Star Trek SPOILER EDITION!!!!!!

[Snarf]

Here's what I thought: amusing action movie made by a mainstream glitzy Hollywood sh** of a director.

The little bad things:
Kirk, in the episode "A Piece of the Action" is completely dumbfounded by a 20th century automobile that required shifting. In this movie, he's rocking a stickshift at age 10 or whatever.
The Enterprise was modernized way too far for the movie. It looked even more advanced than the Enterprise E. This is very annoying.
Freefalling from space into a planet's atmosphere is only productive if your goal is to incinerate yourself. Also, the wind on that drill platform would have made it nearly impossible to stand on it, not to mention it was awfully far up in the atmosphere. Not a whole lot of O2 in that air.
Red Matter was never sufficiently explained.
No one would have been retarded enough to waste all their photons and valuable time on shooting at a ship that was getting sucked into a black hole. Doing that almost killed off the crew, no captain, even Kirk, would have stayed just for that.
Related to the above, ejecting the core is already overused in Star Trek. Abrams was trying to establish some Trek cred here, because I guess he knows what a warp core is. Fail.
Uhura was poorly cast, Chekhov didn't fare much better. Whoever played Sulu had too high a voice. Kirk just didn't talk like Kirk. If he had tried to put a little bit of Shatner's delivery in there, it would have gone a long way toward legitimizing Pine's performance.

The big bad things:
In Star Trek, Vulcan still exists. You can't blow up a planet that exists later in the timeline unless you establish that this movie is setting up for more material in a different, Vulcan-less timeline. Biggest hole in the movie. Unforgivable.
The other really big thing: Uhura and Spock. TRAVESTY. BLASPHEMY. Prepare the gallows. (serious) Unforgivable.
The last really bad thing: Spock (prime) would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER get involved with the timeline in order to tell young Spock what he's already going to figure out through life anyway. To talk to himself like that and pollute whatever timeline was forming . . . THAT IS NOT STAR TREK. Just a ploy to play to the dumber audience the movie was trying to bring in.
This movie just has nothing to do with Roddenberry's vision of the future. It was way too edgy, glitzy, and action-oriented. Star Trek was never supposed to be about action.


Good things:
Karl Urban got Bones perfect.
Simon Pegg did a good Montgomery Scott, though it was a little too close to comic relief.
The score was excellent.
Props for not putting in sound during the descent to the drill platform.

[acubass]

I loved it. As far as timelines go, star treck has never stuck to a single one. This doesn't bother me one bit. Just like superman, each new edition goes it's own way. The smallville series is a great example of this. I'D love to type more but I'm on an iPhone. Good movie

[arbitrary]

As I said in the other thread; the wife and I are going w/the premise that its NOT a Star Trek movie.

[fitbass3p]

Originally Posted by Snarf

The little bad things:
Kirk, in the episode "A Piece of the Action" is completely dumbfounded by a 20th century automobile that required shifting. In this movie, he's rocking a stickshift at age 10 or whatever.
The Enterprise was modernized way too far for the movie. It looked even more advanced than the Enterprise E. This is very annoying.
Freefalling from space into a planet's atmosphere is only productive if your goal is to incinerate yourself. Also, the wind on that drill platform would have made it nearly impossible to stand on it, not to mention it was awfully far up in the atmosphere. Not a whole lot of O2 in that air.
Red Matter was never sufficiently explained.
No one would have been retarded enough to waste all their photons and valuable time on shooting at a ship that was getting sucked into a black hole. Doing that almost killed off the crew, no captain, even Kirk, would have stayed just for that.
Related to the above, ejecting the core is already overused in Star Trek. Abrams was trying to establish some Trek cred here, because I guess he knows what a warp core is. Fail.
Uhura was poorly cast, Chekhov didn't fare much better. Whoever played Sulu had too high a voice. Kirk just didn't talk like Kirk. If he had tried to put a little bit of Shatner's delivery in there, it would have gone a long way toward legitimizing Pine's performance.

I agree with all of these things except the casting. A new vision deserves new character interpretations, at least. I thought the movie was extraordinarily well cast considering what they tried to accomplish.

Originally Posted by Snarf

The big bad things:
In Star Trek, Vulcan still exists. You can't blow up a planet that exists later in the timeline unless you establish that this movie is setting up for more material in a different, Vulcan-less timeline. Biggest hole in the movie. Unforgivable.

