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PeterWeller posted:Spock is emotionally stunted. One of the nicer points of Abrams' films is that that they show how being raised Vulcan has done a total number on Spock. I can't help but wonder what any of that is supposed to mean to someone who has no idea what Vulcans are. Do the (new) movies ever actually address that? I remember one scene from the first one where little Spock freaks out at the principal's office or something, but if I didn't already know the Star Trek mythos that scene would have just said "Spock has anger issues". Not exactly the kind of deep characterization worth hanging multiple climaxes on. Space Hamlet posted:when odo shapeshifts into his uniform is he also making his comm badge out of himself? does that mean he can create other types of sophisticated machinery? could he become a working photon torpedo? a warp core? a starship? a borg, complete with nanomachines? Somehow this line of thought bothers me less than wondering why Starfleet put Napoleon in charge of the drone program.
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Apr 8, 2014 20:25
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Space Hamlet posted:YO I always figured since he's a gelatinous blob he just always, like, has a phaser and a comm badge floating around in him at all times or something. 
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Apr 8, 2014 21:55
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Some Guy TT posted:I can't help but wonder what any of that is supposed to mean to someone who has no idea what Vulcans are. Do the (new) movies ever actually address that? I remember one scene from the first one where little Spock freaks out at the principal's office or something, but if I didn't already know the Star Trek mythos that scene would have just said "Spock has anger issues". Not exactly the kind of deep characterization worth hanging multiple climaxes on. When he's talking to his dad after he beat up those kids I think the dad said something about how they conceal their emotions but they're more powerful than other species'.
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Apr 8, 2014 22:00
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Some Guy TT posted:I can't help but wonder what any of that is supposed to mean to someone who has no idea what Vulcans are. Do the (new) movies ever actually address that? I remember one scene from the first one where little Spock freaks out at the principal's office or something, but if I didn't already know the Star Trek mythos that scene would have just said "Spock has anger issues". Not exactly the kind of deep characterization worth hanging multiple climaxes on. He has multiple scenes across both films where he talks about or hears about what it is to be Vulcan. You don't need to already know that. The film tells you.
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Apr 9, 2014 02:20
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Was looking for a video on the new USN Supercarriers and found something magical. The typical undertakings of a nerdy 11 year old, being discussed with the seriousness that only a +30 year old Trek fan, pretending to be Frank Lloyd Wright can muster. It's a 13 minutes long (completely legit) "tour" of a man's journey to "design a better Starship Enterprise". Skip ahead to 7:00 to see the scribblings of a madman, and at 8:50 there are actual scribbles. At 7:11 I let out an audible laugh upon hearing a line that goes counter to the seriousness of the established tone so far. Around 11:00 it gets into some  territory. Star Trek's best entertainment value is easily its more hardcore fans.
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Apr 9, 2014 06:23
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Blistex posted:Was looking for a video on the new USN Supercarriers and found something magical. The typical undertakings of a nerdy 11 year old, being discussed with the seriousness that only a +30 year old Trek fan, pretending to be Frank Lloyd Wright can muster. It's a 13 minutes long (completely legit) "tour" of a man's journey to "design a better Starship Enterprise". Skip ahead to 7:00 to see the scribblings of a madman, and at 8:50 there are actual scribbles. At 7:11 I let out an audible laugh upon hearing a line that goes counter to the seriousness of the established tone so far. Around 11:00 it gets into some Thank you so much for this. You are doing god's work.
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Apr 9, 2014 07:45
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Blistex posted:Was looking for a video on the new USN Supercarriers and found something magical. The typical undertakings of a nerdy 11 year old, being discussed with the seriousness that only a +30 year old Trek fan, pretending to be Frank Lloyd Wright can muster. It's a 13 minutes long (completely legit) "tour" of a man's journey to "design a better Starship Enterprise". Skip ahead to 7:00 to see the scribblings of a madman, and at 8:50 there are actual scribbles. At 7:11 I let out an audible laugh upon hearing a line that goes counter to the seriousness of the established tone so far. Around 11:00 it gets into some Hahahaha misspelling Matt Jefferies's name in the opening dedication is a hell of a start.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:25
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penismightier posted:Hahahaha misspelling Matt Jefferies's name in the opening dedication is a hell of a start. Hassling Gene Roddenberry’s widow and getting an, “It’s so nice I’ll put it up on my fridge” reply is the best ending.
