Star Trek: Into Darkness

[Samwise]

If we're talking raw box office numbers as a measure of quality, Phantom Menace was the best Star Wars movie, and Empire was the worst.  

If you're just examining why they made a crummy generic action movie with just enough recycled Star Trek tropes for the popcorn-scarfing masses to recognize, I don't think any of us have been under any delusions in that regard since the first trailer for the first nuTrek movie came out.  

[HaemishM]

I would have been fine with a summer blockbuster with recycled Star Trek tropes for the popcorn-scarfing madness... if it had been executed with the least bit of attention to the basics of good storytelling. It didn't and it wasn't.

[Speedy Cerviche]

You guys have to take into account inflation...

If you do, the new Star Trek films are not greater than the other 7 combined, nor is Phantom Menace greater than original star wars or empire.
http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm
http://filmonic.com/star-trek-movies-top-box-office

[Venkman]

If we're talking raw box office numbers as a measure of quality, Phantom Menace was the best Star Wars movie, and Empire was the worst.  

If you're just examining why they made a crummy generic action movie with just enough recycled Star Trek tropes for the popcorn-scarfing masses to recognize, I don't think any of us have been under any delusions in that regard since the first trailer for the first nuTrek movie came out.  

I was talking about your second point specifically because it doesn't have any bearing on measure of (individual or intrinsic quality).

And yes, when I said that last page, I knew someone was going to bring up inflation. That is why I said "Yea this gets into a whole rabbit hole of inflation and size of market and shit. But the size of the market in 1982 when WoK launched is not going to factor into the Powerpoint/Keynote/Prezi presentation that goes into justifying the next movie."

Nobody who bankrolls the next movie is going to be thinking inflation-adjusted anything.

[UnSub]

Kirk and Spock did stop a ship from the future from destroying Earth by going on board fighting the bad guys hand to hand.  And who knows what they did together between movies?  I would imagine that would cause some camaraderie. 

Kirk and Sulu fought Romulans on a mining platform too, but that didn't make them best buddies.

"It happened between films" is as much a flub as "it happened in the original series".

Silly argument.  How many scenes do Kick and Sulu get compared to Kirk and Spock?  I don't need to see a bromance between the two to get that they are friends.   

Why would they do that unless they felt a kinship?

As many problems as the movie has, it's strange to focus on this.  There is a certain amount of hand-waving necessary to keep a summer blockbuster going and this I didn't have a problem with.

Kirk rescues Spock because the film requires them to be together.

In the scenes that Spock and Kirk share in the two films we have scenes like:

Star Trek:
 - Kirk hacking Spock's Kobayashi Maru scenario so that he wins and makes Spock look stupid
 - Spock having Kirk up on discipline issues
 - Kirk getting snuck on board a ship he shouldn't be on thanks to Spock, who's annoyed when he finds out
 - Kirk using Spock's dead mother to provoke Spock into becoming emotional, leading to the highly emotional Kirk being put in charge of the Enterprise

Star Trek: Into Darkness:
 - Kirk violating the Prime Directive (which is meant to be a major thing in the ST universe) over Spock's objections
 - Spock reporting Kirk for violating the Prime Directive and lying about what happened in official reports, thus losing Kirk his command
 - Kirk bascially over-ruling every objection that Spock has

 - Almost every scene involving the two characters showing a complete lack of chemistry - Kirk is just pissed at Spock and Spock questions every harebrained idea from Kirk

Up to the point that Spock gets emotional about Kirk's death, there's not a lot on show to say these characters are great friends. In contrast, Kirk seems to get on better with almost everyone else (although mainly male characters, since Kirk is much too busy trying to stick his penis in the female characters) like Bones or even Sulu. Kirk and Pike have chemistry, even though Pike spends most of his time being slightly pissed at Kirk.

There needed to be some scenes showing that, despite being constantly undermining each other, Kirk and Spock actually do share some common ground on something.