They explained this away (not well) with the fact that they had moved into a DIFFERENT timeline with the Red Matter/singularity issue. It's not well done, but it's certainly not like they ignored it. The future after the movie will NOT have Vulcan in it.

Originally Posted by Snarf

The other really big thing: Uhura and Spock. TRAVESTY. BLASPHEMY. Prepare the gallows. (serious) Unforgivable.
The last really bad thing: Spock (prime) would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER get involved with the timeline in order to tell young Spock what he's already going to figure out through life anyway. To talk to himself like that and pollute whatever timeline was forming . . . THAT IS NOT STAR TREK. Just a ploy to play to the dumber audience the movie was trying to bring in.
This movie just has nothing to do with Roddenberry's vision of the future. It was way too edgy, glitzy, and action-oriented. Star Trek was never supposed to be about action.

-While I disagree with the choice to make Uhura and Spock a thing, it did not clash with the overall emotional construct of the movie.
-The last scene with the two Spocks was a sop for Leonard Nimoy to "pass the torch," and was out of character. It was one of the things that JJ Abrams put in the movie to get Nimoy to sign on.
-I agree that it was too glitzy.

Originally Posted by Snarf

Good things:
Karl Urban got Bones perfect.
Simon Pegg did a good Montgomery Scott, though it was a little too close to comic relief.
The score was excellent.
Props for not putting in sound during the descent to the drill platform.

Fully agree here.

Now that they've set the scene, I think they have the opportunity to make a pass at a new vision for Star Trek, and can explore the characters in an ongoing fashion (at least I hope so).

[john turner]

Originally Posted by Snarf

Here's what I thought: amusing action movie made by a mainstream glitzy Hollywood sh** of a director.

The little bad things:
Kirk, in the episode "A Piece of the Action" is completely dumbfounded by a 20th century automobile that required shifting. In this movie, he's rocking a stickshift at age 10 or whatever.
The Enterprise was modernized way too far for the movie. It looked even more advanced than the Enterprise E. This is very annoying.
Freefalling from space into a planet's atmosphere is only productive if your goal is to incinerate yourself. Also, the wind on that drill platform would have made it nearly impossible to stand on it, not to mention it was awfully far up in the atmosphere. Not a whole lot of O2 in that air.
Red Matter was never sufficiently explained.
No one would have been retarded enough to waste all their photons and valuable time on shooting at a ship that was getting sucked into a black hole. Doing that almost killed off the crew, no captain, even Kirk, would have stayed just for that.
Related to the above, ejecting the core is already overused in Star Trek. Abrams was trying to establish some Trek cred here, because I guess he knows what a warp core is. Fail.
Uhura was poorly cast, Chekhov didn't fare much better. Whoever played Sulu had too high a voice. Kirk just didn't talk like Kirk. If he had tried to put a little bit of Shatner's delivery in there, it would have gone a long way toward legitimizing Pine's performance.

The big bad things:
In Star Trek, Vulcan still exists. You can't blow up a planet that exists later in the timeline unless you establish that this movie is setting up for more material in a different, Vulcan-less timeline. Biggest hole in the movie. Unforgivable.
The other really big thing: Uhura and Spock. TRAVESTY. BLASPHEMY. Prepare the gallows. (serious) Unforgivable.
The last really bad thing: Spock (prime) would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER get involved with the timeline in order to tell young Spock what he's already going to figure out through life anyway. To talk to himself like that and pollute whatever timeline was forming . . . THAT IS NOT STAR TREK. Just a ploy to play to the dumber audience the movie was trying to bring in.
This movie just has nothing to do with Roddenberry's vision of the future. It was way too edgy, glitzy, and action-oriented. Star Trek was never supposed to be about action.

remember, the point of this movie was that the romulan came back and changed the past, by killing kirk's father. therefore, kirk was exposed to an entirely different childhood in this story than the canon story. the "modernized" more battle-oriented enterprise is completely believable considering the fate of george kirk's ship at the beginning of the film. they had to spend the subsequent 20 years working toward more powerful vessels, in the off chance that the romulans from the future should make their way back to federation space.

