361

My personal review:

I was stunned at the opening sequence, the action, the pace and intelligence behind design and cohesion was incredible. The first action of conduct from the Captain in charge of the USS Kelvin, was a small anthromorphization of what the whole Starfleet entity represents, ordinary men and women making split-second rational decisions, within the frame of utter chaos. The image of the villians carried a direct and striking similarity to its Starfleet opposite.

" Hello, my captain wishes to welcome you aboard, in order to negotiate a cease-fire". [paraphrasing]

Just a marvelous approach to introduce “villians”. Then the action sequences in between the scene, just absolutely incredible. The moment where a Starfleet agent gets sucked into the abbyss that is space, is so realistically upheld, the sound, the abstract movements in space, all glorious.

The two scenes where we get introduced to Spock and Jimmy.T.Kirk. Were a simple and comprehendable few minutes for all audiences, a great way to capture the simple minds. They could have just left it to sort out for ourselves, by way of narrative. They don’t really show that much, although Spock’s few minutes tell us more about him, than Kirk’s few minutes. Spock is portrayed as a conflicted mind of two worlds and perspectives. While Kirk, is just a lost punk, which totally appeals to people that like movies such as Wolverine-Origins etc. Simple people. Catching as it were, two audiences in one attempt.

Total action-
The action was beyond words, it felt real and surreal at the same time. The Space dive for instance, where Kirk and Sulu dismantel the drill. The moment where they are in nothing, absolute nothingness, refering to space here. Is amazing, no sound, the visuals are nigh blinding, and for a moment you forget that that’s exactly, what is supposed to happen if people where to space dive. Just amazing.


Over arching story-

Didn’t really appreciate the time travel aspect ruling the film, but it was necessary to maintain a new Star Trek reality embedded into the framework of the old one. Due to this, they now have an a great blank canvas, where they can literally pick and choose from whatever they see fit. Intelligent approach, very great.

Weak points:

Well, there was actually just one. Nero, not so much the acting, it was great. Eric Bana really did an amazing job. But mostly his motives and the way he chose to act upon them. His home planet got destroyed, very tragic, but it’s not like Starfleet made that happen. They did their best to stop it from happening, they failed. Instead of getting over it, he decides to take revenge on all of Starfleet, no problem, that’s what villians do. But, a plot hole emerges, why didn’t he just tell Starfleet or Spock, to get there sooner? Or even advance on the technology used, since now, the red matter can be studied ever more elaborately? I guess they had to do it and sacrifice it for upcoming sequels.

Director, writers, and Cast.

JJ was awesome, he really managed to give it a new look, lens flares pace, design. That made even people who despised Star Trek [ like me, sorry] absolutely adore it and keep dreaming of how much they want to join Starfleet and date hot green girls and girls with different inter-galactical dialects.

Writers,
From the same writers of Fringe, and producer of Lost. Alex, Damon, and Robert, are really just geniusses. It’s our generation of Spielbergs. Don’t tsk tsk tsk me, we all know you’d rather watch Star Trek or LOST, than War of the Worlds or the latest Indiana Jones flick.

The Cast.
Amazing, just absolutely impossible. I don’t know how this worked out. I mean, have you seen Karl Urban as McCoy?
" Dammit man, I’m a doctor, not a physicist!"

This movie was in one word:
Phenomenal.

362

Cool. Thanks Derek.

363

Well remember RT is simply a binary scoring system so it’s not a measure of how good a movie is, rather how crowd pleasing a movie is.

364

Oh, and why haven’t the future Romulans invented guard rails yet? That ship was worse than the Death Star.

365

Oh, nice. I guess they nailed it then :)
Personally, I didn’t like TDK that much, Heath’s performance pretty much ran the entire movie. Literally, every scene he wasn’t in, I couldn’t bear to watch through.

I thought they were simple miners.Perhaps there wasn’t enough time, or they didn’t think of using it for extensive combat.

366

Yep, they adapted the mining ship for war/battle as they were out working when their planet was destroyed, IIRC.

367

25 years and no railing? Come on, how about at least a rope line? Then they wouldn’t need to worry about the issue of leaning around all day.

368

Have you ever BEEN on a navy ship? They are NOT OSHA compliant. The very idea of catapulting dozens of aircraft off of an incredibly short strip where engine blast can suck crew members into engines and off of the deck in the blink of an eye is insanity. Doing this at night with crosswinds and a rolling sea is insanity.

At what point did you think war-ships or mining crews would have remotely adequate safety procedures? Are Romulans secret unionists?

369

Oh come on! It’s got to be somewhere in employee benefits. Forget the dental plan, forget sick leave, just a railing!

370

Plus, where would they get the materials for railings? That is a big ass ship. For that matter, what kinda angry and now depressed Romulan wants to safety proof their ship when all the women folk just got sucked into nothingness.

371

I don’t think those guys are all that angry and depressed. They still have aspirations, like being famous singers.

