f13.net

New trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRVD32rnzOw

Not feeling it. I hope they're just doing a fakeout on the Enterprise being destroyed because wow, that used to feel like a weighty event but now it's ho-hum. Though maybe in nuTrek since you can just beam to the other side of the galaxy, ships are passe anyway and Kirk & Co. will just teleport everywhere.

OMG that's utter crap.  That's like someone put it together in the house.

Well, it's been heading this way anyway, but it looks like the transition to action schlock is now complete.

(http://i.imgur.com/RGcPKEU.gif)

Just stop already.  For fuck's sake, Into Darkness was the worst movie I saw this year and this looks magnitudes worse.

Agree about the Enterprise thing - it's become old hat. I will say if it Into Darkness had not been so shitty, I would have reacted more positively to this one. As it is, I'ma wait-and-see.

But it has a motorcycle in it!

This looks like the Star Trek: Insurrection of the new Trek world.  The big budget version of a mediocre episode.

I'd really been hoping this would be the movie where they fix the timeline and get back to the original universe.  Sadly, I see no hint of that.... but there is stuff not in the preview that may hint that we're getting more time travel badness.

This is where it begins, Captain! <- bad dialogue

I liked the McCoy and Spock moment though.

Urban's McCoy is the only thing I enjoy in any of these movies. I had hope for Pine after the first one when he really did pull off Shatner-esque mannerisms, but those are gone....

I.... uhh.... hmmm.

I'm beginning to think Beastie Boys are the Wyld Stallions of the Nu Star Trek Universe.

Its directed by the Fast and the Furious guy. I couldn't come up with a more inappropriate director for Star Trek if I thought long and hard on it.

Penny Marshall?  :why_so_serious:

McG ?

You're right, it may be fun to watch now, which is totally what Star Trek isn't about.

I didn't know they were making a Mass Effect movie tho.

"Hey guys, the 50th anniversary is going to be a big deal so let's not fuck this up.  Get me an iconic soundtrack piece from Star trek's past."

And dirt bikes! Fucking dirt bikes.

Just watch the Force Awakens trailer again and then watch this for more  :heartbreak:

Feel the same way about this movie as I do about Suicide Squad. They'll probably be pretty fun movies even if they aren't good Suicide Squad or Star Trek movies.

"I saw the weirdest trailer today. It was for a generic science fiction action movie, but it was all dressed up in Star Trek costumes."

WIll FUCKING WHEATON said that.

Movie doomed

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/676546142499307520?s=09

(Yeah I follow Will Wheaton on Twitter what of it?)

He appeared in Star Trek: Nemesis so he doesn't really get to comment.

He's also an incredibly unfunny, uninteresting prick.

Yep. "Let's put in some sort of ATV/ dune buggy chase!"

Why is there a Narn in Star Trek?

Well there is the little paycheck that sways judgement and before the contract ink is dry, you are stuck making a horrible film. Not a fan of his, but he has a point.

Quote from /r/startrek gave me a good cackle.

What does a good Star Trek movie look like again? They've all been mostly mediocre movies except for maybe 1 or 2.

1?!

That was the song from the 2009 Trek film right?

My understanding is they rushed this trailer out first in German and then in English after it leaked in Germany.

Maybe that's part of why it feels rushed and unfinished.

But I also agree with the Enterprise getting destroyed. Again. Just how often is that going to be a thing?

I think the cast holds up well.

I meant one or two of the movies have been ok, not the first and second one.

The kickstarter video for the next Prime episode looks more compelling.

Fast and Furious: Starfleet Drift.

I would totally prefer her version. Team banter like in League of Her Own, a bittersweet character moment out of Awakenings, a performance as good as Big (and hopefully not an overall Renaissance Man). It would be way more Trek-like than... this.

I presume the enterprise gets destroyed because it is the third movie. And the third movie is the one where the enterprise gets destroyed and they wander about on a planet looking for spock.

Looking forward to the next one where they have to save a whale from the 80s in an invisible space ship.

A whale will be too in the nose and not topical enough. It will be a killer whale from Sea World to save Earf from rogue space sharks.

I liked "Fast Trek: Beyond & Furious"

Hey guys, remember Guardians of the Galaxy when they had that classic Earth rock music and all the space people were like WHUUUUT?  Let's do that, guys.

Also space elves because it worked for Thor and them hobbit movies.

To be fair, Sabotage was the song they used when they first introduce Kirk in the first Star Trek. 

While I hate sticking up for it, because the trailer is awful, Beastie Boys appearing in nuTrek isn't new.  Both of the new Star Trek movies have featured Beastie Boys songs so it's kind of a theme.  Sabotage was in the first one when you're introduced to Kirk as he steals a car as a kid and a remix of Body Movin' is played when Kirk is gettin' it on with some alien cat twins in the sequel.

If anything it's sad that they're recycling the same song.  They should've used Intergalactic...

Edit: Evildrider beat me to it.

Paul Revere  :drill:

Yeah, it was kinda stupid in the first one too, but I appreciate that they're really going front and center with it this time.

