Damn! That’s it! Undiscovered Country was the Chernobyl metaphor and Iman and Plummer, right? Yeah, that’s a good one.
Please replace all previous posts of mine that say “Undiscovered Country” with “Final Frontier.”
I must admit, I occasionally throw out “Excuse me – what does God need with a starship?” to my friends but yeah, Star Trek V is crap.
Yeah, it’s encouraging. Can he overcome the awful influence of Kurtzman though?
Yeah, that’s the one. I know it’s probably sacrilege to say it, but I have a light preference for it over Star Trek II. Love them both, but I find VI just a bit more rewatchable. I just think all of the main crew was at their best, and Plummer is so good.
One of the best reasons to play Klingon Academy – besides being an awesome capital ship simulator – was you get a LOT more of General Chang, including how he lost his eye. Both him and Gorkon (David Warner) appear in the game.
Yeah the one with Spoc’s sudden half-brother and some alien pretending to be God was not… good. Undiscovered with all the poetry references, spy stuff, Kirk’s bigotry… it was good stuff.
Thanks for the Kang > Chang correction. I am ashamed. Where do I turn in my replica tricorder?
That’s interesting re: Klingon Academy. Missed that one back in the day. Not sure why? It sure seems up my alley, and it looks like reviews at the time were at least OK-ish.
It’s a fantastic game that came out at a time when people were losing patience for games like it, so it’s a shame it didn’t get the accolades it ultimately deserved.
I think this is the character arc I liked the most. It was believable to me that Kirk would hate Klingons (you didn’t even need the cheesy death of his surprise son as motivation) and it’s easy to see how Kirk could’ve fallen in with the warhawks of the Federation. His journey from Klingon-basher to someone willing to set aside his feelings and work with people he had always been taught to mistrust was good stuff. That his arc occurred while being the patsy of a joint Federation/Klingon faction plot made it even more outstanding when he overcame his natural inclination to hate.
Final Frontier had Row, Row, Row Your Boat, so there’s that I guess.
I love me some Star Trek. There are things I like and dislike about each of the different TV series and movies. And you have to admit that several of the movies are just not that good. I like the re-boot. They aren’t designed to replace the old material, they are simply a different look at the characters and at the world around them. And like it or not movies tend to be more action oriented now than they used to, but I don’t mind that if I can enjoy the characters as well.
I don’t think the Borg Queen and the Alien(s) Queen are at all similar - the former was a clear retcon and actually contradicted everything we’d been previously told about the Borg, as well as making them less interesting. But in Alien we already established that the Alien was insect-like and that there were rows of eggs laid in an organized pattern, which was consistent with insect-queen behavior.
Unsure how to quote someone in this new forum?
Anyway, I went to the Star Trek Marathon today and saw all 3 movies. I saw both of the first 2 on opening day, but I don’t think I’ve seen them at all since. I will say that the 1st one was quite a bit better than I recalled, and the 2nd one had the potential to be very good if they’d made both Robocop and Khan more morally nuanced (all the pieces are there) and had spent more time with the Klingons and ended the movie with the torpedo gambit that blew up the Dreadnought. Some of the stuff afterwards is interesting, like the carnage of the crash and Khan vs Spock, but there was too much awkward Wrath of Khan fan service at that point, a lot of which was either dull or cringe-worthy “Khaaaaaan”.
Just silly. And one of my big problems with all of JJ Abrams movies is that they overly rely upon goofy luck and put their protagonists repeatedly in situations that they they’re preposterously lucky to survive in, and yet they seem relatively nonplussed. Goofy crap like Kirk and the snow monsters/spock popping up, and many more instances in the 2nd movie.