The above is more a symptom about the problems I've got with this neo-Star Trek's approach to the movie narrative though.

TL;DR Kirk and Spock share no on-screen chemistry and are only together because that's Trek. STID is fine as an action film, but it's terrible as a Trek film.

[jgsugden]

UnSub is 100% right...  They're capitalizing upon a history of friendship that had not taken place.  They'd have been better off setting this film 8 years after the events of the first and showing a montage of credit scenes that were parallels of the original series episodes.  That would at least have established that these characters had time to grow together and develop friendships.

[Khaldun]

There's the additional weirdness that Spock has been told by an older version of himself from an alternate time line that he is meant to be close friends with Kirk and is more or less instructed to have that happen no matter what. For someone as logical as Spock, that amounts to a command he can't ignore--he's basically been told that the greatest good for the greatest number depends upon him forming a close bond with a human that he does not like or respect. At the same time, Spock in both time lines has a history of chafing against what other 'logical' elders tell him he has to do. The last third of STID could have worked with this problem in a great way--Spock rebelling against the command to trust and value Kirk until Kirk does something to finally demonstrate to *this* Spock what kind of genuine friendship they could have. But they don't really do that--they just fall back on a fanservice postmodern ironic lazymode thing to force the story to that point rather than finding a way to earn it.

[jgsugden]

There's the additional weirdness that Spock has been told by an older version of himself from an alternate time line that he is meant to be close friends with Kirk and is more or less instructed to have that happen no matter what. For someone as logical as Spock, that amounts to a command he can't ignore--he's basically been told that the greatest good for the greatest number depends upon him forming a close bond with a human that he does not like or respect. At the same time, Spock in both time lines has a history of chafing against what other 'logical' elders tell him he has to do. The last third of STID could have worked with this problem in a great way--Spock rebelling against the command to trust and value Kirk until Kirk does something to finally demonstrate to *this* Spock what kind of genuine friendship they could have. But they don't really do that--they just fall back on a fanservice postmodern ironic lazymode thing to force the story to that point rather than finding a way to earn it.

That would have been a good way to go... I'm getting to the point where I'm not sure if I'd be happier if they didn't make a 3rd movie or if I can overlook these types of foibles and enjoy it for what the last one was - more spectacle than story.

[Samwise]

I'd be fine with them not making any more of these, but they're definitely going to get made, and they're going to be more of the same.

[Yegolev]

I found this article very helpful in sorting out what I watched.
http://io9.com/star-trek-into-darkness-the-spoiler-faq-508927844

Look, I know Star Trek is science fiction, but hasn’t Trek always at least nominally tried to get science right? Shouldn’t a Star Trek movie give the tiniest shit about such things?

[HaemishM]

God, that so perfectly encapsulates every problem I had with the movie.

[Venkman]

That was pretty good. The only thing they missed was that part of one of the original trailers where Kirk is arguing with someone and that someone says "Starfleet is not about revenge" and Kirk says "Maybe it should be". No idea why they cut that from the flick and instead relied on Spock to talk him into it.

[Korachia]

Hehe, that was actually more entertaining to read than watching that wricked flick.

[Ratman_tf]

I hadn't planned to watch this one. The 09 Trek was so terrible. But the bro bought Into Darkness today and so I sat through it.

My one word impression is Gutless.

We have this new crew and a new take on the Franchise, and they went and recycled old Trek. Way to go, guys. What a waste of an opportunity.

But I didn't hate it as much as the 09 Trek. They're both unnecessarily convoluted and stupid, but this one, the first 2/3 was a little more interesting.
And then the shameless recycle of Wrath of Khan's ending with Kirk dying was terribly lame and mechanical.

Both Treks feel like they're full of mindless scenes where characters YELL AT EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME and then run down hallways while laser bolts fly. It's like watching the fight scenes in Bay's Transformers. Full of manic action and no suspense.

