What's an alien? The hoverbike cop? In Iowa? I don't think so.
Star Trek
- Thread starter Batutta
- Start date
What's an alien? The hoverbike cop? In Iowa? I don't think so.
They're definitely reaching for a wider audience; looks a bit Bay-ish.
Brandon Rice
Distributed Producer
I like Bay-ishness 
Nektonic
Veteran
I need to re-watch both The Undiscovered Country and The Motion Picture. Haven't viewed either one for quite a while. Wrath of Kahn is great. Another of my favorite Trek films is First Contact (gotta support the TNG crew).
That's what I was thinking. I fear that this may be a very dumbed down Star Trek. Of course I'm not surprised. I think we need a proper trailer that actually shows something for more than a millisecond. They still seem to be in "teaser" mode with the second trailer. I hope this is good though. I'll still probably have to see it because it is Star Trek. I was hoping this would be the hot ticket for the big summer event movie, because I don't think GI Joe or Transformers 2 will be it, while Watchmen and Avatar are kinda like bookends for the blockbusters of 2009.
J.R. Hudson
Spirit Animal
I realy can't deal with Star Trek at all but I am going to go into this one with an open mind. Perhaps they are catering to a broader audience, but maybe that's what they need to get away from the niche.
They wouldn't make enough money to cover the production budget if they catered this to the niche trekkies.
Captain Pierce
Veteran
I personally LOVED the trailer
Technically, there are no "Trek people" involved with this, as I don't think anybody working on this film has ever worked in Trek before (excepting Nimoy, of course, but he's just acting this time, not doing anything on the production side). But, to the point of Trek getting more modern... as I think David alluded to earlier with his comment about the 23rd century becoming almost a period piece, it all depends on what you're trying to do. If Abrams is, as I think he said early on, trying to make a film that fits within the established continuity, then he has to be careful of doing stuff that doesn't fit just to "get with the times." If, on the other hand, he's doing a full-on BSG-level reboot, then all bets are off and he can have all the 60's corvettes, car chases, and groundside refits that he wants...
Yeah, because Treks 2, 4, and 6 were such box office flops.
Look, as one of the "niche Trekkies" of whom you speak, I know they're never going to make a movie that's aimed only at me. But that doesn't mean they still can't make a movie that's true to the ideals and mythology of Star Trek, and have it be a commercial success (as the aforementioned three were, and you can throw "First Contact" into the mix, too). For that matter, the "flops" of Trek moviedom have come not from films that tried to cater to "niche Trekkies," but because they just weren't very good movies overall. ("Final Frontier" and "Nemesis," I'm looking in your direction.) Plus, and this is something I just thought of, those two are a couple of the least "Trek" of the Trek movies, with all kinds of stupid mistakes (like "Frontier's" Deck 78 and flying to the center of the Galaxy in a matter of hours, or "Nemesis's" "self-destruct system is offline," just off the top of my head). I'll go one farther--there was a certain attempt to make us "niche Trekkies" think that "Nemesis" had been made to cater to us, with screenwriter John "How the poo poo did this guy get an Oscar Nomination?" Logan talking about what a huge fan of Trek he was--but then he delivers a script that could have been written by any schmuck who walked in off the street and was given a list of character names. So there's a certain (totally non-scientific ) correlation between how "Trek" a movie is, and whether it's considered a success or failure at the box office...
MikeGunter
Well-known member
Hi,
I certainly going to go see it, that's a given.
The trailer is terrific. I don't know what's going on, and that's the point.
I certainly going to go see it, that's a given.
The trailer is terrific. I don't know what's going on, and that's the point.
Yeah, I've never understood the reasoning behind "if you make it faithful Trek, it'll flop." Why?
Captain Pierce
Veteran
Captain Pierce's Trailer Breakdown & Trekkie Over-Analysis
Captain Pierce's Trailer Breakdown & Trekkie Over-Analysis
(And I'm going to go ahead and SPOILER WARNING this just in case anybody hasn't seen the trailer and actually cares about spoilers. )
The trailer opens with a 60's Corvette convertible being chased by a pretty cool futuristic "hoverbike." It could possibly be a dirt road in Iowa, but (as a native Iowan) I'm not quite feeling it. (Although it could represent an Iowa where the effects of global warming are not yet fully overcome.) It ends with the "tween" driver of the corvette running the 'Vette into some sort of huge "Death Star" trench, and announcing to the cop who's been chasing him that he's James Tiberius Kirk.
