I had the sense that a drop of red matter plus a lot of heat and mass (such as what’s found in the core of a planet or the middle of a sun) combine to form a black hole. The black hole that forms at the end is the result of the energy from the ship exploding and the sheer quantity of red matter reacting. The first two black holes are created with just a drop under specific circumstances - the final is the entire cylinder of red matter reacting.
Remember that Nero wanted to implode every single planet in the federation, which is quite a few, and he only had a finite amount of red matter to work with with no way to make more since he basically was using stolen technology. He needed to conserve his supply by minimizing the amount needed to destroy each planet, and the best way to do that was to use the core’s energy to start the reaction.
Also, you were intended to imply that Nero forced military secrets out of Pike (in a nice homage to Wrath of Khan) which made breaching Starfleet’s defenses trivially easy, especially combined with his technological advantages.
I think the pacing worked because they didn’t feel the need to show each of these scenes. We didn’t need to see Nero slowly break through Pike’s mental defenses through a bunch of cutaway scenes, or watch Nero use whatever he learned from Pike to somehow make it to earth. You see the aftermath, and the action gets to follow Kirk and Spock which is as it should be.
I liked the movie a lot and was surprised at how much I loved the performances from all the cast. Checkov was better than the original. Eomer of Rohan was the original, it was such a great imitation. I also really like Pine as Kirk, and the fact that they kept his character arrogant, smart, brave, instead of more wishy-washy and uncertain, like most protagonists these days. Nice to have an old-style hero.
I do think the writing could have been tightened up - there was some needless stupidity:
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Kirk happens to stumble into the same cave as Spock when thrown on a planet? It’s an entire planet! Stupid contrivance that they could have easily written better, by having the escape pod “lock onto a local Federation signal”, for instance.
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Nero waits around for 25 years for Spock to arrive? Utterly retarded - he had no idea that Spock would EVER arrive, since he was dragged through the wormhole first and didn’t know for sure that Spock was as well. And if he was, for all he knew Spock arrived 2 million years ago, or would arrive 2400 years in the future instead of 25. The whole premise of the movie is completely nonsensical.
It seemed like at some point the script draft the travel back in time was more deliberate, to a specific point in time, so that when Nero missed it, he’d know when Spock would likely arrive and therefore wait. But as the script was revised, it made zero sense for him to wait around at all.
I saw this yesterday and I agree with most of the nits but they in no way detracted from me having a great time with this. The new cast did a terrific job taking on the iconic roles, especially the main trio of Kirk (who I was most skeptical of going in), Spock and McCoy.
The lens flare was a bit excessive and I did always notice it but it wasn’t enough to genuinely annoy me.
Or they do, but what moron is going to go back in time and erase his own existence?
Hopefully they don’t, and we don’t see the constant fall back to time travel for story hooks. Although it was used great in this movie. Completely wiping out the restriction to adhere to continuity without completely ignoring it.
mono
65
Wasn’t the the point of interrogating Captain Pike to get the codes to bypass Earth’s defenses?
Just came back from seeing it today. I went in prepared to be wowed…and came out feeling entertained by the experience. I agree on most of the criticisms described throughout the thread, so I won’t rehash. It’s unfortunate that they had such a weak plot but with so many introductions of the main cast I guess they couldn’t fit a story with too much depth in there without it being a 3-hour movie.
I could be wrong but believe both of these (and what the heck magical “red matter” is) are explained much further in the comic book series that leads up to the movie. I know it may not be an excuse for the movie failing to providing what some may feel is needed information, but if you want more info. there are sources available.
As for the Kirk, and Scotty meet up; it did not seem that outrageous to me. Kirk’s pod was programmed to head close to the starfleet outpost, while a bit off it was close enough for someone to survive until recovery. I did have to make a short leap for Kirk running into Spock prime, but I chalked it up to heroic destiny. My mind simply decided that cave, which happened to be close to the outpost, provided Nero the perfect spot in viewing range of vulcan to place spock safely long enough to watch his world die.
