No. The McGuffin is the McGuffin, that little artifact thingy. The Abronath. I think that’s what it’s called. He has to find that before he can launch the attack. For reasons.
-xtien
I liked the movie a lot.
But I’m listening to the Qt3 Star Trek Beyond podcast, and I got to the part where they are saying the movie was too dark. Did anyone else get that impression? Maybe it was my movie theater, but I didn’t feel like it was too dark at all. There was one scene in the wreckage of a ship with Kirk and Chekov and the alien girl that was kind of dark, but I never had any trouble telling what was going on in each scene.
Really surprised this movie is getting a good reception. Liked the first 30 minutes and wanted more of the “5 year mission” space exploration stuff, but thought everything once they hit the planet was just terrible. Very weak overall.
Yeah, I just don’t understand why so much supposed “space opera” wastes all its time on planets. I don’t really care about planets once I have a stardrive. Planets provide a nice backdrop for orbits. That’s about it as far as I’m concerned.
Star Trek Beyond is the Star Trek movie for people who don’t like Star Trek movies! Two thumbs, way up! Tom Chick, Quarter to Three.
-Tom
Some of us like both, just saying.
Yep. I enjoyed it, and I’m a big Star Trek fan.
Although, apparently according to Telefrog and others in the Star Trek Discovery thread, I’m a different type of Star Trek fan than most, since I don’t care as much about ship designs in the TV shows.
By the way, the Qt3 podcast about Star Trek Beyond did a great job of covering all my favorite parts of this movie, and that included the thrilling action scenes. As for Dingus vs Tom on whether or not the show tries to explore a deeper theme, I actually found myself agreeing with both of them. I agreed with Dingus that the show does try to explore this theme of being lost, through Kirk and Spock and eventually the villain too. But I also agree with Tom in that this was not really explored much in the movie in the end. They’re both right!
Btw, I also agree with the members of the podcast on the best action scene in the movie. And I wish I hadn’t seen the second trailer so that it had come as a complete surprise to me. It really was an intense sequence that was very exciting despite knowing the result in advance.
Saw it yesterday, loved it. Such a fun time, great action, finally had more McCoy, which I needed, but felt bad that Uhura and Sulu were mostly sidelined. I hope the series continues in this direction.
By the way, in the movie Kraal (however you spell the bad guy’s name) mentioned the Xindi Wars and other things briefly from Star Trek Enterprise. Which reminded me, oh yeah! Now that the Kelvin timeline changes everything, the only thing that’s canon in the new Kelvin timeline is the events in the show Star Trek Enterprise. I gave up on that show after two episodes into season 3 and then came back to watch the last few episodes of Season 4. Sometime I should watch the remainder and finally fill in my missing Trek lore.
Watched this tonight; it was fine.
Star Trek Reboot felt like it was written by people who watched the original series episodes and didn’t really like them. (Orzi and Kurtzman write a script where Kirk bones a green lady and gets giant hands while running down the hallway. Then Spock’s mom dies.)
Star Trek Into Darkness felt like it was written by people who watched the original movies and didn’t really like them. (Orzi and Kurtzman rewrite the only film they can remember. Due to file corruption, the script merges with Orzi’s 9/11 conspiracy diary. Lindelof adds magic blood for some reason.)
Star Trek Beyond felt like it was written by someone who liked Star Trek. (Pegg submits the fan script he wrote in the 90’s after watching Star Trek Insurrection. Twenty year old music, a motorcycle, and a surfing sequence are added to the script because that’s probably what the target audience is in to these days, too.)
Beyond is my favorite New Trek so far. Probably a bit too much punching and shooting, though. I started to get a bit bored, but not, like, Age of Ultron bored. Splitting the party and pairing off characters to give them some screen time and some opportunity for some chemistry and/or dialog sort of worked for me.
And I know there are many to choose from, but this was also my favorite Enterprise death scene. We’ll see if they top it in the next film when the ship is attacked by rust gas and crashes into the moon.
I saw it in 3D, and boy howdy was it dark. They named the wrong movie ‘Into Darkness’. There were several dark scenes (initial ship fight, the underground stuff, mucking about on the old ship, and the night scenes on the planet), and I had only a vague idea what the holy heck was going on.
