Star Trek: Into Darkness

[Reg]

And a thousand berets go flying through the air in chagrin.

[Baldrake]

You know I watched Wrath of Khan a couple of weekends ago in preparation for this movie.

Wrath of Khan is terrible. It is an awful movie that is stupid and terrible and it's supposedly the best one of the bunch?

UGH.

I'll take the reboot over any other Trek movie.

I tried this a few years back. It didn't go well.

I loved the reboot, by the way.

[Ratman_tf]

Are we saying that WOK's story didn't make sense, but the reboot did?

I think I need to start drinking bleach.

[eldaec]

No star trek stories ever made sense.

But the characters have been through so many that they build up a kind of internal consistency built around bizarro-logic, which at least means actions and choices come from an identifiable palette in a specific situation.

At least until the TNG movies which are even worse than the SW prequels.

[Ironwood]

They never made any TNG movies.  If they had, they would have been utterly awful and have been erased from my brain.

So that's good.

[VainEldritch]

I liked this film, it delivered everything I wanted from a Trek movie.

Did it respect Cannon?

http://headdlineslondonuk.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/78217-1.jpg

[Ratman_tf]

No star trek stories ever made sense.

Khan steals a ship, sets out for revenge against Kirk, whom he blames for the death of his wife. They go at it, tooth and nail, and SPOILER! Spock has to sacrifice himself to save the ship and crew.

How does this not make sense, as a story? It's not like the reboot, where Nero something something red matter, old spock time travel, something Vulcan something, PEW PEW! Hanging off ledges, roll credits.

No argument about the TNG movies. They were all a special kind of shit, and only watchable in a train wreck kind of way.

[rk47]

I brought my friend to watch the reboot. He wasn't a trekkie.
So I explained, the world of Trek is like - what if everything is utopia on earth and humanity unite to reach the stars and stuff.
Also, be prepared for moral decisions and themes as they meet new alien race for the first time and try not to interfere in their evolution.


30 mins later into the movie...

He gave me a weird stare and I just shook my head slowly as I munch on the popcorn.

[Nevermore]

On the Daily Show, Abrams basically said he didn't like Trek so he made a Trek movie for people who didn't like Trek.

[Hutch]

Would that be a Reverse Xzibit?

[01101010]

On the Daily Show, Abrams basically said he didn't like Trek so he made a Trek movie for people who didn't like Trek.

Well....he said he never got Star Trek until he did the movie and went back and watched the TV and movies. And he made the movie for everyone - for those they didn't understand Trek and those that are Trekkies. So it becomes an Abrams movie with Star Trek decor and enough attention to canon to placate the rabid fans, like my mother.

[Ratman_tf]

On the Daily Show, Abrams basically said he didn't like Trek so he made a Trek movie for people who didn't like Trek.

Well....he said he never got Star Trek until he did the movie and went back and watched the TV and movies. And he made the movie for everyone - people who watch Jersey Shore.

[Khaldun]

I give Abrams a lot of credit for pitch-perfect recasting and for some interesting tweaks to the character's backstories and interrelationships. And some of what people are complaining about in the movies (that they're all about battles and pew-pew and not so much about overloading supercomputers with illogic, visiting planets where crazy Federation officials have reintroduced Nazism or Chicago gangsters, and getting all agitated about the Prime Directive) is a problem with the movies in general. e.g. because of the need to have a 90-120 minute narrative that is appropriately "bigger" than a TV episode, the TOS films actually told stories very differently than the episodic series. In only one of them (VI) is the Enterprise in something like its "normal" role with its "normal" crew and even then it's essentially a retirement voyage. None of them feature the Enterprise just doing its thing and being interrupted by an emergency or complication.

The TNG films *do* play like expanded episodes and they're horrible swamp-poop as a result.

So Abrams having his films filled with pew-pew and explosions and non-status-quo adventures is partially a narrative defect of all ST films. Like Doctor Who, it's really a property meant for episodic treatment.

But that said, it's also clear that Abrams doesn't really like and doesn't get Trek's basic core mythos, which is too bad. I like the creeping introduction of a slightly darker, slightly more realistic, slightly less utopian element--Roddenberry's cornball pretentiousness about a lot of his ideal future is pure early 70s and about as appealing as George Lucas' masturbatory beliefs that he was doing the Heroes' Journey or whatever.

