violence

[Shat Happens]

I don't like the scene where Khan crushed Marcus' skull with his bare hands -- and in front of his daughter whose leg he just had broken too. With disgusting sounds.

Was it needed? I am sure not.

Fantasy sci-fi traditionally used rayguns not only for the futuristic look but to avoid showing blood and such when dispatching enemies. I

I also didn't like in ST2009 when Kirk ordered open fire with all weapons at an enemy already defeated. In traditional Star Trek the enemy would "honorably" self-destruct after refusing help.

I also didn't like in STID that Kirk took our beloved starship Enterprise as a weapon of vengeance and execution on John Harrison. And at the end they didnt think twice before forcibly dissected him for the magic ressurection.

Star Trek should be cleaner.

But I'm just one guy.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I don't like the scene where Khan crushed Marcus' skull with his bare hands -- and in front of his daughter whose leg he just had broken too. With disgusting sounds.

Was it needed? I am sure not.

Fair enough.

Fantasy sci-fi traditionally used rayguns not only for the futuristic look but to avoid showing blood and such when dispatching enemies. I

Waitasec, it was totally bloodless! Khan's hands and shirt were magically clean immediately afterwords and not covered in brains and gore like one would expect. Also we never got a shot of Carol's leg after it was broken. All the nasty stuff is implied rather than shown.

I also didn't like in ST2009 when Kirk ordered open fire with all weapons at an enemy already defeated. In traditional Star Trek the enemy would "honorably" self-destruct after refusing help.

Fair enough (although the possibility of Nero possibly having a last ditch plan or him escaping through time has been discussed to death already)

I also didn't like in STID that Kirk took our beloved starship Enterprise as a weapon of vengeance and execution on John Harrison. And at the end they didnt think twice before forcibly dissected him for the magic ressurection.

Star Trek should be cleaner.

But I'm just one guy.

Wait, dissected Khan? They just took some blood. And wasn't the entire point of Kirk using the Enterprise to hunt down "Harrison" that he thought better of it, showing that revenge isn't the way?

 

[Shat Happens]

All the nasty stuff is implied rather than shown.

Same thing to me, sometimes it's even worse. Either way, I think it's too violent for a Star Trek movie.

(although the possibility of Nero possibly having a last ditch plan or him escaping through time has been discussed to death already)

Has it? I think I wasn't here during that discussion. But it didnt seem so in the movie.

Wait, dissected Khan? They just took some blood.

Yes, but how much does it need to be harvested to be considered a dissection? Also, I'm not a English native speaker, maybe dissection isn't the right word. Is "forced harvest" better? even if it is, doesn't seem something the good guys would do.

Now I think if would be better if it was more like the ending from that Batman movie with Schwarzenegger when Mr Freeze is defeated but willing gives the medicine for Alfred.

Or something like that.

 

[Ryan8bit]

I think Star Trek isn't violent enough. It's all too clean, in an Eminiar-type way.

 

[Khan 2.0]

TWOK was more violent

 

[Shat Happens]

TWOK was more violent

Indeed. I forgot about poor Preston and the corpses in the space lab.

I still believe this JJ-Trek is too violent for my tastes, but now I don't know why.

 

[BigJake]

TWOK actually shows relatively little violence apart from a few burns and corpses resulting from its space duels; likewise Preston and the others die offscreen, it's just their bodies and a bit of blood that are found. I certainly wouldn't rank anything in TWOK on a level of straight-up violence with Khan crushing Marcus' skull. Really its most disturbing scene on a body-horror level is Khan implanting the eels in Chekov and Tyrell.

That said, as skull-crushings in film and television go, that scene is well behind Game of Thrones or Blade Runner. So... I guess that's something? I think it's maybe more problematic that having your bad guy crush somebody's skull with their bare hands to demonstrate their bad-assery is turning into, like, A Thing, which doesn't need to happen.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Even when angry, Cumber Khan lacks the necessary passion and is too glacial.

Montalban Khan would've just slapped Carol Marcus, to get her out of his way. Considered making it up her later with a dinner, a gift, and banging her brains out in a different way to her Father.

I was actually more disturbed by him breaking her leg, than the skull crushing that followed to be honest. He could've basically shoved her aside, into the nearest wall and unconsciousness.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Personally, growing up and still to this day, I've found the concept of being vaporized by a phaser or disruptor far more disturbing than any of the more conventional deaths we've seen in Trek. The poor innocent in TWoK who got vaporized by Terrel when he was aiming at David Marcus always bothered me in particular as a kid. It was a pretty horrifying image of him screaming away into nonexistence, without even so much as a body left behind for his friends to mourn over.