Eh, I don't get why you guys are complaining about this one and all in love with the other generic comic stuff that gets churned out these days? They're all disposable pain-by-numbers.

The generic comic movies are based on generic comic storylines. Star Trek has not historically been generic tripe.

The line "the frontier pushes back" implies that the crew have finally gone out to the 'final frontier' so that's good. Losing the ship in the third movie is not so good. The ship is a character to me.  If it's the original Enterprise/Kirk vs. the Doomsday Machine or Enterprise D/Picard vs. the Borg cube or even Enterprise ?/nUKirk vs. Nero, the ship was shown to be the best we could build. A testament to Federation science and ingenuity.  There was always drama when Kirk or Scotty was begging the ship to hold together.  And it did.

At any rate, the trailer was about what I expected from the new movies.  The new series can address the more non-explodey issues Trek is known for.

Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahahahahahah. :rofl:

FWIW: Simon Pegg says the movie trailer sucked and there is a lot more "Star Trek" stuff not in it...

http://www.avclub.com/article/wincing-simon-pegg-admits-he-didnt-new-star-trek-t-230006 (http://www.avclub.com/article/wincing-simon-pegg-admits-he-didnt-new-star-trek-t-230006)

THANK YOU! I said that above (Sabotage/Young Kirk), but don't think anyone confirmed it, and didn't care enough to look it up myself.


Oh thank God, I almost had to call a medic  :grin:

New trailer, definitely better despite a bit too much Bwaaaaap!.  Pine is getting some good Shatner affect without doing an impression.

https://youtu.be/HzWIGFiGrlA

Still no fucking idea what's going on in this movie.

That's a good thing trailer wise isn't it?

Anyway, why do they keep blowing up the Enterprise? Might as well just call the damn thing the USS Kenny at this point.

Killing the Enterprise creates a sense of loss, without killing off a beloved crewmate.
Plus, the Enterprise can be rezzed for the next movie, and no one will blink when it takes place off-screen.

I'm actually getting really fucking tired of the Enterprise getting blown up in every movie. It's been done so much, it completely robs the whole thing of any emotional impact because we know it'll be back.

As for the trailer keeping me from knowing what's going on in the movie, I don't want it to spoil the whole thing (such as the Enterprise getting shitcanned again) but I'd at least like to have some idea of the story besides BOOM POW KRASH CHAKA CHAKA!

It wouldn't be soo bad if they hadn't already done it in the last 2 movies.  Fucking hell.

You guys are right. Blowing things up every movie seems like just another symptom of JJ-itis.
It's senseless and doesn't have the right impact.

I was thinking back a little farther. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nZlXngXB64)

No, you absolutely cannot blame the Enterprise destruction on JJ Abrams. That shit's been going on since forever. They destroyed it at the end of Search for Spock, didn't have it in IV and then it got blown up again in Generations and of course the ass-kicking it took in nuTrek 1 and Into Darkness. It's just been done. OVER AND OVER. It lacks all emotional impact.

Nah.

For one, the Enterprise has only actually been destroyed twice (III and Generations). It's been beat to hell in II, VI, Redemption, and of course JJ1 and 2. But not actually destroyed.

Also, we don't know if it will be here or if the magical tooth fairy time travel will make it right.

But I do agree with the lack of emotional resonance npw. It's being treated as a plot device, not the Kobayashi Maru-like scenario Kirk had in III (where he changed the rules). Nothing we see now can replace the emotional build up to self destruction in III.

Nothing can replace it because it wasn't earned. The destruction in III had the history of three movies, a TV and animated series and 20 years time behind it. After evading destruction so long, it was gone. You didn't know if more movies were coming and it seemed like a goodbye to the series.

Even Generations had some decent weight behind it with the series. It felt a bit token because we'd seen it happen in III and TNG wasn't quite the touchstone TOS was at the time. It still hurt a bit, but you knew more movies were on the way. This was only the first of the new set, so while sad, Meh there's going to be another ship.

The JJ movies have tried to stand on the shoulders of the previous series and largely failed. Everything has happened in 90 minutes or less. We have three episodes of familiarity with the crew. The destruction here doesn't have the weight of anything behind it. It's just a special effect and one we expected by now, since it was nearly blown to hell two times already.

It's like halfway through writing the script they decide the new ship already sucks and they should write it getting blown up so they can get a newer new ship.

I just like that they've recycled the Narn for their tossaway evil aliens this movie. I'm puzzled how an albino Night Elf got there though.

Elba's character really does look like an armored Narn. It's a lazy design on several levels. Also a waste of Idris Elba, frankly. At some point if a Star Trek bad guy isn't just "humans with a bump on their upper nose", I almost wish they go full CGI and give us a genuinely alien-looking alien for once. Elba's voice is worth paying for if they want the name.

That was Idris Elba?

Yeah, talk about a waste.

Man, even the studio must think this sucks. Less than a month before release and very little effort to drum up interest.

I dunno. Generally when I see a lot of hype more than a few weeks before release I expect the movie to suck.

