Sounds good. Sorry for the intrusion.
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
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Sounds good. Sorry for the intrusion.
Oh no intrusion at all! This is something that folks talked about before the film came out, and it only came back with a vengeance with the Lindelhof (sp?) interview.
All I know is that I thought I'd seen every episode of Star Trek and its spin-offs. But apparently there is this romanticized version that I've completely missed where warp speeds are consistent, women never wore skimpy outfits and no plot-holes ever existed.
Yeah, it's the Star Trek I dream about.
Aw, come on. There's nothing wrong about appreciating the human body.
I think I first became a science fiction film buff watching the captivating Altaira on "Forbidden Planet" when I was about age eight - and then, as a young teen, a TV presentation of "Barbarella" (in b/w) in the privacy of my bedroom. I saw almost as much female flesh on Jane Fonda as I did male flesh on John Phillip Law's Pygar.
Those movies just wouldn't have been the same if the characters were all in bulky neck-to-knee costumes. Nor as memorable/enlightening.
Sorry, now I've quite forgotten why scenes of Gaila, Carol and Kirk in underwear are so... eh?
Those movies just wouldn't have been the same if the characters were all in bulky neck-to-knee costumes. Nor as memorable/enlightening.
Sorry, now I've quite forgotten why scenes of Gaila, Carol and Kirk in underwear are so... eh?
Look, just to remind people who we're arguing about - look at Eve (yes, I'm serious).
That young woman has the fortune to be physically attractive by Hollywood standards, and of course she wouldn't be successful in commercial movies if she weren't.
That said, there is nothing "anorexic" about her in the least - that's plain hysteria. She looks to have a healthy amount of body fat for a young person. If you think you can count her ribs here you're imagining things:
No, it's not possible for everyone to look like that no matter how hard they try - I could never have looked like Chris Pine, either. Both cases are matters of heredity, not how much willingness to abuse one's health in the pursuit of an unrealistic goal one may or may not possess.
That young woman has the fortune to be physically attractive by Hollywood standards, and of course she wouldn't be successful in commercial movies if she weren't.
That said, there is nothing "anorexic" about her in the least - that's plain hysteria. She looks to have a healthy amount of body fat for a young person. If you think you can count her ribs here you're imagining things:
No, it's not possible for everyone to look like that no matter how hard they try - I could never have looked like Chris Pine, either. Both cases are matters of heredity, not how much willingness to abuse one's health in the pursuit of an unrealistic goal one may or may not possess.
Talk about misguided rage. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at parents who don't teach their daughters not to tie their sense of self-worth to their body image.
If even a fraction of this crap is what's really in the movie, I won't even watch it when it eventually comes on TV. The last one was bad enough.Okay, you've been warned - a lengthy and somewhat disjointed synopsis of the movie from someone at IMDB.
Five minutes before entering Pike's office, Kirk had been skipping along after Spock saying, "Yeah, we're cool. I haven't lost a single man. Pike's gonna give us the five year mission" and the meeting with Pike completely bursts his bubble. When Spock is dismissed from Pike's office and he talks to Kirk alone, he really rips into him, in a different take to the one we saw in the trailers. He's really angry, but you realise that Pike sees Kirk almost as a son and feels he can do much better. Kirk's command is ripped away, they give the Enterprise back to Pike, Spock is assigned to the USS Bradbury. Kirk leaves with his tail between his legs. Greenwood was fantastic in this scene. The movie really started here for me.
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Er, yes, it's Kirk and Spock's hands on the glass. Yes, BC is Khan. Yes, Marcus is Section 31 Black ops.
There's another fantastic scene between Pike and Kirk the bar. Kirk is completely gutted an Pike tells him he asked for him as first officer aboard the Enterprisr, because he believes in him. Apparently he really had to go to bat with Admiral Marcus for the appointment.