So dissapointing, but not as dissapointing as the 09 Trek, but then the uninspired recyling of Khan takes it back down a peg.

Bleh.

[eldaec]

If we're talking raw box office numbers as a measure of quality, Phantom Menace was the best Star Wars movie, and Empire was the worst.  

If you're just examining why they made a crummy generic action movie with just enough recycled Star Trek tropes for the popcorn-scarfing masses to recognize, I don't think any of us have been under any delusions in that regard since the first trailer for the first nuTrek movie came out.  

I was talking about your second point specifically because it doesn't have any bearing on measure of (individual or intrinsic quality).

And yes, when I said that last page, I knew someone was going to bring up inflation. That is why I said "Yea this gets into a whole rabbit hole of inflation and size of market and shit. But the size of the market in 1982 when WoK launched is not going to factor into the Powerpoint/Keynote/Prezi presentation that goes into justifying the next movie."

Nobody who bankrolls the next movie is going to be thinking inflation-adjusted anything.

Of course they do.

Anyone making an actual decision will certainly consider market growth and inflation. Or they get fired for being incompetent.

Marketing fucks will use any stat they can to build unmanageable expectations of course.

[Venkman]

And yet these kinds of movies keep getting made. Mass marketability runs head first into critics.

We can argue this one point about inflation. Of course it matters in general. I was being flippant, in part because it's not a particular point to consider, just one of the many that applies to the cost of making these movies as much as it does the number of available screens, ticket prices in general, relative income to entertainement expenses, the profit-inflating IMAX stuff, timing of US vs worldwide launches (and how that's shifted), how "opening weekend" has changed, and so on. So inflation does matter.

They measure the shit out of everything, because there's a lot more data to review, and after all of that, these are the kinds of movies that come out.

[Sir T]

I'm reminded of the "friendship" that Whatsisname and Darth Noooo had in Revenge of the Shit. They were supposed to be 2 great friends, but everytime they were together Darth irritated the hell out of the older guy. Its almost like the directors of these things are saying "well I irritate all my friends and treat them like shit, so that's what all friendships are like!"

I mean its not like you can do genuine Chemistry between leads. For example, Glover and Gibson managed to have 2 leads having a genuine friendship in the Leathal Weapon movies, and that had no TV series backing it up. Fact is that Kirk and Spock have no reason to even associate in this Trek, other than "elder Spock told me to hang around with this moron." If there was a scene where Spock finally had enough of this crap and told kirk to go take a hike, that would actually make sense, but they are jammed together by plot.

[Venkman]

Yea I do totally agree these two new movies have not established that Pine and Quinto became friends. They're reliant entirely on the common knowledge of Kirk, Spock and McCoy all being friends. I feel like they got Kirk and McCoy more established than they ever did Kirk and Spock, and the latter is more quintessential to the franchise.

But on Lethal Weapon, it took a good 2/3 of the first movie for them two to not exasberate each other, and it really didn't come across they were actually friends until 2. That's a good pacing for something that doesn't have a TV series or a 40 year heritage, to your point

[Speedy Cerviche]

I found this article very helpful in sorting out what I watched.
http://io9.com/star-trek-into-darkness-the-spoiler-faq-508927844

Look, I know Star Trek is science fiction, but hasn’t Trek always at least nominally tried to get science right? Shouldn’t a Star Trek movie give the tiniest shit about such things?

Haha that's great. Sums up every second I felt sitting through that crap in the theater but goes through it scene by scene and takes notes for proper internet venting after.

[Megrim]

Read it. I bet it was written by someone who is fat.

[Sir T]

I found this article very helpful in sorting out what I watched.
http://io9.com/star-trek-into-darkness-the-spoiler-faq-508927844

Look, I know Star Trek is science fiction, but hasn’t Trek always at least nominally tried to get science right? Shouldn’t a Star Trek movie give the tiniest shit about such things?

Oh god I'm crying. That's hilarious!

[lamaros]

This movie is crap. That's all.

