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Original post by Oluseyi
McCoy doesn't actually get the nickname "Bones," though he does provide a hilarious possible origin for it.
If I remember correctly, Kirk calls him "Bones" at the very end, just before the "Final Frontier" speech (which has been slightly modified BTW!).
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Original post by Oluseyi
a whole bunch of things are different than you may remember them: Kirk never gets any Uhuru ...Sulu can fight.
Did Kirk score with Uhuru in the original? I know they had a kiss but I didn't think it was an ongoing thing.
And Sulu could always fight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Time
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Original post by Oberon_Command Quote:
Original post by Oluseyi
McCoy doesn't actually get the nickname "Bones," though he does provide a hilarious possible origin for it.
If I remember correctly, Kirk calls him "Bones" at the very end, just before the "Final Frontier" speech (which has been slightly modified BTW!).
He also called him "Bones" on the front lawn of the academy as he was talking about taking the Kobayashi Maru test.
As a sci-fi action film, it was entertaining. But overall I felt rather disappointed by it.
The Star Trek universe is limited only by the writer's imagination. The original series had the cast fighting everything from hyperintelligent psychic beings, silicon lifeforms that looked a lot like a guy crawling about with a rug on his back, rapidly multiplying small furry animals, nazis, the roman empire, obnoxious children, and of course, Khaaaaaaan! The opportunities for plot are almost endless, so I was rather disappointed that the writers had just opted for a bunch of time travelling Romulans trying to destroy Starfleet with a piece of technobabble. Lazy, boring, unimaginative, and lame; between the original series, and the various spin offs, and the older films, that shit has been done to death.
The Star Trek universe is limited only by the writer's imagination. The original series had the cast fighting everything from hyperintelligent psychic beings, silicon lifeforms that looked a lot like a guy crawling about with a rug on his back, rapidly multiplying small furry animals, nazis, the roman empire, obnoxious children, and of course, Khaaaaaaan! The opportunities for plot are almost endless, so I was rather disappointed that the writers had just opted for a bunch of time travelling Romulans trying to destroy Starfleet with a piece of technobabble. Lazy, boring, unimaginative, and lame; between the original series, and the various spin offs, and the older films, that shit has been done to death.
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Original post by Sandman
As a sci-fi action film, it was entertaining. But overall I felt rather disappointed by it.
The Star Trek universe is limited only by the writer's imagination. The original series had the cast fighting everything from hyperintelligent psychic beings, silicon lifeforms that looked a lot like a guy crawling about with a rug on his back, rapidly multiplying small furry animals, nazis, the roman empire, obnoxious children, and of course, Khaaaaaaan! The opportunities for plot are almost endless, so I was rather disappointed that the writers had just opted for a bunch of time travelling Romulans trying to destroy Starfleet with a piece of technobabble. Lazy, boring, unimaginative, and lame; between the original series, and the various spin offs, and the older films, that shit has been done to death.
But it wasn't fun.
Or, ">Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'
One day, randomly, I asked my dad if he liked Star Trek. While my tastes are in many respects broader than my dad's, I find the things he likes to be impeccable and the reasons he puts forward for not liking things quite cogent. "No," he said. "It always looked boring. A whole bunch of talking, then they get shot at and start staggering around in a blue room while someone shakes the camera."
I nearly died laughing.
Anyway, to return to my point, Star Trek tended to be ponderous, though silly. Over the years it got more ponderous and self-important - "we are making serious statements about The Human Condition." While it may have endlessly fascinated a core of Starfleet uniform-wearing jurors and royal extras, most people frankly didn't give a shit. And now they do. And that's good enough in my book, because I don't always want a Less Bread-ian thesis on the pros and cons of "rescuing the Andoran Ambassador from the surface of Sylax IV."
I LOVED it. :)
Sure, sure... the story might be 'thirteen in a dozen', time-travelling angry person trying to kill everybody else... but hey! It was a challenging enemy, it brought everyone together, and it didn't distract me from the great fun of watching the crew meet up!
