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Hal's giving us his critique why he thought the movie fell short (my words, maybe he'd say it more strongly.) We both were taking separate stands so he's giving me a hard time about why I shouldn't have enjoyed it. Hal's a smart guy, and he's a critical guy. (You have to be to make a living in the film business.) I agree with half of his points, but sometimes a flawed movie can do so many other things well, it's still enjoyable.
Yes, the Nero character is a two dimensional bad guy, but I enjoyed so many other things that the movie did right that I ignored those problems. Yes, Hal missed that Kirk drove into a quarry and the first time I saw the movie, I felt the same as him for about five seconds and then I realized that the cut of the canyon was too square to be natural. The scene moves so *fast* that connecting the to being a warning about a quarry is tough. I bet most of the audience didn't even think about it because it was just such a fun and fast scene. But since it is a quarry, then why would Kirk have driven that car over a cliff he knew was there since Kirk lived in that area for some time if not all his life? He must have really hated his step father? What's his motivation if it wasn't a mistake? Should Abrams fix that scene for the few audience members (say 10% of each viewing population) who at that point are looking for reasons to *not* like the movie? Maybe, maybe not. I'd rather he spent more time developing Nero, his ship, his back story as I felt that was a bigger flaw. As a writer, I make decisions about these situations every day. Sometimes I've screwed up a lot and need to do a lot of work to fix or cover them up. Sometimes I have to re-write for a long time to get it right. And sometimes, the problems are small and most people will love the store anyhow. There are always a few people who will find problems that ruins the story for them. And sometimes, they see problems due to their own internal perception of the world. My dad sometimes spends so much time counting bullets that he forgets to think about why those guys are shooting at each other, which was the point.
...but Spock's character has always been about his struggle to balance emotion and logic, struggling to control himself quite often. That involves showing emotion.
Honestly, in another sense of this, TOS has always been a bit of a human bigot in that the stories always made Spock lose this philosophical debate and indicate that the Vulcan have made a cultural mistake.
Perhaps it's to balance the Spock character because he is superior in every other characteristic. Or perhaps the audience is supposed to remember what happened off-camera in the Vulcan's past, the wars, etc. that motivated the society to institute draconian self control of their emotions. I don't feel that enough TOS stories supported the Vulcan people's decision or perhaps the writers couldn't think up a story.
A time travel to the Vulcan of old would have helped us understand this better and bring that decision out of the back-story and onto the camera.
Wouldn't that make a nice Star Trek prequel TV series? Star Trek--<insert name of Vulcan starship>. We get to see the wars on Vulcan, the battles with the Klingons, Romulans, learn more of these three peoples connection.
Heh, I recall Picard recording a log in the present tense, rather than actually trying to solve the crisis at hand. There was a tense moment on the bridge, cut to commercial, and then a log narration, and Picard still on the bridge.The only way for him record a log was to do it in front of everyone (and I believe, virtually in front of the enemy). I *think* it was Peak Performance, when the Ferengi came to claim Riker and the Hathaway.
So not only has it been done before, but it was done so much worse
The "spoiler" is actual a list of one of the guys list of complaints and-or debate items.
They’re too arrogant to provide a subtitle.
A woman is sucked into space and sound effects fade, denoting the silence of space. The rest of the film sticks with the tradition of sound effects in space. This is annoying.
It feels more like Star Wars than Star Trek which, in my opinion, accounts for its unearned success (it’s been dumbed down). It is important to remember that one of the reasons kids in the 70s made fun of their Trekkie fellow students is because the Trekkies were nerds. Star Trek is supposed to be for nerds because it’s more intelligent than Star Wars. Most people who never liked Star Trek always pointed out that they didn’t want intelligent drama, just soap operas. Well, now they’ve got what they wanted and the true Trekkies have been left behind.
The Corvette scene directly contradicts Roddenberry’s vision of a future Earth as paradise; a place where parents are consistently loving, even step-parents, and that teenage rebellion has become rather rare due to the universal acceptance of the precept of personal achievement. A policeman would never appear dystopian. There are no canyons in Iowa. The scene is a cheap trick to wow the audience, and Kirk was never depicted as rebellious in nature (i.e. – they’ve changed the basic nature of his character which is simply unacceptable).
