I haven't seen said movie yet, but considering the first one included a ship that could contain a giant ass ball of space imploding matter, I assume their special matter containment techniques are pretty good by now. I'm glad that the new startrek future includes a starfleets that's smart enough to put solid safeties on an engine powered by a gigaton bomb, before locating their headquarters in a major city.
It does make me wonder, could a permanent magnetic field contain ionized (or is that anti-ionized) anti-matter?
Why did Admiral Marcus have a model of the Vengeance on his desk? Other models on his desk included the Phoenix and the NX-class Enterprise. (Nice continuity nods, there.)
But why the Vengeance? I mean, the whole point was that the Vengeance project was supposed to be a sooper-sekrit program, that the ship was being built off the official books and probably in violation of quite a few Starfleet policies, and that it wasn't even manned by regular Starfleet personnel.
So why on Earth have a model of the ship on your desk, where everybody and their brother can see it and wonder, "That's an intriguing-looking model; I wonder what the Admiral's trying to tell us by displaying it so prominently?".
To quote Batman: "Villaims are stupid."
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Bring a green drink. When people ask you what it is, reply, "It is green." Done.
I used to be able to buy Chartreuse at 110 proof but I think it was cut back to 100 proof or less. Haven't had any of that for a long time. My dad used to have several bottles of Moonshine, and I have no idea what proof it was but it was potent. I tried it straight a couple of times.
Why did Admiral Marcus have a model of the Vengeance on his desk? Other models on his desk included the Phoenix and the NX-class Enterprise. (Nice continuity nods, there.)
But why the Vengeance? I mean, the whole point was that the Vengeance project was supposed to be a sooper-sekrit program, that the ship was being built off the official books and probably in violation of quite a few Starfleet policies, and that it wasn't even manned by regular Starfleet personnel.
So why on Earth have a model of the ship on your desk, where everybody and their brother can see it and wonder, "That's an intriguing-looking model; I wonder what the Admiral's trying to tell us by displaying it so prominently?".
To quote Batman: "Villaims are stupid."
How and why did the plastic model companies have models of the 'Stealth Fighter' long before the government admitted that it even existed?
I just got back from seeing it in 3D at the IMax. I too pronounce it quite excellent for a Star Trek movie. Not sure why anyone would complain about it -- I sure as hell won't, after having sat through TOS Season Three, TNG season one (two wasn't much better), Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V, and Star Trek Nemesis... I know, there were some other Trek movies that were not good, but those were just awful. Actually come to think of, I don't think I ever did sit through all of V...
This was p. damn worthy imo. Lots of good moments already mentioned -- but I especially liked how Quinto nailed this scene:
Pike: Are you giving me attitude, Spock?
Spock: I am expressing many attitudes. To which are you referring?
I am avoiding the spoilers until tomorrow. I ended up going to my local pub to try different recipes for Romulan ale without having to buy half the liquor store. When we arrived, they were playing Dune on all the big screens, just so's you know we were in the right place.
Cosplay is optional tomorrow. I am thinking of painting myself green and wearing a feminist shirt and being "Orion Feminist Girl" but I can't decide whether that is awesome or groanable.
Contra was leaning groanable, but he is biased against painted costumes after my Medusa of many moons ago. Oh god, and that headress weighed like four thousand pounds and I don't even like to think about it. Plus, I think he is sad because he wouldn't have a costume to wear. Even though he does a mean Kirk impression.
How and why did the plastic model companies have models of the 'Stealth Fighter' long before the government admitted that it even existed?
Exactly. I remember building a Revell model of what became the SR-71 Blackbird before their existence was acknowledged by the gubbermint. The model was labeled the Lockheed YF-12A on the box.
I went to see it with my oldest son last night. Dolby 3D blows chunks--like a bad Viewmaster. Everything in the foreground is so badly out of focus it's distracting. I enjoyed the story, but--Ricardo Montalban was Khan. Cumberbatch was more like Ash in "Alien".
Cosplay is optional tomorrow. I am thinking of painting myself green and wearing a feminist shirt and being "Orion Feminist Girl" but I can't decide whether that is awesome or groanable.
Just because something's groanable isn't a reason not to do it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who imagined that exchange during that scene.
The only other sciency thing that bugged me was...
Apparently phaser fire travels faster than light, since a ship traveling at warp can fire phasers ahead of it?