The Kevin Spacey/ Jennifer Garner human-as-a-cat movie, for example. Two months out with lots of TV ads, obvious shitshow of a movie. Ghostbusters: hype everywhere, TV ads since May, probably not that great.  Avengers? I don't recall an ad before 2-3 weeks out.

When it's a "Big" movie, people just generally know. There's been trailers before every tangentially-related movie for the last several months, too.

Apparently you missed the new trailer featuring Rihanna's new single "Sledgehammer".  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO-lz2erBQ0)

Also, Star Trek is now "hip" enough to solicit Rihanna singing songs for it. #LivingInInterestingTimes

It's the same trailer, only with Rihanna. Which feels desperate and unfocused at the same time.

Motorcycle jumping! Rihanna! This will get them to come to this movie, or...I dunno. Maybe. Star Trek? Do we own that, really? Gosh. I dunno. Do you think Marvel would be interested in buying it?

Both Marvel and DC have published Star Trek comics, so there is rights to go round.

Incidentaly, Enterprise is the only Trek series that has not been made into a comic.

WTF is the NX enterprise doing in this trailer? Is Scott Bakula gonna show up?

Time travel yo!

Probably not time travel. The Star Trek universe is the same until the Narada shows up. Stands to reason the NX is still out there somewhere.

Apparently it is an NX akin to the Enterprise 01, but it's an even earlier prototype dubbed the USS Franklin. It can only go to warp 4.

But yes, in this alternative Trek timeline, Bakula very well could rear his head up as some old man/admiral. Not that anyone would want that?

Let's not forget Scotty killed Bakulas beagle which is why he was in frozen hell planet.

I thought the beagle was just lost. Considering that they're beaming across the galaxy by movie 2, there's a lot of planets for that kind of transporter to dump a beagle on.

Like he said.. killed his beagle.   :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, that was the implication of the movie line. Or at least how I figured it. Dog "lost" in transporter accident, what else is it going to be? I assumed some sort of de-patterned flub or never materialized, implying death.

However, apparently in one of the comic book follow-ups they rescued the beagle.  :awesome_for_real:

Well shit, all this time I never realized that connection.

I only ever watched like three episodes of Enterprise though. Wasn't for me.

I'm excited for Beyond. Because I'm an easy sell :-)

George Takei isn't happy that they made Sulu gay, even though it's a direct nod to him.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-takei-reacts-gay-sulu-909154

He's not happy with the twist on Sulu. Some of us aren't happy with a lot of the twists they have been taking with New Trek. So I take this with a grain of sand.

Yea. What surprises me is that Pegg didn't think to maybe say something to Takei ahead of time. Maybe he didn't think he needed to. But considering a) Takei is still alive and well; and, b) very out there regarding LGBT issues, you'd think from a purely public relations angle alone, a courtesy note woulda gone out ahead of time, maybe even floating the idea by Takei.

I'm sure he has zero say over how his character is handled contractually. But perceptually, he's vocal, liked, and coulda been a good ambassador for the idea or explained behind the scenes the potential issues with it.

I think it would be an interesting twist for a Star Trek tv-series where it might come in to play in a few select episodes on how some aliens or cultures react to it. In a movie where it's just a small gimmick (in all likelihood) it just seems NuTrek(tm).

They did talk to him ahead of time. Twice. Both times he said it was a bad idea with the implication it's gimmicky. It's in the article. 

It's curious. Takei says that he thinks it's disrespectful to Roddenberry's intent, which is a head-scratcher unless Roddenberry really felt that people in his perfect future were all straight. It's possible: he was basically a dirty old man and probably would be accused of harassment if he were still around today. I don't think Sulu was ever established on-screen as having a wife or even a girlfriend--he didn't really get any character arcs at all until the films, when he got to be a captain. The characters who had actual romantic subplots in TOS and the films that established them as straight that I recall:

Kirk, infamously so. Constantly.
Spock, quite a few.
Uhura, we at least see what her ideal male companion would look like (in The Man Trap).
Scotty, a couple of bad girlfriend episodes that make him seem pretty hapless and a bit desperate sexually. I think maybe the TNG episode where he's brought out of storage implies he had a wife?
Chekov, has at least one ex-girlfriend that I recall.
McCoy, a couple of bad romantic arcs and in the animated series they established he had an ex-wife and daughter.

The Generations film I think established that Sulu had a daughter but nothing more about the circumstances.

Takei apparently would rather they add a new LGBT character, which feels more like tokenism--a new character in these films is just going to be a redshirt in some way.

Takei mentions in the interview he had a discussion with Gene during what I ssume to be the Stonewall movement timeframe and Gene nixed it as far too controversial. I take it that's where George is coming from. Having a character you've portrayed for 50+ years changed in such a way after you had a direct conversation with the creator about it probably does feel like pandering.

I'm of the view that tokenism and pandering are worse when you subvert original characters rather than developing new ones, though.

To boldly go where no fanservice has gone before

Well, think of all the things they've done to shift the Kelvin-timeline characterizations.

Spock has an active relationship with Uhura. Plus Vulcan is blown up and he has a duplicate from another dimension.
Kirk is considerably stupider than he was in TOS.
Chekov is more of a scientific wunderkind.
Scotty is all kinds of different.

