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Ofc. Sex Robot BPD posted:I also got that impression. It was the second scene that made me think it more, when they're strapping in and I thought someone (McCoy) mentioned something about feeling seasick/motion sickness. I thought they cut to her on that, but it might have just been to indicate that people had to be strapped in. It's true that ever since she showed up I might have been looking for evidence of a callback. Spaceman Future! posted:Yeah its incredibly odd that people would gripe about this. I mean, there's only so much screen time you can have for your movie, you aren't gonna waste it trying to establish proper time frames for magic space travel. People also never take time to poop in Star Trek, priority of screen time trumps minutiae. The problem with this is that the Star Trek world has pretty well-established time frames for magic space travel. Travel of this era is meant to be roughly like sea travel of the 18th century (almost literally, per Roddenberry). Travel between star systems usually takes several days. Colonies are spread out enough that they can be established in one era but end up utterly transformed from lack of contact with the home world. Anything that works outside of that (i.e. super-powerful beings, of which there seem to be quite a few) is specified to be unavailable to the normal folks of the time. The idea that a human-built starship can super-warp faster than even technology of a century later in the original timeline is, in this context, absurd. Moreover it literally serves almost no purpose other than to destroy Alcatraz. Absolutely nobody cares that they're back at Earth; there are no other star ships nearby; nobody ever contacts or monitors either ship as far as we can see. So why even bother having them return to Earth? It would have been just as easy to have Vengeance catch Enterprise a few minutes into warp, leaving them stranded far from their destination and without hope of rescue. If someone takes over a franchise with fairly well-established conception of how things work, and then decides to throw in super-advanced technology of warp, casual communication across the galaxy, and magic blood that resurrects the dead but will likely never be mentioned again while at the same time aping scenes from an old movie no matter how awkwardly they fit when the movie is already good enough to stand on its own, and possibly even better off without resorting to doing so, I have to question where their priorities are.
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May 19, 2013 22:06
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Kangra posted:I have to question where their priorities are. Making a zippy, exciting summer blockbuster?
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May 19, 2013 22:21
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Just got back and really enjoyed it, but that scene where the blonde woman is just in a bra and panties for a long beat posing on screen was bizarre and male gazey. Seemed outta nowhere. Some neat directions they could take ST3.
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May 19, 2013 22:22
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A point for the people with the "why wasn't anybody else in Starfleet available to help/notice things?" question: every available starship captain and their XO had already been blown away or at least badly injured at the conference room shootout; any ship that WAS nearby would still be dealing with the whole "no commander" issue. Anybody that did get put in place would have been most likely junior and promoted by Admiral Marcus, which makes it more likely they'd obey any orders to sit it out from him. I gotta say new Trek has actually been a lot better on the issue compared to old Trek's "we're the only ship in the quadrant" handwave; both movies have reasonable excuses for why it's just up to the Enterprise crew. As for the rest of it - they missed a golden opportunity to have Kirk die from "delta radiation" as a subtle reference to what happened to Pike in the original timeline. Might have also explained the lack of visible radiation burns, which annoyed me a bit; if they were gonna crib from WoK, they should have at least noticed Spock LOOKED like a radiation victim in that one. As for the size of the Vengeance, I suppose the question depends on A. the room requirements for her no-doubt large number of weapons, and B. whether she was intended to carry ground troops, which could also justify overbuilding things while still only needing a small crew. The "can be run by a single man" thing might also be thanks to the fact Khan was one of the chief designers; it's something that could easily be sold to the admiral as a good idea, but also rather sets the ship up as something Khan might steal for himself later. He obviously was thinking in terms of how he could screw the Federation from Day 1, as demonstrated nicely by his actions in Space Seed. That episode also illustrates why new Spock wouldn't recognize Khan, since it took the Enterprise crew a rather long time to figure out just who he was even then, when they didn't have any other chaos going on to distract them from the question. Though I found it amusing on finally watching it that Kirk did in fact beat Khan in hand to hand combat then; guess he was still groggy after just being woken up in the episode. monster on a stick posted:Understood, but in this case the Klingons there did not "need killing." They were intercepting an alien ship which had landed on their own planet, and are justifiably suspicious. Kirk didn't come out guns blazing, but they did once the Klingon border patrol started to defend themselves once Khan opened fire. The "right thing" to do was not to sneak into Klingon space at all (at least not without permission.) Uh, the Klingon captain was pretty obviously planning to kill/harm Uhura when he drew his knife, so it wasn't Klingons acting in "self defense" in that case. I definitely got the impression Kirk was getting ready to come out guns blazing in any event, Khan's attack just gave him a perfect distraction he seized. As for Kirk's action being "better", the advantage of his approach was a ship full of people not in Starfleet uniforms could be more easily disavowed than torpedoes fired directly from a Starfleet vessel. It was also less aggressive in the sense he didn't actually fire first; Uhura wouldn't have even had the chance she had to talk if they'd been shooting at the Klingons first. As casus belli for the Klingons, it's definitely a lot less so than outright shooting up their home planet. As for Kirk refusing an "illegal order", how was it illegal? He was ordered to take down a demonstrated threat to the Federation, who could very well have fled to Klingon space as part of a plot with them (especially if he started sharing Federation secrets or little things like, oh, how to beam saboteurs directly to Earth). Committing a blatant act of war to do it could be considered excessive, but even Spock never said they should just IGNORE Khan after all. Kirk picked an option that held to the spirit of his orders while avoiding unnecessary consequences that would occur by following them exactly. So, basically, exactly what he tried to do with the Prime Directive at the start of the movie.
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May 19, 2013 22:22
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PeterWeller posted:Thanks man. I really think it's a poignant and important message, and it speaks directly to the American audience in a way that is blunt but not insulting. I don't know what to say about how well the film conveys that message. I found it obvious, but I was expecting an allegory, and some of my buddies didn't see it until I pointed it out. I totally agree. I think the film sent the message perfectly.
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May 19, 2013 22:23
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Guilty posted:I can't believe that I'd actually see the day when some sci-fi nerd would actually complain about warp travel and how it takes seconds to cross Space in movies.... This movie was odd, though, because Abrams completely disregards the velocity/distance issue but still has someone say that the Vengeance is three times faster than the Enterprise as though speed actually matters in this universe. It also deflates the immensity of a five year deep-space mission because the films make it seem like the Enterprise jumps around almost instantaneously. E the Shaggy posted:Was it me or did the base that Scotty went to where the Dreadnought was being housed look exactly like a Borg "Cube"?  .
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May 19, 2013 22:25
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Making a zippy, exciting summer blockbuster? I agree! That they did so while cashing in on the reputation of a well-known and much-loved universe with decades of history is unfortunate.
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May 19, 2013 22:30
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Kangra posted:I agree! That they did so while cashing in on the reputation of a well-known and much-loved universe with decades of history is unfortunate. Star Trek cashed itself to death a decade ago. Not sure why you're waiting till now to complain about it. At least they are making a commercially viable product now, there would be no chance of a new series otherwise.
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May 19, 2013 22:34
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Kangra posted:I agree! That they did so while cashing in on the reputation of a well-known and much-loved universe with decades of history is unfortunate. You're going to have to point that universe out because I don't see one from here.
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May 19, 2013 22:35
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api call girl posted:You're going to have to point that universe out because I don't see one from here. Its the one where Picard is taking orders from Admiral Janeway.
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May 19, 2013 22:36
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MadDogMike posted:the Klingon captain was pretty obviously planning to kill/harm Uhura when he drew his knife, so it wasn't Klingons acting in "self defense" in that case. I definitely got the impression Kirk was getting ready to come out guns blazing in any event, Khan's attack just gave him a perfect distraction he seized. The knife shot was pretty much put in there as a "Greedo shoots first" justification for Harrison (and maybe Kirk too) to fill their hands. It made Harrison's motivations somewhat more "good" and ambiguous to us. That scene would have read very different if we didn't see the knife.
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May 19, 2013 22:50
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Who was the person who took over Chekov's station? Did she have a name in the credits, or the script? Has she been in the comics?
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May 19, 2013 22:50
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Astroman posted:The knife shot was pretty much put in there as a "Greedo shoots first" justification for Harrison (and maybe Kirk too) to fill their hands. It made Harrison's motivations somewhat more "good" and ambiguous to us. That scene would have read very different if we didn't see the knife. I thought that whole fight was very problematic because while it was obviously intended to show off Harrison's (seriously at this point can we just make this thread a spoiler zone?) combat abilities it didn't seem substantially different from the gunfight from the last film, so it was just an action sequence with zero feeling of peril because he's just gunning down Stormtrooper/Redshirts.