From a Trek standpoint, the biggest problem here (aside from a 300-year old sports car) is that James T. Kirk can't drive a car, as famously evidenced in the TOS episode "A Piece of the Action." He barely even knows what a car is, let alone how to drive a "stick" (Spock has to remind him of the clutch).
Next we have an older Kirk driving down a similar road, with young crops in the field, on a suspiciously contemporary motorcycle (definitely not related in any way to the cool "hoverbike" from before). The same large structures are visible in the background, suggesting that if this is Riverside, Iowa, Iowa City has definitely grown. (Technically, Riverside is not canon, but Iowa is, from Star Trek IV.) He then stops in front of the groundside facility where the Enterprise is being either built or refitted.
The implication from the editing here is that, if we were in fact in Iowa before, that this facility is in Iowa as well. Again, the sheer "retro" feel of the bike is troubling; but even more so is the thought that a starship that has clearly been shown to not be capable of maneuvering in atmosphere could be built or refitted on the ground. Building is the lesser of the two evils, as refitting suggests that the ship would have to be both landed and then taken off again, which seems clearly impossible, but I suppose you could make a case that the ship could "blast off" successfully if clumsily.
We have only one "canon" reference to the Enterprise's age, Admiral Morrow's comment in Star Trek III that the ship is "twenty years old"--and that's clearly wrong, because twenty years prior to ST3 is just before Season 1 of TOS. (Not to mention that Spock is said to have served under Captain Pike, on the Enterprise, for 11 years prior to Kirk taking command.) A commonly-cited semi-canon date from Mike Okuda's published Chronology is 2245, because Gene Roddenberry said once that he felt the Enterprise was about twenty years at the time of TOS Season 1. So, if we go with that, and accept a birthdate of 2233 for Kirk (based on how old he's said to be in a TOS episode), the Kirk we say watching the Enterprise being worked on is clearly older than 12, so we're left with a refit. Now, again based on that 2245 launch date, and given that Spock's 11 years on the Enterprise seem to have started in 2252, a Kirk in his 20's watching the Enterprise be refitted for a new mission actually makes a certain amount of sense. (Although it happening on the ground still doesn't, IMO.)
Two other things I'll say about this sequence: first, in all fairness, the new Enterprise looks quite a bit less ugly here than it did in the previous image; and second, the voice-over (although I can't quite figure out who's giving it) seems very appropriate for Kirk.
We then get a quick Vulcan montage where everything looks pretty good, and again we get a well-written voiceover (although we can but hope it's not his father saying this to him, because of course Sarek didn't want him to "choose his own path ). This then goes to a shot of Spock apparently beaming down; it's clearly not anything like the TOS transporter effect, but honestly, did anybody expect it to be? At first glance, it seems maybe a little "overdone," but we don't see a lot of it so it's hard to say.
This then leads to our first shot of Kirk and Spock together on the Bridge. Ah, the Bridge. There are things that I like about the Bridge, and things that I'm not that thrilled about--and things that I hate. It's far too big, for one thing, probably the biggest Bridge set we've ever seen (including Voyager and that monstrosity they designed for Excelsior in Trek III); and the classic TOS roundness has been completely lost. Again, I realize we're not going to get a 100% accurate rebuild of the bridge from "The Cage"--and again, I didn't expect or really want that--but give us something that's at least in the same ballpark, even if you have to jazz up the consoles and displays (and I know that you do).
From here, things start to get edited rather frantically. We have the Enterprise leaving what appears to be a Federation Starbase (and one that looks pretty nice, at that), and then a shot of it in warp (which is actually a pretty good blend of the TOS "effect," which was underwhelming to say the least, and what was done for the first six movies).
We then cut to a shot of the Kelvin and escorting fighters attacking something--and this is probably as good a time to discuss the Kelvin as any. I really want to like the Kelvin, because it looks to me like somebody in the CG department might have based it at least a little on the classic Saladin-class from the 70's. The Saladin and several other ships designed for the "Star Fleet Technical Manual" occupy a strange grey area in Trek canon; Gene apparently originally signed off on the book, but later recanted. Still, the ships (and other material from the book) have appeared or been mentioned (briefly, and very much in the background) in TMP, TWOK, TSFS, and TNG.
