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Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND - Grading & Discussion

Grade the movie...


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Voyager had a character who killed a crewmember for zero reason and redeemed himself later when they put him to use for something. That was a great little arc and better than this one. It's true that Trek is about fun and action but a lot of bad guys had a bit more to them than this guy, especially if you're including the other series besides TOS.
 
Voyager had a character who killed a crewmember for zero reason and redeemed himself later when they put him to use for something.

Yeah. Lon Suder. He was someone that was mentally unstable. He killed because he was off his rocker. Bit different than Edison.

I enjoyed both. Sometimes one can redeem themselves, sometimes they can't. :shrug:
 
In Beyond They mention Thasus as where they got the saurian brandy from and I also remember that Thasus was the planet that Charlie Evans was trapped on and I was wondering if that event still happened in the Kelvin Timeline.
 
Suder also knew that there was no redemption for him.
He accepted his punishment of confinement and when the time came to do his bit, he did it because he considered himself expendable enough, not to gain forgiveness.
 
I got to see it yesterday. A+ from me. I'm really glad this cast finally got to do a truly great movie that really felt like Star Trek (albeit the action Star Trek). Everything in this movie was, for me, just so much better than pretty much all the Trek movies since FC.

I'm surprised to see so many people so down on Krall. Yeah, they avoided giving him depth in the first half of the movie, but I thought he came together beautifully at the end. Easily the second best villain in the Trek movies in general (sure, there were some better in the shows, but those had the benefit of much more setup and payoff time). I also absolutely loved the way they made you think he might redeem himself at the end, only to have him not actually do it.
 
What? Not a single Trek movie before First Contact was an action movie in any way, shape or form, from my perspective.

But even if you classified those from II onward as "action", they wouldn't be action movies for today. I was comparing them to the Mission Impossible, Fast & Furious and Bourne movies. All of them good franchises, but that's not a direction I want Trek to take. Plus, some of those other movies have pretty _good_ action. Beyond I thought was a bit generic in that department.

The "They wouldn't be action movies for today..." is spurious as they WERE considered action movies for the time in which they were released.

The ONLY Star Trek based feature film which had little to no physical 'action' sequences was ST:TMP.
 
In Beyond They mention Thasus as where they got the saurian brandy from and I also remember that Thasus was the planet that Charlie Evans was trapped on and I was wondering if that event still happened in the Kelvin Timeline.
I don't know if you care about the comics, but I just checked and they haven't done Charlie X.
As for Krall/Eddison being redeemed, I did wonder if they were going to go that way, but I wasn't disappointed when they didn't. Not every villain is going to be redeemed.
 
I also noticed this, and I was really aching for either McCoy or Spock to refer to the Vulcan healing abilities and/or for McCoy to actually raise his hand to slap Spock awake from a healing trance. Those are little things that an old/long watching Trekkie would expect... and be gladdened to see.
If Spock was in some sort of Sickbay (or other medical type area) - I would agree with you. But it wouldn't have been appropriate in this situation.
 
The "They wouldn't be action movies for today..." is spurious as they WERE considered action movies for the time in which they were released.

The ONLY Star Trek based feature film which had little to no physical 'action' sequences was ST:TMP.

I've already addressed this. Before this thread I have never thought any of the TOS movies were "action" movies nor have met someone who thought so explicitely.
 
I've already addressed this. Before this thread I have never thought any of the TOS movies were "action" movies nor have met someone who thought so explicitely.
I think there are two distinct points here that are being conflated. I concur that not all Trek movies after TMP were considered "action movies", even by the standards of the day (certainly not TVH). However, the marketing campaigns/trailers heavily pushed the "action" that was part of the films as a way to draw in more casual audiences. Perhaps therein lies the confusion.
 
The Good-

I like how they handled the characters better. I've always liked the cast but I haven't really liked how the writers have handled the characters before. Kirk felt like an example of what would happen if you let a frat boy have a spaceship. He felt more believable as a leader this time and reminded me more of Shatner's incarnation of the character. Scotty was less of a butt monkey. I was very glad to see McCoy get more screentime and specifically more screentime with Spock, since Urban is the best of the new cast.

