Star Trek: Round Spaceships

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Star Trek: Round Spaceships

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I think this is somewhere where the ol' warp factors would've been handy, geekazoid as the concept kind of is.

# ¿ May 21, 2013 11:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2024 09:04

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I'm actually going to go against the usual line here. I didn't like Cumberbatch throughout the first half of the film. It felt like he was doing the "I'm Sherlock Lecter McHitler" thing so hard, I half expected him to say "You know nothing, Jon Snow." It was just "OK, it's Benedict Cumberbatch doing his Benedict Cumberbatch act," it's like how Jason Statham has always seemed to play essentially the same character. That said, he did improve as things went on.

I also appreciated the scene where Khan is running from Spock. On the one hand you have this stylish, sexy man in a trenchcoat, artfully touselled and handsomely white. On the other hand you have this guy with fake ears, and a bowl haircut flopping in the breeze, power-striding in his dorky Star Trek uniform. I felt like that was a comment but I'm not sure if it was saying 'the dorks will always get you in the end' or if it was more akin to 'these ideals are stronger than Benedict Cumberbatch's sexily alienated trenchcoat'. And of course even Spock can't win without the black woman's help.

# ¿ May 25, 2013 16:29

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Gatts posted:

And I also noticed what you described. Benedict in costume running the streets of San Fran it was like "This dude runs hard as gently caress but has great form and looks sweet." while Spock was more goofy and effort as heck to keep up. It did seem to insinuate the characters states and perhaps their nature.

Between MI3 and Star Trek, JJ loves his athletic actors running hard as gently caress. Seriously, so much running. There's even the Scotty joke.

But Spock, goddamit, he had heart. :vulcanflagemote:

# ¿ May 25, 2013 16:53

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Cingulate posted:

Aren't most of us in agreement about the main points though:
- there's much white washing and racism going on in general
- it would have been nice and progressive to see an actual Indian play Khan
- somebody of the same ethnic group of the original actor was the original casting favourite and a white guy was only chosen when Del Toro dropped out
- Cumberbatch did a good job, but didn't really look like Khan at all

I don't agree with the first half of the fourth part at all :armfold: Even if he'd been John Harrison, Khan's XO who they thawed out instead, I'd still hold to my criticism, it would just not have the point of comparison to Montalban's portrayal. e: Nor the whitewashing critique which I agree with but which is a separate point

Nessus fucked around with this message at 01:17 on May 26, 2013

# ¿ May 26, 2013 01:12

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Count Chocula posted:

This is an indictment of how short-sighted the Federation is and how stupid any prohibition against genetic engineering is. Khan and his men should be the future of the Federation, their post-human goal, not the enemy.

I would say this is not the case.

Part of the thesis of Star Trek seems to be that people are valuable "just the way they are," and that every group's distinctive cultural and technological and social and philosophical contributions are valuable and precious. An approach where humanity immediately upgrades themselves with the genetic and biological distinctiveness of whatever-they-want would... actually be an interesting modification of the concept of the Borg.

I am not a deep Trek Head but this is even made nuanced in the whole corpus of Star Treks I saw; I know Worf at one point favors euthanasia over a cyborg reconstruction of his back, and Dr. Bashir in DS9 has it come up as well. So this isn't just 'grr, bad! no augs!'

# ¿ May 26, 2013 03:05

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

DFu4ever posted:

See, this is where I disagree. Basically, following this line of thought, JJ Abrams is now potentially a huge racist. So is Ronald D Moore for changing Tigh from black to white. If you have a different vision of a character, but that would involve the character being moved from minority to white, you are automatically being tremendously racist. This sort of absolute stance comes off to me as intensely stupid. Most absolute stances can get dumb, though, even if their intent is noble.

Honestly, I'm more uncomfortable with watering down the term 'racist' than I am with non-malicious whitewashing.

I think you can make a distinction between "thoughtlessly reifying a harmful thing" and "deliberately setting out to plant your boot on the black man's throat." I would agree that a lot of criticism makes cases of the first sound like cases of the second - I think this may actually be a flaw in the English language - but "you're expressing your point more stridently than I would prefer" doesn't mean jack or poo poo, the point remains valid. e: I guess it might be valid if someone is literally screaming right in your face IRL but these are internet words

# ¿ May 26, 2013 04:09

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

MisterBibs posted:

What are the criteria in which a creator is allowed to alter the race of a specific character, without it being racist? From your posts, all I can glean is that the answer is "Never."

I'd say the problem here is that 'a character's race' is taken as being a variance from the default of 'white', which is the big complaint. The problem is when you have characters who are black/Hispanic/Asian/etc. who then snap back to 'the default' - and why is 'a white guy' the default? I think this also why it's less problematic when you put (say) an East Indian in a role previously played by a black person.

This is particularly notable because a lot of what made Star Trek special for a lot of people is that it was originally cast with this topic in mind, making it particularly galling to see. Gene Roddenberry fought for blacks, Asians and even Godless Communists to be on the bridge of the best starship of the future, and so 'whoops well we cast Britishus Cumwhitehonkey for the non-white romantic villain' stings.