McCoy is about the only one who is really the same.

Plus the ship's interior technology is wildly different. Including having many lensflare projectors.

Making one of those characters gay doesn't strike me as any less or more of an issue than giving Scotty a little alien mascot friend or whatever.

There was an article on Geeks of Doom where he basically says that since NuTrek is an alternate timeline of OldTrek, having Sulu be gay NOW means he was gay THEN as well - and apparently at some point, it is established OldTrek continuity that Sulu has a daughter from a one-night stand with a Gamalazon. Meaning Sulu would have had to be gay, then turn hetero later which is counter to the whole idea that you are born gay and kind of offensive to gay people. I get where he's coming from. Most people who see NuTrek won't know about the daughter though so I'm not sure it's going to bother them.

Simon Pegg's response to George Takei:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/08/simon-pegg-defends-gay-sulu-after-george-takei-criticism

Excerpt:

Yep, that's another part of my beef with it.. BUT it's a little more convoluted. Because I think about stupid things far deeper than I should.

Because the characters all, it is assumed, have the same parents and similar backgrounds as the originals some parts of them will remain immutable. Kirk still has an authority problem. Spock was still picked-on when young. Scotty is still brilliant. Uhura is still a brilliant linguist. Chekov is a remarkable wunderkid. Sulu is a badass space pilot.

However, because Sulu gay now when he wasn't before you're also making a statement on the nature of homosexuality. That it's a choice, or something that can be altered by things 'not going just right.'  Without realizing it Pegg has played into a very right-wing narrative on the nature of sexuality and human personality.

And it bugs me, a lot, that he both doesn't realize it and because doing it just to do it IS pandering. His intent is good-natured but still misguided. The way you right an injustice isn't by saying, "BOOM, EQUAL," and waving flags saying, "look we fixed things!" It's dismissive to the problem and ignores that it's a problem you felt you had to do it in the first place.

Plus, making it Sulu feels like they did it BECAUSE Takei is gay not because it felt like it should be for that character. Why not make Uhura finally realize she's gay and that's why she breaks up with Spock? Or that Kirk is gay? Or Chekov?

It does feel like pandering.

Eh, come on, it's not like I read past the headline :-)

(my bad)

But to your followup:

Kirk's parents were both alive in OldTrek while his father was killed in NuTrek. Spock's mother was alive until dying of old age in OldTrek, but she died on Vulcan in NuTrek. Scotty recklessly transwarp'd an admiral's dog in NuTrek, never showing that level of recklessness in the original series. As far as I can tell, they haven't said anything about Uhura's musical talent in NuTrek, which could be there or not.

Basically, the new cast has some of the snapshots of the original, but the origins are all different.

We don't know anything about Sulu's heritage in NuTrek. We therefore can't make the leap that "badass space pilot" means the same as it did in the 1960s.

Multiculturalism means something different each generation. It's all context. 150 years ago, it meant Italians getting along with Germans in the US. Nowadays it means realizing people are different even when it's not obvious by skin color or accent. In the 1960s, I'm guessing the cultural assumption was that pilots were guys were heterosexual women chasers.

Roddenberry was a visionary, but we can forgive him if is breadth of vision then doesn't match the idea of "visionary" today. Takei is probably right that Sulu being gay doesn't match The Vision(tm). But that was 50 years ago, when having a Russian weapons officer was considered wierd.

I am not sure that "sexuality is something you choose" is a necessarily right-wing narrative *if* you celebrate all the choices that people make. This was something that a lot of queer activists actually argued in the 1990s before "it's genetic and it is destiny" became orthodox dogma that provided  a way to shut mouthbreathing right-wing shitheads up. I can easily see a Star Trek future where one of the things that's awesome about it is that people are polymorphously perverse and fuck whatever they want to fuck without fear of anyone thinking less of them. People besides Kirk and Riker. That would actually be consistent with the post-racial future that Trek usually shows--where ethnic and racial background is just an interesting human detail about a person, not ever in any way something that the government or society hassles them for.

THIS is the problem.

Have some balls and make Kirk gay if you want a gay guy.

Takei is an actor. The idea that a character played by a gay actor must necessarily be gay themselves is so misguided - acting is pretending. Gay people should be able to play straight characters without the implication that the character is gay, and straight people should be able to play gay characters. Alec Baldwin is a raging liberal but on 30 Rock he played a conservative - acting!

Reading between the lines, it seems like Takei likes the character he played, the job he did playing him (and specifically portraying a macho straight guy as a gay man), and is proud of this personality he brought to life, and now he's being told "well you're gay so the character is gay now too." It really diminishes the skill of the actor to bring a character different from themselves to life - which is their entire job!

It also plants in people's minds that any character played by a gay person is secretly gay and is going to be retconned as gay later, which ultimately probably isn't good for gay actors.

This strikes me as a classic case of guy trying too hard to prove he's progressive and down with "the gays", over the objections of the primary gay person involved. "Pipe down gay guy, a straight guy is talking for / over you!"

