Star Trek: Into Darkness

David Jimerson said:
Not quite the same thing. According to the premise, these are supposed to be all the same people, just in a different timeline which was changed 25-30 years prior. It's not supposed to be a totally separate continuity. And Khan, being from the 20th century, would not have been affected by the timeline change at all. He's a Sikh.
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I really didn't like the first one and thought the premise was really crappy to begin with so honestly I don't expect much of any "continuity". It's just a crappy "we don't have a good explanation, so we did time travel!"

IMO, the time travel added nothing to the movie at all. They should have just skipped the time travel and rebooted, clean. New cast, new story, deal with it and have fun no stupid attempt to shoe horn it all in, especially with something as lame as time travel.

I mean, Spock is making phone calls to himself on the regular. Which means he wouldn't be the same spock when he got older, so he wouldn't go back in time to make phone calls to himself...

I"m glad they just ditched the continuity and made a good villain.

Maybe it IS a totally seperate continuity now. That's how time travel works. It's baloney and you can do anything you want.
 
The trouble really is that a franchise cannot span 50 or more years and not change. The original fans are now too old to like the same stuff that people the age they were then, would like now. Exactly the same thing happened with Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds and later creations. The Jonathan Frakes directed Thunderbirds movie was simply hated by the old fans, but kids of today quite liked it. I liked the first 'new' Star Trek, once I purged the entire old ones from my head and viewed it as a new movie and not in any way connected to the old. As for any movie with time travel in it - it messes with your head. Millennium - a time travel movie with Martin Landau and Cheryl Ladd was the trickiest for me!
 
I enjoyed the second movie because I just pretended it was a fresh Star Trek and forgot all about the stupid time travel explanation; how contrived and hokey it was.

The next one will be even better, because we'll be even further removed from the stupid time travel explanation, and just (hopefullY) head out on the 5 year mission. I hope they get some red shirts and change out of those grey uniforms. How will we know who's going to die if they don't?
 
paulears said:
...The original fans are now too old to like the same stuff that people the age they were then, would like now...
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A couple of points...

1) I avidly watched the ancient 'old' TV show while it was being first broadcast...
2) I stopped watching broadcast TV shortly after the final season of Star Trek: The Geriatric Generation.

I very much like the reboot, both of them.

I thought "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"(1979) was 'good', but a bit more pretentious that I like. The only one of the following 'original cast' shows, that I really liked... was "Wrath of Khan"(1982), and apparently that is a popular 'favorite'.

I use to ponder 'why'... and in one of the more recent, say late 90's, editions of the set, there was a BTS feature where the producer made a statement that crystalized my 'why'... the producer made the statement that the first film lost gobs of money, and there after they produced the movies 'like TV shows'... bingo... They became just 2 hour TV shows, heavy dialog, and less than on props. The 'film' series with the Soon to be the New Geriatric Generation, continued that 'TV production' value style.

Only with the reboot, did they return to a 'movie' style, and I think my appreciation improved by quantum leaps.

I've not tended to like movies made from 60's TV shows... not for any 'nostalgia' or 'sacredness of the shows'... but many of them just had plain stupid plot lines or setups... For example, I only watched a few episodes of "Charlie's Angels' in the TV era... and was not 'disappointed' with the movie version... since I thought the TV show, and the movies were on a par of 'silliness'...

As for something like "Get Smart"... it was a product of its time and the 'cues' of what it was make fun of, spoofing, etc. are just culturally 'lost' at this point...

Speaking of 'spy films' of the era... I have liked the "Bond" reboots with Daniel Craig much better than the previous editions (and I'm almost finished watching them all, having got the set in December...)...

About the only film that probably I would be 'very critical' of is, if they remade "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold"(1965)... but given what "The Constant Gardener"(2005), and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"(2005), a remake may not be all that bad, given an update in 'context'...

Oh, yeah, while I'm at it... I didn't mind the "Mission Impossible" new series... they had lacks, but it was not due to their connection, or lack thereof with the TV show 'history'...

Waxing a bit philosophical... while some people may have a hissy fit about 'remaking' such classical fare as "Medea", or "Agamemnon", or even "Romeo and Juliet", I have no problem with recasting and adapting these old 'classics' to modern states of affairs.
 
