Slashdot Mirror
Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness
Spoiler level: minor. This review contains character and actor names and a couple references to scenes without going into their content.
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Star Trek: Into Darkness is a very entertaining film, and you will probably enjoy it.
Into Darkness hits the ground running, quickly reintroducing the rebooted crew and the Enterprise in all its glory. The opening act reminds us of everything we like about the 2009 Star Trek; snappy dialog, direct references to important parts of the original TV show, and cinematography that shows off the power, grace, and majesty of a Federation starship. It also highlights many of the differences between classic Trek and Abrams Trek.
In Abrams Trek, everything is fast. Kirk runs fast, Spock talks fast, crewmembers are always scrambling about the bridge and engineering at top speed, and as soon as a decision is made, action is taken. Tension and conflict arises with immediacy, and is resolved at the same pace. In Abrams Trek, no screentime is wasted. If a section of dialog is a bit technobabbley or it’s just providing background, something shiny will appear to keep your eyes and your attention engaged. In Abrams Trek, the lens flare deserves its own billing. Oh my, the lens flare.
But the big question about the Abrams films, both in 2009 and 2013, is: are they Star Trek? It’s a complicated issue, but one that's worth answering to fans of the various Trek TV series. Let's start by answering a somewhat simpler question: are they sci-fi? Not really. They fit the Hollywood definition of sci-fi — after all, they're flying spaceships and talking to aliens — but of course sci-fi is more than that. It's about ideas; it's about taking some part of life and changing it, then seeing what happens as a result. That's why Leguin, Dick, and Vonnegut are celebrated as sci-fi writers alongside Bradbury, Asimov, and Niven.
Into Darkness and the 2009 Star Trek before it aren't about ideas. They're unrepentantly character-driven. They're space operas. Perhaps more importantly, they're action films. I say this not to be exclusionary, but so we can evaluate in the proper context: as a Trek-themed action movie, Into Darkness is fantastic.
But Trek isn't about action (space opera, sometimes — action, no). It has certainly incorporated action; Kirk didn't get the reputation for always having a torn shirt for nothing. But in the TV shows, the action was punctuation; it was the set-up to the plot, or a way to resolve it once a moral issue had been defeated. In Day of the Dove, we were constantly shown fight scenes, but their purpose was to show the exaggerated hatreds of the characters, and to set up the we-must-work-together ending. And let's be clear: Abrams Trek isn't the first time the movie franchise departed toward action, either. Star Trek 2, widely regarded as the best of the films, was certainly a space opera, and you could make the case that it's an action film. The last three Next Generation films tried to be action films and failed. Abrams Trek tries and succeeds.
So, is it Trek? Well, it doesn't pass the sci-fi test, but let's look at the characters. Christopher Pine's Kirk is an exaggeration of Shatner's Kirk. All the characteristics of Shatner's Kirk are present in Pine's Kirk, but magnified tremendously. On the TV show, Kirk had a reputation as a womanizer. In Abrams Trek, Kirk is shown waking up in bed with space-babes and hitting on almost every female he comes in contact with. A lot of times it's for comedic effect, and succeeds at being funny, but it also feels like a caricature. Zachary Quinto's Spock felt much more natural to me this time around, in some ways. He pulls off Vulcan stoicism well. The only downside is that his emotional control feels like a simple prop; he maintains his facade until the writers need to show how important some event is, then it breaks.
The other familiar crew members each get a brief moment in the spotlight, but the limitations of a two-hour movie prevent any significant depth. Bones exists to crack jokes and repeat his catchphrases. Chekov exists to run around looking overwhelmed. Scotty exists to solve whatever problem is keeping the plot from moving forward. Simon Pegg's Scotty is still jarring, to me. His role as comic relief doesn’t mesh well with my perception of Scotty. (People unfamiliar with the original series probably wouldn't notice, or care; he is funny.) Doohan's Scotty was funny sometimes, but not in such an intentional way. It seems odd to have that character cracking wise. Sulu's screentime is brief, but it's good.
The one character I truly lament is Uhura, though not because of any complaint with Saldana. She serves to highlight one huge difference between Abrams Trek and classic Trek: Abrams Trek is a guy-movie. The majority of Uhura's role in Into Darkness is to be Spock's love-interest. She has one brief moment of being her own person, showing her own strengths — and (very minor spoiler) she fails and has to be rescued by men. Aside from Uhura, there's only one other significant woman character in the film, and her main purpose is to be both eye-candy and a bargaining chip for the men. In fact, thinking back, I'm pretty sure Into Darkness fails the Bechdel test. It bothers me that this happens in a Star Trek film. One of Trek's driving principles is a future of equality; a future free of the sexism and racism and classism we deal with today. It's not always an easy thing to write into a story, especially one limited to two hours — but we should at least try.