It just makes me think of how many (albeit fictional) people must have been vaporized in various criminal or intelligence operations where friends and family left behind have no idea what ever happened to them, which can often be more emotionally traumatizing than getting a sense of closure by at least knowing if they're dead or not.

 

[Franklin]

There has been PG and PG-13 type violence in all Trek, movies or TV. But it's all relative. Action adventure needs some violence, but they're not going for an R rating, either.

In TUC we see Klingons being shot by phasers with their blood going all over the place. That it's comically pink doesn't make it any less violent or graphic for the rating. As others have said, TWOK was quite violent. Again, it's all PG or PG-13 level stuff, though.

I don't think any of it was gratuitous in any of the movies, either. Therefore, it honestly doesn't bother me. It is action-adventure, after all. Beings are going to die sometimes terrible deaths. This isn't Disney's "Bambi", after all. Oh. Wait.

 

[BigJake]

I still find bone-crushing physicality more disturbing, but that's not to say vaporization isn't.

 

[Melakon]

I don't like the scene where Khan crushed Marcus' skull with his bare hands -- and in front of his daughter whose leg he just had broken too. With disgusting sounds.

Was it needed? I am sure not. . .

But I'm just one guy.

I don't know. I was sort of surprised that there wasn't a Scanners style head-bursting scene. To me, it felt like a big gore scene was intended to go in there but never shot. Stomping Carol's leg seemed unnecessary though.

But I'm just another guy too.

 

[Franklin]

Personally, growing up and still to this day, I've found the concept of being vaporized by a phaser or disruptor far more disturbing than any of the more conventional deaths we've seen in Trek. The poor innocent in TWoK who got vaporized by Terrel when he was aiming at David Marcus always bothered me in particular as a kid. It was a pretty horrifying image of him screaming away into nonexistence, without even so much as a body left behind for his friends to mourn over.

It just makes me think of how many (albeit fictional) people must have been vaporized in various criminal or intelligence operations where friends and family left behind have no idea what ever happened to them, which can often be more emotionally traumatizing than getting a sense of closure by at least knowing if they're dead or not.

Agreed. In "The Most Toys" the collector had a weapon that was supposed to vaporize, but also create an agonizing death. Vaporization didn't look instantaneous when the shape-shifter was killed in TUC, either.

Let's face it, there really is no good way to go. The scene in Trek that sticks with me most is the woman on the Kelvin being sucked out into space.

Let's not forget six billion Vulcans dying, too. Even if we didn't see it, imagine the horror going on on the planet. Death by black hole.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I still find bone-crushing physicality more disturbing, but that's not to say vaporization isn't.

Oh, my post wasn't meant to be a counter-argument to yours, I just was pointing out that vaporizations have always bothered me more than conventional deaths. When Riker (unnecessarily, IMO) vaporized that terrorist lady that always bugged me too.

In "The Most Toys" the collector had a weapon that was supposed to vaporize, but also create an agonizing death. Vaporization didn't look instantaneous when the shape-shifter was killed in TUC, either.

Yeah, in both TWoK and TUC the victims seemed to fade away in a second or two with a horrifying scream.

 

[Ryan8bit]

In "The Most Toys" the collector had a weapon that was supposed to vaporize, but also create an agonizing death.

I wonder, wouldn't something like that smell really bad? Even though that's one of the moments that stands out as being somewhat shocking, it still strikes me as rather sanitized.

 

[Mage]

Some of the assimilation in First Contact was pretty gruesome. The heads of some drones on spikes in Unimatrix during Voyager. The death by facelift in Insurrection.

There's been plenty of yukky stuff in Star Trek through out the decades. This sounds more like trying to find fault with JJ's version of Star Trek, simply for the sake of wanting things to be wrong with it.

I dunno, I read enough complaints about JJ's Star Trek that I can understand. People don't relate to characters, they find the cinematogrophy not to their liking, they don't like the plot. Those are legitimate concerns.
Even finding something to violent can be a valid reason. But saying that they are bad because it's more violent than previous Star Trek, is a fallacy I feel.