Back in London, we all know Khan's blood saves the dying child and he enlists the father to bomb the Starfleet Data Archive. All the captains and first officers meet at Starfleet headquarters to plan strategy. Marcus reports that it was Harrison, and ex Sect 31 black ops specialist. Kirk is looking at vids from the bombing, and in a very cool extreme Google Earth kind of thing, he zooms in on Harrison. Kirk starts to ask why Harrison would bother to bomb a Data Archive when he knows all th material is n public record and starts to question the real motive, but for once he's unsure of himself and shuts up. Marcus has to wheedle it out of him.
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Kirk realises its just a ploy to get everyone together in the one room just as Harrison shows up to blow them all to Kingdom Come. Pike is badly injured, Spock runs to help him while Kirk picks up a gun and starts firing away at Harrison's ship, then throws some sort of piece of metal on the end of a fire hose thing into the ships vent, sending it crashing down, but not before they get a look at each other. As Pike gasps his last Breath, Spock melds with him. Kirk runs over and sees Pike is dead and bursts into tears, literally sobbing uncontrollably with Spock looking on. It's a very Powerful scene. It feels like that is Kirk experiencing the loss of his father.
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They find out that Harrison has fled to Kronos, in Klingon space, "The one place we cannot go." But Kirk insists on being allowed to go after him. So they devise a plan to travel to the edge of the Neutral Zone and Marcus organises for Kirk to carry a payload of advanced torpedoes that they have been developing. They beam them all aboard Enterprise, but Scotty won't sign off on the manifest because their shielding means he can't scan them to see what's inside. Therefore he refuses to have them aboard his ship because he doesn't know what danger they present. He also has a philosophical problem with the torpedoes and challenges Kirk. He doesn't like the military op. He wants to know if they are still explorers. Kirk orders him and he refuses, saying Kirk will have to fire him. So he does. Kirk appoints Chekov as Chief engineer and tells him to go get a red shirt. We all squeal. Scotty leaves the ship
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Spock/Uhura are fighting. It's almost like a teenage spat. Spock is seriously having girl trouble. Uhura's mad at him because she thinks he doesn't feel. That he endangers his life without a thought about how it affects him. It's not unlike the accusations Kirk was hurling at Spock earlier. Calling him a traitor and a robot. She's pretty snitty and they have a bit of an argument on the way to Kronos with Kirk reluctantly in the middle. Then Spock suddenly reveals that he does feel. He recounts feeling Pike's death - the pain, the fear, the loneliness. He says he felt a similar thing at the death of Vulcan. He never wants to have to feel like that again. We see Kirk and Uhura both rect, chagrined. They have been unfair on Spock. On a side note, Uhura seems to really like Kirk now. She worries about him a lot. There is also a lot of touching. Everyone is always caressing everyone else. Lots of closeups of hands on arms or shoulders. Fanfic, here we come.
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Sorry, just trying to say things the way they happened because it's more engaging that way. Just a fact dump is not going to be very fair to the movie.
In Engineering, Chekov discovers some weird fault or anomaly with the engines and Kirk instructs him to work on it. He leaves Sulu in command, and Sulu broadcasts to the surface that he has a whole pile of high-powered torpedoes pointing at them. Uhura goes with Kirk and Spock in the shuttle to find Harrison. She speaks Klingon, so this actually makes sense. After a StarWars-esque chase, the Klingons outnumber our galant trio but then Harrison shows up and starts wiping the floor with them all. He then walks up to Kirk and Kirk just lays into him (very neanderthal) and the blows just bounce off Harrison. Then Kirk decides he's not going to kill him, but take him into custody so he can stand trial on behalf of Admiral Pike.
I forgot to mention, a weapons specialist called Carol Wallace has joined the Enterprise to look after the torpedoes. Spock is suspicious and runs her data. Discovers Wallace is her mother's name. She's Marcus' daughter. I am getting a little confused about the scene order, but they decide to beam one of the torpedoes down to some planet to see what's inside. McCoy goes with Carol, but when the torpedo arms and catches McCoys arm in it, he screams at them to beam Carol up to save her, but she bravely stays to try and disarm it, sort of winning their trust. She yanks loose some big component, the outer casing slides open, and of course inside is a cryotube with a frozen body. Back on the ship, Harrison asks Kirk how many torpedoes they have and they tell him, they have a payload of 72. Isn't that how many cryotube turns were aboard the Botany Bay?
