Star Trek: Into Darkness

[Reg]

The last season of Enterprise was actually not terrible.  It wasn't enough to save the show though.

[Ironwood]

It's very easy to argue that Enterprise wasn't all that good.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to defend it in any way. I hope that came across.

Re-read what Riggswolfe wrote.  Bad Grammar all over the shop.

[palmer_eldritch]

Voyager's cast was ok - even the CONCEPT was a decent take on the universe. But it was saddled from the get-go with totally shit stories that no one could have acted well with. I mean, I tried to stick with it but after like 2 seasons, I just couldn't take it anymore. And really, the only reason I watched it second season was it came on before Babylon 5 and my buddies and I would hang out on Saturday nights to watch B5 and that was something that soaked up an hour.

I remembered Voyager picking up a lot towards the end.

The concept was great in that it was supposed to be a return to the idea of exploring unknown space as they undertook their long voyage home, but for some reason they still seemed to end up going back and forth between locations they'd already visited.

[Venkman]

1. I should have been more clear, I meant the airspace around starfleet headquarters when they are having the meeting in response to the London bombing. The gunship Khan steals just flies up with no response, blasting away for minutes. We do a better job of restricting airspace now, and put up defensive batteries in really high security areas.
...
I just sat down to watch a 200$ million budget movie and was slapped in the face by these gaping plot holes that can be picked apart so easily is just insulting to the viewer and sloppy writing.

Ah good point on #1. Yes, that did bother me. I could handwave it by saying Super Smart Secret Guy in Section 31 having necessary clearances and shit, but still, it'd be harder for him to get to our current White House. I understand that the pre-Kirk Trek universe of Cochrane to Klingons to Romulans had that same optimistic hope of the future before Nemo; however, after Nemo shit obviously hit the fan culturally or there wouldn't have been the intense effort going into making the Vengeance, and pushing for war with the Klingons, and all that. You can't get to that point without also have a paranoid leadership body.

I could overthink the movie into hating it. That's really easy. But even after this and other debates I still love it. Maybe it's because I have super low expectations for Trek movies. This was a GREAT Trek movie. I'm with angry.bob in where this possibly ranks. Nobody can tell me this was worse than 3 or 5 or Generations, Insurrection, or Redemption. After that it comes down to personal taste. I was bored by 1 but some love it. I thought 4 was cute but not real Trek, but that's personal bias. 6 was ok but not as good as Nick Meyers' first Trek movie (2, which is my favorite). I also loved First Contact, and it had all the right beats to it. But 2 was better for me.

Was it a quintessentialy good movie? No idea. But I personally don't give a shit about that scale. I'm not a trained critic, I don't watch a nearly broad enough range to have an objective opinion, and as I think I've previously said, my old time favorite movie is the original Die Hard.

So yea, don't invite me to Sundance, for, I am the summer blockbuster target 

[Raguel]

I just saw this today. I thought it was unfortunate that they ripped off Godfather 3, of all movies to steal from. It was a decent movie overall. I can't say I care for the reboot in general, despite the best efforts of the cast.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I just saw this today. I thought it was unfortunate that they ripped off Godfather 3, of all movies to steal from. It was a decent movie overall. I can't say I care for the reboot in general, despite the best efforts of the cast.

 

[Raguel]

I just saw this today. I thought it was unfortunate that they ripped off Godfather 3, of all movies to steal from. It was a decent movie overall. I can't say I care for the reboot in general, despite the best efforts of the cast.

 

I was referring to the scene where Khan attacks the room full of senior officers.

[palmer_eldritch]

Although that was probably the best bit of Godfather 3.

[Special J]

Well, I watched it finally.  I stayed away from this thread, reviews or any spoilers all summer. I was pretty pumped but was never able to get to the theater.

So I'll do the positives: I thought it was well acted, great visuals and some great action scenes.  I don't care enough to get pissed about lens flare and fully realize this is not the Star Trek I grew up on. But...

 

That was a stupid, lazy shitpile of writing.  I won't list them all since I'm sure this thread has hammered on all of them.  So I'll just go back and read and nerdrage in private.