I look forward to watching it at home, where I can see stuff.
Apart from that, mixed feelings. I was happy with much of the character stuff. The core team is still great. The action stuff (the bits I could see) seemed to be well staged. I thought the Yorktown was visually interesting, and the scenes with the ships skimming through the docking tunnels below streets and ponds were awesome. The Leonard Nimoy tribute was quite nicely done. A few good laughs.
But, another inscrutable villain with another inscrutable revenge plot? Really? Coming out of the movie I had no idea what the guy wanted and how he intended to accomplish it, and had to read up a bit to sorta’, kinda’ understand things. I just want a Star Trek movie where I’m not constantly scratching my head at motivations and intent.
Light years better than Into Darkness, certainly.
I did not see it in 3D, and it didn’t seem all the dark to me.
+1. Didn’t notice anything re: being too dark.
AFAIK (unless it’s changed in the last couple of years), the most common method of converting non-3D-filmed movies to 3D-friendly formats results in a significant darkening of the original frames. Doing it “properly” (at time of filming) doesn’t have this downside, but is also noticeably more complicated and (probably) expensive.
Oh, yeah. As far as the darkness, I was assuming the 2D was fine. The 3D is always darker and they typically do some brightening to compensate. It’s usually OK. In this case, my 3D showing was hella’ dark. Like black. Like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.
I don’t actually know what to do about the 3D showings. My preferred theater always has 3D on the big screen with the great sound, but man am I sick of the glasses and the darkness and not even being impressed by the 3D. On the other hand, I don’t want to deal with the expense and trouble of going to the movies unless it’s on a huge screen with great sound.
Star Trek Beyond has tipped me over the edge, though. No more 3D for me.
The movie is exceedingly dark in non-3D. I really don’t get what the deal with that is. @marquac, as he said in his email to the podcast, is spot on with this point. I just got back from seeing the movie again (had to take my kid to it) and it’s really striking how dark it is visually, as in bordering on unwatchable.
If it’s not some huge mistake in processing, then it’s a terrible choice that ruins many of the early scenes of the movie.
I don’t get it at all.
-xtien
Heh. Maybe it’s coincidence, but the movie that made me make the same resolve was Star Trek Into Darkness. Before that I used to go watch movies in the Imax theater. But the IMAX theater more and more started showing movies only in 3D (except Chris Nolan, God Bless Him. His movies are still 2D and yet they are also IMAX). And I just had such a horrible experience watching the last Star Trek movie in 3D, I said “no more 3D. Ever. No matter what.” And I’ve stuck to that.
Sadly, some of my movie experiences have been sub-par as a result. Star Trek Beyond wasn’t that dark in the theater where I saw it (Dingus, did you watch it in the same theater twice?) but there was a “bright spot” on the screen that’s very distracting sometimes in the theater I was in. And there was a blown speaker. Luckily most of the time I couldn’t hear that single blown speaker, but when it got really quiet, like in the beginning of the movie, with just a single musical cue playing, that blown speaker was soooooo “nails on chalkboard” annoying. But when all the different sound effects and music kicked it, all the other speakers were so loud I couldn’t hear the single blown speaker on the front right of the theater.
I saw it at the same theater, but in the same actual theater. That is, it’s my really good local theater, but it was a different screen. If it weren’t for the fact that I go to this theater almost every week to watch movies, I’d think it had to do with some decision to crank down the wattage of the projection bulbs in order to save some money. But it’s not that.
My very good friend in Canada had the same experience. And a quick google of “why is star trek beyond so dark” gives me this link from somebody presumably in the U.K.:
Tom has a theory for why Justin Lin did this, and Tom explains it on the podcast. But I don’t remember what that theory is. All I know is that the second time through it was even more frustrating than the first. Hey Justin Lin? Is it really too much for us to ask to, you know, let us see the action you’ve taken the trouble to film for us?
-xtien
Pretty sure Techcrunch did an article about some 3D screen that would allow viewers at different angels to watch 3D without glasses. We’re a long ways from that and theaters changing their screens… but you never know,.
Yes, the mention of this issue on the podcast is what initially made me post upthread, since I found it strange. I had no trouble seeing everything in the movie and didn’t think it was that dark.