I somehow managed not to be spoiled, since I didn't know who Cumberbatch was supposed to be until the reveal.
I'd grade it about equal to the previous Abrams Trek. It manages to be a fun action flick with enough Trek mixed in to not feel off. I'm unclear on exactly how some of the plot was supposed to work, but that's OK.
So, Kahn hides his crew inside torpedoes, like ya do, but then he finds out that Admiral Dick Cheney knows that he hid his crew inside torpedoes, so he...er...blows up the top secret installation* because underpants? Profit? And then he runs off to Kronos (they're doing amazing things with transporter range these days), so Admiral Dick Cheney arms the Enterprise with the same torpedoes that he knows have Kahn's crew in them because underpants? Profit? He hopes that Kirk will cause a war with the Klingons by firing frozen war criminals at them? Was that also supposed to kill Kahn? Was being attacked by a ship unknowingly wielding his crew as weapons part of Khan's plan?
* - And also! Kirk and Spock figure out that Kahn is about to attack Starfleet HQ because it didn't make any sense that he would blow up an archive containing public domain data so, aha!, the attack was a ruse to gather all of the Starfleet brass in one room, as per protocol, so he could kill the, but , wait, it wasn't actually an archive, so it did make sense that he would blow it up, so they just got lucky and guessed?
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
And then he runs off to Kronos (they're doing amazing things with transporter range these days)
They actually addressed that. IIRC, at first they were looking for him around earth, because they didn't detect any warp trails leaving the system, but then at some point somebody says something like "he has somehow acquired a trans-warp transporter" or some kind of whatever device handwavey thing. The point is, hands were waved.
I went to see it again yesterday with a chemist friend. She didn't like it as much as I did. In her words, "I miss the days when Star Trek movies didn't force you to turn your brain off so that you could enjoy them."
She really, really hated
the "let's rape the 1st law of thermodynamics with our 'cold fusion bomb'" thing.
But what are ya gonna do with chemists?
As an aside, I watched the pilot episode of Star Trek: Enterprise yesterday evening. I've never seen Enterprise before, and thought I might give it a try.
Let's see: hate the stupid, arrogant, hypocritical Vulcans; hate the even stupider Humans; don't care for the stiff acting.
And will someone please tell the writers that evolution does NOT work the way they seem to think it does?! It's bad enough that Creationists mangle and horribly misrepresent evolutionary theory; you'd think sci-fi writers would be at least a little more on-the-ball.
Does it get better? So far, I'm not feeling terribly inspired to watch any more episodes.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
-- Socrates
Last edited by The Lone Ranger; 05-21-2013 at 06:08 PM.
Does it get better? So far, I'm not feeling terribly inspired to watch any more episodes.
IMO, no it does not get any better.
What could have been a good story about a nascent Star Fleet and early warp-exploration of the galaxy turned into a ridiculous commentary on cold war era politics with the introduction of the temporal cold war.
When that story line failed to gain traction they shifted away completely and switched to the earth/Xindi conflict, which was just another proxy war. This lasted for two seasons (seasons 2 and 3).
Season 4 was probably the best Enterprise season. Why? Because they recycled a lot of previous story lines from TOS rather than make shit up as they went. Although season 4 did have it's problems, like the attempt at explaining why TOS Klingons do not have cranial ridges like later Klingons.
All in all Enterprise blew more balls than Voyager, and that was hard to do IMO.
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The best way to make America great is to lower the standards!
Saw it yesterday with my Trekkie sister and mom, IMAX 3D because that's what my sister wanted and it was her movie after all.
I'm sure there were many good things about it like you have all said, but my main emotion in retrospect is anger. I am irritated at the cheap sentimentality. It's one thing for Hollywood to take characters who were introduced on television as having an existing relationships and have them just meet and be antagonistic. As much as that annoys me I expect nothing less anymore. But to take these characters, who are still at odds with each other, and put them through an intense emotional scene and expect the audience to buy it just because the previous iterations of the characters had years of history and affection that the audience remembers is cheap, exploitative and, frankly, pissing me off right now.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I didn't dislike the movie, or feel angered by it, but you get at something that's been bothering me since the first one. I've never really been able to put my finger on it before.
