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Special Effects Lessons From JJ Abrams' Star Trek
brumgrunt writes "JJ Abram's hugely successful — on many levels — reboot of Star Trek has, for Den Of Geek, brought to the fore a lesson about special effects that many movie makers have been missing. Surely it's time now that special effects were actually used properly?" (The new film is not without some goofs, though only a few of the ones listed by Movie Mistakes' nitpickers are sciency.)
don't rely on special effects for content
Some movies are made to entertain people between the ages of 4 and 70 (i.e. spiderman). The wider the age range, the less room there is for typical plot elements, because younger audiences get bored quickly. Some movies are pretty good just because of their CGI alone. I might be risking my geek-card here, but none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
FTA: "when was the last time we had a blockbuster summer movie of any genre as downright entertaining as this one?" Iron Man last year. IMHO, Iron Man spent a bit too much time focused on taking on and off the suit. Other than that, the special effects were great and fit in with the movie. I especially loved him getting out of captivity using the original suit.
Even in a black hole there are too many lens flares.
Lens flair.
Um... What exactly is TFA about, other than being a gushing fanboi ode?
I went to the theater and the movie left me empty. I wasted time and money there and got nothing of value in return. This movie is so shallow you couldn't get your fingertips wet in it. If it were at least funnier or something. Instead you get scenes passing by with light speed while you sit there wondering: did I miss something? I must have, I haven't seen anything important yet. Half the movie in and it still feels like it hasn't started yet.
If you haven't seen it yet, don't. Download a pirate version first and if you like it, only then go to the cinema.
I specifically DIDN'T go see this movie because all the trailers made it look like a CGI-driven action-fest (a la Michael Bay). I hate those kind of movies. If this movie is NOT that, then its trailers did it a grave disservice.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm sick of people calling this a "successful reboot of the Star Trek franchise". They made one cotton-picking movie, for crying out loud. You can call it a successful reboot after they've made maybe a couple of movies, or gotten a second highly rated season of TV out of it. Until then, it is just marketing hype.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The article gushes about how the efffects were not overdone, and only put in to enhance the story. The problem is, the story itself is the screenwriting equivalent of the overzealous effects producers the article complains about.
Don't get me wrong, the movie was awesome. It was a masterpiece, but it wasn't in any way morally superior to the Star Wars prequels - they just did the special effects right.
It just didn't live up to the older Star Treks, where the focus was on the sheer joy of discovery and the strength of the human spirit. There was a bit of the latter, but it was mostly just standard action-movie fare.
I have to agree with the author here, it was quite tasteful. I was turned off by several movies this last year due to liberal application of CG where it wasn't needed, but I never once had that feeling with this movie. I also have to comment on the fact this didn't suffer from the 'prequel' syndrome that Lucas's movies did. The art departments did an excellent job of recreating "period" technology that fit right into the setting.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
and i really liked that show.... which is why I reallky like the new star wars, opps, star trek! Oh and like the batman movies the enemys are really evil!
They had to be like that, to attract people who otherwise revile Star Trek for being a nerd's pastime. How else are you supposed to draw in the masses and make a killing?
It was great, and definitely worth seeing. There's a lot of action that you seem to not be interested in, but the plot & acting are excellent.
I could not see the special effects well enough
because there was way too much camera shake in some shots.
Do we really need to have camera shake to make action look like action?
Are the effects so bad that they need to get hidden behind motion blur?
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
I thought the roll of duct tape sitting on the console shot in the trailer set the bar a bit high for the rest of the movie...oh well.
After all the reviews I guess maybe my expectations were too high, but personally I thought this movie was actually pretty cheesy. The whole series of coincidences and bad acting starting with meeting Spock on the planet's surface was just ridiculous. Also, if you have this "red matter" that can create a black hole, why bother to drill to the center of the planet? Hell, you could drop off a black hole around Pluto and still easily destroy the Earth depending on it's size, but at the very least just putting it right next to the Earth would certainly do the job. This movie was more of a shoot-em-up and didn't show any of Kirk's ingenuity like we see in the Wrath of Khan, which I think will probably always stand as the best Star Trek movie ever made. I had always imagined Kirk was much more subtle with his "rigging" of the kobayashi maru test and I was really disappointed to see such a blatant and brainless resetting of the entire program as opposed to a small alteration that gave him just enough of an edge to win somehow.
...that even though it wasn't consistent, there was actually a effort to make certain of the sudden "space action" scenes silent.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
This is a movie that was practically ruined by lens flare and/or screen whiteouts in almost every scene. The cinematographer also insisted on having camera shake in at least 50% of the scenes, even if the ship was moving relatively smoothly though space. If there wasn't camera shake, the camera angle was coming up from the actor's feet at a 35 degree tilt. In sum, the cinematography was distracting and truely, genuinely, terrible.