But let's step back to the more mundane aspects of the film, for a moment. The visuals are absolutely stunning. The alien planets, outer space, and a futuristic Earth are all fascinating to see. More importantly, Abrams shows us the Enterprise as we've always wanted to see her. Whether it's tearing off into high warp, diving through the atmosphere of a planet, or having the hull torn open by phaser fire, the ship looks amazing. The inside looks amazing, too — engineering looks much more like the belly of an enormously complex spacecraft than ever before. The special effects budget was well spent. ...Mostly. Abrams is known for his use of lens flare, but rather than toning it back, it seems like he's doubling down on that reputation. There are also a few action sequences where camera shaking and flashes of light get a bit excessive. I get that moving the camera really fast around a completely CGI environment helps to mask the imperfections, but there are times where you'll know a whole lot is going on without being exactly sure what. I'd happily take a slightly-less-crazy chase scene if I can get a clear look at it.
The scoring is solid. Into Darkness takes its main theme from the 2009 movie, with a few improvements. It doesn't get in the way. The acting is generally fine, as well. The regulars are more comfortable in the roles; this time around, they're playing themselves as much as they’re playing the original crew. Benedict Cumberbatch brings his talent to a leading role, and he does well with what he was given, but he could have been utilized better. His character exists in two modes — complete stillness and furious action. There’s very little in between, and I think that middle-ground is where Cumberbatch thrives, as on BBC's Sherlock. Still, his character made a far more compelling opponent for Kirk than 2009's Nero.
There were a few points where the acting did strike a discordant note for me. To explain why, I'm going to step back for a moment and discuss one of the major themes of the Star Trek reboot. J.J. Abrams and the others running the show constantly use aspects of the original show — props, plots, attitudes, and characters — to inform the reboot. However, they’re very, very consistent about re-interpreting all of those aspects. Everything is close enough to be familiar, but different enough seem new. In most cases, it works; new phasers just look better than old phasers. New Spock is different from Old Spock, but not in a bad way. In Into Darkness, we meet a familiar alien race, and the re-interpretation makes them feel a bit alien again. But it doesn't always work, and this leads me back to the acting. Without spoiling the content, there are a few scenes that are much more direct adaptations of old Star Trek scenes than we saw in the 2009 movie. It is a really interesting and cool concept, but the execution felt very odd, for me. I'll try to describe it: knowing how the scene was "supposed" to go, it felt as though the actors were trying to recreate it, but failing. Obviously, this is not the case; it was clearly planned, scripted, and shot with painstaking care, until they got exactly what they wanted. Still, the similarity hit an uncanny valley between original and re-interpretation. Fortunately for most viewers, anyone who isn’t much of a Trek fan isn't likely to notice or care.
As a long-time Trek fan, Star Trek: Into Darkness occupies a conflicted spot in my mind. At the most basic level, I went to a movie and really enjoyed it. I don't regret the $10 I spent on it, and I suspect most people would feel the same. At the same time, I'm a bit troubled by the direction the franchise is taking. There are a whole generation of kids who are now growing up with a very different perception of Star Trek than I did. To them, it's going to be just another Transformers-style action flick with no lasting importance. There's none of the idealism, optimism, or broadmindedness that was inherent to classic Trek. It's not hard to see why that is; stories like that are much harder to tell on the silver screen, and even when done well, they don't make as much money. They're much better suited to episodic TV. Unfortunately, if we see a new Trek TV series (more likely: when we see a new Trek TV series), you can bet it will be done in the style of the Abrams reboot, and I worry that the true sci-fi stories and the thought-provoking allegories will be subsumed by over-the-top action and relentless special effects. At the same time, I think some Trek is better than no Trek, and the two Abrams films make a better legacy for the franchise than Insurrection and Nemesis. I almost envy non-Trek-fans for not having to resolve the conflict of What Trek Is versus What Trek Isn't.
Bottom line: go see it.
If I wanted to watch attractive, young people doing exciting things, I'd watch sports.
You're trying to claim that the original StarTrek wasn't a chauvinistic, womanising series in which Uhura was portrayed as an independant woman?
Seriously... What?
You can many points about how this differs from the original StarTrek, but that sure as hell isn't one of them.
Personally, I think this StarTrek is probably the most StarTrek that StarTrek has been in a long time.
I think it's an interesting comment about the women in the film.