While they aren't bad movies on their own, they don't really seem like Star Trek to me. The movies don't feel like Star Trek or really look like Star Trek (not always a bad thing), but the movie-makers are clearly banking on our affection for Star Trek to get us to watch them. And because they know we're already familiar with the characters, they aparently don't feel like they have to invest any time in real character development or in explaining characters' motivations, and so can get straight to the action sequences.
[That having been said, there's a lot more character development in this one than in the first one, which is part of the reason that I like it better. The characters don't seem quite so static.]
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
I went to see it again yesterday with a chemist friend. She didn't like it as much as I did. In her words, "I miss the days when Star Trek movies didn't force you to turn your brain off so that you could enjoy them."
So like, 1982? Wrath of Khan? Or do any really qualify on that front?
One comment on format. Seeing it in IMAX made me focus on the wrong thing. I was all about Spock's eyebrows being uneven, my sister was noticing that Kirk looked extra pockmarked and my mom pointed out that one of Kirk's eyes is wider open than the other. I also spent some time wondering at how weird Benedict Cumberbatch's philtrum is when you look at it that closely.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Does it get better? So far, I'm not feeling terribly inspired to watch any more episodes.
IMO, no it does not get any better.
What could have been a good story about a nascent Star Fleet and early warp-exploration of the galaxy turned into a ridiculous commentary on cold war era politics with the introduction of the temporal cold war.
When that story line failed to gain traction they shifted away completely and switched to the earth/Xindi conflict, which was just another proxy war. This lasted for two seasons (seasons 2 and 3).
Season 4 was probably the best Enterprise season. Why? Because they recycled a lot of previous story lines from TOS rather than make shit up as they went. Although season 4 did have it's problems, like the attempt at explaining why TOS Klingons do not have cranial ridges like later Klingons.
All in all Enterprise blew more balls than Voyager, and that was hard to do IMO.
Yup. Enterprise totally wears the late crown. They finally lost me for good the day they "killed off" Archer while destroying the Xindi weapon ("Zero Hour"). At first I was totally psyched. FINALLY! A Star Trek episode that acknowledges space is a dangerous, unpredictable environment, and that sometimes even the captain doesn't make it home. That's balls, to kill off the captain like that. Archer took personal responsibility to make sure the Xindi weapon was taken out, and dies a hero. And the r-tarded Xindi story arc is finally over! And now T'Pol would get command of the Enterprise -- how cool is all that? This show is finally going to get interesting!
Then, somehow five minutes later Archer is...alive? In the past? with...Nazis? AND Aliens? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK???
I don't think my suspension of disbelief ever evaporated so fast and hard as on that day. THANK YOU, RICK FUCKING BERMAN.
I shut off the television before the theme started and have never watched another second of that pathetic loser of a show.
And that dumbass theme... it totally fits that train wreck of a Star Trek.
I also spent some time wondering at how weird Benedict Cumberbatch's philtrum is when you look at it that closely.
I didn't need the IMAX for that. In fact, I didn't even need to look up which character that actor played or what that fancy word means to know exactly what you are referring to.
Don't know when it comes out for you backwards livin' folks, but go see it, go see it, go see it I want to talk to people about it!
Also, I like Bort's reviews, so go see it asap Bort!
MEDIUM SPOILERS
The joke is on you all, ha ha ha, because I seen't it the Thursday before you posted your twiddles! But at the time I was feeling conflicted about it. So many little things slipped by while watching that I wanted to comment on but by the end of the movie I'd forgotten so much that it didn't feel right to opinionate about. My overall, general, impression at the time wasn't favorable. That is to say that I didn't hate it but neither was I terribly excited about it either.
I think I felt worse about my opinion of the movie than I did about the movie. There are enough people right here on the Free Thought and Talk Forum that loved the movie, and those across the webosphere and into the IRL real world too, that I wonder if maybe is something just wrong with me. Yeah, it's opiniony and everyone can have one but weighing on me isn't just the Star Trax but some other media and shows where I find myself on the other side of from the popular opinion. Am I missing something? Am I being too ... harsh? Unforgiving? Obstinate? You know, that stuff.
I quietly put off any sort of reviewing until I had the chance to see it again. I figure if slim is going to pressure me, I may as well do my full doody. Man, the things I do for you people, I swear. I even went and gotten myself a little notebook so I wouldn't forget to write things down when I had a stray thought. The scribbles aren't so terrible considering they were scribbled in the dark of a movie theater, in a little notebook and without a desk upon which to rest it.