And Scotty rules. *nods happily*
Ps: watched every serie and every movie, liked almost all of them, and this one as well. :)
Sure, sure... the story might be 'thirteen in a dozen', time-travelling angry person trying to kill everybody else... but hey! It was a challenging enemy, it brought everyone together, and it didn't distract me from the great fun of watching the crew meet up!
And Scotty rules. *nods happily*
Ps: watched every serie and every movie, liked almost all of them, and this one as well. :)
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Original post by Oluseyi
words
Since when where cool action sequences and interesting and imaginative plots mutually exclusive?
You can berate the originals all you like for being ponderous; you're probably right. But if this rebooting of the franchise was an opportunity to change that, it's done so at the expense of what made the originals successful in the first place.
The plot was unimaginative, stale, and reminiscent of all that had grown tiresome in the franchise. The other aspects of the film were good enough to keep it entertaining, but I'm just tired of having to turn my brain off to enjoy a film.
[Edited by - Sandman on May 11, 2009 5:00:54 AM]
there is nothing wrong with using lame timetravel as a plot device if it serves a higher purpose. It did just that and the only reason the plot wasnt meatier was because of time constraints. The next movie will have alot of story no doubt.
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I've seen the whole of TNG, DS9, and Voyager (couldn't be bothered with Enterprise and I've only caught a few episodes of TOS). I've seen every movie so far, including the originals.
What I really liked about the reboot is that I was never bored. It introduced the characters and all the important plot elements really early in the movie and put you straight into the action. It happened so fast that at one point I thought to myself "oh crap the movie started".
I liked that it tried to add more action to Star Trek which can be ridiculously slow at times but I'm kind of sad that it removed so much of the Star Trek universe to achieve it. I would have liked to see a bit more of the academy. I also felt that assembling the crew on the Enterprise was a little forced.
The smaller details that annoyed me:
-The red matter was a little weird. Why do they need so much of it and how does a group of miners figure out how to use it, etc...?
-Also, seems like the blackhole should of had a stronger pull. It seemed to have a different behaviour throughout the movie (a time portal, instant death for the Romulan ship but just a strong tactor beam for the Enterprise, etc)
-Why did Kirk have to be podded on that ice world?
-Did he really have to meet future Spock there? I guess it was "destiny" or whatever but I thought it was really lame.
-Why was the fleet destroyed within seconds while the Enterprise and the Kelvin were able to take a beating?
-"Storm in space" sounds like such a common anomaly in space that I hated how it was linked RIGHT AWAY to the romulans.
I'm being nitpicky because honestly I loved the movie and I'll probably watch it over and over again. The guy playing Checkov was awesome.
What I really liked about the reboot is that I was never bored. It introduced the characters and all the important plot elements really early in the movie and put you straight into the action. It happened so fast that at one point I thought to myself "oh crap the movie started".
I liked that it tried to add more action to Star Trek which can be ridiculously slow at times but I'm kind of sad that it removed so much of the Star Trek universe to achieve it. I would have liked to see a bit more of the academy. I also felt that assembling the crew on the Enterprise was a little forced.
The smaller details that annoyed me:
-The red matter was a little weird. Why do they need so much of it and how does a group of miners figure out how to use it, etc...?
-Also, seems like the blackhole should of had a stronger pull. It seemed to have a different behaviour throughout the movie (a time portal, instant death for the Romulan ship but just a strong tactor beam for the Enterprise, etc)
-Why did Kirk have to be podded on that ice world?
-Did he really have to meet future Spock there? I guess it was "destiny" or whatever but I thought it was really lame.
-Why was the fleet destroyed within seconds while the Enterprise and the Kelvin were able to take a beating?
-"Storm in space" sounds like such a common anomaly in space that I hated how it was linked RIGHT AWAY to the romulans.
I'm being nitpicky because honestly I loved the movie and I'll probably watch it over and over again. The guy playing Checkov was awesome.
I've seen about half of the original series, every episode of the other series, and all of the movie. I don't remember it much now, but I even watched the cartoon back when it was on. I've read a few of the books as well. I drew the line at going to conventions.
