[Movie] Star Trek (2009)

For those of you who are too cheap or too far away to see Quantum Of Solace, heres the Star Trek trailer attached to it: Untitled on Vimeo

Frankly, it looks like crap. If JJ Abrams - a man I have no faith in to begin with - cut that himself (which wouldn't surprise me) then this film is already worse than Nemesis and Star Trek V in the same way getting your fingers smashed by a ball-peen hammer is worse than having wonderful, passionate sex with a beautiful supermodel.

Everyone chime in on why they agree or disagree with this sentiment.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

YouTube - Star Trek Movie Trailer http://teaser-trailer.com

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

Honestly, it's a trailer. There isn't much reason to jump to the conclusion -- like you did -- that the film will be poorly shot or edited based on what's presented here.

Or you just have the worst taste in human history.

I mean - can anyone take you seriously after what you just said here or have you just never seen a Star Trek movie before?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

I AM LEHAH, MASTER OF ARGUMENTS

So thats what it comes down to? Making your text bigger? You're a sorrier sight than I expected.

Originally Posted by sprouticus

However, I *have* always wanted to get into the Trek series of films and TV. Where would be a good place to start with doing that?

Start with the first show and just work your way up. Be sure to ignore the internet along the way - Enterprise is excellent and DS9 is a brilliant back-hand commentary toward Roddenberry's idea of utopia.

Wrath Of Khan is good - but generally overrated. All Star Trek movies make completely improper literary useage, none worse than Kahn.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Voyager is TNG Redux.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Abrams' track record is nothing but a series of larger and larger let downs.

Felicity was a major hit - for one season. Then flailed a lot and added up to nothing; the show ends with a time travel episode.

Alias lasted two seasons - and then died in an amazingly spectacular implosion when Abrams left the show to start LOST.

LOST is crap. Its build-up without substance and suffers from Twin Peaks Syndrome - that no explaination, no matter how revealing, is going to satisfy the audience.

Mission Impossible III was boring and trite. Badly directed, with a script that made less sense than the first Tomb Raider.

Do we really need any more evidence than the press's constant question of if Abrams is the "next Spielberg"? Remember the last person that moniker was attached to? Yeah, he put out a movie this year - The Happening.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by sprouticus

Please. There are actually people on this board who genuinely like Michael Bay, M Night, Steven Sommers, and the rest of those untalented lackeys, and you're trying to lump me in with those tasteless fucks by naming one director I enjoy, two out of my only three guilty pleasures, and a man who's impressed me as a producer only?

Lost has always been a fun show to watch, discuss, and theorize with friends. Despite the third season being flat-out awful, it's a sharply-written show, and even though sometimes it pisses me off with the blue balls it leaves me, it's air-tight.

I think the unintended dichotomy here speaks for its self.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Skexis

At least until Generations came along.

Generations has one of film's greatest visual sight gags. I gauge people's intelligence based on if they get the joke or not.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by M.U.G.E.N. Forever

The trailer looked boring as shit, as is the case with most Star Trek, TNG being the exception 20% of the time.

I could totally get behind this statement if I didn't disagree with your math.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Quote:

I always felt that star trek is more of a cerebral experience relative to some of the other more action oriented Science Fiction films.

The problem with Star Trek movies is that they've never once been like the shows which were popular.

Star Trek 2 is popular for, what, blowing shit up and having some early cross-pollenation between movie and show. Meanwhile, TOS had entire episodes devoted to allegory about Vietnam and TNG was doing episodes about acceptance of homosexuality.

First Contact? Blowing shit up. Undiscovered Country? A Scooby-Doo episode.

I mean, they're fun and I love watching them - but "cerebral experience"? Oy gevalt!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

This will probably sound dumb to LeHah some but the HD trailer improves my opinion of the movie somewhat.

So, Kirk was an accomplished hotrodder in his youth, huh? Funny how he forgot by the time he visited the Iotians in TOS's "A Piece Of The Action", but I guess driving a car's not like riding a bike...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Pang makes a snide comment that adds nothing to the thread and only further bolsters the idea he lacks a personality

See page 16, after the middle school sports scores.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Pangalin

Page 16? Well, I can't knock KIRK'S ORIGIN LADEN WITH INCONSISTENCIES off the front page, I guess.

The joke isn't that Star Trek has no continuity issues - since the joke has always been how convoluted the franchise is.

The joke is that - for someone who supposedly loved and grew up on the original series - JJ Abrams and his script continuity department didn't do their homework at all.

Originally Posted by knkwzrd

LeHah attempts a comeback.

This event recieved no media attention.

Except you just said it happened... so, what?