 

[Khan 2.0]

Ive always thought of Wrath of Khan as not so much a Trek film, more a deadly serious R rated SF/horror like Alien, Terminator or Scanners. It helped that it was rated ‘15’ when released on ‘uncut’ VHS in the UK (15 and 18 rated films usually = ‘R’ in the US), but later downgraded to ‘12’ for the Directors Cut dvd (12 = PG13). The Terminator was also downgraded from 18 on VHS (hard R) to 15 (not so hard R).

the tone is just too adult for kids, the themes too lofty, the violence feels too real and graphic (the disturbing ear scenes are almost like Alien chestburster or Cronenberg levels in terms of disturbing goriness), there seems to be frequent bloodletting (this movie is steeped in red - red uniforms, red alerts, red rum), mind torture(like Scanners), people being killed in violent nasty ways - vicious radiation burns, burned alive from Reliant phaser hit, the Regular torture aftermath (the guy Bones backs in to hanging upside down throat slit blood all over the floor), Khans bloody injuries, and the hand phaser deaths on Regular - the scientist caught in the phaser fire being vaporized and Terrells suicide (you really feel the agony of his struggle) - i know disintegrations happened loads of times in TOS but that was 60s tv budget almost comic book violence - here it was in big budget big screen Trek never seen before..it felt totally real as if that’s what super advanced ‘ray guns’ 200 years in the future would do to a person (it also helped that TWOK felt totally real so the danger/threat felt real) - the horrible scream the scientist does as hes destroyed feels like something out of a Cronenberg film- in fact the whole scene is like something out of an 80s Cronenberg tech chiller - its not so much SF/Fantasy violence, its more like REAL violence. (even Paul Winfield lends the film a harder edge in retrospect as he was in the hard R rated Terminator two years later).

but mainly the tone of the movie - very serious, realistic thanks to the great acting from everyone (Montoban and Shatner shouldve been oscar nominated - best supporting actor and best actor - in fact i think Khan is one of the few Trek movies that didnt get any nominations - not even for FX which had the first use of CGI!!) stuff feels like its happening for real (much more so than any of the other Trek films - although maybe III and TMP come closest to capturing that element of realism). i imagine Khan himself would be pretty terrifying for kids - a raving superhuman madman who kills at any given moment ...they mustve been pretty scared seeing it, I know I was when I saw it at the cinema as a kid. And then theres the eerie dark silence of space with the haunting background noises in the spaceship/planet scenes - this dosnt feel like the star trek universe of TOS, any of the other movies, or the TNG era, - its almost like the Alien universe, complete with horrible, truly alien creatures that will crawl inside your body given half a chance. (in retrospect the James Horner Aliens score in places makes it feel of that universe too - and the whole scientists playing god and developing Genesis/terraforming with a substance that can either create life on lifeless worlds or destroy it on worlds where life exists now feels all very Prometheus)

 

[Melakon]

The most shocking gory moment in Star Trek has to be the TNG episode where Lt. Cdr. Dexter Remmick is revealed to have some space slug inside his body. I don't think they've matched that yet for over the topness.

 

[Smellmet]

Totally agree with all of that, this is exactly how I view TWOK, and it's also one of the reasons it's still at or very near the top of the movie pile to this day. It came at a time before we started to laugh at these guys, and was a movie that was desperate to excite it's audience after the plodding The Motion Picture (which is still one of my favorites). I think the film is better for the violence in it, none of it is gratuitous, and it all helps to ramp up the tension and menace of Khan himself, in short it gives the film the credibility to stand with other sci-fi movies of it's era IMO.

Having said that - I found the transporter accident in TMP to be quite disturbing, especially the comms from the guy at the other end 'what we got back didn't live long' if that doesn't conjure up images of The Fly I don't know what will.

I don't thing that any of the violence in STID was anywhere like as disturbing as some of the scenes in TWOK, the head crush being the worst, but was also not seen and not graphic in any way. If we're comparing like for like scenes in comparable movies, then I'd say when Magneto crushes the helmets of the two Nazis in X-Men First Class, and when Bane crushes one of his henchmen's throat in The Dark Knight Rises are both worse for me.

I'm totally happy at the level of violence in these two movies, in fact I'd be happy with it dialled up slightly more, but still keeping it within PG-13/12 ratings.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Fantasy sci-fi traditionally used rayguns not only for the futuristic look but to avoid showing blood and such when dispatching enemies.

What?

TOS movie sampling of non "raygun" violence:

TWOK:

1. The bloody victims of Regula 1.
2. Crewmember caught in the fiery corridor during the Enterprise / Reliant battle.

TSFS:

1. David stabbed to death on screen.
2. Kirk kicking Kruge to his death.

Other sci-fi/fantasy films are pretty violent: the Star Wars films featured dismemberment, electrocution, and other forms of death. The original Planet of the Apes series was loaded with gunshot victims, etc. From the 1960s-forward, sci-fi and/or fantasy films did not avoid bloodshed / physical violence when necessary, so i'm wondering why you believe it was avoided?

Star Trek should be cleaner.

But I'm just one guy.

Since when? Even on TOS, it was not limited to victims being vaporized by Phasers. Explosions, stabbing, skewered by various weapons (The Galileo Seven, Friday's Child & The Gamesters of Triskelion), and on and on.