372

I mostly agree with this, but I wouldn’t call the cast great. I think the potential is high but there wasn’t really that much for Sulu and Scotty (I think they’ll both be good choices in the long run), and Chekov was awful. Good cast outside of him, And I understand that in a reboot things ar egoing to be somewhat different, but Kirk was too much of a douche bag. I’ve read arguments that it’s unfailing confidence (which is supposed to be good), but all Kirk really does is make a bunch of stupid or incomprehensible decisions and get magicked into a good outcomes; he’s a borderline Mary Sue as is and this will not do. But not the end of the world, and I’m sure he’ll be a strong character in the long run. there is interesting potential there, since growing up without his father very clearly changed him.

Also, the time line was actually changed as soon as Nero’s Battlecruiser I mean Mining ship made its way into the past and destroyed the Kelvin. Future Spock seems to make special note of Kirk not growing up knowing his father; butterfly’s wings and all that. So, Spock and Uhuru are in wuv. And Kirk is a fucking shitheel who stumbles into star fleet and starts to think maybe there is more to life than being a shit heel, as opposed to the highly driven, inspired by his father starfleet man (Spock notes his relationship with his father was a big deal). The Borg probably grow up as peaceful hippies who worshup carebears.

I don’t like time travel stories generally (outside of Dr Who and the occasional exception like Back to the Future), but this was a decent way to do a reboot. I’m sorry that Nero was such a shitty villain (and really, Eric Bana brings things to the table normally; he just didn’t get to put them to use). I think the plot was largely stupid while the action was good and the cast has a lot of potential, once Chekov is fired and they get a decent script (I read somewhere this was allegedly just a second draft and they just sort of rushed into everything). I don’t regret spending the money to see it or regret my time in the theater. I think there is a vast amount of room for improvement.

I can’t say I understand the humor comments, though. Various TOS movies had some to considerable (IV, though it was often corny, but so was a lot of stuff in the new film) amounts of humor. III even had Bones doing his possessed by Spock routine, and Christopher Plummer and his pets.

373

I really like Karl Urban and (just a tad less so) Eric Bana. They might start to replace my man crush for ol’ Christian Bale.

374

I always assumed it came from “sawbones”, but I suspect that is an older term many in the audience has never heard, so they changed it.

375

I really liked Karl Urban as McCoy, and Zachary Quinto will do all right as Spock, but no one else really felt right. Except maybe John Cho as Sulu. Bruce Greenwood was good, too, but it’s doubtful we’ll see much more of Captain (Admiral?) Pike in the future.

376

You know that lonely feeling you have right now? Get used to it. I was one of the three people who didn’t think TDK was the best thing ever and I am just now being invited back to parties.

In all seriousness, finding movies of any sort that I enjoy these days seems to be a rare treat. I am happy to have greatly enjoyed this and sorry you don’t feel the same. Here is to finding those rare nuggets of movie happiness.

377

When did I say I didn’t enjoy it?

I had a great time watching this movie. It was fun!

The old Trekker in me finds things to nitpick, but the moviegoer in me was able to shut him up and just savor the action. But old habits die hard, and it’s far easier to nitpick after the fact.

Not liking some of the casting =/= Not liking the movie.

378

Oh! Then in that case… We don’t need to see his identification. These weren’t the droids we were looking for. You can go about your business. Move along!

379

I saw this today. I loved it. The characters, the way the channeled the original cast, the references to TOS, the reboot, the cleverness, the effects, everything was awesome. I’ll forgive things like the “Three characters ended up withing a few kilometers of each other on a whole planet” thing and “Kirk went from cadet to Captain when there were much more experienced officers available” thing. Whatever, because the film was actiony and entertaining.

Given this … it was a great film … but it wasn’t a Trek. In my mind, Star Trek is the penultimate “as hard as you can make it” sci fi in our culture. Star Trek is sci fi for nerds, sci fi for geeks, sci fi for people who pay attention to the smallest details and care if a certain engine can go to Warp 9 or not, and why, or how a black hole works.

Star Trek in that form is what inspired people to make cell phones and thermal imaging and (we’re still working on it!) transporters and a thousand other things. This movie was entertaining and fun, but it’s not going to inspire anyone to become an engineer, whereas the original series and next generation did.

By the way, here is one bit. That thing that was put into Pike’s mouth wasn’t the same thing as the creature in Star Trek II. In II that was a Ceti Eel and entered through the ear. In this movie it was called a “Centauri” something and entered through the mouth. But it did look the same!

380

Sure. You need a certain mass of red matter to keep it stable. To simplify it in terms a non-Vulcan can understand, a large mass of red matter has what, simplified, is a greater surface tension, which helps keep it from interacting with the matter around it. Once you get to droplet size, the area of surface tension is so thin that standard matter starts to seep in, allowing the singularity process to begin.

Once you extract the smaller globule, you have to use it within just over an Earth minute, or it will begin to react with the matter in the containment module. At that point, you have about another minute to make peace with your deity or deities or some such belief which comforts you.