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I saw it 3 days ago in 3D. The 3D for me was really distracting. In the future it's 2D only. I enjoyed the movie. Amazing VFX.

Spoiler alert:

The one thing I didn't get was how Capt. Pike was still alive. I thought he was killed in the first one. But, okay, if he dies in this one, how does he survive crippled in the original series to live on the forbidden planet with the
, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menagerie_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)

mmmmmm,
Christopher Pike (whom Spock served under for 11 years and had since been promoted to Fleet Captain).
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David Jimerson said:
Because Khan was born almost 300 years before the effects of the time travel.

You can look at it and pretend it's a totally unrelated project all you like, but that's the premise which was presented.
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My point is that time travel is arbitrary. It can be whatever you want it to be. It's not hard science. No one ever traveled back in time before in the series, and this is the only change in the time line? Of course they did. It happened all the time.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Time_travel_episodes
 
I thought STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS was terrible. It was trying so hard to speed through it's quota of cool action scenes that it completely forgot to tell a coherent story. Utterly mediocre.
 
Gillvane said:
My point is that time travel is arbitrary. It can be whatever you want it to be. It's not hard science. No one ever traveled back in time before in the series, and this is the only change in the time line? Of course they did. It happened all the time.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Time_travel_episodes
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No, I don't buy that at all.

They presented a specific premise. If they don't follow it, it's a flaw. If they presented it as a hard reboot with no connection to the original continuity, then it can be whatever they want. But that's not what they did.

It's not an unreasonable criticism to say they don't live up to their own explanations. It's perfectly reasonable to hold a movie to its own ambition. Especially when they're leaning really hard on the original continuity and fan knowledge of it.
 
David Jimerson said:
No, I don't buy that at all.

They presented a specific premise. If they don't follow it, it's a flaw. If they presented it as a hard reboot with no connection to the original continuity, then it can be whatever they want. But that's not what they did.

It's not an unreasonable criticism to say they don't live up to their own explanations. It's perfectly reasonable to hold a movie to its own ambition. Especially when they're leaning really hard on the original continuity and fan knowledge of it.
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I accept your analysis that they didn't follow their own premise. However, I think the creation of a cool villain trumps any continuity they have to follow from the original premise, which is just so completely flawed from the very beginning. The entire "time travel" reason for the reboot is crap to begin with so following it only leads to more crap. The more they depart from it the better, IMO. I don't want to see Kahn from North India...AGAIN. Seen it. do something different, and thank god they did.

Also the movie did lean WAY to hard on fan knowledge. The "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" scene with Kirk dying ONLY works because of the previous time you saw that scene. On it's own, it doesn't work emotionally at all. These guys haven't been working together as best friends for decades at this point like in the original movie where this scene takes place. It gets most of it's emotional power from nostalgia, not from what's going on in the story.
 
agcohn said:
I thought STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS was terrible. It was trying so hard to speed through it's quota of cool action scenes that it completely forgot to tell a coherent story. Utterly mediocre.
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Although I liked it, I totally see your point. I'm hoping now that they've established the reboot (time travel in the first movie), given Kirk the ship (because commander Robocop is a douchebag) they can FINALLY get on with the 5 year mission and just have some fun with it.
 
Gillvane said:
I accept your analysis that they didn't follow their own premise. However, I think the creation of a cool villain trumps any continuity they have to follow from the original premise, which is just so completely flawed from the very beginning. The entire "time travel" reason for the reboot is crap to begin with so following it only leads to more crap. The more they depart from it the better, IMO. I don't want to see Kahn from North India...AGAIN. Seen it. do something different, and thank god they did.

Also the movie did lean WAY to hard on fan knowledge. The "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" scene with Kirk dying ONLY works because of the previous time you saw that scene. On it's own, it doesn't work emotionally at all. These guys haven't been working together as best friends for decades at this point like in the original movie where this scene takes place. It gets most of it's emotional power from nostalgia, not from what's going on in the story.
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You're pretty much spelling out my problems with the entire endeavor.
 
