Star Trek 09 review thread

[JME2]

That's not the funniest part.

The funniest part is those trekkies who failed to understand that the Onion is not a real news organisation, but as a satire program. All they cries of being insulted that a comedy show is insulting them by pointing out the obvious(something they failed to understand) is the funniest thing ever. Hell, they even tried to argued that the news shows is inaccurate.

Reminds me of the conservatives that think Colbert and his show are legitimate news rather than satire.

[ray245]

That's not the funniest part.

The funniest part is those trekkies who failed to understand that the Onion is not a real news organisation, but as a satire program. All they cries of being insulted that a comedy show is insulting them by pointing out the obvious(something they failed to understand) is the funniest thing ever. Hell, they even tried to argued that the news shows is inaccurate.

Reminds me of the conservatives that think Colbert and his show are legitimate news rather than satire.

Which kinda makes me wonder, how many hard-core Trekkies turn outs to be Republicans. Especially with their good old past mentality.

[Jack Bauer]

Wil Wheaton just saw an advance screening tonight.

For what it's worth, he just tweeted: "Star Trek is reborn and it is SPECTACULAR."

Things are looking up for this movie.

[Zablorg]

That's not the funniest part.

The funniest part is those trekkies who failed to understand that the Onion is not a real news organisation, but as a satire program. All they cries of being insulted that a comedy show is insulting them by pointing out the obvious(something they failed to understand) is the funniest thing ever. Hell, they even tried to argued that the news shows is inaccurate.

Reminds me of the conservatives that think Colbert and his show are legitimate news rather than satire.

Which kinda makes me wonder, how many hard-core Trekkies turn outs to be Republicans. Especially with their good old past mentality.

Don't be retarded. All nerds are like that.

[Kamakazie Sith]

That's not the funniest part.

The funniest part is those trekkies who failed to understand that the Onion is not a real news organisation, but as a satire program. All they cries of being insulted that a comedy show is insulting them by pointing out the obvious(something they failed to understand) is the funniest thing ever. Hell, they even tried to argued that the news shows is inaccurate.

Ray, how many times has an onion article been posted on SD.net and people totally bought it?

Hint - A lot. I swear there was one year where each time an onion article was posted it hooked a few it was targeted to provoke. The onion is VERY good at doing this. The most memorable one for me was the Onion article which told a story about a Highway Patrol officer who pulled over Obama's bus while he was campaigning. Comedy gold...

[ray245]

That's not the funniest part.

The funniest part is those trekkies who failed to understand that the Onion is not a real news organisation, but as a satire program. All they cries of being insulted that a comedy show is insulting them by pointing out the obvious(something they failed to understand) is the funniest thing ever. Hell, they even tried to argued that the news shows is inaccurate.

Ray, how many times has an onion article been posted on SD.net and people totally bought it?

Hint - A lot. I swear there was one year where each time an onion article was posted it hooked a few it was targeted to provoke. The onion is VERY good at doing this. The most memorable one for me was the Onion article which told a story about a Highway Patrol officer who pulled over Obama's bus while he was campaigning. Comedy gold...

Except this piece of comedy is so bloody obvious!

[Bounty]

The Metacritic score has ballooned to 94%.

I'm going to see the movie again this afternoon. If anyone wants an in-depth review, or just has questions, feel free to ask.

[Ford Prefect]

by some quirk of fate I managed to score one of the one hundred and fifty preview screening tickets in Tasmania, and I basically just got back. And it was great. If I wasn't laughing, I had a big smile plastered on my face the whole time. It was upbeat, clever and extremely well made: the way Bounty put it seems very appropriate. Admittedly, I have famously bad taste, but I thought it was a wild ride.

[Bounty]

If I wasn't laughing, I had a big smile plastered on my face the whole time.

Same here. I was surprised at how well the humour worked, even the bits that sound horrible on paper.
Spoiler

The whole inoculation scene shouldn't work, but somehow they had the whole theatre laughing out loud. And Chekov's video briefing? Jesus. That scene took balls to put in but it somehow just killed.

[Bounty]

There are now two negative reviews out of fifty plus on RT. One is from a reviewer who has legitimate complaints about the script:

Youthful energy, non-stop action and a downright sexy Spock, but this "Trek" lacks the heart and wit of its predecessors.

The other is a reviewer who goes on a rant about modern cinema sucking:

Anyone who accepts this doesn’t respect Eisenstein and Peckinpah’s formal/spiritual innovations and will probably never understand Spielberg’s genre transformation.They’re settling for Abrams’ idiot savantry; he’s TV’s Fincher, not an artist.

