Star Trek

Batutta said:
It's worse because these new screens aren't even using an IMAX film format projector. It's 2K digital.
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Yep, at AMC IMAX is a DLP 2k projector. Don't get me wrong it looked great and the screen is bigger than the normal theater (sounded better too) but it's just not the IMAX I once new.

Trek did do 10% of thier weekend gross on just 138 IMAX screens, I wonder how many out of the 138 were really IMAX? 10?
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
"we wanted to build this whole intricate engine room but it was so expensive and then we toured this brewery and it was immaculate" (approximate quote)
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That's something that a freakin' fan film would do. Unbelievable.

David Jimerson said:
Now, I think it was far more watchable than TMP, and far less boring than many of the '90s series episodes, but I see a lot of the same thing going on -- not here, but elsewhere. I think after months and months of hype over what Team Abrams was going to be doing, no one wanted to be disappointed.
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I didn't see TMP until after I'd seen 2, 3, and 4, so I can't really comment on that angle. What I am finding, though, is that my experience with this movie is a lot like the one I had with Star Trek VI. During the movie, and for a while thereafter, I felt like it was the best Trek ever; but then, rewatching it on tape, I started to feel less and less impressed.

Now, I didn't leave the theater thinking that the new movie was the best Trek ever, but I have been getting more and more annoyed at some things the more I think back. The biggest is that, even for Star Trek, the science in this is awful. At least, back during Voyager, when every other episode was about dark matter, "dark matter" is an actual phenomenon (although the Voyager writers never bothered to research what it actually was). But, "red matter?" Please. Also, a black-hole type singularity would not appear to the sensors of a Federation starship as "a lightning storm in space," even in 2233. (Speaking of the "lightning storm," if the singularity that brought Nero back in time was what caused that, then why did it show up in the distress call from Vulcan? There was no singularity formed prior to Nero's attack, so why would the "lightning storm" appear?)

Another thing that's bugging me more and more is the little inconsistencies between the script and the production design that never got fixed. For example, one of the first things that the captain of the Kelvin does on the bridge is order "Polarize the viewscreen." Well, first off, viewscreen doesn't really accurately describe what was done in this movie--but worse than that, the Kelvin has no less than three viewscreens. "Which viewscreen, sir?" Similarly, when Scotty advises ejecting the "warp core," what really gets ejected is six or so brewing tanks--ERRRRRR, I mean smaller matter/antimatter reactors. (NOOOOOOOO!!! DON'T EJECT THE AMBER BOCK!!! OH, THE HUMANITY!!!) I actually like the idea of the smaller reactors, because all the way in the Franz Joseph blueprints I think there were four reactors rather than the one big "intermix column" from TMP, but change the friggin' line. Personally, I don't think you can call it a "warp core" until whenever the dilithium crystals were integrated into the intermix, rather than being tied in from separate systems, as we saw in TOS and the early TMP-era (supposedly, it was the dilithium crystals that Spock was adjusting in TWOK), anyway, but that's just me.

Finally, for the love of god, Romulans use warbirds. Klingons use birds of prey. (And yeah, this gets a little tricky because the original Romulan Warbird was called a bird of prey for many years, and the Klingon bird of prey in TSFS was originally supposed to have been a stolen Romulan ship, but the overwhelming majority of the evidence supports Romulan=WB, Klingon=BoP.) And anyway, the ships seen in the Kobayashi Maru simulation were not birds of prey, they were pretty standard battlecruisers; hard to tell from their short appearances, but I thought they looked more like K't'inga-class than D7's...
 
Here's my cast for The Next Generation reboot--

Larry David as Picard
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Ice Cube as Worf
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Danny McBride as Riker
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Steve Carrell as Data
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Chris Tucker as Geordi
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Lisa Edelstein as Troi
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Michael Cera as Wesley
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Stephen Colbert as Q
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I'm not up on star fleet regulations, but I'm pretty sure jettisoning your first officer into space and diverting the federation flag ship to save mommy and daddy, means you are already pretty-much compromised. We didn't need to sit through a pointless monster chase(did they rip that off from Galaxy Quest?) that just happens to lead to the cave where the deus-ex-machina will explain the plot to us, just so we could rip off a bit from Star Trek IV, and go back to have a fight about it.

Oh yeah, and deus-ex-machina? We've seen you sacrifice yourself before for the greater good. We know you got it in you. In fact, the very line you quoted in the cave on Hoth was from the exact moment when you sacrificed yourself before. When you came out of the black hole(WHA??????????!!!!!!!!!!) and were taken aboard what's-his-bucket's big ship, you know, you're kind of carrying a HUGE LOAD OF shi* THAT CAN DESTROY HIM. Why spend all this time, saving up that idea to give to young you, when you really could have just done it on the spot?