Sorry, I just don’t believe Vulcan children bully one another.
Spocks’s accents are completely inconsistent. It should be mid-Atlantic.
Uhura is from the United States of Africa and speaks Swahili. There really should have been at least the smallest reference to this. I personally found the dropping of the romance between Spock and Chapel to be very sad. The romance with Uhura is illogical! Vulcans only engage in romantic activities during the Pon farr. How could they drop this most basic of Star Trek elements?
In the TOS episode The Menagerie it is made clear Kirk only barely knew Pike.
Starships then never had more than a crew of 430.
Spaceships are never built on Earth, not to mention Iowa.
There’s no reason why Star Fleet would have any major facilities in Iowa (just because Kirk grew up there?).
It is too contrived that McCoy would refer to his bones.
Nero is depicted like an avenging human. Romulans, even disturbed ones, simply don’t act like this.
Nero’s dialog never rises above cheap exposition.
Orions do not join Star Fleet.
Why would McCoy be at the navigation station? No other version of ST ever made basic mistakes like this.
The Kobayashi Maru tests character and therefore can only be taken once. When a person already knows it’s a no-win scenario it is pointless to test a person again. Kirk would never have been allowed to take the test twice. In The Wrath of Khan the suggestion is that somehow Kirk knew the purpose of the test before taking it the first time, which makes sense. This doesn’t.
Spock refers to the Kobayashi Maru as, “a lesson”. Clearly it is not a lesson, it is a test.
Star Fleet Academy would never punish Kirk for the Kobayashi Maru incident, let alone put him up for trial in front of his classmates. Hopelessly stupid storytelling.
The constant fake lens flares are annoying.
Uhura bullying Spock to get on the Enterprise is ridiculous. This is the military. Things just don’t happen like that.
The depiction of how Kirk gets on the Enterprise is ridiculous.
San Francisco is ugly, like it’s supposed to be a dystopian future.
Why does Vulcan need help? Vulcan is more advanced than Earth and has many more ships. Furthermore, the Neutral Zone is mentioned as if everyone knows what it is. At this time in future history very few people knew about the Neutral Zone and the Romulans were a very mysterious species. For once some exposition would have been appropriate.
It takes longer than a few minutes to get to Vulcan. The dialog suggests it takes only a few minutes.
If they knew that going to Vulcan was a trap, why did they walk into it?
Why are torpedoes loaded manually on the Enterprise?
Romulans always speak very formally, just like Vulcans. Neither do so in this story.
Humans are depicted falling from orbit to just a couple of miles above Vulcan’s surface. Why don’t they burn up like meteors?
Sword fighting between the Romulan & Sulu is silly.
The drill idea is preposterous. The vast majority of the interior of any planet is made of liquid. A drill would simply have no effect.
Why didn’t anyone shoot at the red matter torpedo as it headed towards the drill hole? Also, Gene Roddenberry would never have allowed an event as dark as the destruction of Vulcan to occur.
It is too contrived that Kirk’s parachute should break.
They wouldn’t fall on the transporter pad just because they were falling when energized.
Why is it that Chekov can catch falling crewmen but not falling mothers?
Captains don’t verbally record their logs in front of the crew.
It’s unmotivated and contrived that Uhura would suddenly kiss Spock and he would hug and kiss back.This is the most obscene contradiction with the real ST universe. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, knows Spock doesn’t show emotion.
Nero’s character is too monstrous without proper explanation. He’s not even a two-dimensional character and ST has always been excellent at providing proper motivation for its villains. This is simply not good enough.
Nero’s ship’s so powerful, his torturing of Pike serves no purpose. Gratuitous nonsense.
Why would Spock ask a communications officer (Uhura) which direction a ship is headed?
The talk of an alternate reality is completely unnecessary exposition. They would never have this conversation. Science fiction characters should only ever worry about changing the past. It should never occur to them that their future has been changed while in the middle of a conflict. They might briefly reflect on it when it’s all over, but it has no bearing on the conflict itself and so would never be mentioned.