Fuck you, JJ. Fuck you.

[Yegolev]

Similar to my experience.  I spent time trying to think of a succinct way to describe this movie.  I have decided that it is really a trailer for another, better movie.  Mostly this is due to the awful pacing.  I'm not sure any scene lasted more than 45 seconds.

I did enjoy the fan service very much.  *ducks*

[Venkman]

Aside from the three usual suspects (2, 4 and maybe 6 depending on audience), what is an example of a well written Trek movie?

Like, is the standard some are holding this one to based on movies in general (understandable) or Trek movies specifically (why I ask)?

[Khaldun]

I could give two fucks about whether something is a well-written "Trek movie" per se. I do care a bit that if you're making a Trek movie that you care about some of the baseline ideas that make it Trek. This does not mean vague dirty old-man late 60s liberalism a la Roddenberry. It might mean, though, that you care about space being big and about what a ship of people do when they have to face the unknown more or less alone. Or things of that nature. If you buy a property, do something that makes your purchase make sense. If you're just going to make a flick that name-checks a property but otherwise is indifferent and/or hostile to it, I hate you just for wasting money like inbred Hollywood dumbfucks do.

But I care more about whether a movie is just a decent movie. And for speculative stuff in general all I care about is that you don't change the rules every three seconds just because it makes for a great action sequence, because you're already playing in a situation where the rules aren't referencing everyday reality. This is not just nerdism, it's about decent storytelling, about how you establish a feel for the world you're telling stories in. You can even say, "Fuck consistency and world-building" if you *mean* to say that--if it's the point of what you're doing. Nobody bothers to think about whether the aliens in Galaxy Quest are plausible in the strict sense.

For me STID wasn't a good movie or a good Trek movie. And the first JJ Trek movie was largely both. There just to me were some big differences at both levels.

[jgsugden]

Just to toss it out there:  I'd have had much less of a problem with the current Star Trek movies if they had just cut the cord and done a complete reboot, but essentially told the same stories. 

If you establish that you're in the same continuity, you have to live up to the rules and visual style of that continuity.   If you're in a universe where we've established that the time police will fuck you up for changing history and will set it aright, then you can't have a Romulan miner go and rewrite the universe without ramifications.   Going back into the past of Star Trek and changing the rules would be like doing a Star Wars prequel and explaining the Force with some lame ass sciency explanation.

[UnSub]

Star Trek is about

1) The relationships between the characters; and
2) Moral / ethical / philosophical / social quandaries of sorts.

Those things are broken up by pew pew space fighting and pseudo-science, but Trek often follows the rules of trying to be a drama.

STID doesn't bother with boring stuff like characterisation (e.g. there is absolutely no evidence given about why Kirk and Spock are friends, because they sure don't seem to work well together) and while there are some moral discussions within STID, they are very well hidden.

For instance

[Tannhauser]

Star Trek is about

1) The relationships between the characters; and
2) Moral / ethical / philosophical / social quandaries of sorts.

Those things are broken up by pew pew space fighting and pseudo-science, but Trek often follows the rules of trying to be a drama.

STID doesn't bother with boring stuff like characterisation (e.g. there is absolutely no evidence given about why Kirk and Spock are friends, because they sure don't seem to work well together) and while there are some moral discussions within STID, they are very well hidden.

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. 

[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".

[Samwise]

The Star Wars prequels are great too if you just mentally fill in lots of cool stuff happening between the movies.

[HaemishM]

The Star Wars prequels are great too if you just mentally fill in lots of cool stuff happening between during the movies.

FTFY

[Special J]

Aside from the three usual suspects (2, 4 and maybe 6 depending on audience), what is an example of a well written Trek movie?

Like, is the standard some are holding this one to based on movies in general (understandable) or Trek movies specifically (why I ask)?

I'm not looking for genius here.  But every bit of plotting in that movie was a) a massive contrivance b) a massive plot hole c) a rehash of something old.  They even rehashed their own film.