The new film is not without some goofs, though only a few of the ones listed by Movie Mistakes' nitpickers are sciency.
Uhh... What Star Trek movie were you watching?
Because in the one *I* watched, they traveled through the event horizon of a black hole, and came back out again (although, this is actually an interesting question over in Trek-land; warp engines let you travel FTL, so could you escape a black hole? I mean, after the tidal forces ripped your puny ship into it's component atoms, of course...)
Or, how about the "space dive", where they leaped out of a shuttlecraft and suddenly lost all their inertia? How about re-entering the atmosphere in a space-suit without any worries about friction or heat?
Or how about that giant drill? Why did it fall when they cut it off the ship? If the ship was in geosynchronous orbit, then the drill must have been traveling slightly slower than geo-synchronous orbital speed; it should have very gently drifted eastwards.
Just as long as it didn't have a car chase scene. That's the dead giveaway of a shitty sci-fi action movie--that it has to resort to a old action movie cliche that doesn't even make sense in a science fiction movie (the nonsensical car chases in "Star Trek Insurrection" and "Serenity" are great examples).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I am tired of films made for all the audience. The plot so simple as to be ridiculous. The players pathetic, (not his fault, just an horrible history that should ever been ever filmed to start with). The effects and sound over-emphasized. And the result, well, if you have 8 years it's a great movie.
But that's not SF, that's CRAP.
What's in a sig?
While I generally enjoyed the movie, they need to drop the Oliver Stone camera work, and this post summed up my problems with the plot quite well.
Entertaining, yes. Has potential? Perhaps. I would only call the plot excellent, though, if by "excellent" you mean "painfully contrived".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
They were much to frenetic for Star Trek and looked more like Star Wars. I couldn't really tell the difference between phasers and photon torpedos. And I swear I even heard Star Wars sound effects a few times, particularly when Spock's ship was firing at the drill.
The art departments did an excellent job of recreating "period" technology that fit right into the setting.
I really really wish, though, that they didn't cover the entire ship wigh freaking gun turrets. Was that really necessary, beyond "sexing-up" the Enterprise?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
It seems to me that we're still experiencing special effects giddiness as many of the industry people that started in the 70s and 80s when things were hard and you had to build intricate models and crazy sets and sometimes colour things in with crayons are now the old coots in charge and leading some of these works of wonder out there, and literally can't control the power they have. It's not even that you couldn't do some things without CG but it was just too expensive and no one in their right mind would do it.
Just look at the Gungan/droid battle at the end of SW Episode 1; it adds virtually nothing to the story but does show a total lack of imagination by those in charge. They took great pains to construct an encounter that, for all its lasers, aliens, droids and tanks, is essentially a medieval skirmish where large formations clash at close quarters. 20 years ago you'd have to dress up a few hundred guys, build faux tanks and giant beasts, and many of those things in miniature as well, and then use a lot of clever editing to pull all of it together. It would have likely never happened because of the sheer physical effort involved, or they'd do a different style of battle instead because it'd be easier to show a few people on the screen at one time. George is not the only one succumbing to this, though he certainly is our favourite example.
The current state of CG in movies is almost what would happen if new Lamborghinis were suddenly being sold for $20k - many of the people who wanted one as a kid would probably get one, and then your roads would be packed with impractical but cool-looking two-seaters, and it would take some time before people came to their senses.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
Ahh... umm.. well... er...
Yeah. It did. Not really plot-related.
I have nothing more to say on this subject =(
The thing that annoyed me the most about the new Trek was the abundance of 'shaking the camera during filming' shots I was subjected to. Can we give that a rest?
I think the cinematography, which includes the special effects, made this movie. The story line was passable, the acting alright, better than Cloverfield at least. But the emotions that JJ was able to evoke when George Kirk sacrificed himself to save the rest of the crew was powerful. Or when Kirk and the rest of them dived from orbit and was silhouetted against the sun was impressive. Sure a lot of it was obviously plot devices to be used, but it worked.
Those antipiracy dots are really annoying. Especially when you try to sneak them into a half-second of a special effects burst. Saw a couple in Star Trek, and at least four in Angels & Demons. In each case, there was an explosion or other high-contrast light and they tried to sneak in a few frames of antipiracy dots.
Although I think that technology is lame and unnecessary, there are a zillion less obvious places to put it...
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I assume this movie was made for your basic young adult male, since that's supposed to be the most desirable segment of the audience, especially for this genre. Abrams and company obviously believe such people are lobotomized morons, since that's the level they pitched the movie to. Most of the young people I know are brighter than that. They might turn out for this movie, but I doubt very much whether they'll be back en masse for the sequel.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
This movie does have a car chase scene when young kirk steals his, presumably, step-fathers car.