This is one of only a handful of sci-fi movies that many of my female friends and acquaintances have actually enjoyed recently. I've received so many good reviews of it from women that I was hesitant to go and see it myself because I thought it was going to be too targeted towards the female audience.
Soulskill (i'm presuming) is a guy, so I find it interesting that you're offended on their behalf and yet a lot of women don't seem to mind it at all.
Note that I'm passing no judgement there, it's just an interesting observation for me.
See "The Wrath of Khan" instead.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Science Fiction is always rooted in what it means to be human. Usually by exposing something that is not human, and trying to make sense of it. Its about making you think.
Star Wars does not do that. It is fantasy happening in space. Abrams will do a great job with that franchise. To be honest, I hope the next Star Trek series is a long time coming (if its too soon, we'll get the Abrams treatment - which would suck), so we can go back to the best of Trek : true science fiction with multiple plots going on in a single episode.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Yeah, I know how you feel. Star Trek was a rare bastion of (semi)intellectualism on television, technobabble aside. To see all that removed in favor of violence, pretty colors, and snappy writing, makes me feel sort of depressed.
Of course, the reality is that everyone who likes the non-Abrams Trek's tone has options. The current incarnation of Doctor Who on BBC has exactly the same mix of high-concept, technobabble, silliness, and mystery uncovering plots that Star Trek used to have.
Now all they need to do is bring Tennant back. Matt Smith is decent, but not that great.
Watch TOS again. Most of the episodes were truly terrible. TNG was not too bad after season two, and DS9 was fine until the last season. The TOS movies however were much better.
-- science fiction is defined so narrowly that pretty much the only thing that qualifies is technical documentation;
-- old guys whine about the "perversion" of Star Trek into some sort of "jocky action film"
-- People miss the fucking point by 3 country miles.
News flash: Star Trek was never as good as you remember. It was never about "ideas," it was never "sci fi" in the narrow definition presented above, it was never NOT a caricature, and the reason it was never "cool" is because it was a plodding, meandering mess with shitty dialogue and poor production values.
If you don't like the new movies, that's fine, but stop pretending like the old Star Trek was some sort of masterpiece. It wasn't. The fact that geeks like it is more a testament to its imaginative world building than to its rigorous scientific accuracy, devotion to ideas, or fair & balanced treatment of characters. Maybe the reason you liked the boring old series so much and can derive no joy from a departure from the original formula is because you're boring, too.
And full disclosure: I watched the original & tng, and have seen most of the movies. I'm quite familiar with Star Trek, and I always enjoyed it - but I never reached the level of zealous worship apparently required to be a "fan." Christ, people. Get a grip. It was fine entertainment, but it was far from perfect, and wasn't as good as you like to remember it - that's nostalgia at work.
Can you tell me what's wrong with pretty colors and snappy writing? Those are the kinds of claims that infuriate me. Would I want to have more science-fiction in Abrams Trek? Yes, of course. Why would it need to come at the expense of good visuals and snappy writing, though? All it does is reinforce the idea that modern "cool" movies or TV shows can't possibly have depth, or that deep movies and TV shows need to look shitty and have wooden, sluggish dialogue.
I haven't seen Into Darkness but a lot of this review covered what was painfully realized in the first movie: no longer is Trek about philosophy, ethics, tolerance, gray areas and real world problems. It's mostly absolute good versus absolute evil. I think the driving force behind the bad guy in the first movie was largely a misunderstanding ... which is incredibly boring. His motivation was confusingly laughable.
Unsurprisingly I'm pretty sure I heard JJ Abrams tell Jon Stewart that "he never liked Star Trek" on The Daily Show. Well, now he's had a chance to kill it by turning it 100% into a modern day blockbuster action flick and shirking any attempt to tackle an interesting philosophical or ethical dilemma as the main plot. As the modern reemergence of comic book and super hero movies have shown, those films are a dime a dozen that anyone can do. Tackling something deeper while still holding our attention is the hard part. The Watchmen was a good candidate for it but fell short. I'm sure JJ Abrams would rather cover up the complicated parts that question good versus evil with another lens flare.
My work here is dung.
I *am* watching the original series again (on hulu) and to the contrary, I'm surprised on how well they hold up.
Yes, they are a bit cheesy, but for example 'the enemy within' made a pretty good point about good and evil - that the distinction is false - that we need the animal half of our nature in order to be effective.
