I guess it's my own fault then. I hate change so naturally I don't like new movies.
Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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Not to pile on, since obviously everyone is free to express themselves, but the Kelvin films have always struck me with very much TOS character moments. None of them are perfect and they all have their flaws. Kirk's happen to get center stage because he's the main character, but we also see Spock's struggle of being between two worlds. That dual nature is still at the forefront of his arc.
Now, do I think the pacing of the new films is too fast? Yeah, I do. That's a problem with contemporary film making is the need to cram as much stuff in to the frame so that people feel like they get their money's worth. That's the attitude that feels like it is driving it. And, in some instances, little details can make it work on a story level. TWOK is a fantastic example of this, and I credit Nicholas Meyer for that. Star Wars is another film that does similarly, showing little details that speak to the over all narrative.
Kelvin universe is hit and miss. As much as I love it, am entertained by it, and find each character enjoyable, I can see the cracks. Does it ruin my enjoyment? Know, because it's an art form and a business all at once. Like any other business, I'll agree with some points, disagree with others, but as long as I'm entertained then I see no issue with the film.
I stated this elsewhere, but I'll add it here: I identify more with nuKirk and his arc than most of the other characters in the rest of Star Trek lore. Some where here and there, and Spock would probably be my closest in any Prime continuity. But, Kirk feels like someone I would know, would be there to help and watch grow. I've known people like him, and its more palpable to me.
So, I get it. It isn't for everyone. It's different and that's not always good. But, I think Beyond in particular, but all the films, take the characters somewhere new, while speaking to many of the themes expressed in Star Trek.
I'm sorry, I only read a few of the posts in this thread, but here's one 54 year old's lifetime Trek fan's opinion:
I remember watching Star Trek TOS when it first aired on NBC, I was all of 5 years old but was immediately attracted to the ship, the bridge, and all those cool blinking colored lights. And then as I got older, watching over and over those horribly damaged film episodes on WPIX in New York. I've been a fan of ALL the TV shows (some I like more than others), as well as all the movies.
But I was one of those people who really didn't like the new reboot movies. For the longest time I couldn't get past the fact that 1- they would continue on without Rick Berman and his team (Brannon, Moore, etc.) and 2 - they "ruined" Star Trek's carefully crafted canon. I felt that all the years, all the writers and producers, all the various shows built upon backstories and history, only to have it wiped out and *whoosh* we're in an alternate Universe. I thought it did a great disservice to everyone that put so much time and effort into creating the history of the original Star Trek universe.
(I still don't understand how Kirk's Star Fleet Academy history could be so different that TOS and original canon.
Kirk was portrayed as "a walking stack of books", he was a serious cadet. But in the reboots, he's portrayed as a punk ass kid who "joined Star Fleet on a dare". Didn't this all happen BEFORE the timeline split? This is a perfect example of why I don't like all this alternate timeline/ruined canon stuff)
But I eventually learned to let it go and to simply enjoy the movies for what they were: Star Trek for the next generation of fans.
I still feel the new actors didn't try very hard to emulate the characters they were portraying. It seems to me they just are using the same names of these characters, but little else bears the resemblance of the original characters.
And as other people have pointed out, the new movies are more flash than substance. While they are entertaining as "stand alone" movies, there is no heart or soul in these movies. Which is why I thought Rick Berman should have been involved, he was passed the torch for a reason...he GOT Star Trek.
Anyway, I recently watched Star Trek Beyond for the first time and I must say I was blown away by the special effects.
Clearly no other Star Trek movie (old or new) have seen this level of sophisticated special effects. The story felt a bit derivative from previous Star Trek storylines, but overall I enjoyed it, will watch it again and continue to keep watching anything that has the Star Trek name on it. Although I'm a little hesitant about the new TV series (from what I've heard) but that's a topic for another thread.
I remember watching Star Trek TOS when it first aired on NBC, I was all of 5 years old but was immediately attracted to the ship, the bridge, and all those cool blinking colored lights. And then as I got older, watching over and over those horribly damaged film episodes on WPIX in New York. I've been a fan of ALL the TV shows (some I like more than others), as well as all the movies.
But I was one of those people who really didn't like the new reboot movies. For the longest time I couldn't get past the fact that 1- they would continue on without Rick Berman and his team (Brannon, Moore, etc.) and 2 - they "ruined" Star Trek's carefully crafted canon. I felt that all the years, all the writers and producers, all the various shows built upon backstories and history, only to have it wiped out and *whoosh* we're in an alternate Universe. I thought it did a great disservice to everyone that put so much time and effort into creating the history of the original Star Trek universe.