Personally, I knew JJ Abrams was no Michael Bay when the orbital drill, after being destroyed, fell into San Francisco Bay *right next* to the Golden Gate bridge, but somehow missed subjecting us to a gratuitous and cliched effects sequence of the destruction of San Francisco's most famous landmark, preferring instead to get on with the story.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
One of the "goofs" doesn't make sense to me:
The first shots of the Enterprise in space show it docked at the massive space station with the bridge facing the center of the station. When they show Spock entering the bridge for the first time (when the ship is still docked) you can see the view out of the front viewscreen/window. You should be able to see the huge space station, but all you see is empty space.
Submitted by BocaDavie
Isn't it possible that people in that century have figured out that you can have a camera facing backwards and put it on a video screen on a wall facing the other direction?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I'm with you on that one.
When Kirk and Pike were in the bar, on earth, there was camera shake. The Earth certainly wasn't shaking too much. My friend-who-suffers-from-motion-sickness had to leave the theater long before they made it into space.
It makes me want to write a piece of software that goes through a movie and lines up all the frames.
The first captaincy could be in a smaller ship, more scout-level than Constitution.
Then the next could either be him and a few of the others (all?) going about their own business and going on up the ladder to bigger and better ships, or it could be five years later when Kirk finally gets his first Constitution class starship captaincy.
That's how it works (somewhat) in the real navy. When you get your first captain, you're given a small ship, maybe just a refueller or ASW platform. Then if you show good, you get a Frigate. Then a Destroyer or Point Defence. Then you get to the real top dog: nuclear battleship or carrier (maybe even captain of the carrier group!).
Getting "Captain" is the START not the end.
Perhaps it's just me, but I think special effects have gotten worse, not more impressive, over time.
A good example would be the scene where Wolverine is playing with his new adamantium claws in front of a mirror in the latest X-Men movie. You can't miss the fact that they have been added to the movie with a computer.
What gives? In the first movie, I believe, they used props. They looked real enough.
What about the first Hulk movie? I haven't seen the movie, I'll admit. But from the trailer it was obvious the CGI did not fit into the movie at all. Remember Jurassic Park? How fricking old is that movie? How can it be that it looked more realistic than newer movies?
Is this just a matter of using the computer too much? Is it a lack of care or skill? I don't know. I just know that these things didn't jump at me, figuratively speaking, so much five to ten years ago...
Oh, don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed the movie. It was a lot of fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone (except my friend-who-suffers-from-motion-sickness). I'm hoping they make it into another series.
But, to claim it was largely free of science errors? No.
I can break the movie down into 10 words: I'm Captain Kirk and I'm going to kick your ass.
Star Trek was not a thought provoking movie. It didn't raise many of the ethical and moral questions that TOS and TNG did - in fact, it went so far as to shit all over that idea (one of the last scenes with Nero, Kirk chooses violence over peace). It also wasn't a deep movie - beyond the story of the TOS crew meeting each other there really isn't much there.
To me this wasn't a problem. It was an entertaining TOS-type movie (not to be confused with the TOS crew in a Roddenberry movie, ala ST1-4), with corny action movies, dead red shirts, the classic theme, the classic voiceover, and Kirk being a badass ("I've got your gun").
Overall it was a fun movie. It's no Godfather II, but it's certainly not a pile of shit like Twilight. Artistically, it's bunk. Entertainment wise, it fits the bill, and gives the Star Trek series the new legs that, in my opinion, it so desperately needed.
(And if you don't think Star Trek needed new legs, I'll say this: The later episodes of DS9 and Voyager sucked. Warp 10 being "everywhere at once"? The magical anti-borg shielding? Don't even get me started on the Enterprise episodes, or the three movies prior to this one)
The Vulcan cannon, point defenses. The old Enterprise (even all the later ones never improved it) didn't have any point defenses. It was either use the big honking main gun (overkill and limited ROF) or pretend it wasn't a problem.
But this one had a better tactical feel.
When crafting his movie, Abrahms had two choices: either make a fully faithful canonic trek movie that would disinterest the public at large and get an outcry from hardcore trekkies, or make a fun, action-packed blockvusters that would get the larger public excited and get an outcry from hardcore trekkies. Seems like he made the most financially sound choice, seeing how hardcore trekkies are never satisfied with the end result anyway.
Nemo was told what year it was.
He waited 20 years to capture old-spock.
He had *plenty of time* to figure out that Romulus had not been destroyed yet, and *plenty of time* to realize that it would now be trivially easy for him to prevent the destruction of Romulus himself. Once he captured old-spock, he had the red matter. So he could have flown over to the star and sucked it up in a black hole a full century before it would go supernova and destroy Romulus.
