Comments on: Thoughts on the new Star Trek

By: Andrea

Andrea — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:32:23 +0000

I thought it was totally excellent, laughed out loud a lot, loved the puffy hands. The only thing that bugged me was seriously – if you have a ship full of stuff that can destroy entire planets, do you REALLY leave it totally unguarded?

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:25:49 +0000

What is actually good about the movie is that they have created a meaningless pocket universe.

Now matter what happens in the next 130 years of Star Trek Beta, in 130 years. Many good things, no David Marcus …. etc…..

The same star will supernova because that wont change but now Kirk/Spock will stop it and angry Nero wont exist and the pocket universe will be closed.

BTW: WTF is JJ Abram’s issue with Red Balls. He ruin Alias with with one.
Maybe one to many lava lamps as a kid.

By: adam

adam — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:10:53 +0000

I thought that Kirk running around with puffy hands was about the weakest part of the movie. Scotty in the tubes was okay, because my immediate reaction was “Why do they even have the spinny choppy room?”, which was, I think, as expected.

Perhaps they could have made it work without the continuity games, but I liked the fairly novel approach, and I thought the pacing was good.

By: nathaniel

nathaniel — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:55:05 +0000

I think if Star Trek fans are of the sort where they need a convoluted and rather corny exposition why the new movies dare to diverge from canon, then that is a problem with the fans and the franchise, and the best thing to do would be to leave them to hate it and make a better movie for the rest of us. For my own part, as (really) a Star Trek fan, I’d have been open to movies that continue the existing universe with a new cast (James Bond style), with or without any particular level of attention to continuity. I would also be open to anything along the continuum from that to a Battlestar Galactica style unapologetic reboot/reimagination (Kirk as a chick, obviously); what I didn’t appreciate was the movie going to such lengths to graft the reboot into the universe itself that this process of self justification itself becomes the main purpose of the movie, and makes it into a big corny series of coincidences that overshadow and coopt the plot.

Relatedly, I thought the nods to history (Pike in a wheelchair, Wrath of Khan brain bug) were all the more fun appearing, as they did, in a new context, and spotting and enjoying these would have gone a long way to keep old fans on board, even absent the more pondering and self-conscious explicit reboot justification.

That said I did enjoy it, and all the logistics being out of the way, am looking forward to the next movie being a proper Star Trek adventure.

What did yall think about the action sequences? Things like Scotty shooting around the coolant tubes were the other part I found a bit jarring at least in tone.

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:05:56 +0000

I guess that depends on whether you’re a many-worlder or not. If you believe that every time there’s a ‘choice,’ all options are chosen and the time lines branch out as a result, then the other time lines could still exist (in which Spock never tried to help Romulus). If you believe only in one actual world at a time, then when Spock tried to help Romulus and led to the events in the movie, the other time line ceased to exist. If circumstances then go so as to prevent Spock from trying to help Romulus and the events of the movie are never to have taken place, then the original time line is restored. This is suggested in the TNG episode (”Yesterday’s Enterprise”) where the Enterprise C jumps into the future, restoring Tasha Yar, but preventing (for a time) the Ent C from aiding the Klingon outpost that led to the peace treaty with the Klingons. When the C returns to the past the timeline is restored (except for the fact that Yar goes with them, leading to the Yar’s liason with a Romulan captor and the birth of her daughter, Sela, who later bedevils the Ent-D crew.

By: adam

adam — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:42:54 +0000

I don’t see why the other timeline can’t still exist and we’re just not paying attention to it anymore.

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:19:24 +0000

Oh yeah, and I LIKE it when the time travel stories are all tied up in the end. It’s the only way to resolve the paradox. It feels like time is the master hand behind the way of the universe or something. As it stands now, Quinto-Spock will never try to save Romulus, which means Nero will never be out for revenge, which means he and Spock will never come back in time, which means Kirk’s dad will never die, etc., etc. But I guess they could just leave it a deformed time-line for the duration of the movies, and tie it all up in the last movie they decide to make with this group. (Incidentally, the time travel aspect does give an easy answer to all the complainers: Sure Checkov wasn’t introduced until the second season, but that was in the OTHER time line…, etc.)

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:13:30 +0000

I liked it but didn’t get everything I had hoped for. I also saw it in IMAX in the last row. One annoying thing is that it wasn’t REALLY IMAX; they didn’t use the whole screen. It was basically just really big format digital. This was obvious when they do the IMAX intro that uses the whole screen and then you start the movie and it’s much smaller.

Can I also just say I HATE jerky cam? I know it’s something Abrams is into, but I can’t stand it and in IMAX it’s that much worse. (I know this cuts against my previous comment – but whatever.) It doesn’t make me feel more a part of the action; it makes me feel more disconnected. I want to SEE what’s going on, see all the great props and special effects.

Quinto was pretty good, but I was a little underwhelmed by Pine. It might have been the writing but I thought the Kirk character was a bit stereotypical and didn’t really develop at all (while Quinto’s Spock developed a lot more).

I would have also liked a litte more story that probably got cut out for the sake of keeping all the action: like what was going on with the owner of young Kirk’s stolen car? Was that his step-dad? By only having the car chase, it almost seemed pointless (although still a nice chase). A little backstory for the Spock-Uhura relation would have been nice too. Urban’s McCoy needed more screen time (and backstory) too, not to mention Scotty. Don’t get me wrong: it was a wild ride and I enjoyed it, but as a fan who’s seen all the shows (even the Bakula ones), I would have prefered sacrificing just a little of the action for a little more substance. But maybe that’s not the way to get new fans.

By: dan

dan — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:43:10 +0000

i have to agree with adam,

if they didn’t use the methods for this changeover, i would have completely hated the movie. but the timeline change implications are just perfect and made the movie plausible in the scifi world known as star trek. simply i just would have hated if they messed with the cast and didn’t change the flow of time. Kirk couldn’t have been who he was in this version in the original timeline.

but you know – everything you need to know you can learn from watching star trek .. lol. I’m hoping that they do in fact move into a long term project with this. Star Trek really has inspired many technological advances and I hope that this new breed continues to make this happen. LLAP (yea i’m an original series trekie)

By: adam

adam — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:32:52 +0000

I don’t think so – if they had just jumped in with this cast, it would have really lacked any continuity with the old series and felt like a real reboot instead of a gradual natural shift. I think that would have really triggered the functional equivalent of the fans’ immune system, where imposters are treated as foreign bodies and resisted.

By: nathaniel

nathaniel — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:19:04 +0000

Interesting. I thought the cast was great — especially, as you say Quinto and Urban — and sets, costumes, etc, but I didn’t really like the prequel nature of it at all. I thought it was a little corny and tedious to watch all this backstory whereby all the crew assume their rightful positions on the bridge and then the movie is over. All of this time-travel-reboot business was just a little too overly thought out, cumbersome, and unnecessary. I think they’re set up to make great Star Trek movies with this cast now, but I think they could have just skipped the long reboot and just made a damn Star Trek movie instead.