The other films have flaws, I agree, but this is the one where they just continuously piled up until I couldn't take it anymore. We've all got our rankings for the films, and I'm not sure where I fit this one yet, but it's definitely in the "not good" bracket.

edit: spelling is hard

[Ironwood]

The Star Wars prequels are great too if you're just mentally ill

FTFY

[Yegolev]

I was mainly comparing this one to the previous one, if that helps.

[Shannow]

Or under the age of 12 (which might qualify you as mentally ill in some places)

[Venkman]

K, all that makes sense, the feeling that it's neither an empirically good movie nor even a good Trek story.

To me though, I thought it was both, for what it can be.

To get the large budget you need for high production values, you need to fill seats. But you can't do that on the backs of esoteric conversations in a conference room of the main bridge or from conventions.

At the same time, I don't think this is where Trek is going per se. I think they needed a big shot in the arm to the brand, to see if it had anything left in it. After Voyager it was kinda dead, and Enterprise nailed the coffin. The first JJ movie represented the kind of big bet you'd make if you really want to see if it can be saved, and that success resulted in the sequel. For the future, Trek will either take on another director or jump to TV. Then we'll know if there's life still in the IP.

But for now, these are the movies Trek needed, to see if there was a new audience to be captured without shedding too much of the existing one.

All that aside, I personally really enjoyed both. Very watchable and even rewatchable, the very kind of movie I always like.

[Samwise]

K, all that makes sense, the feeling that it's neither an empirically good movie nor even a good Trek story.

To me though, I thought it was both, for what it can be.

A bag of dog shit is also a great Trek movie for what it can be.

[Tannhauser]

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.

[Samwise]

You can just handwave and say "these two are friends, okay" if it's necessary for the plot, but then you can't have scenes whose intended emotional impact hinges on that friendship.  Well, you can, but those scenes will fail because you haven't given the audience any good reason to care.

"I have been and will always be your friend" worked in Wrath of Khan because it built off a lot of established history between those characters, which the screenwriter even took time to reinforce earlier in that same movie.  All that got established in Into Darkness was that they kind of get on each others' nerves.  The screenwriter put the cart before the horse by trying to use that scene to do the work of establishing their friendship, not understanding that the scene only works if the friendship was established PREVIOUSLY.

Your next post will probably be to say I didn't enjoy the movie because I was overthinking it.  I wasn't thinking about any of this while actually in the theater.  In the theater I was just thinking "wow, that was really fucking stupid" without knowing why.  I'm just explaining to you what I have figured out after the fact was probably behind my reaction, because you seem to be confused as to why some people did not enjoy this turd.

[Tannhauser]

You can just handwave and say "these two are friends, okay" if it's necessary for the plot, but then you can't have scenes whose intended emotional impact hinges on that friendship.  Well, you can, but those scenes will fail because you haven't given the audience any good reason to care.

"I have been and will always be your friend" worked in Wrath of Khan because it built off a lot of established history between those characters, which the screenwriter even took time to reinforce earlier in that same movie.  All that got established in Into Darkness was that they kind of get on each others' nerves.  The screenwriter put the cart before the horse by trying to use that scene to do the work of establishing their friendship, not understanding that the scene only works if the friendship was established PREVIOUSLY.

Your next post will probably be to say I didn't enjoy the movie because I was overthinking it.  I wasn't thinking about any of this while actually in the theater.  In the theater I was just thinking "wow, that was really fucking stupid" without knowing why.  I'm just explaining to you what I have figured out after the fact was probably behind my reaction, because you seem to be confused as to why some people did not enjoy this turd.

If you can un-clench a minute, you can see I replied to Unsub.  Not you.  Tell you what.  You just go ahead and put more words in my mouth while I move along.

[Samwise]

If only UnSub is allowed to reply to you, maybe you should be PMing him instead of posting in a public discussion.

Keep walking, punk.  

[jgsugden]

Personally, I think there is a lot to the argument that the Wrath of Khan scenes echoed in Into Darkness were unearned.  In Wrath, these characters had known each other for 15 to 20 years and had a bromance longer than most marriages.  In Into Darkness, the characters have known each other for perhaps a couple years.  Even if they were best friends for those couple years (which would be odd given the Vulcan view of emotions - even in the more enlightened Spock of the new films), it just wasn't earned.