Or the menagerie, with its central take-away that truly immersive VR is a drug, and that with it we may face destruction of our civilization from ppl wanting to retreat back into it and letting the world go to hell. We are probably going to be facing *that* particular dilemma in the next five years, if we aren't facing it already, here in america.
so lay off on the original series - for its time, it put up on the small screen a great deal of philosophy that otherwise would not have permeated popular culture.
That is called nostalgia. Watch this, enjoy it and you will complain when it gets rebooted again just the same.
"It's a movie with all the same strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor, and if it worked before, it'll work again."
It is nothing of the sort. They went a long way toward throwing away the tremendous gains of the 2009 "new" Start Trek movie.
The first movie took great pains to give them a brand NEW Star Trek world with all the possibilities that implies. It breaks all necessary ties with the past, and gave them a new start.
So what did they do? They made the second movie a blatant derivative of "The Wrath of Khan".
With all that possibility, they came close to throwing it all away. As it is, it was WAY too similar to that other Khan movie.
Pardon me, but I go to movies to see new things. This wasn't it. My rating: FAIL.
I have to ask. Is this really such a huge deal for everyone? I don't even notice lens flares. I'll go back and look and think "oh yeah, I guess there was one in that shot." But other than, I mean, there's an entire movie to be watched. Judging its overall quality based on the presence or absence of one minor, irrelevant special effect just baffles me.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Check out the 50th anniversary special this year. I have heard that your wish will granted(temporarily).
It's not that it can't be. It's that it isn't. Name one intellectually interesting occurrence in Star Trek(2009), that raises questions of any sort.
And Firefly was a bit higher on the scale, while Max Headroom may actually have been the zenith...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Probably make me dislike Star Trek as much as I'm beginning to dislike Doctor Who. Which is ironic, considering my favorite Tennant episodes were written by Moffat, but now that he's in control, it feels like every episode has to be more over-the-top than the one before it, especially in series 7.5.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Why do people keep saying that JJ Trek 1 was a good movie? No, no it wasn't. Ignore whether it was Trek or not. Ignore whether it was SciFi or not. It was a bad movie. The casting was great (except for Chekov), the performances were great. The sets were... like watching how Apple would design something...
But the plot. Ugh. The entire time I was thinking about how I saw that exact scene in some other movie. Hey, JJ, you know the Spinning Blades of Doom (TM)? Yeah, Galaxy Quest was making fun of you with that, not encouraging you. Sure, make Kirk the youngest CO ever. I'm cool with that. Right up until, apparently, there's not a single officer on the entire ship... except for Spock... and you can just bring up his mommy issues to take command.
I'm not a Trekkie. This isn't about not liking how things are now. I find much of Old Trek to be unwatchable. That was just a crap movie, and I saw absolutely nothing to make me want to watch this new one, and every reason to just skip it.
Pass.
There is a good reason that the middle ages spoke Latin and that we still teach Greek plays. Once something has been done well it is difficult to beat it. 60's idealism driven Star Trek is very unlikely soil for our miserable in-looking times to beat.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I think the comparison between the Star Trek of Today and the Star Trek of yesteryear is vastly unfair. The world of today is very different. The original Star Trek was set in a time that was practically before manned spaceflight; The concepts of space travel as well as technology were new except to the select few original nerds and geeks that read sci-fi by the masters or followed comic books. If the original Star Trek did anything it was to try and bring these ideas of technology and space flight to the masses. Some of the ideas are rather anachronistic and taken from old westerns, don't get me wrong it's great stuff. It also dealt with some social issues of the day, which was pretty common back in the day for classic sci-fi. Now everyone knows about technology and spaceflight nothing really wows anyone so it's really pointless to try and push that button; people are pretty jaded. Westerns are gone, for the most part anyway, and most of those concepts are long gone and if you tried to make a series with those concepts people would probably laugh and think it was kitsch. The awesome thing about the reboots is that it brings back to life for today's generation and it IS more of a space soap opera but that is what is popular today, like westerns were at the time of the original trek, and to bring people in you have to film something that is marketable and sell-able. If you want to see something classic like Star Trek, go watch the masters; the original crew, love those guys. I love the new crew as well, their just freaking awesome; I just realize that this is a different time and a different world. Besides I wouldn't want a line for line reboot anyway, I want to see something new.
I don't think it's a matter of how Abrams' Trek compares unfavorably to the scientific and philosophical "Old Trek". This is not an entirely accurate characterization of Old Trek, and completely ignores the substantial difference between Old Trek and Middle Trek. Whereas Original Kirk often resolved things with a directed phaser burst or clunky fight scene, the series of the Berman era, starting with ST:TNG, went too far the other way, preferring to move the plot forward with endless meetings and discussions and existential crisis and long meaningful stares. (Side note, I think this was primarily because meetings are cheaper to film than fight scenes, but feel free to disagree.) This is where the technobabble reached a peak, as babbling nonsense to get out of a predicament is viewed as somehow more cerebral than kicking ass. Or actually coming up with a plausible predicament with a plausible solution.
