I could add the minor nitpick about Kirk running from the half mutated/borrowed alien from Starship troopers to land magically RIGHT at the cave entrance to meet Spock, but reallly, the audience clapped several times at the theater. Despite all the criticisms, it made it right between the eyes with the larger percentage of the audience. A good thing as I remember it being REAL quiet at Trek V.
Weak Plot, Good Everything Else?
- Thread starter Bisz
- Start date
Technically not really, but I came to the conclusion with this kind of movie (science-fiction especially) it could be.
I think at a point all directors have the tendency to forget that plot should be the most important part of a movie, and especially if they're "playing" with something that can rely on something else (fan-base, good casting, nice special effects and so on) they take it a bit on the simple side and forget about the rest.
I'm not saying Abrams, Orci or Kurtzman are not good at what they are, but sure they must have felt they needed something that makes money, and unfortunately PLOT =! MONEY in cinema, as a first step. The two are surely correlated, but not necessarly linked as tight as we'd like to believe.
I think the main flaw of the movie, which in turn brought in other ones, was Nero. Not Eric Bana's fault (I like his acting), but the character was weak. If you're going to revolve all your plot around a villain you need a Khan, or the Borg or something as good as that. Take away that, and you find yourself with a huge gap in the story setting, IMHO, and it's not something easy to fill up.
Not something that ruin the movie (for me at least), but a bit of a shame, because it could have made this even better than it is already
Intelligent writing?
I agree whole-heartedly. Poor Nero, he was a normal person who ended up snapping under pressure; and is there anything worse than losing your entire civilisation? He needed someone to blame, and there wasn't anyone left apart from Spock. He isn't Shinzon at all.
I have no idea where you are coming from. I think this thread hasn't had any bitching until you came along. The overwhelming majority of people like the movie, its just that a majority of those think the plot was weak, myself included. No one is asking for nude shower scenes... what does Starship Troopers have to do with this discussion anyway?
No worries mate. It's great that people are talking about it, but initially I saw a load of nitpicks & decided to ignore them. Glad I did, it's a great movie. Now if it were awful, then it would be justified dissecting every bit sideways & so on, but it ain't. Doing loads better than the Piipi remake did. Sorry my humor didn't go over so well last time.
The New Adventures of Pippi.
It was a box-office failure, holding the distinction of having the 59th-lowest per-screen revenues of a wide-release movie in history as of April 2009.[1] It grossed $3.6 million during its domestic release in the U.S., with a per-screen average on opening weekend of only $1,105.[
The New Adventures of Pippi.
It was a box-office failure, holding the distinction of having the 59th-lowest per-screen revenues of a wide-release movie in history as of April 2009.[1] It grossed $3.6 million during its domestic release in the U.S., with a per-screen average on opening weekend of only $1,105.[
The main emphasis of this movie was on the initial meeting of all these great characters. The plot was of secondary importance. Because Abrams succeeded wildly with the primary goal (the initial meeting), I can overlook the plot.
However, the NEXT movie will need to kick butt with the plot.
However, the NEXT movie will need to kick butt with the plot.
Had to go with "Other": the movie didn't 'suck,' but the plot was weak, some of the production design was annoying, and many of the characters were either implausible or outright cartoons.
The Good:
Captain Pike - he could've carried an entire movie. You want to reboot Star Trek? Fine - give me Bruce Greenwood's Pike and a story that doesn't pander to re-establishing how all of the signature characters "really came together."
Spock Prime - kudos to Leonard Nimoy for a great performance. This more than makes up for his turn in "Save the Whales."
Chris Pine - good performance for what he was given; doesn't mean Kirk's meteoric rise made any sense, but Pine did a good job.
Zachary Quinto - same deal as Pine.
Scotty - I didn't know if I was going to like Pegg's Scotty, but I did. Could've done without the gratuitous reference to ENT, though - it sucks that, in rebooting the universe, we're now stuck with ENT as the only unchanged continuity in the franchise .
The Bad:
McCoy - Urban chewed the scenery with this one, overplaying bad lines that the writers should've been slapped for. He may look the part, his voice may sound the part, but he was a cartoon of McCoy, not a character.
Chekov: another cartoon, and one I guess we have to presume joined Starfleet at about 13 years old, maybe 14 (based on Kirk getting through in 3 years instead of 4).
The complete lack of a chain of command and discipline - there's just no good reason for Kirk to have ended up the captain based on what happened; even Pike promoting him to first officer made no sense, regardless of his potential. Same thing goes for Spock jettisoning an officer; regardless of there being a Starfleet outpost on Delta Vega, this was equivalent to walking the plank! So Starfleet is now a bunch of pirates? Why don't they just follow the Klingons - or the MU - and have promotions by assassination? It would make as much sense.