The main thing that keeps me from entirely embracing the Kelvin is the upper "secondary hull," containing at least the main deflector and a shuttle bay of some sort. I can understand why they felt it was necessary given the overall state of Treknology, but my personal theory has always been that TOS's technology was at least somewhat different--and perhaps very different--from that of TNG and beyond, and that the TOS Enterprise did not have a main deflector dish (as several TMP-era ships such as the Miranda and Constellation classes didn't); under that theory, there's no need for a deflector pod. Also, the apparent "fighter shuttles" are kind of coming out of nowhere, as far as the "fighter" aspect, but their look is good.
My other issue with the Kelvin is the NCC-0514 registry; again, it's not necessarily canon, but glimpses from the background have set up the expectation that they didn't add a zero at the beginning to make it four digits, but just went with NCC-514. It's a pissy little thing to be annoyed by, but I am, I can't help it.
In amongst the quick cuts, we have a sequence of Kirk pulling what appears to be his classic "piss Spock off to get his attention, and hope you survive" trick from TOS, which is a nice touch.
We get a 23rd-century HALO drop (nothing to do with the game, Xboxer's, it's a paratrooper term for High Altitude, Low Opening; and when you're "jumping" from a high enough altitude that you need space suit, pretty much anything would be consider "low" opening ), possibly in spacesuits that match the uniform tunic color code.
We get a shot of the viewscreen from behind the captain's chair (with the classic "Red Alert" klaxon sounding, and you gotta love that), where it seems to be Pike in command with Sulu and Chekov in front of him; followed closely by a shot of Pike in the big chair with Kirk behind him.
Uhura gears down.
There's the obligatory "Scotty's accent" shot, although why he's in civvies is unclear.
There's a quick bit of Sulu what seems to a sword fight, a nice touch to his fencing hobby in TOS.
There's McCoy (also in civvies) giving a pretty good line.
We have the one shot where Kirk is wearing command gold (or indeed any colored shirt) and "high-fiving" someone (Spock?) with what seem to be Captain's stripes on his sleeve.
There's the even more obligatory "Kirk getting it on" scene, although the purist in me feels it should be a more alien-looking woman in a more tin-foil bikini. :love4:
And we end with the double-meaing line that seems like it was thrown into the film just so it could be in the trailer (or hell, maybe it won't even make the final cut of the film): "The wait is over."
(Oh, and did I mention that there's a shot of Uhura taking off her top? Wouldn't want to forget that.)
I have been trying to maintain a level of "cautious optimism" about this film. I want to look forward to it, but I have watched too much bad Star Trek, in the theatres and on TV, to embrace anything whole-heartedly from leaked screenshots or trailers. There are a lot of things in this trailer that make me more cautious, but also plenty that swing me back toward the optimism side. And certainly there's nothing here that's going to keep me from planting my ass in a seat for a very early showing.
Captain Pierce's Trailer Breakdown & Trekkie Over-Analysis
(And I'm going to go ahead and SPOILER WARNING this just in case anybody hasn't seen the trailer and actually cares about spoilers.
)The trailer opens with a 60's Corvette convertible being chased by a pretty cool futuristic "hoverbike." It could possibly be a dirt road in Iowa, but (as a native Iowan) I'm not quite feeling it. (Although it could represent an Iowa where the effects of global warming are not yet fully overcome.) It ends with the "tween" driver of the corvette running the 'Vette into some sort of huge "Death Star" trench, and announcing to the cop who's been chasing him that he's James Tiberius Kirk.
From a Trek standpoint, the biggest problem here (aside from a 300-year old sports car) is that James T. Kirk can't drive a car, as famously evidenced in the TOS episode "A Piece of the Action." He barely even knows what a car is, let alone how to drive a "stick" (Spock has to remind him of the clutch).
Next we have an older Kirk driving down a similar road, with young crops in the field, on a suspiciously contemporary motorcycle (definitely not related in any way to the cool "hoverbike" from before). The same large structures are visible in the background, suggesting that if this is Riverside, Iowa, Iowa City has definitely grown.
(Technically, Riverside is not canon, but Iowa is, from Star Trek IV.) He then stops in front of the groundside facility where the Enterprise is being either built or refitted.The implication from the editing here is that, if we were in fact in Iowa before, that this facility is in Iowa as well. Again, the sheer "retro" feel of the bike is troubling; but even more so is the thought that a starship that has clearly been shown to not be capable of maneuvering in atmosphere could be built or refitted on the ground. Building is the lesser of the two evils, as refitting suggests that the ship would have to be both landed and then taken off again, which seems clearly impossible, but I suppose you could make a case that the ship could "blast off" successfully if clumsily.