They tried to explain that in his brief conversation with captain Pike, when he refused to accept the statement that Romulus wasn't destroyed. But after a full 20 years of floating in the void of space, you would think he would have calmed down just a tad.
So, he qualifies as a stupid bad guy. Given this story line, if he had been intelligent, he never would have been a bad guy, and we really wouldn't have had much of a movie. But I don't care. Movie writers should not rely on weak plot devices like that one to make a movie. Make your bad guys smart, damnit.
I also wonder how a mining ship got such kick-ass military grade torpedoes, and how he managed to maintain morale and loyalty in his crew for the 20 years they spent sitting on their asses, but I won't belabor those points.
You want to see good F/X? See "Angels and Demons". That wasn't filmed at the Vatican. The Vatican scenes, inside and out, were filmed in LA. It was done with partial sets, CG sets, green screen work, miniatures, matchmoves, and computer generated crowds. Can you tell?
Star Dreck was an easy F/X job. Anybody can do 3D spaceships. It's faking the commonplace that's tough.
I only saw the movie once and maybe I misremembered something. I figure someone on this board will know the answer (or invent one, this being /. afterall)
I thought Spock said he came out of the black hole into the new timeline 25 years after Nero did. If so, how did Nero get a hold of Spock's ship with the red matter? He clearly had it at the beginning of the movie since he already had decided to destroy Vulcan and have Spock there to watch, although he was looking for the old Spock and not the young one.
Anyone?
For the best use of special effects, my favorite director is still Robert Zemeckis. For someone who's done as many high-concept sci-fi pieces as he has, his use of FX is remarkably sparing, and artfully placed. Consider Dan Taylor's legs in Forrest Gump, and the giant device in Contact. Even the footage of Gump with various US Presidents, while receiving some criticisms, is arguably in the same vein.
He seems to try very hard to get a realistic look out of something that you know couldn't possibly exist. A lot of this mileage is achieved by placing the effect into an ordinary, present-day setting, as opposed to inundating you in an entire lavish otherworld. Even in a futuristic universe like Star Trek, numerous opportunities exist to juxtapose the ordinary and the fantastic; in fact, Trek stands out as begging for such moments, since one of its motifs is that it presents allegories for our present time.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
People here (and TFA) seem to be confusing Visual Effects (cgi etc) with Special Effects. Not the same thing at all.
And that scene with the huge predators on the ice planet reminded me of Star Wars Episode 1 ("There is always a bigger fish").
I cast "summon bigger fish!"
Bow-ties are cool.
I have to disagree with you on that. My favorite movie is Rio Bravo, which I first saw when I was nine years old. By current standards, that movie is slooooowww. It goes for over two hours and it's only about five minutes after the titles that someone first speaks something. But it's a wonderful film.
I loved it the first time I saw it because I became immersed in the action, I never realized time was passing. I remember it was only after the film ended and my father remarked on how long it was that I realized that nearly two and a half hours had passed.
It's a simple plot, but it's so good that the director Howard Hawks did the same thing again, not once but twice. All three movies are great and all star John Wayne doing a similar plot. I still have to see a film that I liked on Fx alone.
Looks like I made the right decision, then.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Duh :p
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It should be noted that many of the movies he compares to negatively in light of Star Trek (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pirates, Transformers) were all done by ILM as the primary VFX house, and by many of the same people on crew. ...which further supports his point that it's one thing to have good VFX -- it's another to know where to use it.
I also have to comment on the fact this didn't suffer from the 'prequel' syndrome that Lucas's movies did. The art departments did an excellent job of recreating "period" technology that fit right into the setting.
Except the Enterprise looked more like something that happened AFTER Wrath of Khan, and had almost none of the original grace and beauty that the original Enterprise, or 1701-A had.
The hand phasers looked like something out of Barbarosa, and didn't fire anything like Star Trek weapons (except the post-Borg mess).
I could put up with the change in character history, Kirk being a lucky but arrogant punk, Spock being the angsty, barely controlled mama's boy, even Scotty. not quite sure WHAT they did to him, but I never ONCE saw the original Scotty in this guy.
But there were too many changes to the original back-story. too many liberties taken in the name of "making it fresh" that ruined the magic that the original crew held. They should have just changed the names, set it pre-Kirk, and let it ride on its own.
But then my geek-card would be showing. The bridge was never supposed to be in-line with the longitudinal axis of the ship, the nacells were too bulbous at the front, and how the hell did they warp out of the black hole after the explosion of their own warp core pushed them outside the event horizon? doesn't the ship lose warp once the core is ejected?
But enough Trekkie'ism. As an action flick, it wasn't too bad. Lose the stupid vomit-cam, the blurred effects, etc., and it would have been better.