Spock twice uses the word “destiny”. This concept is simple superstition and Spock would never use this word.
Spock was emotional in expelling Kirk; the brig would have been fine.
It’s inconsistent that Nero’s ship was able to destroy several Star Fleet ships in just a few seconds, but George Kirk’s ship (the Kelvin) was never destroyed and was able to protect shuttlecraft and ram Nero’s ship. Nero would easily have killed everyone on the Kelvin and hence no Jim Kirk, hence no story. In other words, Nero’s ship’s abilities change with the requirements of the writers; this is the definition of a contrivance and is the second biggest crime of the producers of this movie.
Spock asks, “You are not the captain?” Since he is not aware of the precise circumstances of the new timeline, his assumption that a 21 year-old would be captain is preposterous.
Why would a powerful empire like Romulus need Spock’s help to survive a nova? Novas are always predictable at least thousands of years in advance. The Romulans would have been well prepared, again, rendering the whole story implausible.
Scott’s materialization and trek through large transparent piping in the engineering section seems more appropriate to Willy Wonka.
Spock would never say fear is necessary for command, because fear is an emotion.
Scott says he’s beaming them to an unoccupied section of Nero’s ship. There is no acceptable explanation for why he failed. They have sensors. Star Fleet characters always know whether there are people about when using the transporter. Again, totally contrived.
The fist fight between Nero & Kirk is unmotivated and Romulans just don’t act like that.
I don’t like old Spock telling young Spock to put aside logic. Spock is logical and he should stay logical.
Why is McCoy always on the bridge?
Spock’s called a commander, but his rank at this time of the future history was lieutenant.
Again with the preposterous drilling of a planet, this time Earth.
Apparently black holes are taken for granted as being transportation hubs through both space and time. As we know, this is not true (notwithstanding string theory, which is unproven and extremely unlikely). Real Star Trek always provides at least a bare minimum of technobabble to explain why known physics have been circumvented for the sake of story. The producers of this film couldn’t be bothered. Lazy.
01 .. All the other ST movies had titles beyond simply "Star Trek," so ... maybe.
02 .. I though the woman in the corridor's death scene was very effective. Given that we didn't know who she was, her death (IMO) had a lot of impact. I thought that the reduction in the soundtrack was supposed to be indicating her life ending.
03 .. He has a point here, the movie did have kind of a Star Wars feel to it, and there was a general dumbing down to certain element of the plot.
04 .. I'm not a big fan of the whole corvette sequence/scene. However, there nothing automatically "dystopian" about the future having a police officer.
05 .. There were children Vulcans bullies referred to in Journey to Babel. Plus there were plenty of references in the various series that Vulcans are basically assholes.
06 .. I didn't pick up on the Spock accent thing.
07 .. Now giving Uhura a central-south African spoken accent would have been interesting, not thick, just a little taste.
10 .. I always thought that building a ship the size of the Enterprise (old or nu) in zero gee would have posed fewer problems, in most of the SF I've read, anything above the size of a shuttle is built in orbit, so I've been making a certain assumption about how the Enterprise was constructed.
12 .. I liked McCoy's story that included a reference to his divorce and his bones, thought it was "cute."
13 .. Nero's motivations could have been more sophisticated, there no reason they HAD to be simplistic. And as I mention in other posts, Nero had this huge ship, why didn't he evacuate hundreds of thousands from Romulus?
16 .. We saw McCoy operate a transporter console once in TOS, and he hates the thing. We saw both Uhura and Rand at different times "man" the navigation station.
17 .. He has a point here, it doesn't really make sense for Starfleet to allow Kirk to take the KM test multiple times, either in ST Eleven or in ST Two. But ST Two did set the precedent on this matter.
19 .. I believe that nuKirk faced a disciplinary board because he acted differently than Kirk Prime originally did in the simulator, he was there not there primarily for cheating, but for firing on the defenseless Klingon ships.
20 .. Yes, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.