We have only one "canon" reference to the Enterprise's age, Admiral Morrow's comment in Star Trek III that the ship is "twenty years old"--and that's clearly wrong, because twenty years prior to ST3 is just before Season 1 of TOS. (Not to mention that Spock is said to have served under Captain Pike, on the Enterprise, for 11 years prior to Kirk taking command.) A commonly-cited semi-canon date from Mike Okuda's published Chronology is 2245, because Gene Roddenberry said once that he felt the Enterprise was about twenty years at the time of TOS Season 1. So, if we go with that, and accept a birthdate of 2233 for Kirk (based on how old he's said to be in a TOS episode), the Kirk we say watching the Enterprise being worked on is clearly older than 12, so we're left with a refit. Now, again based on that 2245 launch date, and given that Spock's 11 years on the Enterprise seem to have started in 2252, a Kirk in his 20's watching the Enterprise be refitted for a new mission actually makes a certain amount of sense. (Although it happening on the ground still doesn't, IMO.)
Two other things I'll say about this sequence: first, in all fairness, the new Enterprise looks quite a bit less ugly here than it did in the previous image; and second, the voice-over (although I can't quite figure out who's giving it) seems very appropriate for Kirk.
We then get a quick Vulcan montage where everything looks pretty good, and again we get a well-written voiceover (although we can but hope it's not his father saying this to him, because of course Sarek didn't want him to "choose his own path
). This then goes to a shot of Spock apparently beaming down; it's clearly not anything like the TOS transporter effect, but honestly, did anybody expect it to be? At first glance, it seems maybe a little "overdone," but we don't see a lot of it so it's hard to say.This then leads to our first shot of Kirk and Spock together on the Bridge. Ah, the Bridge. There are things that I like about the Bridge, and things that I'm not that thrilled about--and things that I hate. It's far too big, for one thing, probably the biggest Bridge set we've ever seen (including Voyager and that monstrosity they designed for Excelsior in Trek III); and the classic TOS roundness has been completely lost. Again, I realize we're not going to get a 100% accurate rebuild of the bridge from "The Cage"--and again, I didn't expect or really want that--but give us something that's at least in the same ballpark, even if you have to jazz up the consoles and displays (and I know that you do).
From here, things start to get edited rather frantically. We have the Enterprise leaving what appears to be a Federation Starbase (and one that looks pretty nice, at that), and then a shot of it in warp (which is actually a pretty good blend of the TOS "effect," which was underwhelming to say the least, and what was done for the first six movies).
We then cut to a shot of the Kelvin and escorting fighters attacking something--and this is probably as good a time to discuss the Kelvin as any. I really want to like the Kelvin, because it looks to me like somebody in the CG department might have based it at least a little on the classic Saladin-class from the 70's. The Saladin and several other ships designed for the "Star Fleet Technical Manual" occupy a strange grey area in Trek canon; Gene apparently originally signed off on the book, but later recanted. Still, the ships (and other material from the book) have appeared or been mentioned (briefly, and very much in the background) in TMP, TWOK, TSFS, and TNG.
The main thing that keeps me from entirely embracing the Kelvin is the upper "secondary hull," containing at least the main deflector and a shuttle bay of some sort. I can understand why they felt it was necessary given the overall state of Treknology, but my personal theory has always been that TOS's technology was at least somewhat different--and perhaps very different--from that of TNG and beyond, and that the TOS Enterprise did not have a main deflector dish (as several TMP-era ships such as the Miranda and Constellation classes didn't); under that theory, there's no need for a deflector pod. Also, the apparent "fighter shuttles" are kind of coming out of nowhere, as far as the "fighter" aspect, but their look is good.
My other issue with the Kelvin is the NCC-0514 registry; again, it's not necessarily canon, but glimpses from the background have set up the expectation that they didn't add a zero at the beginning to make it four digits, but just went with NCC-514. It's a pissy little thing to be annoyed by, but I am, I can't help it.
In amongst the quick cuts, we have a sequence of Kirk pulling what appears to be his classic "piss Spock off to get his attention, and hope you survive" trick from TOS, which is a nice touch.
We get a 23rd-century HALO drop (nothing to do with the game, Xboxer's, it's a paratrooper term for High Altitude, Low Opening; and when you're "jumping" from a high enough altitude that you need space suit, pretty much anything would be consider "low" opening
), possibly in spacesuits that match the uniform tunic color code.We get a shot of the viewscreen from behind the captain's chair (with the classic "Red Alert" klaxon sounding, and you gotta love that), where it seems to be Pike in command with Sulu and Chekov in front of him; followed closely by a shot of Pike in the big chair with Kirk behind him.