And as we know, Berman's Super Talking Trek eventually collapsed in upon itself. Personally, I've seen every single episode of TOS several times, but I stopped watching each of TNG, DS9, and Voyager before they played out. And I only ever saw perhaps four episodes of Enterprise. (Of which, one was the arguably decent follow-on to "mirror mirror".) Why? Because with a few exceptions, it was boring as hell. The same endless discussions scored by the same eight bars of cello and viola until you want to claw your eyes out. It was an exercise in frustration.
I submit that Abrams' trek was meant as a direct counter to the Super Talking Trek of the Berman era. It's not necessarily TOS reinterpreted as a space opera, because, let's face it, a lot of TOS *was* space opera, just with less money and lower technology. Abrams' Trek takes the action qualities of TOS and gives it a huge boost of technology and caffeine, without losing sight of TOS beginnings: Horatio Hornblower in space. I haven't seen Into Darkness yet, but noticed the "wooden ships and iron men" feel to the battle scenes in the trailer, which Previous Trek had seldom been able to convey. I really don't have a problem with that.
But the lens flare, that has to go. What idiot thought that up?
I mean really, if Roddenberry and Coon and Fontana and the rest had access to something that looked like a decent space suit and the ability to film EVAs and descents into volcanos and small vehicles dogfighting in space, and the Enterprise in atmosphere, don't you think they would have used them?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Can you tell me what's wrong with pretty colors and snappy writing?
Because it's Star Trek, and we expect some depth. The franchise that provided thought provoking (though occasionally asinine) entertainment. That's the core of the franchise, not snappy-but-shallow dialogue and big action. The only thing retained are the characters, or at least a one-dimensional simulation of them.
Change the characters and the name and it's a fine popcorn movie.
It's on America's tortured brow, That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
When was Trek EVER "about philosophy, ethics, tolerance, gray areas and real world problems?"
Seriously, what fucking alternate universe did you watch Star Trek in?
I guess you never watched TOS or NG. Episodes brought to light issues that paralleled the prevailing topics of the time such as racism, transgender, homosexuality, bi-racial relationships, the cold war, what defines humanity, etc, etc, etc.
You mean the scene where Kirk says, "oh it will fit..." is classic? How many times have we seen a scene like this? Only now it has lens flare and 3d effects! Yes that is just wonderful!
The problem is that Abrams took it in the wrong direction. Lets compare this to say Oblvion? At least there some interesting questions were asked with kick ass graphics! IMO this is the direction of SciFi. Or what about even Cloud Atlas! Not the fastest moving of things, but pretty decent actually. No Abrams is selling us the crack in movies we know as Transformer-ietes. In about a decade the Star Trek movies will be dated like Miami Vice is today! Compare that to Magmum Pi. Same era and pretty darn dated, but it is a good watch even to this day.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Nemesis is just... bad.
So bad in fact that after that they stopped making Star Trek movies.
Nemesis was not really a Star Trek movie. It was just a movie with Star Trek actors in a Sci-Fi setting.
I like to think Nemesis was a holodeck malfunction: Shortly after the credits finish there should've been a scene where Data, Geordi (visored), Dr. Pulaski, and Wharf and a security team (dressed circa season 2) force open the doors of a deactivated and visually damaged holodeck to find a dead Tom Hardy dressed in standard issue command uniform. Dr. Pulaski checks him over, and looks a Wharf and shakes her head. Data taps his comm badge and says "Data to Picard. I'm sorry, sir. We were too late to save Lt. Shinzon."
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Well, here's the thing, as a photographer I know that lens flare is an anomaly created by refraction of light. Generally, you try to reduce this effect as it "breaks the 4th wall" and force you as a viewer to recognize that this is a filmed event. You do this by altering lighting and camera position. Only occasionally has it even been used in a sparingly and creative way.
Now when you see it every couple of minutes, and know it was digitally inserted, that sort of just makes no sense. It's like a kid that got his hand on iMovie and had to use it's whole palette of effects as often as possible to prove their high tech. It's sort of like the instagram craze. By artificially making it look old, apparently that's cool. JJ Abrams was interviewed about this. He said it was his unique visual style, and by artificially inserting flairs he thinks it makes it look like the crew had no time to setup the shot correctly, because there's just so much action bursting off the screen. So not only is he overusing an effect, but he's artifically inserting it, to make it appear that he didn't have time to light his sets properly, and that apparently (to him) makes it EVEN MORE incredible.