I was just watching "Die another Day" ( I think... it was in portuguese so, I am not sure of the title ). And it had the cheesiest tsunami kite surfing scene ever filmed... ...
compared to that
Star Trek is Shakespear
But, I have to say I really, truly loved Star Trek for that entire "Plot" thing, that I have been hearing about, but haven't actually seen in a recent flick.
Emmanuel
land refinancing
It has a car chase scene with a little kid in Iowa driving a classic 1960s car trying to evade a cop. Seriously. Mind-bogglingly stupid scene, but a surprisingly good movie.
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"I liked the effects, because they were exactly what I like, and because I think that the whole world revolves around me, I think that the people who did this movie were the best in the business, and everybody should learn from them, because everybody would like every film FX to be made like this."
My response: Well, I liked Matrix, A Scanner Darkly, Eternal Sunshine On A Spotless Mind, Sin City, 300, and other movies more, because of their "unrealistic" effects.
It's called "style". Same as comics/manga. Same as paintings. Same as writing style.
So one could say that the style of this Star Trek was, to be invisible. Which is not good or bad. And I agree that I like it, just like I liked the style of Galactica.
Just don't be so egocentric. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This would be summarizing the article:
"I think that every single special effect was absolutely warranted and completely on the spot and necessary."
Clearly the writer of the article went to see some other movie - not JJ's Star Trek.
Otherwise, he would at least mention all the unnecessary lens flaring.
And the car chase sequence at the beginning.
And the Cloverfield monster chase.
Another hint that the author of the text has no clue to the location of the real world - he finds Danny Boyle's Sunshine "underrated".
A movie where they send mentally unstable astronauts to reignite the Sun by dropping a bomb in it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Trailers are to movies as Twitter is to novels.
Aside from those movies where seeing the trailer WAS seeing the movie (THOSE are the worst--I paid for this? I already saw the only good parts in the TV commercials...)
Trailers are like short skirts on hookers, just there to attract your attention, you don't find out how she'll screw you until after you've spent your money.
This movie is one I want to experience again, short skirts and all.
Lens flare! lens flare, shaky camera, lens flare lens flare...shaky camera. Lens! Flare!
Shaky Camera.
Someone apparently mixed up their playboy-billionaire-vigilantes.
A hint how to tell them apart:
Iron Man:
Bright, shiny, metal armor that flies and shoots beams from it's hands and torso.
Out of suit - an alcoholic wimp. Kills people.
Batman:
Dark-black in color, partially bullet resistant suit, does not fly (glides like a kite sometimes) and throws things. Kinda like ninja dressed as giant bat.
Out of suit - could kill a man with his thumb in at least 9 different ways. Doesn't kill people.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
But the movie didn't require a plot, since it was just a series of special effects and action scenes.
Vulcans are very bad at calculating the velocities caused by supernovae.
Oh so very true. The black hole Spock was going to make wouldn't have done very much for the wave of radiation and near light speed particles escaping that would have baked the Romulans home world like a potato in a microwave. If the microwave was the size of a 12 story building.
How 'bout these?
The planet Vulcan would not compress into a black hole the same size as Vulcan. It'd probably be about the size of a marble. See Schwarzschild radius.
You can't drill a hole to the core of a planet. They're molten inside. That would be like trying to drill a hole into the center of a gallon of milk. Thin crispy shell, big fluid inside.
If you have something that sparks off a black hole, you could probably just drop it on the surface and it would do it's magic. The drill is unnecessary anyways.
Things do not go back in time when they fall into a black hole. They pass the event horizon and remain locked there until they dissolve as Hawking radiation. Besides, if things did go back in time 25 years, the ruined remains of Vulcan would have also showed up 25 years ago giving them plenty of time to prepare.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
In my opinion this is a common problem with many modern movies. There simply is too much CGI crap crammed into each frame almost like it just has to be there. Like a police officer striving the meet their quota. Sometimes to the point when its presence is distracting and does not add to the move or even starts to give me a headache.
The bridge design sucked compared to STNG, IV,V..etc. Too much focus on USB lights and ultra modern displays with no real coherent underlying design or theme.
Cool movie :-)
This article lost all credibility when it suggested that the space battle sequence that opened ROTS was a good example of SFX use in a movie. To the contrary, the opening proved that George Lucas had just given up, and had decided to create bad video game 'cut sequences' in place of action driven by narrative. The CGI was awful, especially in its use of video-game 'trails' behind many of the moving objects.
Too many Hollywood 'blockbusters' today look as if they are trying to ape the look of video games- a pointless exercise, since the fun of a game is the fact that it is truly interactive.