Lum
69
The Memory Alpha wiki has a lot of spoilery details:
Giant super powerful ships threatening earth and time travel are so way overdone in Star Trek. The vengeful Romulan has been done before also. On the whole the plots varied from tolerable to idiotic. The ship design was pretty damn ugly even compared to TOS Enterprise, the interiors were pretty stupid on the whole from the ultra modern bridge to the beer brewery engineering (which didn’t even look like it should fit in the secondary hull TBH. There were some truly cringeworthy Star Trek V caliber moments (Scotty being transported into the cooling system anyone?). They should have lost the whole Ice Planet segment which was just dumb. Despite all this it managed to be enjoyable, though I hate whoever made shaky cam popular.
Acting was pretty good. McCoy was awesome. Probably a good stretgy to make the whole thing an alternate universe…
I guess the greater question is why you’d give those codes to anyone spacebound…
What he did, though I can’t say I walked out having enjoyed it. Totally failed to live up to its critical or consumer hype. The Qt3 hive mind fails epically yet again; you kids and your failed tastes and sensibilities need to get the fuck off my virtual lawn.
You need to take a Prosaic and re-join the rest of humanity that can
HAVE A GOOD TIME.
Awesome.
How else do you
TAKE
OVER
KHAN’S
SHIP?
Some stuff that wasn’t covered up above:
The rest of your stuff is pretty dismissable as “dude, it’s fiction,” honestly. Scotty and Kirk transporting that far shows you how badass Scotty is at his job, and thinking outside the box. “Making your brain hurt” seems to be a bit harsh for what Star Trek is and always has been. At least they didn’t “invert the warp coil inducers” or something.
You seem to have some really high standards for movies. I’m curious if you’ve seen Primer, and what you thought of it?
I had not thought of this, which may be another difference in how we approach movies, but damn you for putting that thought in my brain.
I have. I thought it was awesome right up until the end, when all of a sudden I couldn’t figure out what the hell happened. This helped, but I feel like any movie that needs a two meg jpeg graph to explain it has somehow failed to tell its story clearly.
I’m surprised I’m the first to mention the obligatory “Slusho” reference when Uhura ordered it at the bar on the bartender’s recommendation.
Case
78
I had a fabulous time, and will probably see it in the theaters once more. It was like rediscovering Star Trek all over again. So I’m sorry a couple of you feel curmudgeonly about it, but the rest of us had a fun ride.
What really impressed me was that they got the chemistry between the characters right, while developing new chemistry (Spock/Uhura) that seemed to work. And people who might think the new Spock was a tad more emotional than the old one – well, that was the point. His entire world was obliterated.
As for how a just-about-to-graduate officer candidate was promoted to Captain, I imagine a conversation in front of the Federation Council, with some Starfleet Admirals attending, to go something like this:
“Kirk, we want to express our heartfelt thanks for saving Earth and possibly the entire Federation. We’d like to offer you any posting you desire.”
“Thank you, sirs. I’ll keep command of the Enterprise.”
Long silence. “Well, we thought…”
Kirk: “I believe I’ve already proven I’m capable of commanding the ship. You did say any posting?”
I enjoyed it quite a bit. I was able to catch it @ 4:20 this morning. Just two people in the theater.
Denny, that response rocked.
I didn’t see any product placement, so please enlighten me.
I also didn’t notice lens flare until the last scene on the Enterprise bridge.
I thought the first Captain of the Kelvin was badass. Seems like he was a shout-out to Picard fans. Captain Pike was great as well. Both guys learned how to deal with fear and move forward.
Future Spock’s ship was cool looking. For a brief moment I thought it was Andromedan.
The point-defense lasers were nice. Not of a lot of time spent on photon torpedos. They seem to be a bit smaller than I remember.
Glad to see the Red Shirt go down on his own terms and not as a sacrifice.
Tyler Perry? Awesome.
One thing I liked about the movie was the fact that it just moved forward with the timeline and didn’t worry all that much about canon.
Uhuru orders a “Budweiser Classic”.
It would be like ordering a “Bass Classic” now, btw. Once things are that old you don’t need special monikers for them.
One thing I liked about the movie was the fact that it just moved forward with the timeline and didn’t worry all that much about canon.
Actually, if they did one thing really right, it was pay attention to the details. More than I would have expected, actually.