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Apr 9, 2014 16:36
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computer parts posted:When he's talking to his dad after he beat up those kids I think the dad said something about how they conceal their emotions but they're more powerful than other species'. Sorry for bringing this thread back (I've had it in my bookmarks; not sure how far back it is), but I legitimately like this aspect of the Vulcans that hasn't entirely been touched on. The new movies have done quite a bit of work on that: any time Spock decides he needs to punch something, holy poo poo pray you aren't the thing he wants to punch. There's a scene in Enterprise (I think) there one of the Vulcan secondary characters basically says that the Vulcans are loving terrified of humans because they remember how balls-to-the-wall psychopathic they were, and they see way too much that in Enterprise-era humanity. They weren't scared of the Klingons, they were scared of us.
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Apr 25, 2014 05:52
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Into Darkness. I agree with much of the criticism against it but I loved it because it was just so...visceral.That's something that every previous incarnation of Trek lacked. I'm hoping they do something original with the third movie but at the same time I want to see more JJKlingons or even some more Romulans.
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May 14, 2014 22:25
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Roberto Orci supposedly is doing Star Trek 13 and I couldn't be happier.
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May 17, 2014 15:12
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korusan posted:Roberto Orci supposedly is doing Star Trek 13 and I couldn't be happier. The poo poo writer with no directing experience at all. That's a great choice.
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May 17, 2014 19:32
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Did we NOT just have this conversation? There being two trek threads is messing with my brain. brain and brain, what is brain. edit: I just realized this is the third trek (film) thread... didn't even realize which one I was posting in. No idea which of the other two Robert Orci was already discussed in... Snak fucked around with this message at 22:06 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 21:50
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Trump posted:The poo poo writer with no directing experience at all. Leonard Nimoy didn't have any directing experience prior to Star Trek 3 and that turned out fine. Star Trek 4 was even better.
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May 18, 2014 15:38
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korusan posted:Leonard Nimoy didn't have any directing experience prior to Star Trek 3 and that turned out fine. Star Trek 4 was even better. Nimoy had done some television episodes (TJ Hooker and a few other shows). In any event, Nimoy's direction of those movies is in no way a strength. His compositions are terribly pedestrian and boring (imagine that, a television director made movies that ... looked like television shows), and I have no idea what the gently caress he was thinking when he hired Charles Correll as the DP on Trek III. Handing over the art direction to ILM was just a huge mistake coming on the heels of Joe Jennings, too -- they were designing stuff that was way outside their purview, like tricorders, and it shows. He also had no ability to rein in Shatner, unlike Meyer.
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May 18, 2014 17:45
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I guess STID is on Netflix right now, I guess, so I gave it half of a rewatch last night. I found myself watching and waiting to see the exact moment I started to dislike it. Oddly enough, I admit to liking the movie, a lot, up to the first hour. Then once the Khan twist came out I shut it off. This is the exact moment I knew the rest of the film was going to frustrate me. I noticed a few things this go around: The things I hated from the first hour (which I really like) pretty much seem to tie directly into to the second half that I hate a lot. Scotty's resignation, Carol Marcus, the torpedos, even quite literally a superhuman Khan. Looking at the strength of the first half of the film, though, it makes me think the film is weighed down by the forced TWoK vibe they want to go for. Sure, Khan's actions are heavily featured as a bad guy in the first half, but I think it could still work entirely without Khan and TWOK stuff and just focus on the idea of the Starfleet Conspiracy without him.
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May 19, 2014 20:57
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I was just thinking the other day, if they absolutely had to get a white British dude to play Khan, I would've like to have seen Michael Fassbender take a stab at it. The guy has a more suitable physique for the part, is more conventionally handsome (Khan is supposed to be able to just woo unsuspecting female crewmembers off their feet) and seems to me he can display a firey evil intensity while retaining just enough warmth to see how he could be a great leader. Just imagine: "The TRICK! Is not MINDING that it hurts! *hhhaaahhhhh* He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him!" For me, as talented as the guy is, getting Benedict Cumberbatch to play Khan is like getting Al Pacino to play Kirk. It'd be... interesting, and Pacino can act circles around Shatner any day of the week, but sometimes you're simply not the best fit for the part regardless. JediTalentAgent posted:I guess STID is on Netflix right now, I guess, so I gave it half of a rewatch last night. I found myself watching and waiting to see the exact moment I started to dislike it. Honestly, STID plays like: Audience: "Don't you DARE remake Star Trek II!" Abrams & Friends: "Oh, don't worry, we wouldn't do that..." (shifts eyes to the left and right) (Halfway through movie) Abrams & Friends: "SURPRISE! It's Carol Marcus and Khan, of course we're reamking Star Trek II!!"
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May 19, 2014 22:52
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Concerning STID: The entire movie is worth it for that scene where "how much Kirk's mind is blown" when Khan crushes Admiral Robocop's head with his bare hands, is conveyed by the tilting camera angle.