(I still don't understand how Kirk's Star Fleet Academy history could be so different that TOS and original canon.
Kirk was portrayed as "a walking stack of books", he was a serious cadet. But in the reboots, he's portrayed as a punk ass kid who "joined Star Fleet on a dare". Didn't this all happen BEFORE the timeline split? This is a perfect example of why I don't like all this alternate timeline/ruined canon stuff)
But I eventually learned to let it go and to simply enjoy the movies for what they were: Star Trek for the next generation of fans.
I still feel the new actors didn't try very hard to emulate the characters they were portraying. It seems to me they just are using the same names of these characters, but little else bears the resemblance of the original characters.
And as other people have pointed out, the new movies are more flash than substance. While they are entertaining as "stand alone" movies, there is no heart or soul in these movies. Which is why I thought Rick Berman should have been involved, he was passed the torch for a reason...he GOT Star Trek.
Anyway, I recently watched Star Trek Beyond for the first time and I must say I was blown away by the special effects.
Clearly no other Star Trek movie (old or new) have seen this level of sophisticated special effects. The story felt a bit derivative from previous Star Trek storylines, but overall I enjoyed it, will watch it again and continue to keep watching anything that has the Star Trek name on it. Although I'm a little hesitant about the new TV series (from what I've heard) but that's a topic for another thread.
We're in an alternate timeline precisely so that nothing got erased. The Prime timeline is still there, untouched and unmolested (apart from the destruction of Romulus), we're just spending some time away from it. they could have just ignored the original continuity altogether, but ironically they thought there'd be a fan backlash.
No. The timeline split the day Nero arrived in the 23rd century, on the day of Kirk's birth. The whole point is his upbringing from day one was significantly different from Prime Kirk's. He grew up without his father, he was a delinquent, he stole cars and got into fights in bars, but he's still just as intelligent as Prime Kirk - "The only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest".
I disagree, I think the actors have done a sterling job of portraying the characters. What they haven't done (for the most part), is straight-up imitate the original actors. There's been some lip service paid, Chris Pine's Shatnered it up on occasion but on the whole they've stayed true to the characters without necessarily copying the original performances, which to be fair is the way I prefer it. Kirk is still Kirk, Spock is still Spock, Bones is still Bones, just the actors bringing their own interpretations.
Glad you enjoyed the film though!
While I agree with this, you could make a very decent argument that the new timeline overwrote the old one (I actually have, but you have to assume that canon information is pretty firm; in at least one case, the main counterargument was basically that the movies weren't beholden to canon, at which point I think the whole point of the movie's backstory falls apart, but whatever).
Ironically, I would have preferred a clean reboot and would've enjoyed it more, as such.
I disagree, I think the actors have done a sterling job of portraying the characters. What they haven't done (for the most part), is straight-up imitate the original actors. There's been some lip service paid, Chris Pine's Shatnered it up on occasion but on the whole they've stayed true to the characters without necessarily copying the original performances, which to be fair is the way I prefer it. Kirk is still Kirk, Spock is still Spock, Bones is still Bones, just the actors bringing their own interpretations.[/QUOTE]
I have to disagree. Save for McCoy, I don't think any of the performances in the first two Kelvin timeline movies are true to the characters (although I think that that's the fault of the writers, not the actors). Conversely, in Beyond, they are very true to the characters, IMHO, which I think goes a long way in why that movie is an improvement over the original two.
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That they're making a new series set in the Prime universe make it irrefutable that that that timeline wasn't erased by the events of ST'09?
(then again, they're reimagining visuals and likely making the usual round of retcons, so I suspect many will insist Discovery isn't prime universe, just like they did with ENT)
(then again, they're reimagining visuals and likely making the usual round of retcons, so I suspect many will insist Discovery isn't prime universe, just like they did with ENT)
ENT was never said to be not part of the prime universe by the Powers That Be, that was a fan theory.
In the strictest sense, it is true the performances are not "true" to the TOS characters AND the "fault" for that lies with the writers. However, it is also the point of the exercise. These are characters that have each experienced a different set of circumstances in their lives leading up to the time we meet them as young adults--it would be folly to have them be "true" to characterizations born from experiences they have not had. Their core characteristics remain in place and, as they age and mature, they appear to be trending towards their original counterparts, but I certainly hope they don't become identical (leaving aside physical appearances). They are the same, in broad strokes, with allowances for exploring how these characters might have been altered by growing up in new circumstances.