Uhura gears down.
There's the obligatory "Scotty's accent" shot, although why he's in civvies is unclear.
There's a quick bit of Sulu what seems to a sword fight, a nice touch to his fencing hobby in TOS.
There's McCoy (also in civvies) giving a pretty good line.
We have the one shot where Kirk is wearing command gold (or indeed any colored shirt) and "high-fiving" someone (Spock?) with what seem to be Captain's stripes on his sleeve.
There's the even more obligatory "Kirk getting it on" scene, although the purist in me feels it should be a more alien-looking woman in a more tin-foil bikini. :love4:
And we end with the double-meaing line that seems like it was thrown into the film just so it could be in the trailer (or hell, maybe it won't even make the final cut of the film): "The wait is over."
(Oh, and did I mention that there's a shot of Uhura taking off her top? Wouldn't want to forget that.
)I have been trying to maintain a level of "cautious optimism" about this film. I want to look forward to it, but I have watched too much bad Star Trek, in the theatres and on TV, to embrace anything whole-heartedly from leaked screenshots or trailers. There are a lot of things in this trailer that make me more cautious, but also plenty that swing me back toward the optimism side. And certainly there's nothing here that's going to keep me from planting my ass in a seat for a very early showing.
Last edited:
But is Kirk gettin' jiggy with Uhura? The second shot is inconclusive.
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xi/screencaps/trailer/trailer074.jpg
[FONT="]http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xi/screencaps/trailer/trailer093.jpg[/FONT]
That would be bad.
What I don't get is how anything in that trailer would be less exciting or less appealing if the ships and sets were more faithful. Would anyone watching that trailer not want to see it if it all looked "right"?
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xi/screencaps/trailer/trailer074.jpg
[FONT="]http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xi/screencaps/trailer/trailer093.jpg[/FONT]
That would be bad.
What I don't get is how anything in that trailer would be less exciting or less appealing if the ships and sets were more faithful. Would anyone watching that trailer not want to see it if it all looked "right"?
Brandon Rice
Distributed Producer
The problem with the analysis is that (rumors are) this is an alternate timeline... affected by someone coming back in time and killing Kirk's father... so Kirk's childhood is completely different, which then obviously will affect the other characters... so you actually have to throw out everything you know about the history of these characters from previous films, because it has been changed (and explained)
That was, interestingly enough, the plot of Killing Time. More or less.
Hey Pierce, consider editing your post and breaking up some of those huge chunks of text, maybe 4-5 lines for each paragraph. Makes it much easier to read. As it is my eyes were hurting in the second paragraph and had to stop reading. I truly want to read it though, it's very interesting.
pathfinder
Well-known member
I don't care what anybody says, I'm there.
William_Robinette
Shallow Member
The new bridge of the Enterprise reminds me of if Apple's design department got a hold of the Sona Ship's bridge in Insurrection and had their way with it.
Captain Pierce
Veteran
How, exactly, is killing Kirk's father going to change much of anything unless you do it before Jim is born? (Which, clearly, they didn't, cause he's in the frickin' movie. ) It's not going to radically change the design of the Enterprise, it's not going to make the Enterprise suddenly be able to land and take off on planets at will, it's not going to make the Bridge look like the Apple Store... it's not, in a nutshell, going to do cause just about any of the things that are "wrong" (in my opinion) about this movie.
Alvaraz, I thought about breaking that up more as I was typing it, but I was trying to keep stuff that was related together. Let me see what I can do with it.
) It's not going to radically change the design of the Enterprise, it's not going to make the Enterprise suddenly be able to land and take off on planets at will, it's not going to make the Bridge look like the Apple Store... it's not, in a nutshell, going to do cause just about any of the things that are "wrong" (in my opinion) about this movie.Alvaraz, I thought about breaking that up more as I was typing it, but I was trying to keep stuff that was related together. Let me see what I can do with it.
Capt Quirk
Veteran
There is a huge hole in that, as most of the timeline would be unaffected, except for those things directly influenced by Kirk. The Enterprise's history, it's crew, and physics in general would remain unaltered.
Brandon Rice
Distributed Producer
Well... I have no problem with anything... and I like Star Trek, but never feel it necessary to limit one's self to things... look at the prequels..