STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[SheliakBob]

Okay. Two things.
One: I find it amusing that JJ is taking flak for the only scene in the whole movie that I am at all interested in. It's not easy being the Dark Overlord, apparently.

Two: Well, in the spirit of looking for things of interest, rather than simply re-iterating my antipathy to the whole JJverse...What sort of aliens do we get in this new film? How many background aliens show up? Are they pretty much the same ones as in the first, or are there startling new make-ups on display?

(and, demmit, truth be told, I'm moderately interested in the Klingon scenes, but it's funnier to insist that only a barely clad Ms. Eve can rouse my interest. truth is hard.)

 

[Spock/Uhura Fan]

Okay. Two things.
One: I find it amusing that JJ is taking flak for the only scene in the whole movie that I am at all interested in. It's not easy being the Dark Overlord, apparently.

Two: Well, in the spirit of looking for things of interest, rather than simply re-iterating my antipathy to the whole JJverse...What sort of aliens do we get in this new film? How many background aliens show up? Are they pretty much the same ones as in the first, or are there startling new make-ups on display?

(and, demmit, truth be told, I'm moderately interested in the Klingon scenes, but it's funnier to insist that only a barely clad Ms. Eve can rouse my interest. truth is hard.)

Yeah, I think that's why Lindelof is talking about it now. Sorry, nothing against you, but that's how I feel. I'm happy to be wrong, though.

On the Klingons, well, they look different from any Klingons I've seen. That's all I can say. There's not much dialogue and they are hardly used.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

We got NuKirk in his tighty whities and no one cared.

 

[Amaris]

We got NuKirk in his tighty whities and no one cared.

I care.

(I love your avatar )

 

[BillJ]

We got NuKirk in his tighty whities and no one cared.

That was far more gratuitous than the Eve scene. Kirk and Gaila should've been sitting on a sofa discussing Bible passages.

teacake, your avatar is... disturbing.

 

[Belz...]

teacake, your avatar is... disturbing.

And yet strangely alluring...

 

[Flake]

Biggest laughs in into darkness anyone?

For me it's kirk and Spock 'im gonna miss you' exchange

And Scotty calling Kirk a mad bastard

 

[Amaris]

I loved Scotty's outfit in the bar, myself.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Kirk and Gaila should've been sitting on a sofa discussing Bible passages.

Goddamn right they should've!

 

[CorporalClegg]

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.

Exactly. If someone calls you out for your bullshit, stand up for yourself.

And since Timewalker is probably still watching:

As for Shakespeare... I do prefer my Shakespeare as traditional as possible, but Classic Star Trek did its nods to Shakespeare quite well.

Except I said, "Melville, Dickens, and Shakespeare."

Meyer quoted the former two extensively in TWOK for no other reason than he couldn't think of anything better.

He also gave us a bad guy whose whole shtick was to just quote Shakespeare. The guy didn't have an original thought of his own. And, had the character not been in the hands of one of the all-time great actors, would probably be a meme of its own now.

Is this necessarily bad? No. But let's not make it out to be more than it is.

As far as the radiation chamber scene in STiD, I thought it was fucking brilliant. As I've said before it was, at its core, just a John Bradfordesque visual paradox. But there was a deeper meaning than that to it.

As many have said, nuVerse is really a love story between Kirk and Spock. This visual cue here when juxtaposed with that in TWOK demonstrates that the two men are just haves of a greater whole. And however you scramble them up in whatever reality you're in, they belong together.

Or, as some dude once said:

"Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can"

Sums up the JJverse pretty spot-on IMO.

 

[Blue_Trek]

I wonder if Timewalkers perspective opinion holds that TMP is better than either ST09 or STID ?

 

[BillJ]

I wonder if Timewalkers perspective opinion holds that TMP is better than either ST09 or STID ?

Better?

I actually still rank it and The Undiscovered Country higher than the two Abrams movies.

 

[Blue_Trek]

I wonder if Timewalkers perspective opinion holds that TMP is better than either ST09 or STID ?

Better?

I actually still rank it and The Undiscovered Country higher than the two Abrams movies.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
Personally I can't see me ever ranking the TMP higher than any Trek movie ever, now or into the future, yup it was that bad too me.

 

[Captain Kathryn]

teacake, your avatar is... disturbing.

It's awesome!

 

[trevanian]

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.

Exactly. If someone calls you out for your bullshit, stand up for yourself.

And since Timewalker is probably still watching:

As for Shakespeare... I do prefer my Shakespeare as traditional as possible, but Classic Star Trek did its nods to Shakespeare quite well.

Except I said, "Melville, Dickens, and Shakespeare."

Meyer quoted the former two extensively in TWOK for no other reason than he couldn't think of anything better.