I haven't seen the new Trek movie, but if its greatest asset is that it looks like an xbox360 space game, my optimism is fading fast. And anyway, really bad reviews of the new Terminator film are coming through thick and fast, despite the fact that the reviewers seem to agree the production is handsome, with excellent SFX. It seems that people still care about story and script- who would have guessed?
The funny thing is that the only part of the ST canon which was NOT erased by the time jump thingy was mister Quantum Leap's contribution.
I enjoyed the new film as well, but it wasn't Star Trek and Abrams is still a lame jackass who thinks and writes exclusively using mechanical base emotions rather than the higher thought patterns some members of our race still try to embrace. The man and his vision is a link or two backwards on the chain of cultural evolution. That's why his characters all seem like shop-window dummies.
I sometimes enjoy Disney films, but that doesn't make Disney's vision of the world a good thing. Heck, I can also enjoy a bag of Doritoes from time to time.
There was a period when ST was not just empty calories. But hey, that's alright. As our culture has demonstrated, thinking is too much work. And now with the calming effect of the Vulcan empire gone, we humans can now focus on that stuff we all love so much; Endless War!
Sigh. Picard's Enterprise was my favorite and I knew it too good to last. People don't deserve happiness and sanity if they actively reject it in favor of pain, misery and small-mindedness.
The attitude and energy of this new film, particularly the scenes in and around Starfleet Academy, strongly reminded me of another film: "Starship Troopers".
-FL
A movie where they send mentally unstable astronauts to reignite the Sun by dropping a bomb in it.
The technical explanation of what they were trying to do is online if you want to read about it, and is actually based on advice from some physicist consultants the production team worked with.
The director seems to have (correctly) assumed that most audience members wouldn't want to sit through a lengthy briefing.
If you can't buy the idea that a few members of a team of astronauts might start exhibiting unusual behaviour when they're isolated and placed under extreme stress for a long duration, it's probably not your film though.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Remember Jurassic Park? How fricking old is that movie? How can it be that it looked more realistic than newer movies?
Because good directors film around the inherent limitations of the technology and their budgets. A good example of this is Ridley Scott (at least in his earlier films). In Alien he knew the creature would look stupid if it was shown in the light too much, so he made sure we never see it very much. Problem solved. A lesser director would have shown the alien a lot, just like crappy sci-fi B-Movies of the time.
Then there is Bladerunner. Ridley Scott knew the cityscape they built would look crappy in the daylight, so he set it at night, and obscured things even more by making it rain perpetually. Again, a lesser director would not have taken that simple step and today we would all be talking about how crappy Bladerunner looked.
"Granted, there were lots of special effects in the film, but each had a purpose in the greater scheme of things, and at no point did I get the impression that someone was playing a videogame before my eyes," Can someone tell me Why The F@#k was Kirk jettisoned off the Enterprise, How the F#@k he found Spock randomly on an empty planet, How the F@#k scotty invented a faster than light LONG DISTANCE transporter (wouldn't that negate ALL SPACE TRAVEL!), AND WHY ON EARTH WE HAD A DUMB FX DRIVEN MONSTER CHASE (exactly the opposite motivation of what the article states ie. IT WAS PURE EYE CANDY). Don't get me started about THE LENS FLARES IN EVERY SINGLE F#@KING SHOT.
I eventually saw Nemesis last year and I wish I had listened to people because I wasted my time and unfortunately it'll take a while before I completely forget it. I will not waste my time on this Action Trek.
Not that most the trek movies were that great now that I think about it.... Its the series that led to the films which were just made to exploit that success; not a promising formula...
Why is it that anything set in the future is automatically labeled science fiction?
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is the incessant damn shaking of the camera by film makers these days whenever they want to evince a sense of action or urgency.
There was a time when holding a camera steady was considered the most basic of requirements for producing a watchable film, along with an editing style guided by the belief that anything worth putting up on the screen is worth leaving for on the screen for more than one second. That time ended abruptly when a TV show called "Miami Vice" came along. Suddenly it was "cool" to depict action by having a one-legged cameraman chase your actors down the street with a handheld camera.
There are brief instances where jolting the image around on screen is effective, such as when the Enterprise is being struck by enemy fire, but for the most part all this shaky camera work and split-second editing is a needless assault on the senses. If, god forbid, these are combined with the necessity to sit rather close to the screen in a packed theatre, the effect can be physically nauseating.
I wish today's film directors would embrace the simple rules that amateurs learned with the advent of "home movies" many years ago. Hold the f***ing camera still, and make each shot long enough that viewers can actually discern what the hell is on the screen.
I hope you were being sarcastic. ... because it does have a car chase scene. It actually involves an automobile. Yeah, an Automobile.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
Because they had character, plot, and sentimentality. F/X and CGI was a tool to implement living cars and talking rats seamlessly with out getting in the way of interesting stories.
