Regardless of the political motivations behind it, Admiral Robocop as a single plot would have probably been better, because half the asinine shit in that movie was a result of smooshing two incompatible villains together. Obviously all Khan no Murphy would have been preferable, but the reverse would also have been better.
Also I had to use google to check, because I just assumed the 9/11 thing above was a joke about the pentagonal lens flares, but nope. Good thing about that is that now that I know he’s a complete fuckwad I have zero compunction about calling him out for being shitty.
Yeah, I complained about the plot of Into Darkness as well, and my complaints focused on the incompatibility of Khan and Admiral Marcus in the same film. If you’re going to use an iconic villain like Khan, he’d better be the sole focus. The fact that he wasn’t meant he had far too little screen time to develop as an antagonist and was largely wasted.
Not “making sense” in the sense of not having whacky things happening, but “making sense” in the sense of being internally consistent. I watch these kinds of movies to see whacky stuff - what’s not to like about like Greek gods and gangster planets? - but if they don’t follow their own extrapolated science/fantasy logic, or have plot holes like a Swiss cheese, that’s what’s annoying.
The recent Star Trek movies were like a mustachioed villain giving candy to kids - sure, the kids enjoy “cool” action points strung together with non-plot, but it’s not good for their teeth.
I think comparing the reboot of Star Trek to being molested as a child is a bit over the top, don’t you?
The Star Trek franchise had grown stagnant over the years. The reboot is actually closer in spirit to the original series than Next Generation was, for the most part.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore Deep Space Nine…but mostly because it tried something different than the Next Generation or Voyager. That’s not to say I hated Next Generation either, but Voyager and then Enterprise used the same blueprint as Next Generation without altering enough to make it feel like it was fresh. By that point it was clear to a lot of people that a change needed to happen.
Abrams’ reboot borrows its sensibilities from the original series while still trying to be accessible to modern audiences. While that usually is a recipe for disaster, he’s shown remarkable restraint in that latter process.
I disagree utterly, and in fact you have crystalized my dislike of the reboots rather exactly with this statement. Thanks! :)
What I loved about TOS and STTNG was the sense of exploration and high science fiction, where ideas were the primary currency. Yes, the ideas were sometimes clumsy and overwrought, but they were ideas nonetheless. Roddenberry took the high concepts of pure science fiction very seriously, and that allowed the writers to do social commentary as the main thrust of many of the episodes. Yes, that does not excuse Q or holodeck stories or tribbles, but much of the time they were trying.
I don’t recall any ideas in the Abrams movies at all. They are lush visual spectacles, perhaps, but don’t mean anything. The second one’s ending death sequence quotes from the original Khan without earning or even understanding the purpose behind the scene.
Now that’s an argument I can get behind. The Star Trek universe only occasionally made sense, and then likely accidentally, but it was always about ideas and more than that, ideals. That was definitely lost somewhere along the way.
Arguing about Star Trek’s internal consistency is kind of pointless. I mean, it was consistent in the sense that it solved most problems through inventing new technology (that was almost never used or spoken of again) in TNG. At least twice over the series they magnified their shields by a factor of 10 using stuff they already had on board, never to do so again. DS:9 had perhaps the most literal case of deus ex machina ever to grace the small screen when the wormhole aliens disappeared 2000 dominion ships to save the plot, and don’t even get me started on the Borg (in either the movies or Voyager). Is there some reason they can only time travel at Earth? Wait, they could open a transwarp conduit in Earth’s orbit at any time and they are having a hard time assimilating humanity? We are told they never do anything piecemeal when first introduced to them, and then they send one cube at a time to assimilate a quarter of the galaxy? And when that fails they send another lone ship. All these species with cloaking devices constantly at war and yet none have ever just fired a bunch of cloaked nukes at the enemy homeworld?
The entire series is so littered with this kind of stuff that I would go as far as to say it is the rule, and not the exception. Of course you can just instantly transport from Earth to the Klingon homeworld, they invent new technology like that in all the tv series and never use it again consistently. I know that what a lot of people really miss is the “science and exploration” aspect of the tv series, and that is a valid point. Though whether or not you can really make a great movie in that spirit is really yet to be seen in the Star Trek universe. But to argue that the movies are any more unrealistic or absurd than any of the tv series is wearing some pretty rose colored glasses.
Kevin Perry nailed my feelings about the new films. The terrible plotholes and story inconsistencies get me pretty annoyed, but it’s the values, or lack thereof, of the films which have me ignoring this new franchise now. Star Trek has always been about morality, optimism, human ideals, the tendency to stop and analyze and come to better solutions than violence. These are pretty much glorifying violence over tact, and make it seem hip, too. And while the older films were definately more sensationalized than the series, they at least tried.
And a good many of them were incredibly boring. The first movie put me to sleep. Same with the one where they found God. Same with Generations, Insurrection and Nemesis. They may have had great ideas and might have succeeded as TV shows but made for terrible fucking movies. That killed Star Trek for me. The new movies? They’re light popcorn fun but (so far) none of them has made me look at my watch and think “How much longer until this is over?”
Not to rain on the rose-colored parade, but it was just as much about Kirk’s narcissism/love life and violence. The other stuff was there as well, but we shouldn’t pretend these more base appeals weren’t ever-present as well.
My experience with Star Trek was predominantly with The Next Generation and to some extent DSN, Voyager, and just a little bit of Enterprise. The original series was goofy stuff I half-watched before my cartoons came on on saturday morning. But I’m pretty sure original ST had the same message as TNG, and it happened despite Kirk’s narcissism/love life and violence. Kind of like how the dad in All in the Family was there to draw in the very audience they were trying to subvert. But that was before my time too, maybe I’m wrong.
The even numbers (except Nemesis) say hi. And that wasn’t sleep during V, that was your brain initiating a protective coma.
Actually V, for all its shittiness, had two great moments. The camping trip with Kirk, Spock, and Bones was a classic character sequence (even if the side bit with Sulu and Chekov was insulting) and “What does God need with a starship?” was pretty great (if you ignore the larger context of “Kirk takes on God and wins”).