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May 19, 2014 22:58
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No matter who played Khan, if the character was completely absent, a lot of the really convoluted stuff like the overly complicated torpedo plot vanishes. You remove Khan, you remove magical radiation cure, you remove cryomissles, you remove all the TWoK callbacks. Admiral Marcus running a top-secret, false-flag operation that he was also directly in charge of investigating just to create a justifiable war with the Klingons is a hell of a good enough plot on its own. I mean, the more I think about it, the basics of the Marcus plot is actually a really solid framework they could have used, but the weight of the Khan stuff is just too much.
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May 20, 2014 01:08
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I saw WoK years and years ago and enjoyed it, but I'm no Trekkie and my memory of the film is hazy. The Khan reveal (and the ensuing fanservice) was really strange...Cumberbatch says "I'm Khan," and I think the movie wants me to be like "WHOA", but frankly I don't remember the first enough to care, and the characters have no idea who he is either, so it falls completely flat. And the filmmakers seem to know it too, since they have to insert a phone call with Leonard Nimoy to explicitly tell the crew (and me!) that yeah, he's a bad dude. So clumsy. Just keeping him a generic villain would have been better. Same with the ending - once the radiation door showed up I remembered the end of the original, and for a few seconds it seemed like a somewhat clever inversion and a moment with some emotional weight, until we remember Khan's magic blood and the gravity of the moment is lost. And how do you create danger in any sequels now that everyone is effectively immortal? Marcus's daughter is shockingly useless. Her reveal (to Marcus) could have given him pause, let him contemplate the real cost of war, but nope, he'll just teleport her away immediately. The scene almost seemed like it was played for laughs. And to get a little spergier - if Khan can teleport himself all the way across the galaxy with a device that Scotty invented why do we need spaceships? wyoak fucked around with this message at 04:16 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 03:58
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wyoak posted:I saw WoK years and years ago and enjoyed it, but I'm no Trekkie and my memory of the film is hazy. The Khan reveal (and the ensuing fanservice) was really strange...Cumberbatch says "I'm Khan," and I think the movie wants me to be like "WHOA", but frankly I don't remember the first enough to care, and the characters have no idea who he is either, so it falls completely flat.
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May 20, 2014 04:06
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But not really...his biggest flaw in this one is caring too much about his crew. If you mean the original, probably, but then the big reveal of a venerated character is just a throwaway joke that pokes fun at the only people who might get it.
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May 20, 2014 04:13
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Misplaced ego was not ever Khan's problem. He was always shrewd socially, too - monomaniacal but any ego was dangerously well backed.
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May 20, 2014 04:15
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No Khan I think makes the conspiracy part of the story actually work out a bit better too. If Marcus was behind everything, the chance to demote Kirk was his opening: He stages a bombing in London, he gathers up captains and XOs of the system fleet and uses the setting as a chance to eliminate them in another act that looks like a terrorist attack. He and his group are faking all the evidence, leaving all the clues, to put everyone on the path he wants them to be on. Now he can put Kirk, a known loose cannon, back in charge of a ship in an act he plans to fully exploit to his advantage and possibly being able to simultaneously get rid of a bunch of experienced Captains and first officers who might have been opposed to his war plans and ostensibly replace them with Captains he wants on their ships. Of course, that almost sounds a bit like Scooby Doo plot, too. Only thing missing is Spock pulling the mask of of Harrison and finding out it was Old Man Marcus the whole time. edit: When Carol Marcus twist came up, if Carol had pulled a, "My name is KHAN!"-type of reveal, now THAT would have surprised me. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 04:34 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 04:29
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There was this little moment there where I thought because of circumstances and conditions, Khan really was going to be a kind of an ally in this film, which was striking and iriginal and so Star Trekky, but it never happened.
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May 20, 2014 04:32
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penismightier posted:There was this little moment there where I thought because of circumstances and conditions, Khan really was going to be a kind of an ally in this film, which was striking and iriginal and so Star Trekky, but it never happened. Yeah, I really wanted Khan and Kirk to actually buddy up for this film and then split because of irreconcilable ideological differences. Sort of like what happens in X-Men: First Class with young Xavier and Magneto...
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May 20, 2014 04:36
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Man, that movie was a loving sea of squandered opportunity.
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May 20, 2014 04:39
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The movie would have been way more interesting if Kirk's death had actually stuck. Or if they weren't going to do that, then kill someone else off, like Chekov, or Carol. Hitting the "We're okay, Folks!" at the end of the movie was cheap as hell. If they're going to continue this franchise, how are they going to expect the fans to buy into any dramatic moments?
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May 20, 2014 12:53
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Writer Cath posted:The movie would have been way more interesting if Kirk's death had actually stuck. Or if they weren't going to do that, then kill someone else off, like Chekov, or Carol. Hitting the "We're okay, Folks!" at the end of the movie was cheap as hell. If they're going to continue this franchise, how are they going to expect the fans to buy into any dramatic moments? If Kirk had stayed dead people would automatically assume they would ape Search for Spock in the next film.