21 .. Uhura reminding Spock of her "oral sensitivity" was ... interesting.
22 .. How Kirk got on the Enterprise was just plain funny, this movie does have more openly funny scenes than the other movies. Maybe
all the other movies combined.
24 .. It possible that the Vulcans didn't send the distress call, Nero did.
25 .. From combining the dialog in three separate scene, it take far less than two hours to reach Vulcan. It isn't necessary to reach Vulcan quite so quickly in terms of plot. , Kirk only put the piece together after hearing Chekov's briefing, and that could have been after being on board for the days it took to reach Vulcan.
27 .. He right, why in the normal course of things are the torpedoes being loaded manually?
29 .. This point makes no sense, Things burn up in the atmosphere [/SIZE]from friction, when they're moving at thousands of miles per hour , not just from entering the atmosphere in of itself. Kirk, Sulu and the engineer were likely only moving at a few hundreds of MPH.
30 .. I've seen both fencing and Kendo competitions, Sulu really isn't fighting very well, but neither is the Romulan. Oh, and fencing isn't a "martial art."
31 .. The drilling into the magma thing, yes if Nero were simple dtilling a hole it would "fill in." Modern drilling involve the simotanus laying of a pipe into the hole. The beam didn't just drill a hole, it created a hard sided tube down into the magma of Vulcan and Earth, the red matter dropped through this.
34 .. The transporter materialized Kirk and Sulu stationary in mid air above the platform, they only fell a few feet, if they had retain their speed from their fall over Vulcan, they would have hit the transporter pad hard enough to have killed them.
43 .. Yes, placing Kirk in the brig would have been fine.
45 .. I had a problem with this at first, but Vulcans/Spock aren't perfect, it had been more than a century since Spock knew Kirk as a young man, and Spock wouldn't necessarily have known the exact year he was in, so this is reasonable on Spock's part.
48 .. Yes, Scotty's trip though the tube was ... unnecessary at best, wasn't really that funny either.
I could just put on First Contact and start whining and crying that WWIII moved from the 1990's to the 2060's, that Zefram Cochrane had totally changed from "Metamorphosis", that the Borg look different, that Picard submitting to baldness has turned Gene Rodenberry's bright vision of the future into a dystopia...
Eugenics War and Third World War, two different wars, next. Do you mean Zefram Cochrane is depicted by a different actor (you have a point there), or do you mean the character possessed a different demeanor? The Cochrane in Metamorphosis is two hundred years older and had been without Human contact for one hundred and fifty of those years. In the fifty years following the events of FC, Cochrane's ideas had been pubically vindicated, credit for contact with the Vulcan was likely laid at his feet and he would be shower with accolades. All this could account for the difference demeanor in the "two" Cochrane's.
And the Borg have always been a little different from each other.
Or you could just read Diane Duane's novel Spock's World. The writers of STXI did.
Too bad they didn't make her novel into Star Trek Eleven, that would have been great. Better still, have had Diane Duane write the whole movie (Instead of the people who did).
Romulans never act like this. Romulans never act like that. Romulans always talk like this. Orions never join Starfleet.
Because humans can have all sorts of cultures and customs and a wide array of possible professions, but another sapient species is expected to all have the same hair cut and can only be pirates?
This is the same rant where he says Star Trek fans are intelligent?
02 .. I though the woman in the corridor's death scene was very effective. Given that we didn't know who she was, her death (IMO) had a lot of impact. I thought that the reduction in the soundtrack was supposed to be indicating her life ending.
What's funny is that Hal seemed to forget the scenes with McCoy in Sickbay. In fact one of the scenes had McCoy coming from somewhere!
Too bad they didn't make her novel into Star Trek Eleven, that would have been great. Better still, have had Diane Duane write the whole movie (Instead of the people who did).
I don't think they were torpedoes being loaded on the Enterprise, but phaser power cells. They looked just like the things Sisko held up during his speech on the Defiant in DS9. He had a whole line of used-up ones against the mess hall wall.
I'd love to know what James Dixon thought of STXI - his rants and raves at the end of his timeline (particularly the anti-Enterprise ones!) had me in tears of laughter. He was truly insane.
