Hell, I even liked the writing in the first Trek movie, it’s about the closest the films ever got to speculative science fiction, though I recognize those words pretty much translate to “insomnia cure” for most people. But it has aspects I didn’t pick up on as a kid, like Kirk strong-arming his way back into captaining a starship, and Spock figuring out where he really belonged. It must have been fun to catch up with those guys after watching the original series, which I didn’t catch until much later.
After the years of movie speculation, to sit down to actually see it, and then have the drydock scene, was one of the most memorable movie moments of my life.
Even if the movie turned out not so great after that…
The original film started strong. Seeing the three fantastic Klingon ships destroyed by V’ger in the opening sequence was amazing, as were the look of the Klingon crews, their new language, and their theme music. Reuniting the crew up through the drydock scene was also good, although it ran a bit long. After that, though…way too much “Enterprise flies through cloud, crew looks on in awe” and way too little “Fire!”
Lloyd and Dave: Spot on.
The tension between Kirk and Decker is excellent, especially as it plays out in the warp scene. That subplot development in ST 1 is the opposite of the horribad tension that plays out between Kirk and Spock in the first Abrams film. Which basically amounted to “Kirk exploits the fact that NFL referees typically just penalize the guy who responds”.
Bring back the Douwd! My favorite Star Trek character ever.
“So I’m a God like alien pacifist who vowed never to use his powers to hurt anyone. But then this alien race showed up and killed my human wife… which made me slightly mad. So mad in an instant of rage I killed them.”
“The guy who fired the shot?”
“No. All of them. Everywhere. That civilization doesn’t exist anymore.”
“So we’ll go ahead and be leaving now. Thanks for the tea. Sorry about the mud on the rug. Please don’t get mad and end humanity. Ciao!”
That’s an awesome storyline. I wonder how the Douwd would play out in a movie.
“Well, so-and-so did something to reeeally piss off Kevin. Fortunately, Kevin is taking a nap and doesn’t know yet. You have one hour.”
A movie remake of Immunity Syndrome?
I really, really hate this trailer, and I’ll probably hate this movie more than I disliked the last one. Gene Rodenberry is thrashing in his grave, they’ve completely lost sight of what his vision for Star Trek was, or they just don’t care.
I LOVED the last Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams - Time has moved on. We don’t make movies like Godfather anymore - the tone, tempo and storytelling techniques are completely different and this is a result of this.
I like it - not that everything has to be totally actioned up, I enjoy an intelligent movie as much as the next man, but I do also really enjoy movies like Abrams Star Trek.
I hate that trailer because it says almost nothing about the film and sticks WAY too rigidly to the Inception template. The film might be good though!
Also Razgon, you say we don’t make films like The Godfather (I’m not sure why you chose the Godfather, I assume as an example of a classic “slow 70s film”) but the first movie borrowed pretty heavily from Star Wars though it certainly had more action than Star Wars. I think Abrams would benefit from slowing, or perhaps calming, things down more often.
Its so incredibly noisy and stressfull…maybe I’m too old for this stuff.
Cumberbatch is Mitchell? I’m okay with this.
Agreed. Boy, that looks terrible.
Also, that teal-and-orange thing is interesting. It’s one of those things that I noticed all movies looking the same-ish (and different from old movies) without knowing why, but that explains it pretty well.
It was a somewhat poorly worded post on my account due to me being at work - sorry about that.
The reason I chose Godfather as an example, is that I saw it recently, and its a good (albeit extreme) example of how Star Trek of did storytelling. The slower, more ponderous way of expositioning the story. But after watching Godfather (which I still think is a very good movie) with my Girlfriend who never saw it before, it dawned on my just how big of a temposhift movies have experienced over the last years. Godfather is simply boring today for someone who hasn’t seen it before, because we are used to a totally different kind of movies today. Every second counts on the screen and has to make an impact on the audience.
Now, it IS a shame that it seems that the easy way out is to make every second flashy and full of action, as opposed to intelligent conversation or story exposition, but the previous Star Trek by Abrams had some very nice storytelling, and was a fun movie as well - I hope that the trailer is condensed in what it shows us, and that the movie itself retains what I call intelligence, style and fun.
Still at work, but I hope the above gives a better explanation of my reasoning :-)
I love movies from the 60’s onwards but it is true they don’t make them like they did anymore so I watch them again instead. However the are great movies still being made, the tinker tailor remake was a harkening back to the old way as was the kings speech. I saw the Star Trek remake on DVD and really wished I had gone to the cinema as I thought it was superb.
In some ways movies and gaming are moving in the same circle, if you want that old fashioned feel and something different then indie games rather than aaa ones are the way to go and the same is true with film, there are great movies out there but the triple aaa movies in general aren’t it, I’d still say I enjoyed Star Trek as much as the Avengers there just don’t seem to be that many aaa movies that are superb but I’m more interested in if the movie is great rather than how much it costs or what special effects it has.
Still I am definitely seeing this at the cinema if it reviews well and is comparable to the first.
I loved the last Star Trek film. I’m sure I’ll love this one. In my opinion, the incarnation prior to Abrams’ was played out and stale. It offered nothing new and was relying on older fans with memories of the franchise’s halcyon days of yore for its ticket sales. Writers like Braga had developed a formula that increasingly gave each movie and tv show the look and feel of an assembly line product. They didn’t care about the characters, they didn’t care about the universe they lived in. They cared about a paycheck only and it showed. I think Deep Space Nine was the last attempt at creating something fun and exciting…and perhaps the final season of Enterprise when they brought in new blood for the stories. Voyager was just god awful and the less said about that the better.
Abrams’ took the show into new territory based less on utopian ideas of society expressed as thinly veiled allegories, and more on men and women dealing with a future that still held dangers and wonders aplenty. Did he dumb it down? I guess one could say that. But I also believe the franchise was well into doing the same thing before JJ came along. At least with his version, we’re having fun again.
Someday he may make a Dark Knight level Star Trek. But for now, I’m happy with a Star Wars level Star Trek.
…well…Star Wars IV, V and VI level Star Trek.
I guess this is where I disagree with you the most. I felt the remake was a two hour excercise into the glorification of the egotistical extroverted archetype, that contorted scenarios to jam as much snarky wink-wink interplay between the (admittedly well-cast, but) unnecessarily edgy ‘classic’ characters as they could.
The plot itself was an incredibly lazy time travel story (off all things) that could only move forward on extremely improbable and cringe inducing spur-of-the-moment, wild gambles that we’re supposed to celebrate as genius. All this is, imo, antithetical to the considered, stoic, moralistic optimistic voyages of discovery into the universe and human spirit that franchise exemplified.
Although there have been plenty of permutations of ST, none have simply done away with Roddenberry’s values as much as this seems to. There’s a place for SF movies like this but it shouldn’t carry the name ST.
On the other hand, as a reflection of American cultural attitudes, I think it does accurately capture the mood of the current decade much as the original captured the 60’s and TNG captured the 80s.
So, it’s an interesting cultural artifact there, at least.