# ¿ May 26, 2013 04:17

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

Can someone tell me why I'm a bad person for liking this new movie?

Went and saw it earlier and when I came back all thrilled people were treating me like it was wrong for me to enjoy Khan or whatever. (I've never really seen Star Trek before but apparently he's a big deal?)

You aren't, I quite liked it, I even think Cumberbatch did decently once he was no longer playing Sherlock Lecter. I think people care so hard because Wrath of Khan is kind of the definitive Star Trek movie to a lot of people, and Khan is a decently nuanced villain who is at least textually etc. etc. you probably get the idea.

The Warszawa posted:

Basically - see how people in this very thread are talking about how they can't perceive Indians as sufficiently imposing. Whiteness is infinitely flexible, color is inherently limited.

What makes all of this stick out to me is that they didn't just get "a white guy" to do it - they got The Whitest Man Possible without actually farming for Swedish heavy metal musicians.

# ¿ May 26, 2013 05:09

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Forum Actuary posted:

While it's not really relevent to the racism discussion, I was a little dissapointed they had Khan just go crazy at the end. I liked the idea that given different circumstances, Kirk and Khan could work together to beat down someone who'd screwed them both.
And then part ways amicably.

It would probably help matters if Kirk hadn't seen Khan happily kill a whole bunch of Starfleet dudes, including his crew, in general, and his patron and pal Pike, in specific. This would probably militate against a pro-Khan perspective, even if Kirk might be able to swallow it to serve the greater good. But that greater good is... what, some guy who has been a key part of Starfleet's black ops program is now flying off in a giant black Star Trek with seventy-two of his superhuman buddies?

# ¿ May 26, 2013 06:20

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Riso posted:

Except WOK is neither the first nor the only appearance of the character.

Indeed.

You know, if you wanted to develop it you could credibly argue that Cumberbatch hosed up by being all Sherlock instead of... acting like Khan? Unlike Spock or Kirk, there is no difference in Khan's background, and it seems likely his temporary employment would not substantially impact the personality of that kind of a guy.

Of course it's quite likely that Khan behaved in a similar style (if one informed by the style and tastes of a show produced nearly fifty years ago) so, if so, fair enough then.

# ¿ May 26, 2013 10:28

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It is unfortunate that they didn't get another Mexican dude for the reboot, but it's very hard for me to get worked up about it when Into Darkness' critique of the series' liberal ideology is so strong. And Cumberbatch gives us a queer Khan, seemingly based on David Bowie's character in The Man Who Fell To Earth.

I'm curious if you could unpack this a little more. I suppose my distaste for Cumberbatch's particular brand of smouldering thin man look may have interfered with my reading, but it seemed more that he was being portrayed as the mirror of Kirk's obvious immense compassion for his crew - which is certainly a form of love but does not seem to be specifically queer, at least in my understanding of the term.

On some thinking it does seem like they removed the heterosexual/patriarch-vs-patriarch overtones of the conflict in WoK (with sons and wives and what-not).

# ¿ May 27, 2013 04:52

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Sure, but for once a Hollywood film made the dad-chat quotient lower, not higher.

# ¿ May 27, 2013 05:21

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Remember that this is a self-conscious reboot that is not only critical of Star Trek before 2009, but of the 2009 film as well. The superficial multiculturalism of previous entires is directly under fire, showing the liberal Star Trek crew eager to nuke a civilian population in the Space Mideast. "Huh, that's weird. This area is supposed to uninhibited. It must be a random patrol." As a sign of the film's respect for its audience, it's never spelt out that the Space CIA gave them bad intel out of incompetence or malice. It's never outright admitted that Kirk, gullibly, almost killed untold thousands of innocents.

I think this is actually incorrect. Kirk has a mad-on but he clearly reigns himself in after, you know, Scotty literally quits Starfleet over it, after pretty much every member of the bridge crew (except maybe Sulu?) makes frowny faces, etc. Even after they encounter the patrol, he changes his plan and accepts the insistence of Uhura, the black woman, that she use her diplomatic skills to attempt to defuse the situation.

Kirk obviously joins in the fight with gusto after Sherlock opens fire, but there were repeated efforts - efforts that could well have gotten Kirk back in the academy or in Starfleet Jail - to avoid dropping those missiles on Klingons. It is in turn these acts of conscience which derail the entire plan and (however indirectly) appear to prevent war.

e: In other words, with the exception of Kirk - who accepts the judgment of his officers instead of whipping them into line - I don't think you could describe the 'liberal Star Trek crew' as being eager to nuke Klingons. Pretty much literally the opposite, although you COULD make this argument about Starfleet-in-general under Adm. Banzai.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jun 7, 2013

# ¿ Jun 7, 2013 02:39

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Error 404 posted:

Edit: the literal reference is to how the nacelles on the new enterprise are "wrong" and how the design of the Kelvin in ST09 with its single nacelle is "wrong"

Poppycock! The original Star Wars Technical Manual clearly showed several classes of starship with only one nacelle.

e: As did the star TREK technical manual!