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Kirk asks Harrison who he is really. He replies that he was a product of genetic engineeriing from 300 years ago and says his name is Khan (audience whoops, groans, cheers). He starts to cleverly bait Kirk, saying that Marcus scanned space for their vessel then revived Khan and held his crews' lives over his head, forcing him to work for them, develop superior weaponry etc. He asks, is there nothing you wouldn't do for your crew, Captain? This gets Kirk in his Achilles heel. He obviously has separation issues and doesn't want to lose a single member of his little family. Bones takes some of Khan's blood and injects it into a dead Tribble.
Then Marcus shows up in a huge Dreadnaught-class ship. He tells Kirk that Khan is manipulating him and is surprised that Kirk didn't kill him. Kirk is suspicious of Marcus and won't hand Khan over. Says he's gonna take him back to Earth to stand trial. Marcus targets Enterprise and starts blowing them out of the sky. Kirk pleads for the lives of his crew, offers his life in their place, but Marcus just wants to destroy them. Carol jumps in so her father knows she's aboard, hoping that will stop the slaughter, but he just beams her aboard, then just as the Enterprise is about to be blown away, the Dreadnaught's weapons go offline. Scotty has smuggled himself aboard and is in control of the engineering deck. By communicator, Kirk decides to space jump aross with Khan with Scotty opening the port at his end. I the meantime Spock calls New Vulcan...
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Spock Prime appears on the view screen. Young Spock asks if, in his travels, they ever encountered a character called Khan? Spock Prime replies that Spock knows he swore he would never reveal details of their lives, but Khan was the most dangerous foe they ever faced and would kill them all without a thought. Spock asks whether they were able to defeat him and Spock Prime replies, "at great cost".
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Just as Spock is hearing of Khan's treachery on the Enterprise, Khan escapes from Kirk on the Dreadnaught. To cut a long story short... A big space batltle ensues, with Khan demanding that the cryotubes be beamed aboard the Dreadnaught, but Spock is a step ahead of him and Bones has removed the Cryotubes and Spock has armed the torpedoes, so they blow a hole in the Dreadnaught and as Khan plummets towards Earth (did I mention he had pursued them at Warp back to Earth? ) he aims the dying ship at Starfleet Academy to wipe them out. But the Enterprise is also in trouble. The Warp core is offline and the area is irradiated with no way to fix it. So begins the final scenes of TWOK, in reverse, even with most of the same dialogue. Kirk goes into the chamber / giant beer factory, with Scotty screaming after him, gets the core back on line, Spock defeats Khan then gets a frantic message from Scott that he'd better get down there.
It's a lovely death scene, really. Poor Spock/Quinto is inconsolable. There is a lot of crying in this movie. Kirk dies.
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Now you can guess what happens after that, can't you? We certainly did. And it did.
I'm getting pretty punchy. Might go and have a look at some of the other reviews and head to bed.
My impression was that, at first I thought all the Kirk/Spock Logic vs Feeling argument was a bit simplistic, but over the course of the movie, it played out beautifully with some great lines, and lots of emotion/tears. Similarly, the Kirk/Pike scenes are all wonderful.I think people will find the emotional component of this movie satisfying.
The effects are often brilliant, but I wasn't a fan of the 3D at all. At first it was cumbersome and distracting and after that I got used to it, but it doesn't really bring anything extra to the movie.
As for the parts of the plot that are rehashed from TOS prime universe. For a moment there, we got a bit excited that they were going to put a whole different twist on them, but it just wasn't enough of a twist, which left the end of the movie a bit predictable and flat. They perhaps should have branched into more unknown territory.
But as a movie about family, arguing and fighting but getting to know and trust and value each other, it was really lovely. It was certainly action-packed. If TWOK was a 9/10 and ST09 was an 8/10, I'd probably give this a 7, mostly for the raw emotion of the performances.
I hope that satisfies the hunger for this evening.
This is crap to the infinite power. Why can't Abrams come up with an original story? Why does he need to plagiarize (oops, "re-imagine") what far better storytellers and artists have already done?