I loved this movie. I saw it at the IMAX theater in Baltimore. Unfortunately, I was in one of the front rows on the far left, so my viewing angle was less than optimal, but it was still a mind-blowing experience. I found myself jaw-agape on a number of occasions. I was unconsciously holding my breath during the final scene where they almost fall into the black hole. I felt a tingle in my eyes during the opening scene when Kirk Sr. is talking to Mama Kirk while he crashes into Nero's ship. The entire theater cheered when the Enterprise rose out of the clouds of one of the moons of Saturn (is it just me, or was that a recreation of one of the images from the original series' opening credits? Either way, it was beautiful.)
I thought the movie was perfectly paced. It never felt like anything was rushed or dragging on. I too was concerned about what J.J. Abrams was going to bring to the table, because unlike Oluseyi, I've actually seen Lost, and like Oluseyi, I've come to the same conclusion about it. I heard good and bad things about Cloverfield, so I wasn't really expecting much from this movie.
As a franchise reboot, while the time-travel aspect wasn't exactly necessary, I actually saw it as a throw-back to canon. Star Trek is riddled with ridiculously complex time travel scenarios, and it hasn't always been handled very cleanly. The "divergent timeline" concept is a much better handling, I think.
I also thought that this production had a much more plausible portrayal of the future and of space travel. The scenes on Earth were much more convincing than anything that has ever appeared in any Star Trek production to date. The space port looked real, it looked functional, it looked like people actually worked there, instead of some sterilized, overly artistic imagining of a space port. The corridors of the ship seemed much more realistic: like a larger, stylized version of naval warship corridors. I think they also did an excellent job of using them to establish the size of the ship; previously, the ship always seemed much larger on the inside than it was on the outside. The Warp Drive seemed closer to the conceptualization of flying through compressed space. And finally, a Star Trek movie with no sound in space.
Pleasantly surprised, was I. The most important part of this movie, however, is that it got me excited about Star Trek again. It got me thinking about the future, and where we're going. It brought back that sense of wonderment that was so central to the series. For a long time, Star Trek has lost its way into some sense of obligation to being poignant, and forgot to be entertaining. It's finally entertaining again.
I loved this movie. I saw it at the IMAX theater in Baltimore. Unfortunately, I was in one of the front rows on the far left, so my viewing angle was less than optimal, but it was still a mind-blowing experience. I found myself jaw-agape on a number of occasions. I was unconsciously holding my breath during the final scene where they almost fall into the black hole. I felt a tingle in my eyes during the opening scene when Kirk Sr. is talking to Mama Kirk while he crashes into Nero's ship. The entire theater cheered when the Enterprise rose out of the clouds of one of the moons of Saturn (is it just me, or was that a recreation of one of the images from the original series' opening credits? Either way, it was beautiful.)
I thought the movie was perfectly paced. It never felt like anything was rushed or dragging on. I too was concerned about what J.J. Abrams was going to bring to the table, because unlike Oluseyi, I've actually seen Lost, and like Oluseyi, I've come to the same conclusion about it. I heard good and bad things about Cloverfield, so I wasn't really expecting much from this movie.
As a franchise reboot, while the time-travel aspect wasn't exactly necessary, I actually saw it as a throw-back to canon. Star Trek is riddled with ridiculously complex time travel scenarios, and it hasn't always been handled very cleanly. The "divergent timeline" concept is a much better handling, I think.
I also thought that this production had a much more plausible portrayal of the future and of space travel. The scenes on Earth were much more convincing than anything that has ever appeared in any Star Trek production to date. The space port looked real, it looked functional, it looked like people actually worked there, instead of some sterilized, overly artistic imagining of a space port. The corridors of the ship seemed much more realistic: like a larger, stylized version of naval warship corridors. I think they also did an excellent job of using them to establish the size of the ship; previously, the ship always seemed much larger on the inside than it was on the outside. The Warp Drive seemed closer to the conceptualization of flying through compressed space. And finally, a Star Trek movie with no sound in space.