That said, the third movie is definitely the weakest of the bunch, which is a shame. I only saw parts of the first trailer, so I went in relatively blind, but the story is dumb, the action scenes are largely very weak - who really goes to see Star Trek to see Kirk on a motorcycle? And how would he even know how to drive it, let along like a master? On a planet that couldn’t look less hospitable for motorized driving. Just seemed like Justin Lin didn’t want to abandon his Furious roots (ditto for the music). The stuff that’s best is the character interactions/dialogue, and that’s clearly where Simon Pegg left his mark. I liked the first 30 minutes largely because of those interactions, and seeing the old TV show uniforms, etc. It’s not a complete burn, but feels vapid compared to the first 2, and while those weren’t intellectually challenging, they were at least very tightly, economically, directed and didn’t fee lazy like this one. =
Kirk owns or owned a motorcycle - very briefly shown in the first movie when he’s seeing the under-construction enterprise. (Of course, you could still argue that this doesn’t mean that he knows how to operate a motorcycle designed by some other species, but he’s not a total stranger to the concept of riding a motorcycle. Not that any of the recent ST movies actually care about such details though.)
I see what you mean, but the fact that average Aliens were capable of infecting hosts in that movie (as originally intended - I’ve seen that scene in the extended cut but never really thought about the significance of what they were showing - reproduction) seemed different than the row and rows of eggs being laid out in the chamber where John Hurt initially gets infected - that layout was more typical of queen insects laying out a nest. Plus the original Alien could have actually been a queen - they just changed the design for Aliens.
edit: thanks for the tip on quoting!
…that part actually makes sense in the movie, for reasons you’ll see.
I hope this entire movie is Trelane or Q fucking with the Enterprise crew. Kirk rides a dirt bike he stole from the Mad Max world into Ancient Rome world, then has to fist fight a Chicago mobster. Finally he gives a speech about American Values and wins a shootout in the old west.
That would be great. That’s some real classic Trek.
That would be my nightmare Trek movie right there. If I’m flipping channels and come across classic Trek, I think to myself oh boy! But if it turns out it’s one of their trips to Mob World, or Nazi World, or lets team up with Abe Lincoln to fight Genghis Khan then I just keep on flipping.
Dont forget the classic Planet Jesus!
Went in with really low expectations.
It was good. Best of Kelvin-verse Trek easily. Even the cheese ended up being fun.
As for the motorcycle…it actually ends up making sense and it is used brilliantly.
Our villain is a callback to some old misguided TOS adversaries, not in an exact way, but it ends up being something that was occasionally dealt with in old trek.
All in all, Enjoyed it quite a bit.
Pre-ST:Beyond spoiler-free review background context: I am a HARDCORE Trekkie here. I’ve seen every episode of every series. When I was a kid, I could tell you the title of any TOS episode within the first five seconds of the broadcast. I might have a shelf with dozens of small Eaglemoss Federation starships on it, but I wouldn’t admit that. I love Trek, but I’m not an “I love everything Star Trek” fanboy. Hated all of Voyager and much of Enterprise. I think about half of TNG wasn’t very good at all. And I think Nemesis and Into Darkness were execrable abominations that should be removed from continuity, the writing was so terrible in both. And Brian Rubin had me on as a special guest on his Trek games podcast. :)
So all that said, I loved this movie. Very much because of the writing. The script makes sense (a couple of things are a stretch, but there’s not universe-breaking idiocy like in Into Darkness), and the writers and actors nailed the characters this time. Jim Kirk is our hero. The Spock/McCoy banter would make Nimoy and Kelley proud. Scotty is awesome. Uhura’s underused but has badass moments. Chekov and Sulu don’t get a lot of time, but the Chekov scenes show just how great Yeltsin was. RIP.
AND, my 13-year-old, who has gone to Trek movies mostly to appease Dad, declared this one of his favorite movies ever. And he’s past the age of liking every movie.
Agreed with everything @Major_Malphunktion says above.
When I saw the first preview, I was darn near rage. The action pacing, and I took the motorcycle to be an annoying anachronism like the stupid Federation Dune Buggy in one of the TNG flicks. But nope, it made sense, and I actually love what they did with it at the climax of that scene.
The kid and I are going to go see it again, in IMAX this time, next week.
As is true with most most things in life from computer hardware decisions to Star Trek movies, I disagree vehemently with Stusser. To say this isn’t as good as Into Darkness, which ties with Nemesis on my list of worst Trek movies ever due to its nonsensical plot, is just crazy talk. :)
Say no more!