And I know who's-it stranded you on Hoth, but you know, he was kind enough to do it 14 killometers from a star fleet outpost. Something tells me you might have gotten out of there and actually done something to save Vulcan, if you REALLY wanted to. At least asked to use the phone, send a telegram, SOMETHING.

Koboyashi-maru. You know, when all of the computers shut down in the middle of the simulation and then come back on with suddenly everything different, it might be time to RE-START THE FRACKING TEST!!!! "I accuse him of adding a sub-routine, blah blah...YA THINK?" Thanks for taking something that once added to a character, and turning it into something completely retarded.

Mommy, why was the engineering deck designed by Wyle-E-Coyote? Wait, that's an insult to Wyle-E-Coyote. His contraptions actually contribute to the plot...

And dude, why not just say you got them from Ceti-Alpha 5, for Christ's sake???????

This movie was a turd-burger, hold the mayo. Sorry, a turd-burger, hold the mayo, but extra lens-flares, please. In terms of the franchise, this falls somewhere between "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" and that episode of TNG Season 7 where they all get turned into kids.

Fortunately, the same day I got to see Atlantis lift off AND watch Predator, so my faith in both space travel and action movies remains intact.
 
I absolutely HATE that I'm going to have to see it and that I'm almost certainly going to :love4: it. :-Mad(DBG):
 
Mark Harris said:
I'm not up on star fleet regulations, but I'm pretty sure jettisoning your first officer into space and diverting the federation flag ship to save mommy and daddy, means you are already pretty-much compromised. We didn't need to sit through a pointless monster chase(did they rip that off from Galaxy Quest?) that just happens to lead to the cave where the deus-ex-machina will explain the plot to us, just so we could rip off a bit from Star Trek IV, and go back to have a fight about it.

Oh yeah, and deus-ex-machina? We've seen you sacrifice yourself before for the greater good. We know you got it in you. In fact, the very line you quoted in the cave on Hoth was from the exact moment when you sacrificed yourself before. When you came out of the black hole(WHA??????????!!!!!!!!!!) and were taken aboard what's-his-bucket's big ship, you know, you're kind of carrying a HUGE LOAD OF shi* THAT CAN DESTROY HIM. Why spend all this time, saving up that idea to give to young you, when you really could have just done it on the spot?

And I know who's-it stranded you on Hoth, but you know, he was kind enough to do it 14 killometers from a star fleet outpost. Something tells me you might have gotten out of there and actually done something to save Vulcan, if you REALLY wanted to. At least asked to use the phone, send a telegram, SOMETHING.

Koboyashi-maru. You know, when all of the computers shut down in the middle of the simulation and then come back on with suddenly everything different, it might be time to RE-START THE FRACKING TEST!!!! "I accuse him of adding a sub-routine, blah blah...YA THINK?" Thanks for taking something that once added to a character, and turning it into something completely retarded.

Mommy, why was the engineering deck designed by Wyle-E-Coyote? Wait, that's an insult to Wyle-E-Coyote. His contraptions actually contribute to the plot...

And dude, why not just say you got them from Ceti-Alpha 5, for Christ's sake???????

This movie was a turd-burger, hold the mayo. Sorry, a turd-burger, hold the mayo, but extra lens-flares, please. In terms of the franchise, this falls somewhere between "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" and that episode of TNG Season 7 where they all get turned into kids.

Fortunately, the same day I got to see Atlantis lift off AND watch Predator, so my faith in both space travel and action movies remains intact.
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Wait, I'm confused. Did you like it or not? :kiss:
 
Wow Mark, I'm not going to quote your whole post up above Blaine, but I pretty much have to agree with you on all points. I at least thought that this would be better than Crank 2. If I were a film critic, my cynical critic sound bite would be "this Trek is a Wrek".

Good action and effects, but the story left me cold. Overall there were some fun scenes in a sea of really crappy scenes. Can't say it really added up to a complete and satisfying movie though. Don't get me wrong, I did have fun watching this, even though it was quite a disappointment in many ways. I didn't hate it but I didn't really like it that much either. I have always liked Trek quite a bit. TOS, TOS films, TNG, TNG movies, Voyager, and hell I even liked Enterprise too. Star Trek isn't my favorite science fiction series, but I do really like it a lot. I really wanted to love this film and the new direction they took it in, but I just can't.

It felt like they were initially on the right track with the story, but veered off course and got lost in the woods. I think they could've told a great Kirk, Spock, Bones, etc. origin story without having to destroy Vulcan and basically shi* on all of the prevous Star Trek movies and series by going with the whole alternate timeline thing. I have to admit that this film felt like a retread of Wrath of Khan melded with First Contact. It also left me with the feeling that I'd just seen a really big budget TV pilot. Of course they will be doing a sequel so they obviously wanted to leave the audience with the feeling that this wasn't the end but the beginning to more adventures.