Gillvane said:
Also the movie did lean WAY to hard on fan knowledge. The "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" scene with Kirk dying ONLY works because of the previous time you saw that scene.
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Or this 'movie'...

spock-556x344.jpg
 
I just got the BD set of disks for the Star Trek: The Geriatric Generation, and just watched the first installment... "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"(1979)... now just the title sounds pretentious, and the film doesn't disappoint... even the Wife was yelling 'get on with the damn movie'... 'we see...' the Boobyprise... for about 10 minutes... ok maybe about 3 or so... but really... then 'we see...' the vastness of the alien ship... etc... slow as molasses in January...

Anyway... I was also noticing a number of 'jarring' cuts... 180 rule breaches, etc... For an over budget movie it sure got short shrifted in a number of places... and the Wife noticed the men in 'jumpsuits'... and their 'manly outlines'... I of course then noticed that the 'officer/bridge' crew had 'modesty' flaps for their pelvic regions... but I digress...

My point of course is if whether "Khan" character looks Punjabi or not is the only criticism... it is vastly superior to STtMP...

It did occur to me that in the case of STtMP the main 'alien' was a computer 'life form', and the thought occurred me how that may have connected to the Borg of Star Trek, the Kindergarten Generation. But since I'm not a ST Illuminati... I don't know if there is any connection either intra-StarTrek story lines, or extra...
 
I never figured why they stole the basic plot points from the original series episode The Changeling - where the space probe was called Nomad, rather than V'ger-Voyager.

I really think they may have got the new movie right at the expense of long time ST officianardos. All the people who hated Star Trek, who got taken to see it, seem to have enjoyed it?
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
I just got the BD set of disks for the Star Trek: The Geriatric Generation, and just watched the first installment... "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"(1979)... now just the title sounds pretentious, and the film doesn't disappoint... even the Wife was yelling 'get on with the damn movie'... 'we see...' the Boobyprise... for about 10 minutes... ok maybe about 3 or so... but really... then 'we see...' the vastness of the alien ship... etc... slow as molasses in January...

Anyway... I was also noticing a number of 'jarring' cuts... 180 rule breaches, etc... For an over budget movie it sure got short shrifted in a number of places... and the Wife noticed the men in 'jumpsuits'... and their 'manly outlines'... I of course then noticed that the 'officer/bridge' crew had 'modesty' flaps for their pelvic regions... but I digress...

My point of course is if whether "Khan" character looks Punjabi or not is the only criticism... it is vastly superior to STtMP...

It did occur to me that in the case of STtMP the main 'alien' was a computer 'life form', and the thought occurred me how that may have connected to the Borg of Star Trek, the Kindergarten Generation. But since I'm not a ST Illuminati... I don't know if there is any connection either intra-StarTrek story lines, or extra...
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TMP is one example of what I alluded to earlier -- that Trek was always better after Roddenberry was shoved off into a corner. The re-use of plot and boredom of TMP had mostly to do with him.

As for cost overruns, it wasn't really the fault of the movie itself, per se. The movie was to be the pilot episode of a brand new series, Star Trek: Phase II, for which costumes, sets, and props were all created -- and then discarded entirely when Paramount made the decision, after Star Wars, to bump it up into a theatrical release. The entire cost of the abandoned series was accounted against TMP, bringing its budget to probably three times what it would have been otherwise. And, of course, for the Christmas release they wanted, there wasn't enough time to finish the FX to what Robert Wise (who was a curious choice for the project) wanted.

The script was a re-hash of The Changeling at Roddenberry's doing, though in what appears to be a habit for him, everyone told him it was the same and he kept insisting it wasn't. He was also obsessed with things like gods/creators and their creations getting the better or them or whatnot. At least two other possible movie scripts followed the same sort of pattern.

The Next Generation was a re-use of the bible for the Phase II series, and the "new" characters were re-uses of characters created for Phase II. (Decker became Riker; Ilia became Troi; Lt. Xon became Data, etc.) And as you well know, TNG was pretty God-awful (no pun intended) until Roddenberry was put out to pasture at the third season. And following the above, people told him at the time how terrible TNG was, and how racist and sexist some of the episodes were, but he couldn't see it and insisted otherwise.

Now, none of this is to defend TMP; it's way too long and way too boring. It was improved by the 2001 Director's Edition, but it still consists mostly of the cast reacting to FX shots.
 
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