It's cool that he floated the idea I guess, but the idea that it "honors" a guy who is opposed to it is inane. This seems much less about honoring Takei or being inclusive and more about Pegg trying to collect "woke bae" accolades.

Honestly, again, Sulu is the only TOS character who never has an on-screen heterosexual romance, except in the Mirror Universe. So if you're going to make a TOS character have been gay all along, he's the only one you can do that to without actually contradicting the canon version of the TOS character. All we know in terms of on-screen information is that he has a daughter, and in the Trek future I am sure gay men can adopt kids or have surrogates just like in 2016. What was said off-screen, even by Roddenberry, is basically fan-fic, and if we go by that, then Kirk and Spock are gay lovers etc. :)

At this point even Star Wars has a more coherent canon. Trek's canon started falling apart long before JJA.

Star Trek canon continuity is no longer a thing.

In most franchises this sort of thing would bug me, but in the case of Trek it is more fun watching the internet get upset about it.

Sulu had grabby times with females while, effectively, under the influence of drugs.  He was clearly hetero in ToS based upon that element... if you care about a few seconds of screen time from a ToS episode in this argument.  I certainly don't.

Regardless, they're making too much of this issue.  I get everyone's position, but if Takei (Japanese American) and Cho (Korean American) can both play the character, we're already pretty far down the road of not being controlled too tightly by the original series fine details.  Sexuality of the character was not a defining element in either series, so they can retcon all they want as far as I am concerned.

All them Asians look the same amirite?  :awesome_for_real:

Reminds me of Tony Shaloub playing a Korean actor playing a Chinese character.  Galaxy Quest continues to be relevant.

I get this argument, but continuity with the TOS isn't something I care about and I'm not sure the makers of the new movies care about it either. I understand the logic that if being gay is not a choice then in this universe gay characters should still be gay and straight characters should still be straight, but to me the Nu Trek movies are basically a parallel universe with all bets off. To be honest I don't really understand what the relationship is supposed to be between TOS series characters and the Nu Trek characters - divergent timelines, alternate reality, "lol who cares", etc.

My problem with Sulu being gay has nothing to do with continuity, which is why I say have some balls and make Kirk gay. My problem is that the idea that a character played by a gay actor must themselves be gay is damaging. And if you ask a dude and he says no then respect his wishes - otherwise why bother asking?

Ok, I agree with that: making the character gay because the actor is--despite the actor saying he doesn't care for the homage--that's pandering.

At the least making Kirk bi would kind of make sense--it would just reinforce the character's reputation for hitting on anything if the situation calls for it.

Just got back from seeing it with the son person.  This was a much more ensemble approach than the past two. Justin Lin really knows how to make each person get enough screen time.  The plot was not overly complicated, and it was pretty fun. The actors did all seem a bit....weary and tired of their 5 year voyage.

This is:

Way better than Into Darkness, which isn't just bad but stupid.
Can't evaluate vs. the first reboot film, whose virtue is not so much as a story as it is as a reboot.

It is better than most of the bad TNG films.
Some of the bad TOS films.

It's...inoffensive? Watchable? Forgettable but digestible? The sort of thing that if you were bored or hot or whatever and you paid money to see you would go, "Eh, that was ok" and then a day later would be like "I think I saw that, but I don't really remember it".

It uses a late-film plot twist to try and give an antagonist who has almost no personality or backstory up to that point some meaning and to tie him into the main character arc, in a very tortured way that doesn't really make up for the ADHD inability to actually focus for a while on establishing the bad guy and his situation. There is stuff that you can tell Lin said "I HAVE TO HAVE THIS" aka a thing with a motorcycle that the scriptwriters obligingly found a tormented way to pay off. There are a couple of accidentally melancholy things about Chekov.

It's fine. It's not great. No one will be angry or especially happy about this unless they're wound too tight about Star Trek or way too generous about everything.

Yeah, was fun. It was good, not great. I'll at least remember parts of this movie, whereas the last one I literally could only remember Cumberboosh is in it. Good summer action film.

It's forgettable, but not nearly as much as Ghostbusters was. 

The usual quick references to TOS here and there. I enjoyed the Glowing Green Space Hand reference, myself. The wife laughed loudly at the weapon they used to defeat the baddies while I rolled my eyes. Futurama did the classical music joke better.

For being featured so prominently in the marketing and trailers, the girl (I forget her name) was a pretty meh character. I guess it's just because she was a hot white alien. She and her 'storyline' could have been pulled and not really affected the movie much. That's not a good thing.

Props to the score composer. The music is original, but pay attention when Kirk is in melee with the main baddie. You have real and definite aural callbacks to the old "da-da-da da-da da-da daaa-da da-da" fight music of TOS. Nice touch.

I feel like there were some scenes cut due to runtime. I have a very strong suspicion about
I had a good time watching, but I wouldn't say it had any soul. With the sendoff to Nimoy and Anton's death it feels like the series should end, though I'm sure it won't.

Is this movie about anything?

I saw someone post on Twitter a speech Ryker makes in a TNG episode (I think it's Ryker) about a person who comes from a sexless society but feels she is female. Star Trek, to me, is about philosophical themes, a vehicle for classic SF explorations, etc.