Methinks he may have a bug up his ass. He also throws spoilers around like candy, so be warned.

The other 52 reviews are glowing. I'll be damned if I'm posting them all

[General Zod]

Roger Ebert weighs in.

“Star Trek” as a concept has voyaged far beyond science fiction and into the safe waters of space opera, but that doesn’t amaze me. The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action. Like so many franchises, it’s more concerned with repeating a successful formula than going boldly where no “Star Trek” has gone before.

The 2009 “Star Trek” film goes back eagerly to where “Star Trek” began, using time travel to explain a cast of mostly the same characters, only at a younger point in their lives, sailing the Starship Enterprise. As a story idea, this is sort of brilliant and saves on invention, because young Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and the rest channel their later selves. The child is father to the man, or the Vulcan, and all that.

Don’t get me wrong. This is fun. And when Leonard Nimoy himself returns as the aged Spock, encountering another Spock (Zachary Quinto) as a young man, I was kind of delighted, although as is customary in many sci-fi films, nobody is as astonished as they should be. Holy moly! Time travel exists, and this may be me! It’s more like a little ambiguous dialogue is exchanged, and they’re off to battle the evil Romulan Capt. Nero (Eric Bana).

Time travel as we all know, is impossible in the sense it happens here, but many things are possible in this film. Anyone with the slightest notion of what a black hole is, or how it behaves, will find the black holes in “Star Trek” hilarious. The logic is also a little puzzling when Scotty can beam people into another ship in outer space, but they have to physically parachute to land on a platform in the air from which the Romulans are drilling a hole to the Earth’s core. After they land there, they fight with two Romulan guards, using ... fists and swords? The platform is suspended from Arthur C. Clark’s “space elevator,” but instead of fullerenes, the cable is made of metallic chunks the size of refrigerators.

But stop me before I get started. I mention these details only to demonstrate that the movie raises its yo-yo finger to the science, while embracing the fiction. Apart from details from the youths of the characters and the Spock reunion, it consists mostly of encounters between the Enterprise and the incomparably larger and much better armed Romulan spaceship from the future. It’s encouraging to learn that not even explosions and fires can quickly damage a starship. Also that lifeboats can save the crew, despite the vast distance from home base.

That would be because of warp speed, which for present purposes consists of looking through an unnecessary window at bright lights zapping past. This method of transportation prevents any sense of wonder at the immensity of outer space and is a convenience not only for the starship but also for the screenwriters, who can push a button and zap to the next scene. The concept of using warp speed to escape the clutches of a black hole seems like a recycling of the ancient dilemma of the rock and the hard place.

But there are affecting character moments. Young Spock is deliberately taunted in hopes he will, as a Vulcan, betray emotion. Because Zachary Quinto plays him as a bit of a self-righteous prig, it’s satisfying to see him lose it. Does poor young Spock realize he faces a lifetime of people trying to get a rise out of him? Nimoy, as the elderly Spock, must have benefitted, because he is the most human character in the film.

Chris Pine, as James Tiberius Kirk, appears first as a hot-rodding rebel who has found a Corvette in the 23rd century and drives it into the Grand Canyon. A few years after he’s put on suspension by the Academy and smuggled on board the Enterprise by Bones McCoy (Karl Urban), he becomes the ship’s captain. There are times when the command deck looks like Bring Your Child to School Day, with the kid sitting in daddy’s chair.

Uhura (Zoe Saldana) seems to have traveled through time to the pre-feminist 1960s, where she found her miniskirt and disco boots. She seems wise and gentle and unsuited to her costume. Scotty (Simon Pegg) seems to have begun life as a character in a Scots sitcom. Eric Bana’s Nero destroys whole planets on the basis of faulty intelligence, but the character is played straight and is effective.

The special effects are slam-bam. Spatial relationships between spaceships are unclear because the Romulan ship and the Enterprise have such widely unmatched scales. Battles consist primarily of jump-suited crew members running down corridors in advance of smoke, sparks and flames. Lots of verbal commands seem implausibly slow. Consider, at light warp speeds, how imprecise it would be to say “At my command ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...” Between “2” and “1,” you could jump a million galaxies.