I could imagine that after a third film, when this cast is going to either be moving up in their careers and too expensive (Saldana, Quinto, probably Pine, Pegg) or not moving up and therefore heading out to pasture in an endless series of convention appearances, could give way to a rebooted TV series featuring a completely different "next generation" cast but retaining some of the few good grace notes of the reboot.

[eldaec]

The TNG films do not play like extended episodes. This a dumb trope and an insult to the only consistently decent sci fi series in the history of television.

The TNG movies play like inconsistent nonsense in which characters continually make decisions and take actions that make neither practical nor philosophical sense.

They shared the unfortunate trait of "Having low production values" but the TNG episodes were (for the most part) hugely superior to the films.


This doesn't mean I particularly want to see TNG episodes in movie format. But claiming the TNG movies were remotely like the TV show is silly.

[Khaldun]

Insurrection is like a really bad season 1 TNG episode. Of which there are many. Look, I loved TNG, but until you get to season 3, there are a LOT of painfully bad episodes.

[HaemishM]

The TNG films do not play like extended episodes.

Actually, I disagree. They DO play like extended episodes in that the story idea seems like it was made for a 42-minute TV episode, but has been stretched to fit a 90+ minute movie. That stretching is WHY you get impractical decisions and idiotic philosophy because they have to fill twice the time with the same amount of story. The TNG episodes probably WERE superior to the films because they had to be more economical with the storytelling.

[eldaec]

Insurrection is like a really bad season 1 TNG episode. Of which there are many. Look, I loved TNG, but until you get to season 3, there are a LOT of painfully bad episodes.

There is a great red letter media review of insurrection which explains better than I could why Insurrection is not like a TNG episode. Mostly by pointing out that there is a TNG episode with exactly the same plot, only everyone acts like an adult and Picard in particular operates in keeping with established character traits rather than converting him into a stupider captain kirk half way through.

If you set out to make an extended TNG episode what you should get is "Best of Both Worlds". But if you use hack writers and Jonathan Frakes then you what you get is, well, the actual TNG movies.

[Ruvaldt]

In fact, Best of Both Worlds has been edited into a full length film.  I saw it in a local theater last month, and it's available on blu-ray/dvd now.

I'm with eldaec on this one.  The TNG movies are nothing like the TNG tv episodes.  If they were they'd be more like the actual extended episodes, which were pretty amazing: Best of Both Worlds, Time's Arrow, Chain of Command, Redemption, etc.  TNG had several great hour and a half long two parters and they were nothing like the theatrical movies.

[Khaldun]

Argh. You guys are saying, "Oh, if they were like extended episodes, they'd be extensions of the BEST episodes, amirite, and so they'd be GOOD. Because they were BAD, they can't be extended episodes!"

No. First because there are plenty of BAD episodes to extend, and second the point is not bad or good (though lord, Insurrection was bad) but that the badness of Insurrection has a bit to do with the extent to which its central conflict, scale and character development are basically "episodic" in nature--not particularly cinematic or staged as an "event film". This is the problem with ST movies in general: they need to create a 90-120 minute "event" with a sense of spectacle and narrative motion, from a source-material series that spread its spectacles out or that concentrated them into tight episodic bundles (say, Yesterday's Enterprise).  A few of the films, like WoK, rose to that challenge but mostly they didn't. The most spectacular case of not rising to it is Insurrection.

[eldaec]

There are no extended episodes of TNG that were as bad as insurrection. The episodes ruvaldt mentions aren't 'the best' episodes, they are the episodes that are already 90 minutes long.

You won't find any episode at all of any length that is as bad as insurrection for the specific reasons I described above. There are some bad episodes, but Picard doesn't turn into a late middle age Kirk in any of them.

That said, if you just want me to agree that the specific story of insurrection was a stupid story for a film then sure. But that doesn't explain First Contact, which was just fucking stupid.

[Ghambit]

Saw a sneak preview last night in museum IMAX 3d.  Definitely worth the 3d for this one as much of it is filmed in full IMAX and "for 3d."  Interesting effects when pushed with trek sci-fi.
It's a good movie.  Better than the 1st one I thought and in reality is the true "introduction" for the reboot.

Much better filmography in this version too, taking full advantage of fairly epic vignettes and poignant expressions.

There is a caveat to all of this though; this movie is pretty much Star Wars with trek puns.      I'm dead serious.   Imagine Star Wars mixed with Trek and you'll get this movie.  Even down to the sound effects (as evidenced in the credits).  Which makes sense since Abrams now has the SW license too - so may as well pillage their assets.

Oh, and Klingons.    We need to see more of them.