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May 19, 2013 22:59
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Tequila Bob posted:Who was the person who took over Chekov's station? Did she have a name in the credits, or the script? Has she been in the comics? IMDB says "Navigation Officer Darwin" played by Aisha Hinds.
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May 19, 2013 23:01
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MadDogMike posted:Uh, the Klingon captain was pretty obviously planning to kill/harm Uhura when he drew his knife, so it wasn't Klingons acting in "self defense" in that case. I definitely got the impression Kirk was getting ready to come out guns blazing in any event, Khan's attack just gave him a perfect distraction he seized. Think of it from the perspective of the Klingons: you find an alien shuttle hovering over your homeworld, maybe your sensors even detect weapons and numerous lifeforms. They try to run, and you eventually force the shuttle to land at gunpoint. An alien from a race you are not-exactly-friendly with comes out, claiming that they are trying to capture someone who you've never heard of for a crime. They are either members of the alien military/police force, in which case they are violating a treaty; or they are bounty hunters/vigilantes in which case who cares. At this point the Klingons can enforce their own law; true, they will probably kill people for violating Klingon air space, but then don't do that  And all this is assuming that they don't bother to detect the Enterprise which is in visual range of their homeworld; if they do, they'll know that the shuttle was sent by Starfleet and are trying to cover up a major violation of their treaty.It's an illegal order since Marcus ordered Kirk to violate a treaty between the Federation and the Klingons, a violation of which could lead to war. Launching 72 (probably fewer) torpedoes from the NZ was a definite casus belli, but so is parking a Federation ship with the same number of torpedoes (plus other armaments) over Kronos. The latter is only better because you are hoping the Klingons don't notice. But the Klingons did notice, and Kirk's operation hosed up. What would have happened if a few Birds of Prey moseyed on up to the cripped Enterprise?
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May 19, 2013 23:02
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Cojawfee posted:IMDB says "Navigation Officer Darwin" played by Aisha Hinds. Thanks!
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May 19, 2013 23:08
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monster on a stick posted:
Then Marcus's plan would have worked exactly how he wanted it to.
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May 19, 2013 23:08
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Just saw this movie. Not bad. Loved the Harry Mudd shout-out.
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May 19, 2013 23:53
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Not to be the "Just got back" guy, but I just got back. There are several hilarious flaws, yet there are also some moments that I'd put up on a cinematic level with anything from TOS. Unfortunately these moments are invariably cheapened by the plot armor that covers every single main character like those nifty seat belts. In my opinion, they wasted a fantastic chance to contrast against Kirk with his iron control losing his poo poo and delightfully hamming up the 'Kirk Loses Control and Screams KHAAAAAAAANNNNNNN into a Casio Digital Watch.' scene. What if instead of Spock totally breaking down and echoing Kirk's tired-but-still-epic "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!", we see him look down at Kirk's corpse and slowly, tortuously, gather his emotions, then raise his face up to camera, totally in control, and whisper "Khan" Give it the quiet Dolby whisper treatment. Follow it with a slow methodical logical chase scene (that could take the same amount of camera time) where an emotionless Spock with his blood up outwits Khan on a three dimensional level instead of something that wouldn't have looked out of place if the guys had lightsabers. I guess a guy can dream. That being said, I liked it. I'm really glad I got to see it with my dad, he got me into being a trekkie when I was a kid, and there was a shitton of TOS fanservice in this one.
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May 20, 2013 00:00
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DFu4ever posted:Then Marcus's plan would have worked exactly how he wanted it to. Except Marcus didn't want the Enterprise to fly into Klingon space. He wanted torpedoes shot from the Neutral Zone.