Doesn't work for me though. I think it's stupid and distracting. Like when you some badly compressed gradients in black or compression artifacts on "so-called" HD cable tv. Once you start seeing it you can't look away. I don't think there's anything artistic about striving to make it look like you suck at lighting a shot.
JJ Abrams tell Jon Stewart that "he never liked Star Trek" on The Daily Show. Well, now he's had a chance to kill it by turning it 100% into a modern day blockbuster action flick and shirking any attempt to tackle an interesting philosophical or ethical dilemma as the main plot. As the modern reemergence of comic book and super hero movies have shown, those films are a dime a dozen that anyone can do. Tackling something deeper while still holding our attention is the hard part. The Watchmen was a good candidate for it but fell short. I'm sure JJ Abrams would rather cover up the complicated parts that question good versus evil with another lens flare.
Where are the mod points when you need them? You hit the problem squarely on the head with the JJ Abrams reboots. Star Trek has been reduced to an action flick. Something that will be forgotten in a month. A lot of action, pretty visuals, with a big fat void in the middle. I've seen both now and they are utterly forgettable.
Except that the franchise used to have depth and technobabble. Serious social issues were explored in an entertaining way. The current reboot is basically devoid of that depth.
You may want to listen to the content of that 'endless discussion' sometime. There's very few significant topics that weren't addressed somewhere in the Star Trek franchise. And it had a somewhat novel way of addressing them - often from the point of view on non-humans. Sure, that had been done before - but not on that scale.
Very few entertainment franchises, and certainly none as successful as Star Trek, have addressed the breadth of topics that it has.
It's on America's tortured brow, That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
was a failure in several key areas, like believable physics
Yeah, because that's where Star Trek used to really shine.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The current incarnation of Doctor Who on BBC has exactly the same mix of high-concept, technobabble, silliness, and mystery uncovering plots that Star Trek used to have.
Couldn't disagree more. Stephen Moffat seems to have decided that the best way to write Doctor Who is as a series of fairy stories for young girls. Thus, you have a very young actor playing the Doctor as Harry Potter, the Sonic Screwdriver is his magic wand (just what does it do, anyway? everything?) and nearly every episode ends with a deus ex machina, where the Doctor claps his hands together and everything going back to normal, the whole thing explained away with some timey-wimey gibberish. It's almost nothing like Star Trek and it's barely anything to do with Doctor Who. As a fan of the original series, the current one has gotten so bad that it's nigh unwatchable.
Breakfast served all day!
I have to agree, the ship looked like a hipster coffee bar and the movie could have been subtitled "lens flare" thanks to how damned much he used that stupid ass effect.
Abrams and Bay are frankly the two worst directors I think we have today, both are cynical as fuck and care about the marketing more than the films they make but have learned how to appeal to that lowest common denominator to make the big bucks. God I dread seeing what he is gonna do to Star Wars, I want to say he can't be worse than prequel Lucas but then I look at that bridge and how every 5 minutes there is a lens flare...ugh.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That is because both Abrams and Bay can't seem to write any character but differing levels of douchebag and for the love of God will somebody PLEASE make him stop with the damned lens flares? I don't know which is worse, Abrams making everything bright and throwing lens flares in all over the place or bay's ultra fast cuts but they are both annoying as hell to set through.
At the end of the day though lets face it, its all about marketing. you'll never see a film "Wrath of Khan" quality from either director because its not about telling a good story, or making a great movie, its about turning out a product that can be slapped on everything from t-shirts to mouse pads and selling the hell out of that. While this can work the movie has to come first but if the second one is anything like the first the whole thing felt like an excuse to get scenes that would work in the trailers.
And maybe its just me but do these movies have this undercurrent of cynicism to anybody else? I watch films by Abrams and Bay and get this "Meh, it'll be good enough for the sheeple" feeling when I watch them, it just feels to me that its done with the absolute minimum of effort required to make a marketable product, like filming by focus group.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You are kidding right? he had a fricking TIME MACHINE and he doesn't go to warn everybody, maybe give them plenty of time to move, nope he goes to blow up the federation? That is as stupid as the time ship that attacked Voyager saying "there is no time to explain" or Picard going back to 3 minutes before he got his ass handed to him in ST:Generations instead of just grabbing Sauron on the bridge and saying his family from the fire../facepalm/
There should be a law that if you are gonna do a time travel story you have to show you understand the concept and realize that you have just given a character a giant reset button. I mean how sad is it when the last movie i saw that realized this was Back To The Future, where Marty goes "Duh, I'm in a time machine!" and goes back before he left to save Doc. If you have a functional time machine? Its pretty damned hard to lose. And don't give me that alternate dimension crap but if that is the case then it should be the case for every other time they have used it, but its not. I have to agree with Chuck at SFDebris in that "I'll buy your bullshit, time travel, clones, alien invaders, just be consistent with your bullshit".