Meh. Skip it then, because it's ALL TRUE (AGGGHHH!). Just don't post diatribes about what's wrong with a movie you haven't seen, and everything will work out even.
It's a really good Star Trek movie. TWOK may be better - I haven't decided - but it's the only one.
It's a really good Star Trek movie. TWOK may be better - I haven't decided - but it's the only one.
Why didn't Roddenberry, Bennett and Berman create new space operas instead of constantly reusing Trek?
Oops, quoted wrong post.
I watched TWOK last night and the two are such different films I'm not sure it's fair to compare.
They both simply rock the house.
By "better storytellers," you mean Nick Meyer--the guy who "re-imagined" Melville, Dickens, and Shakespeare.
I think you're missing out on some pretty good Trek. But you have to be A) open-minded about the movie being different than previous Trek, which is actually not a bad thing, because I hate it when things get stale and the statu quo is untouchable, which is why Vulcan's destruction is such a good idea.
And B) Learn to live with the fact that movies have mistakes and inconsistencies. I mean, I'd like nothing more than all movies and books and video games to have perfect storytelling with no errors, but guess what ? Only reality's like that, and we're still not happy with it. So I enjoy it when movies are better scripted or the people involved make extra effort to get the details right, but I'm okay with movies that aren't perfect if they are entertaining.
Of course, then I nitpick because I like to do that, but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to.
And by the way, spoiling the entire movie in text form usually sounds a lot worse than the finished product.
FFS, I am sick and tired of never being allowed to criticize the Abrams crap without getting jumped on.
I am perfectly free to criticize what I see in trailers, clips, or whatever else gets posted online. There are some things that don't require seeing the whole damn movie to know I hate it.
I did eventually see the first Abrams movie. And I thought it was every bit as dumb as it looked like it would be. As for this... it's like redoing Planet of the Apes. There was nothing wrong with the original. As for Shakespeare... I do prefer my Shakespeare as traditional as possible, but Classic Star Trek did its nods to Shakespeare quite well.
Abrams doesn't appear to know how to do nods. He takes a sledgehammer and wrecking crew and fits the pieces back together haphazardly and with a distinct lack of respect for the original material.
I'm unsubscribing to this thread now, so don't bother flaming and trolling me. Just remember - there are probably aspects of Trek that I love and you don't. And you're just as entitled to think what I like is crap.
Jumped on ? What are you talking about ? I was trying to give you some advice about this movie. Perhaps you read more into my post than I intended ?
Well of course if you go in with a made-up mind it'll suck. Which is why my point A is there.
Considering that you seem to be in the minority, I'd say he knows what he's doing. And I'd still say that even if I hated it.
I did nothing of the sort. How could you possibly interpret my post as trolling or flaming is beyond me.
EDIT: Gah ! Not only does she unsubscribe, ensuring that her rant can't be challenged, but I can't even PM people yet and clear thing up with her.
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I wish more people would take this to heart.
But if you're unwilling to have your views challenged, why post on a message board to begin with?
Challenged? Do you think this is some sort of game where we keep score of who wins and loses? A novel concept I come here on a discussion board... to discuss Star Trek.
It's a pity so many seem to be personally invested in trying to force others to adopt their opinions.
I think you misunderstand. I come here because I LIKE to see different viewpoints than my own. I want my views of Trek challenged. If we all thought the same way, there'd be little reason to come here.
Speaking of, why are you so emotional, here ? Again, we're just discussing a fictional show. No need to get excited. Timewalker's the one who felt attacked for no reason. I, personally, am quite happy that people have different opinions. Otherwise there'd be no progress.
But BillJ is right: you participate in discussions, your views will be disagreed with and your claims challenged. It's not a matter of winning (not for everyone, anyway), but about the free exchange of ideas.
No one was flaming or trolling you but if you feel that's the case anywhere on the board please use the "notify moderator" button on the post in question. Don't accuse others of flaming or trolling and don't answer back in kind because that will invariably escalate the situation or derail the thread. That said, I hope you reconsider because Belz was just having a normal conversation with you.
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