The overabundance of brewery/warehouse scenery inside the ship. This smacked of cost-cutting onscreen, and was a very unfortunate reflection of Space Mutiny.
The cinematography and editing - thanks, MTV generation, for nothing. The rapid cuts combined with the tsunami of lens flares made this a movie of which I cannot honestly recall a single scene clearly. There was nothing visually memorable other than the fact that it was nearly unwatchable. The occasional lens flare in Firefly was a nice visual language that stood out as realistic, but this much? That's like being forced to listen to an opera in Esperanto that also has a percussion section.
I had fun, mostly because I was with friends, watching it at a drive-in. I'll probably buy the DVD to get all the behind-the-scenes stuff, but this movie did not respark my interest in Star Trek. Maybe Terminator:Salvation will fare better next week ....
The Good:
Captain Pike - he could've carried an entire movie. You want to reboot Star Trek? Fine - give me Bruce Greenwood's Pike and a story that doesn't pander to re-establishing how all of the signature characters "really came together."
Spock Prime - kudos to Leonard Nimoy for a great performance. This more than makes up for his turn in "Save the Whales."
Chris Pine - good performance for what he was given; doesn't mean Kirk's meteoric rise made any sense, but Pine did a good job.
Zachary Quinto - same deal as Pine.
Scotty - I didn't know if I was going to like Pegg's Scotty, but I did. Could've done without the gratuitous reference to ENT, though - it sucks that, in rebooting the universe, we're now stuck with ENT as the only unchanged continuity in the franchise .
The Bad:
McCoy - Urban chewed the scenery with this one, overplaying bad lines that the writers should've been slapped for. He may look the part, his voice may sound the part, but he was a cartoon of McCoy, not a character.
Chekov: another cartoon, and one I guess we have to presume joined Starfleet at about 13 years old, maybe 14 (based on Kirk getting through in 3 years instead of 4).
The complete lack of a chain of command and discipline - there's just no good reason for Kirk to have ended up the captain based on what happened; even Pike promoting him to first officer made no sense, regardless of his potential. Same thing goes for Spock jettisoning an officer; regardless of there being a Starfleet outpost on Delta Vega, this was equivalent to walking the plank! So Starfleet is now a bunch of pirates? Why don't they just follow the Klingons - or the MU - and have promotions by assassination? It would make as much sense.
The overabundance of brewery/warehouse scenery inside the ship. This smacked of cost-cutting onscreen, and was a very unfortunate reflection of Space Mutiny.
The cinematography and editing - thanks, MTV generation, for nothing. The rapid cuts combined with the tsunami of lens flares made this a movie of which I cannot honestly recall a single scene clearly. There was nothing visually memorable other than the fact that it was nearly unwatchable. The occasional lens flare in Firefly was a nice visual language that stood out as realistic, but this much? That's like being forced to listen to an opera in Esperanto that also has a percussion section.
I had fun, mostly because I was with friends, watching it at a drive-in. I'll probably buy the DVD to get all the behind-the-scenes stuff, but this movie did not respark my interest in Star Trek. Maybe Terminator:Salvation will fare better next week ...
.
Agreed. The part where Spock maroons Kirk on the ice planet was where they totally lost me. Why not simply throw him into the brig? And when Spock & Kirk were fist fighting on the bridge, why didn't anyone try to pull them apart?
And while Kirk's promotion from suspended stowaway to acting first officer strains believability to the brink, I would have let them get away with it if they had fleshed out the Kirk/Pike relationship a little more. I feel like we should have seen another adventure before this one, the one where Kirk first truly proves to Pike that he has it in him to live up to George Kirk's reputation. Then there would have been more justification for Kirk's rapid rise through the ranks.
Agreed. As far as shaky-cam goes, it's not quite as bad as The Bourne Ultimatum or The Kingdom but it was still pretty annoying. And it's a shame because I think movies like Casino Royale & The Dark Knight have proved that you can still do action scenes where it's clear what's happening and what the geography of the scene is.
I'll probably buy the DVD to get all the behind-the-scenes stuff, but this movie did not respark my interest in Star Trek. Maybe Terminator:Salvation will fare better next week ...
Me too. After I was so disappointed with how this movie seemed to just not hold together real well, I realized that now all my hopes for the summer are being channeled into Terminator Salvation.
Good points Scotty & Pointy. Visuals were better than last Star wars flick I thought. Too much CG & dizzy bizziness in that one.
Halfway through, I bought the guy playing Spock. Initially his looks threw me, but he pulled it off. I NEVER thought I'd say that, Nimoy is God, but I'll give em his props. The Pippi situation is similar. Original Pippi irreplacable.
Halfway through, I bought the guy playing Spock. Initially his looks threw me, but he pulled it off. I NEVER thought I'd say that, Nimoy is God, but I'll give em his props. The Pippi situation is similar. Original Pippi irreplacable.
Similar threads
- Poll