It is the same reason why a Civil War film in the MCU wouldn't work, yet.  You don't have the emotional connection between the characters you'd need for a war between them to resonate as a major event.

[Khaldun]

The people who liked that scene that I know are mostly people who like certain forms of postmodern referentiality in their movies, which often I do as well. But mostly I think I like that when it's done in a strongly humorous way. I liked Freakazoid, for example. I guess my genre fan AND my story fan has more serious expectations for SF unless it's also self-consciously funny and referential, e.g., Galaxy Quest. When it's not played for laughs, something like Spock yelling Khan just seems, I dunno, like bad dinner theater by fans at a convention. Doesn't sit right with me if it's in a big-budget film.

[Venkman]

That was actually the one scene I didn't like. I'm cool with fan service, but that was so over the top I couldn't help but laugh for how much they ripped off the original, but with just enough twist to make it campy. I really did expect Kirk to just get up and say "just kidding" or for Scotty to pulll out a McGuffin miracle in that moment. But then they couldn't have the platformer sequence and the kinda dumb twice-in-a-row "can't beam them up but can beam you to them" thing.

K, all that makes sense, the feeling that it's neither an empirically good movie nor even a good Trek story.

To me though, I thought it was both, for what it can be.

A bag of dog shit is also a great Trek movie for what it can be.

Sure. As long as you completely the ignore the rest of the post, *anything* is possible 

[Samwise]

K, all that makes sense, the feeling that it's neither an empirically good movie nor even a good Trek story.

To me though, I thought it was both, for what it can be.

A bag of dog shit is also a great Trek movie for what it can be.

Sure. As long as you completely the ignore the rest of the post, *anything* is possible  

I mean, I could SirBruce the rest if you want, but even if the premise were correct (i.e. that the movie had constraints on it that prevented it from being good, which I don't believe anyway), the basic argument that we should evaluate it relative to the constraints you've made up so as to make it a "fair" comparison vs other (better) movies is pretty weak.  No matter what you follow that sentence with, you're saying that we should appreciate dog shit on the grounds that it can never be any better than dog shit.

[Nevermore]

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. 

I'm sure there's plenty of slash fics that cover that. 

[angry.bob]

The Star Wars prequels are great too if you just mentally fill in lots of cool stuff happening between the movies.

The Clone Wars Cg TV show takes place between the second and third movies and does a pretty good job of spanning the gap. Especially about Anakin and why he feels the need to betray the Jedi to protect the woman in his life. The deleted scenes in the second movie also help quite a bit since about 90% of them are Anakin and Padme's relationship. Further proof that Lucas is a lucky hack since cutting them all made that whole facet of the story make no sense.

[Venkman]

I mean, I could SirBruce the rest if you want, but even if the premise were correct (i.e. that the movie had constraints on it that prevented it from being good, which I don't believe anyway), the basic argument that we should evaluate it relative to the constraints you've made up so as to make it a "fair" comparison vs other (better) movies is pretty weak.  No matter what you follow that sentence with, you're saying that we should appreciate dog shit on the grounds that it can never be any better than dog shit.

No, see, I'm not critiquing the movie itself. For one, that's too easy (for all the reasons people have already said). For another, my movie preferences are too pedestrian and narrow to be able to argue shit like artistic merit. You might as well take me wine tasting 

What I'm really talking about is the overall business of the franchise:

In the balance between budget, audience size, production value and quality of storytelling, the studio chose the things that mattered most to them and applied the downward pressure to ensure certain things were focused on and other stuff less so. Screen-friendly talent, unique camera work, big names attached to it, fancy production work, summer timing, all that stuff comes at a price. Mostly that price is any priority put to certain things critcs and trekkies value. And that happens because critics don't fill movie seats and trekkies are the very audience the studio is trying to movie beyond.

In other words, take all the stuff you care about and compare it against this:

- These two made more than the first 7 movies combined
- Almost half of all dollars generated by all ST movies ever came from them

Is it "right"? Only depends how you define "right".

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.