My problem with the previous Nu Treks is that they were just about shooting at stuff. Which is fine, but not what I want from Trek. Is there something to this movie over than action / adventure?

That's one reason I have a soft spot in my heart for Star Trek 5, even though it's a pretty terrible movie.

There is Otho g to this Trek but action. There is some brief introspection about death but it's not a theme.  Your criticism of Nu Trek is the same I have but its what Paramount is going to turn it into. 

Which for me is why it feels like it's time to retire the series. It's wholly generic and interchangeable with any other recent scifi action movie and relies entirely on fond memories of the old series for any weight. You can feel the test screening audience and marketing comments as you watch all of them.

All sizzle, no steak.

If you can accept this you'll be entertained until your next white bread experience.

It is not really about anything. There is the vaguest hint of it being about a motivation to remain on the Enterprise for Kirk and Spock, and there's a sort of vague tip of the hat to all the times Kirk said to some alien or lunatic admiral or superbeing that the human race had started to go beyond its violent past or that the Federation was peaceful etc. That's about it.

The core cast and surviving crew are remarkably nonchalant at the end about losing 200+ shipmates.

The Kelvin universe also continues to puzzle me in that the Enterprise's "five-year mission" in this timeline evidently takes it to none of the places that the Enterprise went in the previous timeline, or so it feels.

There is what now?  :awesome_for_real:

Anyway, I'll catch it one video some day then. I'm really curious about the Star Trek TV show. I've been listening to a Star Trek: TNG podcast (don't mock me) and it's getting me irrationally excited for a new Star Trek show, even though I should know better than to get my hopes up.

This article is never more true.....http://www.theonion.com/video/trekkies-bash-new-star-trek-film-as-fun-watchable-14333 (http://www.theonion.com/video/trekkies-bash-new-star-trek-film-as-fun-watchable-14333)

Check out the score titles:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn-hOUiVMAIXZLW.jpg:large)

Apparently this composer does this regularly with his scores.

That's Giacchino's schtick. He called the track in the first movie where Kirk's father dies, "Nailing the Kelvin". He does it for other soundtracks.

The film is about terrorism and overcoming it via unity, Er, cultural imperialism.  The new character is a poor foreign orphan who loves American Rock and Roll and brings valuable technical skills to the Federation melting pot.  The villain is a discharged US soldier who felt neglected by his country and radicalized in a foreign land only to return and attack a civilian target.  He is defeated by American Rock and Roll corrupting his hold over his adherents. 
It's a bit silly, but there you have it.

Jesus, can you just NOT for fucking once?

I just got back from seeing it and I think it was easily the best NuTrek film which should tell you about the level of it. It was worlds better than Into Darkness and most of the TNG films besides First Contact. I think Elba was a bit wasted behind all that makeup. The twist to that whole thing was given away in the last trailer I saw a bit and the explanation was meh.

Worst, most cringeworthy, saw-it-coming-and-begged-for-them-to-just-not moment:


Justin Lim, Simon Pegg and other screenwriter did a decent job of giving every major cast member screen time and something to do, which some guys just cannot pull off. If they continue on with this crew in this vein, I'm ok with it. Heavy action, a little light psuedo-Trekkian philosophy.

It was much less braindead than the panoply of fuckstupid that was the trailer cavalcade before the movie.

The use of Sabotage was just silly. I think if the whole movie had been tonally that way, like the whales film, it might have worked ok. But it wasn't, so it just felt dumb.

Intergalactic Planetary should play every time they go to warp.   :awesome_for_real:

If you are talking to me, Haemish, I was just replying to the people who said the film isn't about anything.  It totally is.  It's a progressive view of humanity, et al, where we come together in multicultural splendor to build Space New York for Space Immigrants who love Space American music and motorcycles.  Sure, Space Colonialism created Space Terrorists, but we can overcome them by working together each in our own diverse capacity.  I'm making it sound silly, but I am talking about a film where a future space ship won a space battle with a little help from the Beastie Boys, so silly fits.

My opinion is that it is the only NuTrek film that feels like TOS, and I love it.  It is easily better than any Trek film since First Contact.

It's definitely one of the best 4 trek movies.

As Haemish said, this was the best NuTrek film, and I'd probably put it 3rd best overall; maybe 4th.  It had a bit of everything, but didn't overdo any particular trope.  All the while it was a wholly new experience.
I liked Pine's toungue-in-cheek reference to his life being "episodic."  It was almost like Abrams was directly giving me the middle-finger.  I lolled.

The hearkenings back to ToS (both direct, en memorium, and philosophically) were also pretty tasteful; I appreciated that.

Enjoyed it. Only complaint is that the movie only seems to have one speed and I think there needed to be a bit more character development here or there.

Saw it on Saturday. It was enjoyable and didn't feel like a waste of money. White alien girl, however, was a bit of a waste beyond the couple of lines of her complaining about the crcew wrecking her house.