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May 20, 2013 00:38
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I think having them kill off Chekov would have been an amazing twist. I had way more sympathy for Chekov than jerkass Kirk, and while killing Kirk is a great dramatic moment for the characters, it caused a lot of eye-rolling in the audience with the KHAAAAN callback. Killing Chekov would (IMO) have had a lot more emotional punch for the audience and been much more of a shock, although for Spock it wouldn't have been as big a deal. "Oh poo poo, we lost Chekov. Whoops." And as mentioned earlier, you aren't as sure that they'll bring him back to life as you are with Kirk.Baron Bifford posted:In the previous Abrams film, after Kirk wins the Kobayashi Maru by cheating, he is tried in a big hall in front of the entire student body. Is this standard practice for military academies? In my school and the place I work at, guilt and punishment are decided in private sessions. It's very rare; Captain's Mast is usually a private thing between the CO, the individual, and that person's chain of command. Also, they don't put cadets in charge of a ship straight out of the academy. Trek in general plays very loose with training and career paths having any relation to reality.
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May 20, 2013 00:59
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It was alright, but after leaving the theater, the more I think about the movie the more irritated I feel. I think I would have liked this movie more if I never saw Wrath of Khan... Almost every moment after the warp core broke down felt awkward and predictable. Khan's Magic Regenerating Body Juice drained most of the impact of Kirk's death, and then the scene was absolutely killed with the fan service scream. I kinda enjoyed Cumberbatch's performance, but I felt his character development was weak and had the depth of a puddle. Almost everything about this movie felt shallow to me. Overall, I guess I'll give the film a 3/5. I'm mostly just disappointed, I feel like they could have done so much more instead of just Wrath of Khan 2.0. Can't please everyone though, right?
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May 20, 2013 01:28
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Kangra posted:I agree! That they did so while cashing in on the reputation of a well-known and much-loved universe with decades of history is unfortunate. Plus, it's alternate universe so they make the characters fit the script without concern for preserving any sort of legacy.
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May 20, 2013 01:28
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Gammatron 64 posted:Yeah, this bugged me too. On one hand, they wanted it to be bigger and more imposing so the audience would go "ohhh, that's the bad guy ship!" but it was kinda stupid to have the ship be that big when it could be controlled by one guy and had a skeleton crew. Cumberbatch had a hand in designing it. He certainly had his reasons to create the universe's most badass ship, name it Vengeance, and make it only require between 1 and 73 crewmen.
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May 20, 2013 01:53
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fenix down posted:They are calling it that because the majority of the film is pointless action sequences. When half the audience is laughing hysterically at the emotional scene you describe, it's more akin to a youtube parody of star trek.  this did not happen during any of the screenings I went to. Went once on Friday night with a late-20's to 30-something crowd, then went this morning with old people and kids.
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May 20, 2013 02:34
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1st AD posted:
There was someone in my audience that did this. But it was only one person. This person also clapped for everything too.
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May 20, 2013 02:37
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Kangra posted:I agree! That they did so while cashing in on the reputation of a well-known and much-loved universe with decades of history is unfortunate. The last twenty years of Star Trek is Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis. Plus the tv series Voyager and Enterprise. Trek had a well known reputation before 2009. It wasn't a good reputation.
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May 20, 2013 02:41
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Disappointed is the word I'd use to describe the film. I loved the moral questions. I loved the way the crew interacted with each other. I thought Cumberbatch made an excellent Kahn. With that out of the way, it could have been so much more. It didn't have any of the novelty of the best of Star Trek. They didn't explore strange new worlds. The changes they made in history were minor. I wish they would have gone sideways on the alternate universe thing. I wish they would have re-imaged Kahn like they did with Baltar of BSG to make the new series less predictable. I dislike action scene tension for action scene tension's sake. It's not that I don't like action scenes. Action is great. But the action sequence should be the climax of the film or otherwise have some purpose behind it. I felt like the writers just lived by the belief that if some oregano makes the dish taste better, then infinite oregano would make it infinitely better. There were also too many things that were implausible. I'm the type of sci-fi guy who is totally okay with "impossible" elements such as faster than light travel, time travel, magic, etc... But it has to make sense for the people who live in that universe. For example, one of the things that completely drew me out of the experience was when they tried to disarm the photon torpedo. There was a visible digital countdown timer on it. What alternate reality puts visible timers on ammunition? Sitting in the movie theater I couldn't help thinking to myself "hmm, they put that in there to artificially build up tension." Once you get pulled out of a movie like that, it's hard to come back and it's especially hard with this film.