In a similar vein I think it was better written than the other two films. Better dialogue and a simpler, but better structured and defined narrative. The second half of Into Darkness can pretty much be summarized as "and then they shot their way home". I liked how they touched on the "Kirk getting his mojo back" theme from TMP and TWOK with him regaining the desire to explore, even if they didn't do it in as great detail as the other two films.

I also found it better directed, it had much more visual flair and I'd support Lin returning if there's a fourth film. The CG looked great and it is one of the few times I would call CG "beautiful", particularly on the space shots. On a smaller note I thought the uniforms looked a lot better this time around, looking like they were made of actual fabric here like on the original show, instead of the weird looking stuff they wore in the other two.

Spock finding the photo of the old crew at the end put a smile on my face.

The Bad-

Despite my praising Lin earlier, I found a lot of the action scenes excessively chaotic to the point where my attention wandered. I did like the final fight with Kirk and Idris Elba and the sequence where they take off in the Franklin.

Elba was good at chewing the scenery but the character just wasn't written in a particularly interesting way and had vague motivations. The new Star Trek films can never seem to have a great villain like Ricardo Montalban's Khan or Christopher Plummer as General Chang in The Undiscovered Country

Spock is still way too emotional. He's had more emotional outbursts in just the new film then he had in the entirety of the old show and all six of the old movies at this point. The scenes where Spock would show a bit of emotion in the old ones were special because they were so rare. When you have him doing it all the time it just makes him look like a moody emo kid.

Other-
It would have been great if the old ship on the planet had been an old-fashioned Constitution class that looked like the ship on the original show.

It was funny that there were so many references to Star Trek shows no one likes. Lots of references to Enterprise (the Franklin, showing the Franklin crew in the old uniforms on the video screen, Elba talking about the Xindi, a line about MACOs) and Voyager (Commodore Paris). I find this more funny than anything else, since the over the top Enterprise haters will no doubt hate this just like they're annoyed that it's the only of the five shows that's technically still canon in the movie timeline.

Anyway, I liked it the best of the three. I liked the first one when I first saw it, but there's not a lot of substance there and it's one of those movies where you watch it once and that's pretty much it. Into Darkness was just bad. I'd give this one a solid B
 
Despite my praising Lin earlier, I found a lot of the action scenes excessively chaotic to the point where my attention wandered.

That's basically my main gripe with the movie: the action was generic and sometimes hard to follow. Jaylah's fight with Krall's lieutenant was bland kung fu. What? The fighting in the first two movies was basically fist fights and grapples, exactly what you'd expect in a sci-fi flick, but this one fight was weird, to say the least.
 
That's basically my main gripe with the movie: the action was generic and sometimes hard to follow. Jaylah's fight with Krall's lieutenant was bland kung fu. What? The fighting in the first two movies was basically fist fights and grapples, exactly what you'd expect in a sci-fi flick, but this one fight was weird, to say the least.
Remember, Krall and his minions were former MACOs. In Enterprise season three we see them kick as in a similar way.
 
I've only seen the series once so I don't remember very well. It's still silly, in my opinion.
 
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They're basically space Navy SEALs. I like that you can see the difference in the way they handle their equipment and fight versus the Starfleet security guys.
 
I get why the villain has training but maybe I missed something that explained why Jaylah was doing kung fu as well? I guess she learned it from the ships computer, but I agree it was a weird fight. These are two characters supposedly stranded on the planet, one who has been going crazy over the years and then they bust out perfectly choreographed martial arts.

As much as I think the trailer for this Beyond didn't generate enough hype, and gave away too much of the movie, I do think it's an accurate representation of what the movie is. I think it's very cool that they have references to Enterprise though, I still need to watch that series.
 
Regarding Krall, it would have been nice to have a TOS Kirk/McCoy/Spock moment at the end while they are on their way to the party or whatever, to discuss the moral implications of Krall's fall. It would have been a nice touch and completed the "feel" of a TOS episode.
 
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