I haven't seen it yet, but they've had 2 movies to delve into the characters.  I'm not gonna be upset if there's not too much more growth there.  As far as the pacing are you saying the movie was too fast and furious?   :awesome_for_real:

I don't mean the main cast. It would be spoilery to really get into it but the motivation of the bad guy and the "new sidekick" roles are kinda underdone.

Yeah. Two hours, they should be able to give us a memorable antagonist.  They really don't.

He's angry, yells a lot and sucks life force. There's your bad-guy.

I feel like this could be said of 90% of big summer movies these days. Where is Hans Gruber when you need him? (Yes I know he's dead)

Maybe there is something to the theory that so many bad guys being CGI / mo cap makes it hard for the actors to do much with the characters. So many bad guys these days are the same blueish dude or LOTR troll guy. Not only can they not emote well, but they also tend to look very similar to each other.

White alien girl was hot, that's enough.

I know TNG basically did a Die-Hard-on-the-Enterprise episode, but honestly, a nuTrek film that was essentially dealing with a dangerous criminal gang up to serious bad shit would be an awesome change of pace. Or have the Enterprise have to team up with a kind of Dirty Dozen of Spaceships for some desperate mission. There was a good animated episode with Orion pirates who have the bad luck to pull a heist on a ship that the Enterprise is scheduled to rendevous with in order to get life-saving medicine for Spock--it leads to some Wrath of Khan like cat-and-mouse stuff in the chase.

Anything but "generic unexplained alien asshole who is going to destroy a base/planet and then maybe the entire Federation". Especially since they've clearly decided that saving the Enterprise from destruction and not losing most of its crew is insufficiently exciting and motivating for the cast.

This movie was enjoyable, but it just doesn't feel much like Star Trek to me for some reason. I can't put my finger on it, maybe they need to put some (real) Klingons in it next time or some shit.

(I know they were in the reboot and in Darkness but they sucked).

I didn't think the Klingons sucked in Darkness, they were just immaterial. It could well have been any alien race in that situation. Them being Klingon had no bearing on the plot other than to make the Enterprise have to be stealthy, and invading a moon near the Klingon homeworld had no repercussions.

You could say Ricardo Montalbán was the only good enemy in all the films.

The Borg are ok, though TNG fucked them up more and more over time. The Queen kind of ruins it but it's not the worst thing ever.

The Klingon that Christopher Lloyd played was somewhat decent, and rather amusing in some ways. Christopher Plummer's Klingon too. Other than that, yeah, the movies have never really been able to establish a villain able to hold the screen meaningfully.

I swear one of the best Trek's was the one where there was no crew or bad boss to reason with. Just a ship. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doomsday_Machine_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series))


Edit: linked fixed

If you've ever played Klingon Academy, Plummer reprised his role as Chang. Did a fantastic job, best thing about the game imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1JRMJXut8I <-- Trailer for the game and Intro. Worth 6 mins of your time.

If that whets your appititle all the cutscenes are in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqVlSNP1jEI

Your link is broken, but I can see you're referring the episode in which the Enterprise meets Unicron.

The music in that ep is also some of my favorite.

He's a discharged soldier who felt neglected by his country and self radicalized.  If they dwelled on his character any longer, the film would have been a downer.  Besides, there is nothing truer to TOS than a rogue Starfleet captain, except maybe for a godlike computer.

Completely true--though don't forget crazy admiral. (But they did that in Into Darkness, and it might have worked ok if it weren't for the dumb Khan bullshit.)

If you think about "crazy captains" though--there's some who really work and are memorable in TOS and TNG and some who are just forgettable loons. Decker (the guy in the Doomsday Machine) is great. The guy in the Yangs and Kohms one is too silly. I think they could have risked him just being a rogue captain from the beginning--that would have let Kirk build up to a real burn by the end after starting somewhat sympathetic to the guy.

My son asked me last week, "Is Decker from the Motion Picture his son?" I told him I don't think so, then I looked it up and told him yes, yes he is.

Decker was great because he'd seen his crew die and had gone full Ahab crazy.  I think another 10 minutes of him though and you would be rolling your eyes at him. That being said, if there was any episode turned into a JJmovie I'd want to see, it would be The Doomsday Machine.  Plus it wouldn't be Enterprise blowing up for once.

I wouldn't be so sure. My gut tells me they would find a reason to have it blow up. It is almost at mythical trope level now.

The movies have turned the Enterprise into the ultimate red shirt, after the shows treated it as being as unkillable as a main cast member.

To be clear, the ship's "influence" practically never died in the film.  Which I thought was a nice touch.

This was horrible. Absolutely horrible. Bob referenced the heavy handed underlying 'message' that just screamed 'Look how socially conscious we are',  the alien ship tech made no sense, the McGuffin made no sense, the music was stupidly used, the characters were disjointed... there was really nothing good there at all. I was very disappointed and I had low expectations. It really felt like some 12 year old's fan fiction was used for the script.

Sounds like the 2nd or 3rd best Star Trek movie ever then.

It's actually a really good movie and probably the best of the reboot films. I'd put it at about 3rd or 4th best Star Trek movies though to be fair, TNG only had one good movie, TOS had 2 and a half (the whale movie hasn't aged well) and the reboot has 2 good movies. So it's not a huge amount of competition.