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May 20, 2013 03:01
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I feel like Wrath of Khan is the only other Star Trek movie J.J. Abrams has seen because it's the only one he seems to call back to, but it is the best one, so I guess it works. That said, it was hammy as gently caress but I legitimately enjoyed it and teared up when Kirk died. I can't even necessarily give the movie that much credit; Spock and Kirk just have such, nuanced history and are such straight-up friends that it was absolutely heart-wrenching to rewatch that scene happening in reverse  I agree with others that the moral questions surrounding the Prime Directive/other Starfleet protocols were far more interesting than the plot of defeating the bad guy, but that's the kind of thing they explore in the show so it's not a big deal that it's not really the main focus of the summer blockbuster.
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May 20, 2013 03:26
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nelson posted:There was a visible digital countdown timer on it. What alternate reality puts visible timers on ammunition? This has been a Hollywood thing for a long long time.
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May 20, 2013 03:30
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Just saw this at iMax in 3D, and I absolutely hated the 3D. The movie, I thought, was excellent. The dialog, especially near the beginning, was really well done, and pretty funny. I have only a small handful of spergs. Why the hell couldn't Chekov lock on to Spock and Khan with the transporter? He did it under far worse circumstances in ST09. Didn't appreciate the merchant ship's explanation. "This is your captain, prep the SHIP THAT WE CONFISCATED SO WE CAN FOOL THE KINGONS." Per usual, why the hell was the cell block so ridiculously huge? It's a space ship, not a mall. Consolidate all of that space and make your ship more efficient.
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May 20, 2013 03:32
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To be perfectly honest, while it isn't a bad film, the more I think about it the more things I feel weren't very well done at all. The actors are woefully underutilized, it alternates between making painfully transparent references to the rest of the franchise and disregarding the franchise, and in general a lot of the choices they made just seem mystifying at best. And yes, you can roll eyes and say it was all in service of making an "entertaining blockbuster," to which I say gently caress you, you can have an entertaining action plot that also holds itself against scrutiny, having a certain ratio of explosions:not explosions is no excuse for lazy writing.
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May 20, 2013 03:40
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We need to get out of here. The timer on my bullets just started counting down.
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May 20, 2013 03:46
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DFu4ever posted:This has been a Hollywood thing for a long long time.
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May 20, 2013 03:48
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I hate to say this, but upon further reflection, this was probably one of the top ten futuristic space films in the past five years. The genre definitely needs more writing of this caliber. Someone give Whedon a blank check and his own crew again.
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May 20, 2013 04:07
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I said come in! posted:There was someone in my audience that did this. But it was only one person. This person also clapped for everything too. I went with my parents and my mom laughed through the majority of the movie. It was really annoying.
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May 20, 2013 04:11
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The more I think about it the more this movie just makes me sad and depressed about the state of sci-fi. If this is what most people accept as a well-written movie, then gently caress, we really have lost, game over man. Why bother trying to make something original, or logically consistent, if you can just throw some quips and explosions every 5 minutes and people will eat it up.
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May 20, 2013 04:12
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Films have to go beyond being well-written, and while I don't think STID is poorly written I do think the cinematography, effects, sound, styling, etc. rise far above the writing.
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May 20, 2013 04:16
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mr. stefan posted:to which I say gently caress you, you can have an entertaining action plot that also holds itself against scrutiny, having a certain ratio of explosions:not explosions is no excuse for lazy writing. The best action Trek movie wouldn't try to be an action-heavy Trek movie, it would be an action movie with a lot of Trek.
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May 20, 2013 04:16
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1st AD posted:Films have to go beyond being well-written, and while I don't think STID is poorly written I do think the cinematography, effects, sound, styling, etc. rise far above the writing. I agree, but writing seems to be the weak link these days, its almost a given that the effects will look great when they throw 200 million at it. This isn't a terrible movie, it's watchable, there's well directed sequences in it, but its also derivative, muddled, and kinda throwaway. Its like, Transformers has set the bar so low, that this is considered a good, intelligent summer blockbuster by comparison, and to me something like this should be on the bottom end of the spectrum. It's a B or C movie (depending on how much the callbacks offend you), and its frustrating when the common reaction seems to be "it's great, just turn your brain off, its a summer movie, what do you expect".
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May 20, 2013 04:22
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