There are some basic questions Into Darkness asks. How far would you go? What would convince a man to give his life to save a daughter he'll never see again? How many rules would you break to save a friend? Are you prepared to give your life to a cause, to save your family, your crew, your way of life?
Each major character faces one or more of those questions. Okay, and one minor character too.
John Harrison is willing to battle all of Earth and as much of Starfleet as will chase him across the galaxy for his family and the wrongs he perceives have been done to them.
Admiral Alexander Marcus is ready to plunge the Alpha Quadrant into a war because he believes, well, I guess he thinks that Earth and the Federation are vulnerable and weak. He gambles on a bloody future because this universe is suddenly full of shadows because of what happened to Vulcan. I'm not terribly clear on all of his motives for doing what he do.
Commander Spock... don't be fooled. This movie is more about his journey than it was about anyone else. In the beginning he says he decided not to feel anything when it looked like there were no options but death. Throughout the rest of the movie you see him give ground to his emotions. His colleagues, his friends - though they can never replace everything that was lost to him (his mother, a planet full of people) - are valuable and worth striving to keep in his life. Zachary Quinto is phenomenal in a cast of great performances, playing back and forth with a Spock that exists between his two halves. Leonard Nemoy is Mr. Spock now and forever, no one can replace his truly iconic performances; but unlike some of the other new Trax, Zachary creates something great and all his own in his Mr. Spock.
Captain Kirk is an asshole. I still can't buy that a goddamn cadet, savant though he be, was handed both the Captain rank and a starship - and not just any ship but the goddamn flagship of the Federation. Especially when he makes shit headed decisions. But dammit if that isn't occasionally tempered by the nearly unlimited loyalty he shows to his crew. One of my niggles here is that he lets Scotty resign and in the next scene reverses his decision - but leaves his engineer behind anyway. (Yeah, yeah, plot mechanics. I still haven't figured out a way to have my cake and eat it too with that.)
On one hand, I'm happy that the Star Trax lives on and in addition these characters get some fresh faces and interpretations. I'm not terribly excited that they felt they had to create a brand new universe to do it in and a lot of times it feels like I'm getting caricatures of the original actors rather than something fresh; even though I think the actors chosen are the right ones for the job. I'm all conflicty about it, you see. I want to like it more than I actually end up liking it.
I'm excited to see what new stories we can get; and that's ultimately what tripped me up with Into Darkness. I felt like someone thought "Alright, if we're telling a story about this guy then it has to include these other characters just because and it also has to hit these emotional beats also just because." And I feel cheated a little.
My single favorite moment was when Acting Captain Hikaru Sulu laid down the ultimatum in that one scene. You know what I'm talking about.
My least favorite moment (and I had a lot to choose from) was the one where OKAY GODDAMMIT, WE GET IT, KIRK IS A FUCKING PIG AND THERE'S NO GOOD GODDAMN REASON FOR HER TO BE IN HER UNDERWEARS IN FRONT OF HIM MOTHER FUCKER. You know, because she had plenty of fucking time to change her clothes because Kirk had to leave and Bones had to get on the damn shuttle. I'm sure there were many mother fucking minutes that didn't require a man to see her like that; nevermind that we're in the goddamn future where we're supposed to be beyond that bullshit, so fuck you JJ. Right in your mother fucking jalapeno ear hole you son of a bitch.
But besides all of that, I'm saying if you liked the Star Trax the last time, you shouldn't have much trouble enjoying this one. And if you had problems with the last one, you'll have the same problems in this one.
I really enjoyed it, though the Romulan Ale ended up plugging up any of the plot holes y'all found.
Also, everything that Bort said. He is very, very smart, that Bort.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ensign Steve
Quote:
Originally Posted by Janet
I also spent some time wondering at how weird Benedict Cumberbatch's philtrum is when you look at it that closely.
I didn't need the IMAX for that. In fact, I didn't even need to look up which character that actor played or what that fancy word means to know exactly what you are referring to.
I love him, but had to look up the word. Then I wondered if Janet had come up with another google first.
Re: Star Trek is awesome
it totally fits that train wreck of a Star Trek. 
Re: Star Trek is awesome
I want to talk to people about it! 
is willing to battle all of Earth and as much of Starfleet as will chase him across the galaxy for his family and the wrongs he perceives have been done to them.
google first. 
Linear Mode