No, I'm sorry to say that the trailers showed exactly the kind of movie this was.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I honestly did not know that. I just know the cliche. It's been done in a ton of shitty "science fiction" movies lately. It seems to be some kind of default for action directors and bad writers. Not sure if its coming from the studio suits (who think an action movie HAS to have a car chase) or the directors and writers themselves (who are under pressure to "action things up" and so just throw every action cliche and the kitchen sink in). The one in "Serenity" was particularly embarrassing (the entire premise of the series was that they rode horses, and suddenly the movie has an inexplicable car chase on some really goofy-looking landspeeder things).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Assuming there is/was water under the ice. The creature was red because it is a natural camouflage for an ocean creature.
Quote:
A scuba diver in the open ocean discovers she is immersed not only in water, but also in an ethereal blue light. Seawater absorbs light much more strongly than air does, but visible light is made up of a rainbow of different wavelengths, each perceived by us as a different color. Blue light penetrates farther into seawater (giving the ocean its distinctive color). At the same time seawater absorbs red, orange, and yellow wavelengths, removing these colors. Only a few meters below the sea surface, if our diver looked into a mirror, she would see that her red lips appeared black.
As for hunting Kirk when it already had lunch, that "lunch" was already on ice, and could wait. Maybe it just wanted an appetizer.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I don't know if this is related to the story but I was wondering if anyone had read the novel adaption and now it compares to the movie?
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
Anyone notice the resemblance between monster #2 on the ice planet Kirk is stranded on, and the Cloverfield monster? And they sold Slusho at the bar.. Makes you wonder the direction of the sequel. And by the by, I hate time travel arcs - they're almost always a cheat.
Special effects can add to an experience when they're so well integrated you don't even think about it. When they're bad or gratuitous it always hurts the movie, bad effects because they kill suspension of disbelief and gratuitous because they cause a viewer to focus on the effects. The problem is that with sci fi movies it's far too easy to get fixated on the effects.
Imagine a scene inside a house in a conventional, modern day drama. The focus may be on characters interacting with each other. Shots are focused on them and they only interact peripherally with their environment and usually as part of the plot or to give the scene more life. In a sci-fi movie, however, such a scene will descend into gadget porn. They'll take these wide shots where the actors are lost in the midst of this future-modern, impractically fashionable living space. Often we'll be greeted to these vistas of some impressive future city. Making things worse, every bit of technology will be extremely obtrusive in its functionality so as to remind the viewer that this is the future and everything is so freaking cool.
This is the problem I had with Star Trek Episodes 1 through 3, beyond the poor script. That said, they did an excellent job integrating live and computer rendered characters into these scenes. But every single setting in those movies didn't feel lived-in. And it felt like the designers were trying too hard to show off their imagination and effects prowess. To be fair, I think the original movies suffered from similar problems, but the technical limitations forced them to be a bit more down-to-earth and thus more convincing.
I personally think Blade Runner did a great job. The futuristic technology was there, but it didn't stand out. Deckard lived in what was basically a regular apartment.
It's important that technology looks plausible even if it's function is fantastic. A lot of movies feature technology that is so absurdly elaborate it's impractical. Much like Nero's ship which was ridiculous with all the pointy insect-like appendages. Transformers has the same problem with them being made of all these tiny, intricate pieces. How they aren't utterly destroyed with the smallest impacts is beyond me. And from a cinematic standpoint they're so complex it's often hard to know what exactly they're doing.
Another problem with technology in sci-fi, especially more recent movies, is the depiction of use. Futuristic gadgets are either overly pristine regardless of use or they're so worn down and beat up it's almost comical. It's like they're either museum pieces or they were fished out of garbage dumps.
And I have to ask... Did the Federation abolish the news media in the future? How could Nero not have known about Vulcan's attempts to save his planet? His entire scheme hinges on a colossal misunderstanding on his part that could have been avoided if he had watched the future version of Romulan television for five minutes.
I always find it annoying when people in the future encounter unsolvable problems that have been addressed and are basically non-issues in the present-day real world.
Yes, yes it was. Though it seemed to me that most of the 'all over the damn place' turrets were more for point defense, rather than offensive weaponry.
But yes, it's necessary. It's a hostile universe out there. It's odd to say 'did they really need all that weaponry' when you only ever saw it being used to, you know, defend against hostile attack.
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He wasn't trying to evade a cop. You can't evade cops on a planet where they can teleport you into custody.
He was trying to destroy the car. Which he succeeded at.
It doesn't even count as a 'car chase' in any meaningful sense.
However, that was really just a lame excuse for product placement. (The car had some dash-installed old Nokia sound system/communicator.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Get off my lawn!
HUH?!