I wonder if the last film killed him. He hasn't updated his timeline (which holds info from old fanzines above the later series' and movies) in years and years.
Star Trek XI is a daunting number. They're trying to bring in new fans here.
2. A woman is sucked into space and sound effects fade, denoting the silence of space. The rest of the film sticks with the tradition of sound effects in space. This is annoying.
I consider myself a "True Trekkie" and I still like this movie. It's fun. More people that matter liked this movie than those who liked the Star Wars films.
4. The scene is a cheap trick to wow the audience, and Kirk was never depicted as rebellious in nature (i.e. – they’ve changed the basic nature of his character which is simply unacceptable).
7. Uhura is from the United States of Africa and speaks Swahili. There really should have been at least the smallest reference to this. I personally found the dropping of the romance between Spock and Chapel to be very sad. The romance with Uhura is illogical! Vulcans only engage in romantic activities during the Pon farr. How could they drop this most basic of Star Trek elements?
Spock is half human and developed feelings for other characters during the show. And nobody hates STXI because nobody mentioned Uhura is form the United States of Africa. That's silly.
8. In the TOS episode The Menagerie it is made clear Kirk only barely knew Pike.
Alternate universe... and Kirk meets Pike for the first time in this movie anyway.
17. The Kobayashi Maru tests character and therefore can only be taken once. When a person already knows it’s a no-win scenario it is pointless to test a person again. Kirk would never have been allowed to take the test twice.
19. Star Fleet Academy would never punish Kirk for the Kobayashi Maru incident, let alone put him up for trial in front of his classmates. Hopelessly stupid storytelling.
32. Why didn’t anyone shoot at the red matter torpedo as it headed towards the drill hole? Also, Gene Roddenberry would never have allowed an event as dark as the destruction of Vulcan to occur.
37. It’s unmotivated and contrived that Uhura would suddenly kiss Spock and he would hug and kiss back.This is the most obscene contradiction with the real ST universe. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, knows Spock doesn’t show emotion.
Nitpicky. You probably weren't enjoying the movie because you had your head buried in a clipboard
41. The talk of an alternate reality is completely unnecessary exposition. They would never have this conversation. Science fiction characters should only ever worry about changing the past. It should never occur to them that their future has been changed while in the middle of a conflict. They might briefly reflect on it when it’s all over, but it has no bearing on the conflict itself and so would never be mentioned.
45. Spock asks, “You are not the captain?” Since he is not aware of the precise circumstances of the new timeline, his assumption that a 21 year-old would be captain is preposterous.
Kirk was captain at an early age in the original timeline
49. Scott says he’s beaming them to an unoccupied section of Nero’s ship. There is no acceptable explanation for why he failed. They have sensors. Star Fleet characters always know whether there are people about when using the transporter. Again, totally contrived.
I don't think they were torpedoes being loaded on the Enterprise, but phaser power cells. They looked just like the things Sisko held up during his speech on the Defiant in DS9. He had a whole line of used-up ones against the mess hall wall.
I'd love to know what James Dixon thought of STXI - his rants and raves at the end of his timeline (particularly the anti-Enterprise ones!) had me in tears of laughter. He was truly insane.
I wonder if the last film killed him. He hasn't updated his timeline (which holds info from old fanzines above the later series' and movies) in years and years.
I actually was involved in some major arguements with him on USENET alt.trek.tech around the time of Generations or so. He always thought that fandom's answers to Treknology should trump the actual, you know, WRITERS of the shows and movies.
Star Trek XI is a daunting number. They're trying to bring in new fans here.
2. A woman is sucked into space and sound effects fade, denoting the silence of space. The rest of the film sticks with the tradition of sound effects in space. This is annoying.
Come to think of it, Hal is incorrect about this too. They stick with the "silence in space" thing for the space jump, and then I believe it goes silent for the next to final scene with the Enterprise when they eject the warp cores.
I don't think they were torpedoes being loaded on the Enterprise, but phaser power cells. They looked just like the things Sisko held up during his speech on the Defiant in DS9. He had a whole line of used-up ones against the mess hall wall.