Pleasantly surprised, was I. The most important part of this movie, however, is that it got me excited about Star Trek again. It got me thinking about the future, and where we're going. It brought back that sense of wonderment that was so central to the series. For a long time, Star Trek has lost its way into some sense of obligation to being poignant, and forgot to be entertaining. It's finally entertaining again.
As someone who pretty much loathes what is commonly considered "science fiction" these days (as Star Wars and Star Trek, largely, have created a kind of abortion of science fiction from the days of Bradbury) and has no ties to the Star Trek universe, I really dug the movie.
I didn't like:
1) The sword fight.
2) The slow-motion jumps.
3) The big CG monster on the Ice Planet.
4) The young-looking pilot with the thick English/Russian accent. It was a really stupid set of jokes of the "ha ha listen to someone speak funnily" variety that were completely immature and out of place in the movie.
Other than that, though, I thought the movie was really great. The pacing was superb, the casting was phenomenal (especially Scotty, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy), and the story was primarily well-told. The amount of humor, in general, in the movie was a great choice as well.
I didn't like:
1) The sword fight.
2) The slow-motion jumps.
3) The big CG monster on the Ice Planet.
4) The young-looking pilot with the thick English/Russian accent. It was a really stupid set of jokes of the "ha ha listen to someone speak funnily" variety that were completely immature and out of place in the movie.
Other than that, though, I thought the movie was really great. The pacing was superb, the casting was phenomenal (especially Scotty, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy), and the story was primarily well-told. The amount of humor, in general, in the movie was a great choice as well.
Much like capn_midnight I've seen basically all of the eps of all the series broadcast (with the exception of the animated series) and I've got a crap ton of Star Trek books, although I too draw the line at conventions; I'd say I'm basically a life long Star Trek fan and as such I too found this film to be awesome.
Everything else I'd have to say has been echo'd here already.
Certainly one for the Bluray collection when it comes out [grin]
Everything else I'd have to say has been echo'd here already.
Certainly one for the Bluray collection when it comes out [grin]
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Original post by Gazillion
-Also, seems like the blackhole should of had a stronger pull. It seemed to have a different behaviour throughout the movie (a time portal, instant death for the Romulan ship but just a strong tactor beam for the Enterprise, etc)
Well, the red matter was for creating a singularity, the black holes were a side effect of that. Now, singularities have long been linked to concepts of time travel, though granted not exactly in the way the movie has portrayed. I would say that what we're seeing when Romulus is destroyed is actually a wormhole, specifically because of its flat, disk-like structure and time traveling properties. The black hole at the end was made with all of the remaining red matter, instead of just a small drop. Perhaps a small drop of red matter creates a micro worm hole large enough to capture a singularity and open a wormhole, but not destroy a ship. So I think maybe that's the explanation for why it tore up the Romulan ship at the end.
Also, Enterprise hadn't crossed the event horizon of the black hole, so escape was still technically possible. The Star Trek concept of warp drive is the use of gravity fields to compress space directly in front of the ship and stretch space behind it, thereby making a "bubble" of regular space in which the ship resides why using normal, slower-than-light propulsion methods to fly through the compressed space. With the black hole so nearby, its extra strong gravity field would conceivable interfere with the gravity field of the warp drive engines. That's why they had to dump the engine cores: they surfed the energy wave of the anti-matter explosion in order to get the necessary force to break free from the black hole, as the impulse drive just wasn't enough.
Seriously though, I thought it was "close enough".
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-Why did Kirk have to be podded on that ice world?
He attempted mutiny. Marooning is a standard punishment for mutiny, especially in emergency situations. It's pretty reasonable.
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-Why was the fleet destroyed within seconds while the Enterprise and the Kelvin were able to take a beating?
The Kelvin didn't take a beating, it was almost instantly crippled. Nero could have destroyed them immediately, but wanted to interrogate the captain to get information about Spock. When he saw Enterprise, he knew Spock would be there, too, and didn't want to kill Spock, he wanted Spock to live with the grief of having his home planet destroyed. He also knew that Captain Pike, as captain of Starfleet's flag ship, would have vital intel he would need to destroy Earth. So he had very definite motivation for not obliterating the Kelvin and the Enterprise.