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Warning: some foul language ahead, and no, I do not advocate violence towards women. All right, then.
TOS was pretty good and the remasters are pretty cool to watch if for nothing other than how tacky they are. That being said, about half of the episodes are really, really cheesy. Some of the costumes are downright hilarious, like they raided the Hollywood studio equivalent of a Goodwill store. But hey, it's the original, and still quite watchable. We all know the characters, no need to go into that.
TNG was really very good in it's time, but I DARE you to watch it now. Wow, just horrific stuff. Bad acting, all the "men" have vaginas, way way overly PC, and the episodes flog you non-stop with the fucking morality angle. Ugh. Almost every actor way overacts, including Patrick Stewart, who is the star of the whole ordeal. He's excellent, if a little preachy and theatrical. But again, I just dare you to watch it.
DS9 is probably my favorite these days, as it's not too ancient, doesn't get too high & mighty, and the Ferengi presence makes for some good comedy. Still, the Bajor angle wears you down, and you just want to smack Kira around with her Bajor this Bajor that, Bajor...SHUT UP!!!!. You almost start rooting for the Cardassians. Sisko, and especially Quark and Garak steal the show. Keiko, Julian, and Odo are mostly annoying. The Cardassians are delightfully evil; I love me some Gul Dukat.
Voyager: Holy shit, this is a frickin' train-wreck in space. Like a train-wreck, it's a terrifyingly horrible thing to witness, but hard to look away. Being Trek, I have to watch it. It's really an unintentional comedy, and even watching it alone, I end up howling with laughter. Usually my dog will start biting me because I'm scaring the hell out of her as I'm doubled over in fits of laughter. You've got a helium addict for a captain (as I type this I'm laughing my ass off), the spastic half Klingon woman as the engineer, the 1st officer Tonto, the Hologram Doctor you just want to kick in the nuts he's so annoying, the Neelix cook dude (what the fuck is that?), and his Carol-Brady-hairdo sporting girlfriend playing the ???, fuck, I don't know what. This series is the very height of technobabble, and the plots and scripts are just downright ludicrous. I'm going to watch one after I post this, because they're funny as all hell.
Now there's Enterprise, which is pretty good actually. It takes a while to get rolling, and the last several episodes are for shit, but overall, it's pretty good as long as the T&A doesn't offend you: it's really blatant. The stars of this series are definitely the Vulcan science officer T'Pol's breasts and her ass, as this is what the camera is usually focused on. Could be worse. The doctor, Phlox, is excellent: actually, he's my favorite character. It's not without its share of annoying characters, however. Here we go: The WORST has got to be Hoshi, the Korean actress cast as a Japanese (of course) communication officer. At first you think: "Hey, at least she's kind of cute." But then the whining starts. And the pouting. Oh the pouting. Please just STOP IT, HOSHI. Ugh, she is such a bummer. Malcom, the security officer is OK sometimes, but definitely neurotic. Then the hotheaded engineer, who again, grows on you, but is mostly annoying. I liked Scott Bakula (for the most part) as the captain, but the fatal flaw is that NOBODY LISTENS TO HIM, and he rarely kicks their asses, electing to let it slide. Some really cool alien species show up here and there.
So, there's my take on the Star Trek series. Which should really be called Time Trek, because it seems half of the episodes are about time travel. I liked the 1st reboot for what it was (mindless action in space), but really people, ALL of the Trek iterations are pretty bad, so take off those rose tinted glasses and lighten up.
Actually, Simon Pegg (Scotty) had this to say about the Lens Flare:
> Serious social issues were explored in an entertaining way.
Dam straight. ST:TNG was a good social commentary disguised as sci-fi. The original did a good job too.
That's what the heart of Science Fiction is: Exploring the social consequences, implications and ramifications of how technology effects people's lives. The "classic" Sci-Fi writers (Isaac) Asimov, (Robert) Heinlein, (Arthur) Clarke are some of the BEST _precisely_ because they explored these social issues at a deep level. Great Sci-Fi encourages and rewards deep thinking.