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May 20, 2014 13:18
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Writer Cath posted:The movie would have been way more interesting if Kirk's death had actually stuck. Or if they weren't going to do that, then kill someone else off, like Chekov, or Carol. Hitting the "We're okay, Folks!" at the end of the movie was cheap as hell. If they're going to continue this franchise, how are they going to expect the fans to buy into any dramatic moments? Killing Chekov would have been pretty effective, overall. The cast is very large, and whether or not they plan on keeping Carol in the film series I think almost requires them lose someone. Since there's been an issue with gender diversity in the main crew, replacing Chekov with a female character sort of helps with that. He's a character that is major enough to have meaning, but small enough to be risked. Even if Carol isn't to permanent fixture in future films, it allows them to give a few minutes more of plot development to McCoy, Scotty and Sulu or introduce Chapel or Rand. Also, Kirk's "Put on a red shirt" line sounds almost ominous. Having it be a bit of Chekov's Gun foreshadowing makes it something looming over the character for the audience.
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May 20, 2014 13:42
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I just wish there was more McCoy. Urban is so good in the role and they just let him wither away as a third banana.
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May 20, 2014 14:00
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computer parts posted:If Kirk had stayed dead people would automatically assume they would ape Search for Spock in the next film. Like they are opposed to aping the original films. LeJackal fucked around with this message at 14:44 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 14:35
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LeJackal posted:Like they are opposed to aping the original film. What part of TMP did they ape?
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May 20, 2014 14:37
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LeJackal posted:Like they are opposed to aping the original films. There's aping and there's aping well, though. By that I mean remaking Search for Spock with Kirk would be as lame and lazy as remaking Wrath of Khan with a guy who's only famous because 14 year olds want to see him bang the guy from The Office. The first JJ Star Trek movie was really slick about the way it incorporated elements of series highs like Wrath of Khan with stuff that was bungled in things like Nemesis and also elements of the original series and the cartoon. It all gooped together to make a new movie with purpose. Into Darkness succeeded at that when it was evoking things from DS9 and Undiscovered Country, but everything Khanish was just so lovely.
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May 20, 2014 15:00
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penismightier posted:Into Darkness succeeded at that when it was evoking things from DS9 and Undiscovered Country, but everything Khanish was just so lovely. I've never been so disappointed as when the first reviews came out and the villain turned out to be Khan and not Gary Mitchell like the earliest rumours said. You could avoid so much of the pitfalls of STID and barely have to change anything major from the script. Make Khan and his frozen past buddies into weird Godlike weapon experiments and it becomes another reference that hardcore fans think is neat, instead of the whitewashed retread of biggest TOS bad guy that we got instead.
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May 20, 2014 16:37
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JediTalentAgent posted:edit: When Carol Marcus twist came up, if Carol had pulled a, "My name is KHAN!"-type of reveal, now THAT would have surprised me. I am now imagining Alice Eve suddenly making a snarling face and hissing "My name is KHAN!" and the movie subsequently continuing with her as Khan and Benedict Cumberbatch as Carol Marcus and I am desperately trying to keep from laughing in the office.
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May 20, 2014 21:25
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lizardman posted:I am now imagining Alice Eve suddenly making a snarling face and hissing "My name is KHAN!" and the movie subsequently continuing with her as Khan and Benedict Cumberbatch as Carol Marcus and I am desperately trying to keep from laughing in the office. Have Carol Marcus be the equivalent of the guy from Iron Man 3 and Cumberbatch is just the Ben Kingsley standin.
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May 20, 2014 21:40
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penismightier posted:There's aping and there's aping well, though. By that I mean remaking Search for Spock with Kirk would be as lame and lazy as remaking Wrath of Khan with a guy who's only famous because 14 year olds want to see him bang the guy from The Office. I asked you this on Twitter ages ago, but have you re-watched Into Darkness? It's still clunky but I find it works a lot better on a small screen ... not sure why. Edit: Now that I think about it, I think it's because Cumberbatch doesn't know "subtle." Works better at home than it does in a theater, when he's just bellowing "KIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK" Timby fucked around with this message at 23:16 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 23:12
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Timby posted:I asked you this on Twitter ages ago, but have you re-watched Into Darkness? It's still clunky but I find it works a lot better on a small screen ... not sure why. No not yet, I'm still intrigued by what you said but I just can't bring myself to watch it again.
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May 21, 2014 01:04
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penismightier posted:No not yet, I'm still intrigued by what you said but I just can't bring myself to watch it again. If anything, at least the shots are about a thousand times more interesting than Nimoy's poo poo.
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May 21, 2014 01:23
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