He also gave us a bad guy whose whole shtick was to just quote Shakespeare. The guy didn't have an original thought of his own. And, had the character not been in the hands of one of the all-time great actors, would probably be a meme of its own now.

That's being pretty dismissive of the whole "I don't believe in the no-win scenario/I don't like to lose" stuff, which really defined Kirk a bit further than had been previously seen. Meyer does like to do his riffs, but there's actually good dialog in a lot of that as well that does not all owe to Adlai Stevenson or Nixon or earlier greater writers. Facing death was a theme he was working through at that time with his print work, CONFESSIONS OF A HOMING PIGEON, which has a concluding chapter or two that anticipate TWOK in a few ways (I had read the novel before TWOK came out, and immediately reread it afterward, and have probably read it 8 or 9 times since then as well.)

I think I'd fault Meyer more as director than writer on TWOK, in that Khan loses his menace in the last act with all the wide-eyed stuff that verges a bit on comedy. That, coupled with the silly 'mix the antimatter/spread pixiedust over the energizer' business he gave Spock to do, subtracts rather than enhances. But even there it is more than made up for with stuff like the shot of Spock's empty chair on the bridge.

 

[Belz...]

I wonder if Timewalkers perspective opinion holds that TMP is better than either ST09 or STID ?

TMP is my second-favourite Trek movie, after TWOK. I find its slow-paced, full-sci-fi plot refreshing. You don't see much of that.

Meyer does like to do his riffs

In fact, the villain in his other movie keeps quoting Shakespeare, too. Why ? No reason.

That, coupled with the silly 'mix the antimatter/spread pixiedust over the energizer' business he gave Spock to do, subtracts rather than enhances. But even there it is more than made up for with stuff like the shot of Spock's empty chair on the bridge.

I'd even venture to say that Kirk's death in Into Darkness is better foreshadowed than Spock's in TWOK. And the latter is my all-time favourite character death scene ever.

 

[M'Sharak]

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.

I wish more people would take this to heart.

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.

R. Star, this is at least the third thread in this forum, over the last day or so, in which you've tried to complain about some sort of active bias by which the tendering of a dissenting opinion opens one up to being personally abused or to being forced to adopt a "correct" opinion.

You're doing it wrong.

If you believe you have a legitimate and specific complaint about another poster, or that a post's content is in violation of a specific board rule, then what you should do is to make use of the "Notify moderator" button on the post in question or to contact the forum moderator by PM. What you should not do is to repeatedly air vague complaints in the middle of active threads which are about something else. This is not the appropriate forum for that, and I'd like it very much if I didn't see you do it here again.

I wonder if Timewalkers perspective opinion holds that TMP is better than either ST09 or STID ?

Let's not wind that clock up again, shall we?

 

[M'Sharak]

I'm thinking that the real Trekkies did need a good smack in the face now.

Warning for trolling. Comments to PM.

 

[CorporalClegg]

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.

Exactly. If someone calls you out for your bullshit, stand up for yourself.

And since Timewalker is probably still watching:

As for Shakespeare... I do prefer my Shakespeare as traditional as possible, but Classic Star Trek did its nods to Shakespeare quite well.

Except I said, "Melville, Dickens, and Shakespeare."

Meyer quoted the former two extensively in TWOK for no other reason than he couldn't think of anything better.

He also gave us a bad guy whose whole shtick was to just quote Shakespeare. The guy didn't have an original thought of his own. And, had the character not been in the hands of one of the all-time great actors, would probably be a meme of its own now.

That's being pretty dismissive of the whole "I don't believe in the no-win scenario/I don't like to lose" stuff, which really defined Kirk a bit further than had been previously seen. Meyer does like to do his riffs, but there's actually good dialog in a lot of that as well that does not all owe to Adlai Stevenson or Nixon or earlier greater writers. Facing death was a theme he was working through at that time with his print work, CONFESSIONS OF A HOMING PIGEON, which has a concluding chapter or two that anticipate TWOK in a few ways (I had read the novel before TWOK came out, and immediately reread it afterward, and have probably read it 8 or 9 times since then as well.)

I think I'd fault Meyer more as director than writer on TWOK, in that Khan loses his menace in the last act with all the wide-eyed stuff that verges a bit on comedy. That, coupled with the silly 'mix the antimatter/spread pixiedust over the energizer' business he gave Spock to do, subtracts rather than enhances. But even there it is more than made up for with stuff like the shot of Spock's empty chair on the bridge.

Err, the "Guy who just quoted Shakespeare and didn't have an original thought of his own" was Chang.

I think Khan pretty much stuck to Melville and Dickens.

Either way, my argument was (again) to point out the hypocrisy people display when they suggest, if the movie they like does something, it's good. But when the movie they don't like does the exact same thing, it's bad.

 

[BillJ]

I call it the 'Trekkie Paradox'!