as for the big things - there are many precedents set in every series for mulitple universes - the whole "mirror mirror" parallel universe, that got exposure in every series except tng, along with the best of both worlds (tng) and the tng borg episode that had infinite enterprises spawning - one of those enterprises, if you recall, came from a universe where the earth had been destroyed by the borg. the precedent for this kind of thing has been set - the movie was just the first time that we were left, at the end of the story, in the "alternate".

the fact that spock prime's past is no longer even possible to exist, there's no danger for him to corrupt this present timeline - he may know about certain things, but that current time line (the one where vulcan is destroyed) has rendered his potential timeline foibling moot. he'll just appear very wise to folks, and that wisdom will dwindle as time moves on, since the further they get from the "singularity event" (the initial appearance of the romulan ship and the death of kirk's father) the more the current timeline differ's from spock prime's.

remember, in this new timeline, there's obviously never been a menagerie event. the whole storyline with pike is different. remember, too, that in the menagerie, spock smiles and displays other signs of an emotional character. also, in that time line, he had never heard, from his father, that his father loved his mother. the emotional connection between the two of them, and consequently the emotional development of spock, moved in a different direction than originally plotted.

as for roddenberry's vision - he wanted "wagon train to the stars". every original series episode had some kind of tense action/fight scene, and all the movies that he had his hand in were most definitely action-aclimated, with the possible exception of the very first one, which, not surprisingly, fell very flat. the greatest star trek movie, and arguably the greatest space sci-fi movie ever, wrath of khan, was -full- of action.

as for edgy - well, yeah, it was different than in the past, but the various star trek movies and series always were a sign of their times. the whole cold-war aspect of many of the federation-klingon interractions of the original series were directly inspired by the mood of the day, and were not repeated in later years. the inclusion of a "ship's counselor" in the 80's tng was directly inspired by that era's sense of "self-improvement" and the explosion of that kind of analysis in the 80's.

it only stands to reason that this movie would look the way it did.

i do agree that nuking vulcan was heavy handed attempt at artificially inducing pathos in the audience, and was not necessary, but it also does set up for a future movie to explore potential "undoing" of the damage to the time line, at least as far as vulcan is concerned.

all in all, i thought the movie was pretty cool - a great introduction to a bunch of characters that we sorta know, but are still now going to be new enough to surprise us. as far as the movies go, vulcan is gone, the old kirk and crew never were, and this is a whole new ballgame. this could be fun - what else were they going to do in star trek that would hold anyone's interest? the enterprise series was some of the best written and acted shows of the whole trek family, and yet it could not even maintain itself for its intended 7 year run, on its parent production company's television stations, no less.

if trek was going to go -anywhere- it needed something like this. as far as "new cast/crew / reintroducing old cast/crew first movies" go, this one was really great.

[john turner]

here's an additional cool thing that's sorta off topic. many of the characters from the original series, both main ones like leonard nemoy and george takei, and many of the minor characters like mark lenard and some of the other recognizable extras, made frequent apperances in mission impossible. they were both produced by lucille ball and desi arnaz's production company desilu.

[Marcus]

I enjoyed it tremendously. Then again, I was never a fan of the original series (though I really enjoyed DS9 for the most part, as well as Voyager). I guess mission accomplished for Abrams?

edit: I enjoyed reading your post, JT.
edit-edit: One last thing to add, this is one of the few movies I'd pay to watch again.

[john turner]

Originally Posted by Marcus

edit: I enjoyed reading your post, JT.

cool ty.

[MoBeach]

Originally Posted by Snarf

Here's what I thought: amusing action movie made by a mainstream glitzy Hollywood sh** of a director.

The little bad things:
Kirk, in the episode "A Piece of the Action" is completely dumbfounded by a 20th century automobile that required shifting. In this movie, he's rocking a stickshift at age 10 or whatever.
The Enterprise was modernized way too far for the movie. It looked even more advanced than the Enterprise E. This is very annoying.
Freefalling from space into a planet's atmosphere is only productive if your goal is to incinerate yourself. Also, the wind on that drill platform would have made it nearly impossible to stand on it, not to mention it was awfully far up in the atmosphere. Not a whole lot of O2 in that air.
Red Matter was never sufficiently explained.
No one would have been retarded enough to waste all their photons and valuable time on shooting at a ship that was getting sucked into a black hole. Doing that almost killed off the crew, no captain, even Kirk, would have stayed just for that.
Related to the above, ejecting the core is already overused in Star Trek. Abrams was trying to establish some Trek cred here, because I guess he knows what a warp core is. Fail.
Uhura was poorly cast, Chekhov didn't fare much better. Whoever played Sulu had too high a voice. Kirk just didn't talk like Kirk. If he had tried to put a little bit of Shatner's delivery in there, it would have gone a long way toward legitimizing Pine's performance.