The biggest problem I had was Spock jettisoning Kirk in the escape pod. It was lame beyond belief. If this were BSG it would be like Adama or Tigh sticking Starbuck in a disabled Raptor and leaving her stranded on some remote moon or planet on the way to Earth, all because she got drunk and mouthed off. Which doesn't make sense since in both Trek and BSG they could just put an unruly officer in the brig to cool off. That would be the logical thing to do.

What the hell is red matter? You would think that they would at least attempt to be a tiny bit on the side of scientific relevance? I mean, handling dark matter is stretching plausibility enough, but red matter... seriously? And no explanation as to what it is? It just makes black holes and singularities? Also, last time I checked, you can't just fly a ship into a black hole and come out intact.

The lens flares. Stop it. Please. Seriously. I love anamorphic lens flares, but now I don't know if I ever want to see one again. I definitely don't want to use them in any films I make because people will just say I'm copying Star Trek. I say we retire intentional anamorphic flares for good. Of course, if one happens on accident whilst using anamorphic lenses, sure leave it in. Otherwise stop it. It hurts. It is annoying. It takes us out of the film.

Best part of the film was the beautiful opening sequence on the Kelvin. I could've gone for a whole movie about Kirk's dad if they wanted to do that. This scene felt authentically like Star Trek, while much of the rest of the film didn't. The shot of the crewman getting sucked out into space and the sound dropping out was eerily effective. Too bad they didn't develop the no sound in space aspect throughout the film. What is the point of showing it and then later in battle scenes we hear the explosions and phaser fire while outside the ship in vacuum?

Surprisingly the cast worked really well. I actually bought the dude playing Kirk, and the actor, I think he is from Heroes, as Spock. The rest of the cast was good in the roles of Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu. The whole ensemble really clicked. There could've been more character development though. The whole cut to 3 years later and they've all gotten through Star Fleet felt like a huge copout. Hopefully in the sequel we'll get to know these young Trek characters better and through more polished writing? The exception was Nero. He felt like a third rate underdeveloped Khan in Romulan clothes. This was the weakest link in the movie. It is especially tragic considering that Eric Bana is a pretty darn fine actor. He could have done more with the Nero role if they would have just given him more to work with. I also loved seeing Nimoy as Obi Wan, I mean Yoda, oops, I mean as an elderly Spock.

Everyone is gushing over the new Trek film like it is the greatest thing since Pop Tarts. The sad truth is that the Battlestar Galactica season finale, and the entire series in general blows this new Star Trek film completely out of orbit, yet hardly anyone out there will see it since it doesn't have anything close to the hype and marketing that is behind Trek. Hell, Firefly and Serenity eat it for breakfast on a fraction of the budget this new Trek film had. Also, the general public seems to be loving this, yet they didn't like the second and third Matrix films? Now, I agree those films had problems, but not nearly as many as this film had narrative-wise. I just don't get it. (Speaking of other sci-fi series, does the actor playing Kirk in this remind anyone of Ben Browder aka John Crichton from Farscape? That is a good thing actually.)

Hopefully this re-booted Star Trek will be better with the next film. I want to see this cast working with a good script. There is real potential there for something great.
 
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JDS,

FTR in my previous post the duct tape was for Luis, the BBQ, Beer, Liquor and Weed was for me.
 
Nektonic said:
Everyone is gushing over the new Trek film like it is the greatest thing since Pop Tarts.
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Well bro, at least we can agree on Breaking Bad. :)

I'm glad you liked the opening sequence. I thought it was amazing, and you hit on some good points. (space/vacuum issue)


For all the die-hard Trek fans who feel majorly let down, remember this: You didn't get Jar Jar Binks. 10 years later, I'm still bummed.
 
Nektonic said:
What the hell is red matter? You would think that they would at least attempt to be a tiny bit on the side of scientific relevance? I mean, handling dark matter is stretching plausibility enough, but red matter... seriously?
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Red Matter; see unobtainium.

LOL, Mark over your review...Maybe I was going too easy on the film.
 
Remember how disappointing TMP was? Remember how much better WOK turned out to be?

Let's hope for a similar relationship between this and the next one.
 
What the hell is red matter? You would think that they would at least attempt to be a tiny bit on the side of scientific relevance? I mean, handling dark matter is stretching plausibility enough, but red matter... seriously?
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It's JJ Abrams. There is something in all of his stuff that isn't explained.

Meghan's box in Felicity. The number 47 in Alias, Rabbits Foot in Mission Impossible III (the giant struggle for a vial and no one knows what it is). And don't get me started with Lost. That is an enigma unto its own.
 
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