Nessus fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jun 8, 2013

# ¿ Jun 8, 2013 17:38

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

On the topic of 'sensor scans revealing their presence to the civilization being observed,' I believe that could probably be considered a negligible risk in most cases. However, I do recall one of the better Trek novels (Prime Directive, I think?) having a huge complication that while the civilization being studied was circa-1960s technology levels, they had a couple of experimental particle sensors that could detect Starfleet's doubletalk particles.

That novel would actually make a pretty good miniseries, if I remember it accurately.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 05:54

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

yronic heroism posted:

I'm curious about this.

I imagine the reasoning is that Bones is characterized as a down-home Southern fried country doctor type, an archetype which could just as easily be black as white. His background doesn't say 'Rich scion of southern aristocracy,' it's 'hassled doctor from Georgia with a divorce'.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 18:24

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Mister Roboto posted:

The Warszawa, serious question: did you notice that the first new captain we see of the JJTrek universe was a brown guy? His ethnicity isn't 100% clear but his name was Captain Robau.

He didn't have a huge role but he was a badass, went out like a hero AND he was smart enough to get his crew (and thus James Kirk) to safety before marching to his death. His actions were one of the first to have major consequences in this new timeline.

They could've had any random actor there, but the first real hero of the JJTrek series was him.

I think that is well and good but tangential to his core point, which is they took a role that was historically cast by a Hispanic guy and cast it as the Whitest Man Alive (as we have been over ten thousand times) with all the resulting baggage we've had about forty pages on. Like his point, if I read correctly, is not 'JJTrek is total poo poo and basically a KKK meeting' it is 'this was a mistake, made perhaps graver by Star Trek's historical insistence on being ethnically inclusive compared to other franchises.'

# ¿ Jun 11, 2013 17:59

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Lord Krangdar posted:

Casting a white person as Django would have been needlessly confusing and would have weakened the film, but so would casting Jason Momoa. I doubt Tarantino cast Jamie Foxx as Django as part of a fight against systemic racism in Hollywood.

Considering his first choice was Will Smith...

# ¿ Jun 11, 2013 20:06

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2024 09:04

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Hollis posted:

Benedict Cumberbatch played the hell out of the role to the point that the original looks loving corny in comparison. I mean it was a great movie ,but he blew it out of the water. He overcame racial stereotyping to do this.

This movie kicked rear end and was really good.

Well, I'd actually argue he hosed it up. A friend and I went home after seeing it and watched 'Space Seed,' and hilariously enough he actually went 'Wow, original Star Trek was a decent drama series sometimes! What a fool I was!' after watching it.

I'm gonna leave aside Wrath of Khan even though it's memorable because I hear Montalban was having legitimate trouble acting as someone other than the dude from Fantasy Island.

In Space Seed, Khan was a passionate guy who actively attempted to engage with his circumstances. He made charismatic appeals to others, and used ambiguity over his identity to put his opposite numbers off guard. He was passionate; his main Starfleet compatriot was a woman he seduced, more or less, by identifying her romantic image of the past and pressing on it, hard. Until such time as he attempts to jack Kirk's Star Trek in order to (presumably) take over a colony world and resume Khanning it up, the Starfleet officers admit to a certain respect for him, something like a modern set of naval officers might acknowledge Napoleon.

(Interlude: In Wrath of Khan, Khan has a towering rage boner and is out to gently caress Kirk to death with it. I would say this version of Khan is very simple, and if we are taking that version of the character as our sole reference Cumberbatch did provide a more nuanced portrayal. HOWEVER, Khan was chosen BECAUSE of his presence in the show, as I recall, so consulting the performance in Space Seed seems fair.)

I feel the version of Khan we see here fails because he seems to completely lack passion. He does not attempt to engage with Kirk other than some perfunctory 'wouldn't you do anything for your crew? captain? kirk?' and essentially behaves much as he did as Sherlock. This may have been a deliberate marketing decision, but I didn't feel he had meaningful presence or a demonstration of charisma; what we got was more or less a prop labelled 'khan, but now with that thing you like.' Indeed, the strongest part of the reactions between Kirk and Khan were largely on Kirk's side, with Chris Pine (who I almost think is carrying the character of Jim Kirk better than the Shat did) combining fury at 'Khan's' crime with apparent disbelief - 'look at this loving guy, is he seriously doing a Grinch smile at me, Spock?'

I don't know if Cumberbatch could've done Khan with more passion. I don't think he did an awful performance, just an awful Khan, in the same way that if Zach Quinto was emoting strongly the great majority of the time, he would be playing Spock poorly.

e: As for the corniness, I would agree that there was a certain weighty, scenery-chewing hamminess to the TOS episode, but I would say that it was uniform - you could consider it simply part of the 'style' of a nearly-fifty-year-old TV drama. It would have been straightforward to have a calm, warm, jovial Khan seeking to solicit Kirk's aid - but instead they cast Cumberbatch, "because reasons," of whatever sort.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Jun 12, 2013

# ¿ Jun 12, 2013 05:02

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Star Trek: Round Spaceships