[Fraeg]

you fine folks just saved me a redbox rental fee

[Riggswolfe]

you fine folks just saved me a redbox rental fee

There are roughly three ways to look at this movie:

1) Loving homage to a beloved classic of the Trek movies
2) Arrogant and creatively bankrupt attempt to 'reinvent' a classic of the Trek movies
3) A fun adventure movie with a script that is fun in a vacuum but painful when looked at from the perspective of a fan of the older Trek movies.

I think most people here looked at it as number 2. I viewed it as mostly 3 with a slight hint of 1. I was only able to give it any credit for 1 when I remembered a cut scene from the first where old Spock speculates that certain things would happen because the timeline was trying to correct itself. It was an explanation for why Kirk just happened to run into him on that ice planet. When viewed through that prism it tips the movie from 2 a bit more to 1. On the other hand, Damon Lindlelof helped write it and he is probably my least favorite writer working today because he gets involved with properties I am excited for and fucks them up. See: Prometheus

[Lakov_Sanite]

Saying this movie is not worth a $1.50 rental is about as neckbeardy as you can get.  It's a fun action movie, it's not great but for fucks sake, saying it's not worth a buck fifty?  If this isn't worth less than two dollars than your standards for home movie rentals is so impossibly high you will never be satisfied.

[eldaec]

There are much better movies you can pay $1.50 to see. If you want to observe the car crash, wait till it appears for free on your streaming service or network if choice.

[UnSub]

On the other hand, Damon Lindlelof helped write it and he is probably my least favorite writer working today because he gets involved with properties I am excited for and fucks them up. See: Prometheus

I only saw "Prometheus" recently and can only imagine the disappointment of anyone watching it who thought they were going to see a good movie set in the Aliens universe.

[Ironwood]

OOOoh, someone bumped the thread !  Cool !!

This was on Sky over Christmas.  I watched it.

It was awful.  It was really, really, really awful.  I mean, just So Bad it wasn't even funny.

ALL of the complaints have already been handled in the mega thread, I guess, but the Transwarp stuff was probably the biggest shit in the bowl.  Also, zombie tribbles.

[Khaldun]

Though somehow 'zombie tribbles' makes me think about what might happen if tribbles and those flying plastic barf vampires that killed Kirk's brother in TOS bred together...

[Merusk]

I forgot the barf vampires killed Kirk's brother. Ha.

[Ironwood]

Though somehow 'zombie tribbles' makes me think about what might happen if tribbles and those flying plastic barf vampires that killed Kirk's brother in TOS bred together...

You know what would happen.

LENS FLARE.

[Soulflame]

I admit it, I laughed.

[lamaros]

you fine folks just saved me a redbox rental fee

There are roughly three ways to look at this movie:

1) Loving homage to a beloved classic of the Trek movies
2) Arrogant and creatively bankrupt attempt to 'reinvent' a classic of the Trek movies
3) A fun adventure movie with a script that is fun in a vacuum but painful when looked at from the perspective of a fan of the older Trek movies.

I think most people here looked at it as number 2. I viewed it as mostly 3 with a slight hint of 1. I was only able to give it any credit for 1 when I remembered a cut scene from the first where old Spock speculates that certain things would happen because the timeline was trying to correct itself. It was an explanation for why Kirk just happened to run into him on that ice planet. When viewed through that prism it tips the movie from 2 a bit more to 1. On the other hand, Damon Lindlelof helped write it and he is probably my least favorite writer working today because he gets involved with properties I am excited for and fucks them up. See: Prometheus

Or, not in regard to any Trek movies at all and just crap in its own right.

[eldaec]

Obviously it is bad on its own merits. The problem is that it is also bad after making allowances for being a trek movie.

I will give it credit for being not as bad as the TNG films.

In other news, being pinched on the arm is not as bad as being punched in the face.

[Venkman]

I appreciate why you edited, but my wife and I laughed hard at your original analogy