I'd love to know what James Dixon thought of STXI - his rants and raves at the end of his timeline (particularly the anti-Enterprise ones!) had me in tears of laughter. He was truly insane.
I wonder if the last film killed him. He hasn't updated his timeline (which holds info from old fanzines above the later series' and movies) in years and years.
I actually was involved in some major arguements with him on USENET alt.trek.tech around the time of Generations or so. He always thought that fandom's answers to Treknology should trump the actual, you know, WRITERS of the shows and movies.
He also always thought that any instance of anyone daring to disagree with him or to take exception to to any point made by him--whether in post or in James Dixon Timeline/Star Trek Chronology File--gave him carte blanche each time to act like a massively insulting jerk until it got him tossed off the board again. Always a joy, James was.
Star Trek XI is a daunting number. They're trying to bring in new fans here.
2. A woman is sucked into space and sound effects fade, denoting the silence of space. The rest of the film sticks with the tradition of sound effects in space. This is annoying.
Come to think of it, Hal is incorrect about this too. They stick with the "silence in space" thing for the space jump, and then I believe it goes silent for the next to final scene with the Enterprise when they eject the warp cores.
IIRC, JJ said on the commentary that he originally planned on doing nuBSG-style "silent space" for the whole movie, but the results felt "unfinished" so he went with dramatic effect silences only. I totally agree with the way he did it, it was very effective.
Come to think of it, Hal is incorrect about this too. They stick with the "silence in space" thing for the space jump, and then I believe it goes silent for the next to final scene with the Enterprise when they eject the warp cores.
IIRC, JJ said on the commentary that he originally planned on doing nuBSG-style "silent space" for the whole movie, but the results felt "unfinished" so he went with dramatic effect silences only. I totally agree with the way he did it, it was very effective.
3. I consider myself a "True Trekkie" and I still like this movie. It's fun. More people that matter liked this movie than those who liked the Star Wars films.
Care to provide a link to this?? I too consider myself a "true Trekkie", and I enjoyed the Star Wars movies much more than this film.
7. Spock is half human and developed feelings for other characters during the show. And nobody hates STXI because nobody mentioned Uhura is form the United States of Africa. That's silly.
In countless TOS episodes, Kirk states how many crew he has under his command. In The Ultimate Computer before the Excaliber is hit with phaser fire for the last time Kirk yells at daystrom that the ship contains 400ish crew. NOT 500 or even close to 800....
Yeah, except McCoy never was shown or stated to have any pilot training or experience when it came to starships. After all he is a DOCTOR...not a _______!
19. It's a test... he CHEATED. You're contradicting yourself.
Which episodes? Naked Time, where he is under the PSI 2000 virus? This side of Paradise, where he is under the control of the spores?, Plato's Stepchildren, where he is being mentally controlled?.
45. Kirk was captain at an early age in the original timeline.
Kirk became captain of the Enterprise in STXI age 25. In TOS, we meet Kirk as captain of the Enterprise, but never learn when he attained that rank.
The novel Enterprise: The First Adventure says that Kirk (Prime) became Enterprise captain age 28 - so they bumped it up by all of three years.
Orion isn't in the Federation, but nor are Kronos or Ferenginar, and Worf and Nog are happily in Starfleet. Are TNG and DS9 wrong, too? No. Starfleet has an open-door policy.
Captain Mike said:
In countless TOS episodes, Kirk states how many crew he has under his command.
Does he say that his Enterprise is the largest, most populous Federation starship? Does he ever comment on the crew complement or size of starships from twenty-five years prior?
It's like watching Voyager and then insisting that there were no ships bigger or more heavily crewed than Janeway's in the 24th century just because you never saw TNG.
I'm quite sure Karl Urban came up with that line. Quite sure in the prime universe, we weren't told how Kirk and McCoy met, but this is the alternative universe.
There are some points I agree with, but it's a lot of nit picking mostly. I'm looking forward to the sequel (like many other fans)
I completely agree.