I thought about these things during “Star Trek” because I could not help myself. I understand the Star Trek science has never been intended as plausible. I understand this is not science fiction but an Ark movie using a starship. I understand that the character types are as familiar as your favorite slippers. But the franchise has become much of a muchness. The new movie essentially intends to reboot the franchise with younger characters and carry on as before. The movie deals with narrative housekeeping. Perhaps the next one will engage these characters in a more challenging and devious story, one more about testing their personalities than re-establishing them. In the meantime, you want space opera, you got it.

[Bounty]

Well that's a disappointment.

I think he's focusing too much on what he wanted the movie to be rather than what it was; the points he makes are largely valid, but they are only an issue if you go in expecting a different movie. He seems to have a very romanticed idea of what the original series was.

I'm glad he still acknowledges it is fun, just disappointed he doesn't seem to really go for it based on... niggles.

The logic is also a little puzzling when Scotty can beam people into another ship in outer space, but they have to physically parachute to land on a platform in the air from which the Romulans are drilling a hole to the Earth’s core. After they land there, they fight with two Romulan guards, using ... fists and swords?

I don't think he was really paying attention, because the first part is a *major* plot point mentioned multiple times, and the second part was Kirk and Sulu improvising. Was he even paying attention?

[Zac Naloen]

I read that review and think, oh good it's everything I wanted then.

"Serious Scifi" isn't any fun, because that usually means it's pretentious as well.

[Darth Wong]

So it's a run of the mill turn-your-brain-off popcorn movie, then. That's a lot like what I expected. Those earlier cum-stained reviews had me thinking "fanboy alert".

[Bounty]

Popcorn movie? Yes, I suppose - in the sense that it's bright, loud and accesible, but certainly not in the sense that it's vapid or shallow. I hope you're not taking the wrong message away from Ebert's review.

It says something that Ebert is one of only *four* critics so far not to be positive about the movie, and even his review is hardly scathing.

[General Zod]

Popcorn movie? Yes, I suppose - in the sense that it's bright, loud and accesible, but certainly not in the sense that it's vapid or shallow. I hope you're not taking the wrong message away from Ebert's review.

It says something that Ebert is one of only *four* critics so far not to be positive about the movie, and even his review is hardly scathing.

Define "positive" here. Ebert sounded like he felt the movie was entertaining but nothing especially memorable. That seems somewhat positive unless you define positive as blindly fellating the film.

[Bounty]

Rottentomatoes has it marked as "negative"

That's what I was trying to say; when even Ebert acknowledges it as fun you know it's doing something right.

[General Zod]

Rottentomatoes has it marked as "negative"

That's what I was trying to say; when even Ebert acknowledges it as fun you know it's doing something right.

Huh? It's not as if Ebert is some snob who doesn't enjoy anything but "artsy" movies and films that most people have never heard of.

[Bounty]

Rottentomatoes has it marked as "negative"

That's what I was trying to say; when even Ebert acknowledges it as fun you know it's doing something right.

Huh? It's not as if Ebert is some snob who doesn't enjoy anything but "artsy" movies and films that most people have never heard of.

But he is the benchmark at least two people in this thread judge films by, and he's the last person you'd accuse of being either a corporate shill or a screeching fanboy.

[General Zod]

But he is the benchmark at least two people in this thread judge films by, and he's the last person you'd accuse of being either a corporate shill or a screeching fanboy.

Yes, but your post made it sound as if he's impossible to please.

[tezunegari]

In one of the trailers we see Enterprise being constructed planetside.
Does the movie explain how they get a monsterprise off the planet or why they build it planetside at all?

[DaveJB]

To be fair to Ebert, he's stated in the past that he hasn't really been keen on any Trek film or series made since 1986, with the exception of First Contact. For someone who isn't a Trek fan, there might not be much of a reason this film would stand out from, say, Wolverine or Terminator 4 (I'll be able to comment more after I've seen it tomorrow night).

[Bounty]

In one of the trailers we see Enterprise being constructed planetside.
Does the movie explain how they get a monsterprise off the planet or why they build it planetside at all?

This is a review thread, not a tech doscussion thread.

But no, it's not explained how or why. Does it need to be?

[Zablorg]

Frankly the trailer that I saw spelt out for me that it was a pop-corn flick, so I don't think I'll be dissapointed in the least. I'm seeing it in a couple of days with my family, so I'll give a review after that if I have time.

[Ford Prefect]

why they build it planetside at all?

Because it's a visually impressive scene when Kirk rolls up to the shipyard on his motorcycle in the very early morning and sees it sitting there, dominating the landscape.