The big bad things:
In Star Trek, Vulcan still exists. You can't blow up a planet that exists later in the timeline unless you establish that this movie is setting up for more material in a different, Vulcan-less timeline. Biggest hole in the movie. Unforgivable.
The other really big thing: Uhura and Spock. TRAVESTY. BLASPHEMY. Prepare the gallows. (serious) Unforgivable.
The last really bad thing: Spock (prime) would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER get involved with the timeline in order to tell young Spock what he's already going to figure out through life anyway. To talk to himself like that and pollute whatever timeline was forming . . . THAT IS NOT STAR TREK. Just a ploy to play to the dumber audience the movie was trying to bring in.
This movie just has nothing to do with Roddenberry's vision of the future. It was way too edgy, glitzy, and action-oriented. Star Trek was never supposed to be about action.


Good things:
Karl Urban got Bones perfect.
Simon Pegg did a good Montgomery Scott, though it was a little too close to comic relief.
The score was excellent.
Props for not putting in sound during the descent to the drill platform.

You're such a good critic I don't agree with your "little bad things" Don't feel bad, I don't agree with the professional critics either

Hey, it's Hollywood!

[StanFan]

I really liked this movie. It was cast rather well also. There were a few choppy edits in between some of the scenes though.

I shared some concern initially similar to the OP, but yeah, alternate timeline is an easy fix for most of them.

When I saw the list of complaints in the first post, I thought you were talking about Star Trek V . I think this film has more Trek to it than V did, but what do I know?

Edit: Did anyone else go to the movie wearing anything Trek?

I wore my Star Trek t-shirt. When I bought it 3 weeks ago, I said I'd wear it to the movie and I went through with it. It's probably the tightest shirt in my collection. Too bad there were no ladies to show the goods off to.

[Joey3313]

Originally Posted by Snarf

Here's what I thought: amusing action movie made by a mainstream glitzy Hollywood sh** of a director.


Uhura was poorly cast, Chekhov didn't fare much better. Whoever played Sulu had too high a voice. Kirk just didn't talk like Kirk. If he had tried to put a little bit of Shatner's delivery in there, it would have gone a long way toward legitimizing Pine's performance.

I disagree entirely. I thought that both Uhura and Chekhov were fine, but more importantly, I thought Pine was perfect (with the script in mind). If he were to do a crappy Shatner interpretation, the movie becomes a parody instead of a homage.

The big bad things:
In Star Trek, Vulcan still exists. You can't blow up a planet that exists later in the timeline unless you establish that this movie is setting up for more material in a different, Vulcan-less timeline. Biggest hole in the movie. Unforgivable.
The other really big thing: Uhura and Spock. TRAVESTY. BLASPHEMY. Prepare the gallows. (serious) Unforgivable.
The last really bad thing: Spock (prime) would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER get involved with the timeline in order to tell young Spock what he's already going to figure out through life anyway. To talk to himself like that and pollute whatever timeline was forming .
This movie just has nothing to do with Roddenberry's vision of the future. It was way too edgy, glitzy, and action-oriented. Star Trek was never supposed to be about action.

1) Alternate timelines. Considering you are name dropping random episodes, I think it's safe to say that you are familiar with sci-fi and the like, so this shouldn't be such a shock or point of anger. You set the movie in a different timeline, and suddenly any alterations to characters or stories or whatever become acceptable. Kirk's behaviour not entirely Kirk-like? Blame it on the timeline.
2) No random love-story=no girls at the movie. Plain and simply. They wanna make money, you gotta have some sap that probably isn't fitting.
3) Alternate timeline again. It would not happen the same, so elder-Spock's actions aren't warning nu-Spock about what will happen anyway, but what could have happened/did when things were different.
4) I'm fairly certain whatever Roddenberry had it mind has been bastardized pretty severely by now. What more harm could it do now? Not like he cares...