As far as "over-writing" the time line--don't see a case for it. I do see much to suggest the opposite, though.
Have to disagree with the bolded part, as far as the first two movies are concerned (Beyond did capture the core, though). My counterpoint would be that in franchises like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the characters are basically the same across different installments. Star Trek mostly created new characters that only have the same names.
In the history of Star Trek time travel, new timelines don't just create new realities. We see this in episodes like "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG) and First Contact; the original timeline is changed. There are ways this could be fudged, like the quantum realities in "Parallels" (TNG) affecting whether the Jellyfish and Narada went back in time or not, but the "many worlds" model is a new idea for the franchise and one that does not work with most, if not all of the previous stories.
So science fiction should ignore real science when it becomes available? This is no different than changing Khan's background from Eugenics to Genetically Engineered.
I disagree. But I'm not planning a lengthy argument (too little time).
Here too, I disagree. I think almost every version of time travel in Trek created new realities. I've made lengthy posts about this elsewhere (though I don't know how easy they'd be to find). Simple version: almost all Trek time travel stories create new timelines. The camera (us) simply follows the characters. New movies stay in the new timeline and we don't follow the characters "back home" (a "home" that is not really the one they left).
This is why I reject everything after "The Cage."
No surprise on this one, I disagree. Kirk is still Kirk, with a lot of rougher edges. He is smart, ambitious adventure seeking and loyal, all of which I can find in Prime Kirk. The lack of a father figure speaks far more to the importance of George Kirk to Prime Kirk than anything in Prime Trek.
Same thing with Spock. He's still rough around the edges, an outsider looking in on humans. He excels in ways that humans do not and has his own personal issues, specifically around his dad and his caring for his mom. One of the core difficulties that Prime Spock struggled with was the ability to express his caring for his mom and win his father' approval. Both were fully expressed in the first film, if truncated.
Save for the Mirror Universe, the Alternative Factor and possibly even Yesteryear with the Guardian of Forever. It's debatable, as all fictional science will be. However, quantum realities have been a part of Star Trek, even if they are not called as such.
In the case of Kelvin Universe, I will maintain that the gravitational instability of the artificially created black hole creates a quantum reality. It's new to Star Trek. So were holodecks.
Well, how essential is the inaccurate model to the world in question. For example, they recently did scientific experiments that concluded that Spider-Man's "stick-em" powers wouldn't work in the real world, but Marvel isn't going to change the character, since those abilities are a core part of that character and his stories.
Fair enough.
Most of the stories fall apart though with this model. As pointed out, "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG) and First Contact show the original timeline being altered, not a new one created, as does "Year of Hell, Parts I and II" (VOY). The Temporal Cold War could not have happened under the many worlds model, nor would the time cops care about temporal accidents. Predestination paradoxes can and do happen in Star Trek temporal mechanics ("Assignment: Earth" [TOS], "Time's Arrow, Parts I and II" [TNG], "Future's End, Parts I and II" [VOY], et al.), which only work when there's one timeline and cannot work with another universe being created.
While there are ways that the red matter incident could have made a parallel universe, probably by using the quantum reality rules when the black hole deposited the ships out), it doesn't really work whole sale with the franchise.
Fair enough.
"Many worlds" is not a new idea for Trek - see Mirror Mirror and The Alternative Factor. In fact, Trek does it both ways - whichever serves the story.
Those episodes were not time travel stories. There is a multiverse, but, unless you can wiggle some exception in, different realities are created through the quantum reality process (a la "Parallels" [TNG]) or are already freestanding realities. There has never been a time travel story that uses "many worlds," and countless ones that prove the model wrong (once again, unless there is some special exception, with the Kelvin timeline may or may not have).
It does have a special exception-which is the introduction of red matter. It may not be sufficient explanation for all, but it is sufficient for the purposes of the story.
The only thing I question is the reality that Kirk would come across a motorcycle on an alien planet to ride. The movie was great, the story was great, and the action sequences were superb. Yorktown was amazing, although I question calling it Yorktown as I would assume Starfleet would have a starship named Yorktown. One thing I also noticed, like in Star Trek Enterprise, Starfleet in this Kelvin Timeline has a different uniform for various occasions and locations.
The motorcycle was aboard the Franklin, not randomly discovered on the alien planet. Other Starfleet officers have carried their hobbies into space with them, so the Franklin having a motorhead on board isn't exactly that strange.
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