The other ships had nothing he needed, and I don't think we're actually shown that they have been completely destroyed (I think they even say that they're fighting but losing). Also, they were no where near as strong as the Enterprise, they were left overs that weren't involved in other operations, manned primarily by cadets. Enterprise was newly commissioned, the most advanced ship in the fleet.
Realize, Nero has a ship that has been developed in a timeline 120 years in the future, which includes a war with Starfleet somewhere in the middle (with all of the military research that implies). Think about the modern USS John Paul Jones (1980's and 90's ship tech) going up against the USS Monitor (1860s ship tech). We also know that he didn't leave his timeline right away, he said he spent years obsessing over the issue before he had a ship of his own and had the means to go after Spock. While he started with a mining ship, he had plenty of time to retrofit weapons on to it. Speculating: given that Romulus is gone, I would suspect that more than one military general would have been willing to donate their latest and greatest weaponry "to the cause".
Cool bit of trivia, William Shatner playing James T. Kirk was not the the captain in the original pilot episode. Shatner replaced Jeffery Hunter in the role of the captain, but not as the same captain. Hunter played none other than Christopher Pike. In order to explain the transition in the second pilot, they got another actor to play a badly scarred and crippled Pike, having supposedly been "injured leading a rescue mission", with Kirk taking his place. Definitely a nice little nod to the history of the series there.
Something which was worrying me, until the end, was the idea that they might have pulled a time travel trick of their own and gone back to save Vulcan.
As important as Vulcan is/was in the original time line I'm glad they didn't as that would have been cheap 'happy ever after' trick which would have put a huge dent in the film.
To address a couple of Mitten's points;
- The sword fight links back to the original series as Sulu was known for being handy with a sword.
- The whole Chekov thing I suspect was a nod to the original series again where his inability to say 'W' or 'V' "properly" was used before (and used later in Futurama).
As important as Vulcan is/was in the original time line I'm glad they didn't as that would have been cheap 'happy ever after' trick which would have put a huge dent in the film.
To address a couple of Mitten's points;
- The sword fight links back to the original series as Sulu was known for being handy with a sword.
- The whole Chekov thing I suspect was a nod to the original series again where his inability to say 'W' or 'V' "properly" was used before (and used later in Futurama).
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Original post by capn_midnight
He attempted mutiny. Marooning is a standard punishment for mutiny, especially in emergency situations. It's pretty reasonable.
Hmm I don't recall him attempting mutiny (the exact scene prior is a little fuzzy) but I remember him causing a ruckus. Though I'd figure that they wouldn't maroon him, it felt forced. The main gripe comes from his meeting with Spock soon after, the maroon on it's own would be okay but coupled with the rendezvous and it was a bit too over the top.
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Original post by capn_midnight
The Kelvin didn't take a beating, it was almost instantly crippled.
Granted the Enterprise was more advanced than the other ships but the Kelvin definitely took a huge beating that took a lot more time than what it took for Sulu to realize he had the parking break on. We're talking seconds here where Nero's crew wouldn't have had the time to notice the ship drop out of warp. I mean it served the plot and all that jazz but I just felt they could have dealt with that tidbit slightly better.
Thanks for clarifying the parts about Nero though. I hadn't caught on that Nero had the time to work up his plan. I was under the impression that he had some mining ship with the skeleton crew so that part had me a bit confused though I understand his technological advantage over Starfleet.
Oh actually I have a question: how did Nero know that Kirk's dad was on the Kelvin? Did Tiberius and he communicate or did Kirk have a "You killed my father" moment? I just remember one scene where Nero tells Kirk that he'll kill him like he killed his father but I couldn't remember how he made the connection.
I got a strong Khan vibe from Nero for some reason. He definitely wasn't an as intelligent villain nor were his motivations the same but I still got the vibe.