For any series that reboots / remakes / re-cash-grab one would expect a bit more BACK story in the first place. i.e. WHY did Star Fleet invent the Prime Directive in the first place? HOW did they come to that "non-interference" was the only "valid" choice. If you are going to invent artificial rules on xeno-politics then at least treat the viewer as having some intelligence. Hell, if ST:TNG could do it for 7 years, there is no reason why a movie can't. In about 10 years humans will finally meet aliens and we'll get to see some wildly different perspectives on intelligent species communication that will make ST look like a joke / toy in comparison.
Is the new Star Trek a sci-fi? Hell no, not even close.
Is it a decent action flick. Yeah. It was entertaining; if one ignores the one-dimensional characters, plots holes, then mildly yes. There is a time and a place for "dumb sci-fi". The ONLY credit I give to the new Star Trek is that it made it accessible to the general populace. "Coolness" should never depend on "popularity".
What? You haven't seen Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey?
Their final showdown with De Nomolos is one of the few times I've seen someone use time travel properly.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Because it's not wrong.
There is no "absolute position". Anything running on inertia can be said to be said to be moving at any velocity you choose depending on your frame of reference, including motionless. Now, planets don't run solely on inertia -- they orbit because of gravity. But gravity folds spacetime, which is still what you're travelling through. Plenty of good reason to think you'll end up at basically the same position relative to the barycenter of the most significant gravity sources of your point of departure.
You wouldn't time travel to the "same location in a different time" because that doesn't exist. The current time is part of the coordinates in the time-space continuum. We ignore that in our everyday lives as we constantly time travel forward, because our position relative to the barycenter of the most significant local gravity source -- the Earth -- does not change substantially.
Where do you think they would go if it isn't the approximate same location as measured from the local planet/solar system/galactic center/appropriate scale alternative? Every other location in the universe save that one seems like an arbitrary choice to me.*
*Okay, I can imagine another location: perhaps if you worked out what would happen if you ran the universe backwards, but without gravity, such that everything is inertia, you could end up there. Seems unlikely though. How often does that sort of thing happen in physics where you basically have to backtrack through an alternate history to determine how real history happened? If we accept that time travel exists, we can accept that it's weird, but I'd go for a simpler answer while we're basically making shit up anyway. I think most people think of this as time travelling back 6 months in time and ending up on the opposite side of the sun, as if the sun were the center of the universe and time a universal constant.
Except that the franchise used to have depth and technobabble. Serious social issues were explored in an entertaining way. The current reboot is basically devoid of that depth.
Actually to be truly fair, all of the Star Trek series varied tremendously in depth and quality. Quite a few of those episodes in all of the Trek series were quite frankly, awful. Awful in the terms of science, of story, and of characterization. Trek's popularity had nothing to do with it's science, it's actors, nor it's authors, because there were other shows that did better in all three. The secret of Trek's success was twofold, 1. It was created in an era of unequaled optimism and promise and 2. It was a show that allowed many to project what they were looking for in vision.
This is infuriating to me. Because you old farts are conflating nostalgia with story. With meaning and message.
The movie is targeted at younger audiences. But it had plenty to say about loyalty, friendship, duty, honor, integrity. Humanity. In a modern and satirical way.
It was plenty god damned Star Trek. Gene would have been proud. But maybe annoyed as much as you at the format.
Get past your hang up that they were duking it out on floating space barges. That was there to entertain you and the people funding the real movie behind the movie. You obviously zoned out and lost interest because the format wasn't what you were use to, wanted, or were expecting.
This is a classical dilemma with cinema as it develops over the ages. Look at good movies Charlton Heston movies from the 1950s. They wouldn't sell shit today if re-shot and re-done in the same style and format. It does not support fantasy very well. Masume Shirow had this same problem with Ghost in the Shell and decided to take a break, or get out of cinema because of that same problem. He griped a lot about Innocence this way.
Firefly was arguably superior.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Bravo. I wish I had mod-points.
I saw a movie that explored:
The potential effects of interfering with an early-stage civilization. (Prime Directive 101)
The needs of the many and the one.
Xenophobia and the militaristic response to it.
The relative nature of ethical decisions.
The fragility of the utopian Federation image.
Humanity's ongoing battle with it's base drives.
It may have been heavy-handed in places but all of this is pure Trek. I've much more sympathy with those who compained that it revisits old territory a bit too often. This is Trek with a new coat of paint and an adrenaline shot to the heart. Silly, brilliant, thought-provoking and exciting. It leaves the door open for new fans and has enough intellectual fodder for those who want to wonder about the aforementioned issues.