I had always imagined Kirk was much more subtle with his "rigging" of the kobayashi maru test and I was really disappointed to see such a blatant and brainless resetting of the entire program as opposed to a small alteration that gave him just enough of an edge to win somehow.
Do you know how Kirk rigged the test in the original universe? He reprogrammed the test so that the Klingons were scared the very name of "The Captain Kirk" and complied out of fear. I don't know if I consider that subtle or not (though it's surely more egotistical), but it definitely didn't just "give him enough of an edge." After all, if you're cheating, you're doing it to make it easy for yourself. :)
If Lens Flares count as special effects, then they were heavily overused. Apparently in the future they've lost the art of making and using polarized lenses. Pretty much any scene involving the bridge was so distracting I couldn't watch.
...so there were no such things. It looked pretty dang good.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
You sure you want to point to that explanation as "advice from some physicist consultants"?
Basically it boils down to them using a bomb made out of unobtainium, dumped into the Sun to simulate Big Bang.
VERY scientific. Like The Core. A tad less scientific than Armageddon though.
If you can't buy the idea that a few members of a team of astronauts might start exhibiting unusual behaviour when they're isolated and placed under extreme stress for a long duration
Religious people going crazy and wanting to bring on the end of the world? Nothing unbelievable there.
What IS unbelievable is that the entire fucking planet chooses to send a religious lunatic (apparently nobody caught on him being batshit insane during all those tests and training) - instead of one of those Russians that they put up in space and forget about them for years.
Or an otaku with a stash of hentai literature, videos and games.
And a supply of ramen.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Clearly the purpose was to distract the audience from the absurdity of Kirk, faced with searching an entire planet (say, 500,000,000 km2 or so), literally stumbling into Spock within a matter of minutes.
The most important lesson learned from Star Trek is that if an IMAX transfer is part of your business plan, you don't shoot your movie shakey-cam quick-cut MTV style. Ugh.
Hrm... it is more like a technical justification than explanation.
The concept is that the sun is being eaten away by stable super-symmetry particles. More and more matter is decaying into super-symmetry particles. source.
Ok, fine. However, how in the world is dropping a gigantic atom bomb on the Sun going to change that equation? The explanation, that the explosion will be so energetic that it will break down the particles is silly. Even if you could somehow "ignite" the entire Sun hotter than the core is now, that would create a supernova. So, Earth is destroyed anyway.
Even besides the premise, there are so many little problems.
Those stupid rotating reflectors on the outside of the ship. Those things were so misguided -- if the point is to reduce heating, it doesn't matter which direction the light is bounced to. Just make the whole surface shiny.
The "greenhouse" for life support. Why not just carry consumables? The ship only needs to last months, not decades. Even if you were going to have that setup for some reason, why not use hydroponics and algae that would be far more efficient?
Maybe it is still possible to come up with an explanation for what the bomb was supposed to do that is consistent with the movie. However, I think it is pretty clear that this wasn't the intention of the script.
I all the reviews I've read so far, no one seems to be bothered by the instant mind melds we have in this... uhm, let's call it Star Trek. I remember in TNG's Sarek how long and exhausting a mind meld were, how long the two parties had prepare for it. In Abrams' Star Trek we have instant mind melds on the battlefield. *ZAP*ZAP* mind meld to find out where's the red matter *DUCKS*ZAP*ZAP*. I find this to be disturbing.
To be fair, the one in Serenity wasn't as random as all that. I mean, the "mule V 1.0" was shown many times in the series. In the movie, there was a larger Special Effects budget, so they got a new cargo runner for the ship, "mule V 2.0". That chase was similar to the larger ship chases they had throughout the series... and was all about proving to the audience once again, that nothing ever goes smoothly for Mal and the crew. That chase might have been over the top, but it wasn't out of place... remember the landspeeder in Heart of Gold? There was a direct reference to a floaty-craft-thing, and it was in the series (not the movie).
Whereas... Star Trek: warp drive, impulse drive, anti-gravity boots and platforms, transporters, shuttlecraft, and flying motorcycle things the police apparently ride... and there is the need to have an AUTOMOBILE chase. Was Gasoline even produced anymore? Would burning fossil fuels even be legal anymore? In a world where flight is commonplace and personal... why do they maintain the roads at all?
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
Yeah, and there was a time when all politicians were honest too...
Yeah, and there was a time when all politicians were honest too...
Don't be silly.
Though, I LIKED Star Trek The Motion Picture back in 1979. And come to think of it. . . I was just a kid, but Jimmy Carter wasn't a total jack ass, was he? The man is pro-Palestinian today, which makes him, you have to admit, a wee bit Starfleet.
Um. . . That's Starfleet ethics according to the Old Time Line. (OTL?)
-FL