Oh, and plotholes.  There's a lot of em, but who cares in this case.

[Ruvaldt]

they are the episodes that are already 90 minutes long.

Exactly.  All of the episodes I listed were 90 minutes long and were great.  You could edit any of them to be a full length film and I would love to see them in a theater.

Saying that the TNG movies are like long TNG episodes doesn't make any sense because there are long TNG episodes and they're nothing like the TNG movies...because they're actually good.

[01101010]

There is a caveat to all of this though; this movie is pretty much Star Wars with trek puns.      I'm dead serious.   Imagine Star Wars mixed with Trek and you'll get this movie.  Even down to the sound effects (as evidenced in the credits).  Which makes sense since Abrams now has the SW license too - so may as well pillage their assets.

    I don't even have the words.

[Ginaz]

In the theatre now waiting to see this...in 3D IMAX...for free.

[Ratman_tf]

There is a caveat to all of this though; this movie is pretty much Star Wars with trek puns.     I'm dead serious.   Imagine Star Wars mixed with Trek and you'll get this movie.  Even down to the sound effects (as evidenced in the credits).  Which makes sense since Abrams now has the SW license too - so may as well pillage their assets.

    I don't even have the words.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/4026025/deja-view-my-favorite-movie-star-trek-vs-star-wars

More importantly, the TNG movies were dumb action flicks starring a cast and adapted from a TV show that was about ethical space dillemas. Shoehorning Picard into the role of John Mclaine... well they did it in TNG, but they did it well. In the movies, they run roughshod all over the characters, especially poor Picard.
Red Letter Media's video on them show this well.

Insurrection was the really long, bad espiode of TNG. First Contact and Nemesis were dumb action flicks with the TNG characters shoehorned in. Generations was a bewildering kind of stupid, and I can only guess it was 'written' by tossing pieces of paper with words into a fishbowl and plucking them out at random.

nuTrek was dumb action, with an especially dumb story that tops even the TNG movies. It's only saving grace is the actors. But then that potential was pissed away on shallow drama, and mindless action.

[Ghambit]

I only say it feels like a star wars mashup in the superficial sense (plus a smidgen of some hero's journey + friends).  "nuTrek" still doesnt have the char. development and storytelling that Star Wars had, but let's be real.  It's an action flick, as you say.  Does a good job of that too.

[Ginaz]

Just got back from seeing this.  I loved it.  I don't care what the jaded old time Trek fans say.  The last 2 reboot movies are so much better than ANY of the previous ones, TES or TNG.

Also,

[Khaldun]

Just got back from seeing it. It is a fucking terrible movie. One of the worst I've seen in a long time. I liked the first reboot movie a good deal. Whether or not I knew anything about Star Trek, I would have hated this film. The action is totally disconnected from the flow of the narrative and half the film is taken by weird disjointed shoutouts to (or are they mockeries of) previous Trek stuff. It's like watching a bad school play version of Trek at some moments. There are some nice character bits here and there lost in the flotsam and jetsam of the plot, such as it is.

[MahrinSkel]

Just got back from seeing this.  I loved it. 

Just got back from seeing it. It is a fucking terrible movie.

God, I love this site/community/asylum.

--Dave

[Velorath]

Saw it a couple days ago but so much of the basic plot is wrapped up in spoilers, it's impossible to really discuss this movie in anything other than the broadest of terms until a lot more people have seen it.

[Khaldun]

The plot holes also. Fuck they are so bad.

Like:

[Pezzle]

All of those things.  As an action movie you can shut off your brain and chew your corn if you like.  As a Star Trek movie?  What the shit?  Bad pacing, another rushed movie trying to make up for years of tv episode interaction.  Oh, and lens flare.  Is that what makes it futuristic?  This movie did not need to involve you know who.  If you want to establish a new franchise you really do not need to crutch in staples of the old one. 

See it after video release, maybe. 

[Ratman_tf]

See, you can't be negative about nuTrek, because then you're a trekkie neckbeard poophead. It can't possibly be because the movies are shit.

As an action flick, all on it's own, no Trek baggage, it's bad. It doesn't build any tension, and relies on special effects and hanging off ledges instead of building real tension.
As a Trek flick, it doesn't inherit any of the resonance of the long lived franchise, but tries to borrow it anyway.

[Ginaz]

I swear some people just go to movies so they can nit pick about them, thinking they're the internet version of Siskel and Ebert.

[rk47]

you mean u watch movie to be entertained, ginaz?