I'm not sure what the heavy handed message he's referring to is. Probably the bit about the soldier who didn't adjust well to post war life or something? The rest of his rantings seem to indicate he didn't pay attention to the movie. In short, Furiously, judge for yourself but I had more or less the opposite reaction he did. Disclaimer: I tend to be less harsh and jaded than most of the people on f13.

Oh, I've seen it. It was great. I think it really showcased Justin Lin's ability to highlight a ensemble cast much more than the previous two films. I thought it was fun. And it's definitely one of the best four trek movies ever. I am sick of the enterprise being a punching bag, it's almost a joke at this point.

Saw this last night at the local premiere. I liked it even though the ending was very, very silly indeed. Jaylah was cool and I didn't think that she was irrelevant at all. As well as having a hidden spaceship, she also had fairly extensive knowledge of the bad-guy's base, some tech to help Kirk with his distraction and gave important context for the rescue. The fight scenes were awful and I tuned them out so as to avoid getting a headache from the combination of strobes, shakycam and rapidly shifting perspectives. Likewise, the editor really fucking liked rotating camera shots to emphasise a circular element or movement on screen to the point where I actually started to feel somewhat motion sick after a while. Having said that, the long shots of the Enterprise and then the Franklin flying underneath the canals on Yorktown were really nice and the shot where the Franklin is flying through the swarm and it looks like a collapsing surf wave tube was excellent. I'd easily put it at the top of the list for the new Trek films and probably above a bunch of TOS and TNG movies too. Wrath of Khan is probably better and so is Undiscovered Country but this is way better than Into Darkness or the first reboot Trek film.

If you didn't see the heavy handed message, you were the one not paying attention.

All three of the new Treks were disappointing. This one hurt most because Pegg said he understood what was wrong with the prior ones... and it was worse in many of those ways. Turning the radio up wins the day? Ugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLoq9JojZNE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLoq9JojZNE) I thought it was pretty cool in this scene.

The Voyage Home is still the best of all the Star Trek films, and you all know it

I can't help but imagine Ben Carson saying that, with that exact expression.

Watched it in a hotel room at PAX. Was a little inebriated, but could still tell it was the best of the new ones, and probably top 5 overall. Sure, you can laugh at the Sabotage sequence, but it was fun, and it was a typical Trek reversing of the tachyon beam type solution. Only real complaint was that I didn't like Jayla as much as I should have.

That's likely because there was I think supposed to be more of her character that ended up on the cutting room floor. They really needed more of her.

I think they couldn't decide whether the planet itself was interesting. They started to suggest it was a kind of shipwreck/castaway planet full of people like Jaylah--that the bad guy was constantly bringing down ships and some survivors managed to keep away from his troops and his tendency to siphon off the life of captives. So we only get one establishing scene with her fighting off the other goobers, to keep the whole thing streamlined and to make sure each of the major Enterprise characters got one scene or schtick, and that the big action sequences got sufficiently large gobs of screentime. But that's the problem. Imagine a film that was just about the Enterprise near the end of its five-year mission getting drawn to a shipwreck/castaway planet, getting wrecked, surviving crew having to fight their way through a bunch of motley castaway aliens, making friends and alliances (a mini-Federation of castaways) and then taking on the big bad, who turns out to be a Crazy Captain Who Is About to Launch His Evil Plan. Sort of the same story, but Jaylah and the planet would be the centerpiece instead of all the other stuff going on.

This was much less satisfying than I wanted.  Somehow they missed on the little snippets of character development that they won with on the previous two movies.  I liked it, and will watch it again, but it just wasn't as good. 

Watched this last night.  It was terrible.

I wonder if they won't pause again soon for another reboot or actually invent some new characters and stories.  Seems to work for Disney with SW.

Edit: spelling

They're going to have to figure something out with their Chekhov dead. It made 343 on a 185 budget, so it was lukewarm once you account for marketing. Maybe it will take a pause if the VOD Trek does badly.

Stop the films. The core of the setting works best in episodic TV.

I think films should be saved for things that are too expensive to do properly in the tv-series while being part of the tv-series continuum so you don't have to do a whole lot of exposition and the main characters are well defined without cramming it all into the movie.

Problem is nothing to do with the setting.

The problem is the people doing this are not good at what they  do.

This has always been Star Trek's problem. Most of the TV shows are shit for the same reason.

Its ok, they can feed him Tribble blood.

Yes, still bitter.

I don't wholly agree. I think they're passably good at what they do, they're just trying to do it with the wrong property AND want the audience to associate the 50+ years of good memories with the things that go against the principle of the original two series.

It's the same problem Hollywood has with most projects these days. "Lets market on an existing brand and twist it to what sells/ is acceptable today because that's easier than trying to come up with a whole new brand."

Definitely agree they are trying to do the wrong thing. They are trying to do MCU in the Trek universe. That was fun for one movie, could have been fun a little longer probably, and could have been profitable for much longer if they'd been better at it.

But there isn't any inherent reason you can't make a blockbuster with thinking in it. I want a Christopher Nolan Star trek!