Star Trek: Rants and raves about the new movie

[Stace]

I won't get a chance to see until Monday at the earliest. The buzz has me excited, though!

[ShannonA]

My wife is excited too, much to my surprise. I think it'll be next weekend before we see it though, as this weekend is mothers-day-ly busy.

[Stace]

So, finally saw the movie yesterday (finally...as if it'd been out for weeks already!). I thought it was a great ride, lots of entertainment value which is a good thing. The casting was spot on, though I think Karl Urban as Bones was my favorite. Effects were exciting. Dialog was funny. It paid fair tribute to the original series (with a few nods to later movies and series, too) while firmly setting itself apart, too, which was needed.

Kirk should have gotten his shirt ripped during one of his many, many, many hand-to-hand fights. There should have been a little more techno-babble to explain things like just how a supernova was going to endanger "the whole galaxy" and just what the heck red matter is, and why one needs to carry around so much when you're only going to use a tiny little bit, and, um, there's a new black hole that can't be all that far from Earth now...isn't that a bit worrisome? And it would have been really, really nice if they'd use the "reboot" to give the women a little more prominence ... aside from Uhura getting to smack lips with Spock.

I would have given it an enthusiastic thumbs up, right till the end when I realized that they weren't going to reset the broken timeline, pretty much saying "f-you 40+ years of Star Trek continuity, we can do whatever the hell we want." I felt disrespected, and I'm not even obsessive in my Trek fandom. And, in truth, they did that without even really giving us a very good story...it was an *excitingly-told* story, yes, but if you strip away the glamor of special effects and nostalgic humor, it was a pretty lamely contrived storyline. I can live with lame stories in Trek (really...they stole whales in Star Trek IV, and I loved it!) but I think giving us a lame story only for the purpose of pushing a giant reset button is just...sad. I left the theater feeling empty instead of energized.

Anyone else have this experience?

[Fritzef]

Well, yes. That is, I enjoyed the movie as I watched it, but didn't care much for the ending. It seemed rather sad and un-necessary to leave Vulcan destroyed.

The more I thought about it, though, the thing that bothered me the most about the film (beyond the enormous science plot-holes--how did the shock wave from a supernova move faster than the speed of light? How could Spock not know when it was going to arrive?) was an issue of age, and, I think, deliberate manipulation to attract a younger audience.

That is, I think a movie about young Kirk and Spock is a fine idea. But it should end with, at most, Kirk getting some sort of field commission as a lieutenant, skipping a couple of years as ensign. He shouldn't be make captain of the Federation's flagship at age 25, with essentially no experience. He should make captain about, I don't know, 30? And the Enterprise should not be his first command.

I suppose that sounds like Trek-y whining about continuity, or age-ism. It isn't, or only slightly the latter. Trek TOS was never all that into military realism, but it had enough that you could believe you were seeing some 'Star Fleet' of the future (well, maybe if you squinted hard). This version seems like pure wish-fulfillment for teens or maybe young 20-somethings. Nope, you won't have to work hard and pay your dues to get to the top. It will be handed to you because you're a good-looking rebel...

And why are all the characters, for the most part, rebels and misfits? The old Kirk wasn't, particularly--he was headstrong. Scotty was practically straight-laced. But no, our new Scotty has to be in the doghouse for his wild (and apparently unsuccessful) theories. I realize that we have an in-story explanation for why Kirk is the way he is, but so what? [An interesting side question is what does Abrams have against father-son relationships, given that they never work on Lost either.] Why does Kirk have to be a rebel without a cause? Are there really a lot of people out there pining for James Dean?

[Joebot]

I liked it, but I wasn't as ga-ga about it as a lot of reviews I'd read.

First off, there were plot problems. The way the seven main characters got brought together was beyond contrived, into realms of downright absurdity. Especially the way they got Scotty onto the ship. That was just silly.

Eric Bana was wasted as the villain. He was just some angry Romulan miner with an axe to grind? Really?? A miner?!?! Yeesht. The fact that he was so mad at Spock for failing to stop the supernova was dumb. The best Trek movies have all had strong villains (Khan, the Borg, Christopher Plummer's Klingon general).

I know this is going to super-nerdy, but here goes ... it didn't "feel" like Star Trek. Trek has always had this layer of social commentary. Yeah, sometimes it was heavy-handed and preachy, but at it's best, it was intelligent and thought-provoking. This movie had none of that. It could just as easily have been Generic Sci Fi Action Movie.

Now, judging it as a sci fi action movie, it's terrific. Great cast, good use of humor, and some terrific, exciting action scenes and special effects. But as a TREK movie, it left me a little cold.

As for the continuity stuff, I guess I don't care much about all of that. They brushed it all away with magic "parallel reality" mumbo-jumbo, and I was fine with it. The movie is basically an origin story, and they did a good job of setting up this new world. The inevitable sequels could be really great. They just need a better script.

Oh, did anybody else get annoyed with all of the lens flare? I swear, I've never seen so much lens flare in a movie before. There was a bright light shining into the camera all the freakin' time!!