Anyways, my favourite line of the movie is when Pike is talking to Kirk and says: "Your father was captain of a starship for 12 minutes... he saved 800 lives"
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Original post by capn_midnight
Cool bit of trivia, William Shatner playing James T. Kirk was not the the captain in the original pilot episode. Shatner replaced Jeffery Hunter in the role of the captain, but not as the same captain. Hunter played none other than Christopher Pike. In order to explain the transition in the second pilot, they got another actor to play a badly scarred and crippled Pike, having supposedly been "injured leading a rescue mission", with Kirk taking his place. Definitely a nice little nod to the history of the series there.
Also they explained how Kirk cheated the test to win. I remember him mentioning it in one of the original movies but seeing him actually do it was pretty fun. Especially since I had Kirk lecture me about the no-win scenario in Starfleet Academy on the SNES [smile]
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Original post by phantom
Something which was worrying me, until the end, was the idea that they might have pulled a time travel trick of their own and gone back to save Vulcan.
As important as Vulcan is/was in the original time line I'm glad they didn't as that would have been cheap 'happy ever after' trick which would have put a huge dent in the film.
It also wouldn't necessarily have worked, as there is no guarantee when you'd come out of the time warp - remember, even though Nero and Ambassador Spock entered the time warp mere seconds apart, they arrived in the new timeline 25 years removed.
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Original post by phantom Quote:
Original post by mittens
4) The young-looking pilot with the thick English/Russian accent. It was a really stupid set of jokes of the "ha ha listen to someone speak funnily" variety that were completely immature and out of place in the movie.
- The whole Chekov thing I suspect was a nod to the original series again where his inability to say 'W' or 'V' "properly" was used before (and used later in Futurama).
It certainly was. The actor is Russian, so the exaggerated accent was a deliberate homage to Chekov in TOS:
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As with the rest of the cast, Yelchin was allowed to choose what elements there were from their predecessor's performances. Yelchin decided to carry on Walter Koenig's speech patterns of replacing "v"s with "w"s, although he and Abrams felt this was a trait more common of Polish accents than Russian ones.
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Original post by Gazillion
-The red matter was a little weird. Why do they need so much of it and how does a group of miners figure out how to use it, etc...?
They just captured all of it from Spock's ship, and they interrogated him to figure out how to use it.
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-Also, seems like the blackhole should of had a stronger pull. It seemed to have a different behaviour throughout the movie (a time portal, instant death for the Romulan ship but just a strong tactor beam for the Enterprise, etc)
It was instant death for the Romulan ship because it was at the epicenter at the moment of creation of the singularity. There's no telling what would have happened to the Enterprise had she gone through the hole created as a consequence.
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-Did he really have to meet future Spock there? I guess it was "destiny" or whatever but I thought it was really lame.
It was coincidence. I thought about it, too, but decided that it made sense: Spock was placed there so that he could observe Vulcan being destroyed while Kirk was marooned there because he mutinied right after Vulcan was destroyed.
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-"Storm in space" sounds like such a common anomaly in space that I hated how it was linked RIGHT AWAY to the romulans.
It wasn't linked right away to the Romulans. Kirk put together the electrical storm and the chatter that Uhuru had detected the day previous (because he happened to be there bedding her roommate), and had to argue the likelihood with Pike and Spock - the latter conceding its logical plausibility. And even then, Pike simply ordered shields up as a precaution, unconvinced until they came out of warp and saw the firefight.
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I'm being nitpicky because honestly I loved the movie and I'll probably watch it over and over again. The guy playing Checkov was awesome.
Yes, he was! [smile]
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Original post by Sandman
Since when where cool action sequences and interesting and imaginative plots mutually exclusive?
Star Trek I-VI?
(I keed, I keed! [smile])
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You can berate the originals all you like for being ponderous; you're probably right. But if this rebooting of the franchise was an opportunity to change that, it's done so at the expense of what made the originals successful in the first place.
If the new version is more successful, then it will have been worth it, won't it?
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The plot was unimaginative, stale, and reminiscent of all that had grown tiresome in the franchise. The other aspects of the film were good enough to keep it entertaining, but I'm just tired of having to turn my brain off to enjoy a film.
Oh, the agony. Because there are no movies that are intellectually engaging. I sneer.
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