[StanFan]

Originally Posted by Joey3313

If he were to do a crappy Shatner interpretation, the movie becomes a parody instead of a homage.

Big +1 there

One thing I did find weird with the film was the young Kirk scene with the car. Not so much with his driving ability, but just the whole scene in general. The Beastie Boys music (which I love) seemed weird, and I'm convinced this scene was included specifically for a cool visual in the trailer. I know they were trying to establish Kirk as rebellious, but they could have done a more interesting scene.

I just thought of that scene a half hour ago, so the rest of the movie was great enough for me to forgive and forget that bit.

[hover]

Snarf, I really think you went into this movie not listening to or willing to buy into the whole alternate timeline scenario (I mean it was explained at length twice), or you'd realize half your arguments were either fully explained or moot entirely. I agree with the issues that deal with the hard science, but really, when did the series ever adhere to the science? (Full stop from lightspeed and no one was paint on the windshield? Come on man) I'm almost inclined to believe you went in full on set to rip it to shreds with your knowledge of canon (which they gave many nods to, including ending with Pike in a wheelchair)...

The ONLY thing that remains of the original timeline is Spock Prime. This is (almost) completely different.

I was a very big fan of TOS and TNG and I went into this knowing it'd be totally different.

As for them capping off their complement of torpedoes and the like, well, they really had to be sure the Romulans weren't coming back (I mean it was Kirk who laid out the scenario to Pike on the bridge that a lightning storm in space hapenned before his Father was killed...kinda implied that they had the ability to come back out of the black hole, given a chance...)...and, forgiving our knowledge of black holes supposedly work, maybe they didn't realize fully the gravity (haha) of their predicament...(but they had a job to do and their mission was to wipe out the threat, entirely, even at the risk of the ship...you know, the whole "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one" thing???? They had to save Earth, right? ) but I do agree the whole "eject the core!" thing IS played out...then again, here, they are the first to have ever done it.

[NoobOnRoad]

JT, you took the words out of my mouth.

Here is something simplified that i have posted in another forum.

Seriously it is just awesome(and I do am a trekkie since i am 4 years old).

Tchekov uber cool accent is there.
Kirk look is there.
Spock is as always kool.
Scotty is helluva fun guy again.
Sulu is hmmmm Sulu
Ourura is sexy

DAMN i love star trek.

But more seriously, it will not please every trekkie for sure. ''Old old school'' guys will say that it suck. But it's because they don't like changement.

I watched almost all TOS, Voyager, Next gen and a little bit of DSN.

Just to let you know that it is one HELLUVA good movie

Yeah i did love the old ourura ''aunt look'' but the new one is

[Snarf]

Originally Posted by hover

Snarf, I really think you went into this movie not listening to or willing to buy into the whole alternate timeline scenario (I mean it was explained at length twice), or you'd realize half your arguments were either fully explained or moot entirely. I agree with the issues that deal with the hard science, but really, when did the series ever adhere to the science? (Full stop from lightspeed and no one was paint on the windshield? Come on man)

Two words: inertial dampers.

[arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Snarf

Two words: inertial dampers.

Oh Snap!

[James Hart]

I am NOT a Trekkie by any stretch of things... but I grew up watching Shatner with my old man. I've seen maybe 90% of ALL the Star Trek episodes ever made in any of the individual series' combined.

I liked this movie a LOT! I think there was just enough of a nod to the original show (even the expendable member of the drilling away mission) and the young versions of the core crew was all pretty spot on.

I'm interested in what's next... the new time line is open up to a whole new Kirk/Spock era

[john turner]

i also look forward to seeing how this new spock develops. remember, with his mother dead, he may favor his human side more, or conversely attempt to deny it more, finding a different balance than spock prime did.

[popinfresh]

Originally Posted by Snarf

Two words: inertial dampers.

Two words: not real.

I find it funny someone complaining about lack of oxygen high in the atmosphere when they're talking Star Trek. I mean, it's not like I can just teleport to my spaceship either.

[HashbrownCOBM]

Seriously, it's just a movie. "Entertainment". Treat it as such and you'll probably enjoy it more. Fanboys are sad.