is not what Spock was doing! The timeline was already altered beyond recognition and Spock's involvement was out of his control and understanding!

to be continued.....

 

[The Wormhole]

One complaint (I'm only offering up one at this point) is that I felt it was something of a half-hearted reboot. If they had really gone whole hog and side-stepped the whole alternate timeline shtick with a "Spock Prime" and just did a reinterpreted Trek that was roughly analogous to the TOS era then I might have been inclined to be somewhat more forgiving. But to me it felt as if they wanted to be both connected to TOS and divorced from TOS simultaneously. They wanted to be "not your grandfather's Trek" and yet not gutsy enough to really go the distance.

Ah, yes. The infamous reboot argument. I agree with you, the movie would have benefitted on just being a straight and honest reboot. This whole alternate timeline and Nimoy Spock serves no purpose other than to try and keep old fans by saying "see, we remember what came before." It comes off as being sloppy in the end.

 

[TOS Purist]

Awesome posts, folks! You're totally right about Fake Kirk, Jeyl; he was little more than a thug with no ambitions then to show off to other guys. Of course people would say that "Well, he didn't have a father and so he didn't grow up into the same person," but I never thought that Kirk was the type to be dependent on a father figure to NOT be a delinquent in the first place. If anything, the example of his Starfleet mother would be more than enough to inspire TOS Kirk. In fact, I always assumed that Kirk's parents were both killed by Kodos the Executioner on Tarsus IV, anyway, and TOS Kirk always seemed pretty well-balanced (if a little bit of a stick-in-the-mud in his academy days, according to Gary Mitchell and his own words in "Shore Leave").

One of the things that annoyed me the most (and I'm going back to thanking Warped9 for this thread) is that dissenters were never really allowed to say how much the movie looked like it was going to suck, even before it came out.

You remember when we saw our first glimpse of the Enterprise; in the trailer which showed it under construction on Earth. Besides the issue of it being built on the ground, a lot of people were skeptical about the fact that the nacelles looked bigger than the original Enterprise, and that they were closer together. Were they allowed to complain about that aspect? Of course not! In fact, their opinions were completely invalidated by the people who felt like they had to "defend" the new movie somehow. I saw entire websites and posts filled with graphs and measurements showing that the dissenters were WRONG, and that the nacelles WERE exactly like the TOS Enterprise, and that it only LOOKED like they were bigger and closer together. Instead of just allowing people have the valid complaint that the nacelles were oversized and too close together, the valiant ST09 defenders felt like they had to disprove and invalidate the (completely valid) feelings of the dissenters.

Of course, later more views of the Enterprise came out, and it was clearly seen that the dissenters were RIGHT, and that the nacelles WERE oversized and too close together. Then, of course, you never heard anything about the issue.

I still can't figure out why there were people who felt like they had to strongly defend the movie in the first place, instead of just accepting that not everyone is going to automatically like something just because it has "Star Trek" crudely slapped on the title. What did Abrams ever do for them that deserved such loyalty?

 

[Warped9]

After you boil everything away it really comes down to this: I don't see the things that fans of the film apparently see. And some of the film's fans cannot accept that. I say some because, of course, not all are alike.

I also have to laugh over my signature being used as evidence that I dislike anything post 1979. I laugh because they're mistaken. The signature really means that after 1979 I felt Star Trek started to drift away from the things I liked about it. It didn't happen all at once and in a steady progression. It deviated from what I liked in fits and starts. There's something I've liked in all the previous movies except INS and NEM. I liked elements and episodes of TNG and DS9. Admittedly I liked next to nothing about VOY and ENT.

If ST09 had been more ambitious and dared to be a more genuine restart and re-imagining then I could have been more forgiving. But as I said earlier I feel it was distinctly unambitious, conceptually lazy and played down to the lowest expectations.

Clearly I don't see what others apparently do see.

The other criticism hurled against dissenters goes something like this: "You only like TOS and think it's the best Trek so your opinion can't really count for much." Or words to that effect. So what? So what if that happens to be true? There are fans of the other series who think the exact same thing of that show and their opinion isn't invalidated.

Yes, I think TOS is the best Star Trek. It was first and it generally got it right more often than wrong. It established and defined its universe. It doesn't mean I cannot see value in some things that came later, but it also means I don't have to apologize for what I think.

And if someone comes along and intends to play with the original ideas and elements then then it's completely fair that some will compare them directly. They didn't make a TNG or DS9 or VOY or ENT reboot, they made a TOS reboot. As such it's perfectly valid to use TOS as a yardstick for comparison.

 

[I-Am-Zim]

Clearly I don't see what others apparently do see.

The other criticism hurled against dissenters goes something like this: "You only like TOS and think it's the best Trek so your opinion can't really count for much." Or words to that effect. So what? So what if that happens to be true. There are fans of the other series who think the exact same thing of that show and their opinion isn't invalidated.

Yes, I think TOS is the best Star Trek. It was first and it generally got it right more often than wrong. It established and defined its universe. It doesn't mean I cannot see value in some things that came later, but it also means I don't have to apologize for what I think.

And if someone comes along and intends to play with the original ideas and elements then then it's completely fair that some will compare them directly. They didn't make a TNG or DS9 or VOY or ENT reboot, they made a TOS reboot. As such it's perfectly valid to use TOS as a yardstick for comparison.

I could not have said that better myself. I totally agree with every single bit of that. Sorry for editing down the post, but those last three paragraphs sum up my feelings perfectly.