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by TheReverend

I don't have an educated opinion on Abrams or any of the creators of this movie, but I'm certainly glad someone is attempting to restart this intriguing franchise/story as Trek still has potential to excellently entertain for years to come.

So your entire post was "I like some things except the things that I don't like, which I'll ignore."

Ladies and Gentlemen of GFF - your common Star Trek internet person.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Soluzar

Enterprise is supposed to be excellent now? I ditched it... I think before the season finalé.

People are retarded about Enterprise because they don't understand the premise. They think its just a ham-fisted ST show that attempts to prequel the ST universe.

No. Thats the way idiots think. Its The Right Stuff with Star Trek. It also features more than one clever episode - like the First Contact backstory and the series finale is probably the most clever of all the ST endings. (It uses the same literary device as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Soluzar

Honestly I just thought the acting was below feeble in some cases

I'm sure the internet follows your gold standard of good and bad.

This would explain why Sturgeon’s Revelation applies so well to people and posts found on the internet.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Soluzar

my own standards

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhh

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by wvlfpvp

See, my problem with DS9 is that it was pretty horrid to start with

The trick with DS9 is that all of the first season was "hard sci-fi" - all high concept stuff. There was an episode about people not being able to communicate and another one about endless war and so on. It was probably the closest to the original series as the spin-offs ever got.

Around season two, the show becomes a very severe criticism of TOS and TNG and - to an extent - Roddenberry himself. Sisko has a big speech in "The Maquis, Part 1" where he says that the Federation has it far too good and that Starfleet headquarters looks like paradise but that its "very easy to be a saint in paradise". The show continues on as a very strong narrative drive of the sacrifices that it takes to get where TNG supposedly is - right down to the whole Section 31 subplot.

The thing that makes DS9 so damn good is the same thing that makes Starship Troopers so good and BSG so fucking awful - it predates our current era. The fact that BSG deals directly with jerk-off Bush administration criticism makes it dated, while the other two become even more apt as they age.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by OmagnusPrime

If you want those exact characters that behave in exact ways and end up doing exact things in time, go watch the original series.

I think its more the worry that the result of this movie is that the previous material is going to be dismissed, no matter how good it was. Its not a really tangible idea since Star Trek exists in books and DVDs and a shit-storm of material that would require a DeLorean equipt with a Mr Fusion to undo ...

...but people who are introduced to the series "improperly" may expect it to be something it isn't and support that. I can't speak for the movie yet - I'm going to see it this afternoon - but I am worried about what Abrams is going to do and how "old hands" like myself are going to react to it. His is not a job I envy.

Star Trek is something of an investment in my family. I inherited it from my father through Saturday morning reruns and evenings with pizza and TNG. The possibility - however implausible - that someone is going to come through and track mud all over it gets my blood going. Destruction of this type, on this scale is much more insidious than anything anyone ever tried to unsuccessfully pin on George Lucas prequels.

Originally Posted by OmagnusPrime

And I got to say, this line is completely misleading bullshit: There is hardly any 'pewpew lasers' in this thing, it's just that the 'pewpew laser' sequences in this film were fucking cool.

Well, heres the thing. On one hand, Gene Roddenberry created a series that was not about laser gun fights, but to tool out moral questions. As time went on, we found that Roddenberry was just a giant numbskull who hated Star Trek 2 (and was correct in that Star Trek 4 was actually a personal nose-thumbing) and had no idea what his show was about anymore.

However, ST toiled on and more or less continued the "question of the week" material. I think this more or less became flubbed on Voyager (dumb show, but not the horrible acid-in-the-face event its made out to be) and First Contact (while fun - why care at all?) and finally came back to course with Enterprise and Insurrection (expulsion from Eden, questioning the moral implications of Federation survival versus indigenous species).

And now here we have this movie.

It's good that the movie is bringing in new blood and new fans - but it has a huge responsibility to the franchise. Not since Star Trek IV (which did this accidentally) has so much been riding on a Trek movie; this movie will determine if a new show or series or whatever comes out. But more importantly, will probably determine *what* kind of show that is. I'm hopeful but skeptical. I have no faith in JJ Abrams - the guy abandons all his shows after a season to two, Mission Impossible 3 was a fucking awful mess, the guy looks like Pom - and he basically comes off as the Jewish answer to Joss Whedon which is enough to give anything thinking person a headache on concept alone.

I have nothing against the concept of a reboot - and everything against the way it will probably be handled.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by sprouticus

What I don't get is why you people even SEE the movie if you think it's going to be that bad. Seriously, nobody is forcing you to go. Just stay home and save yourself the money.

Because, unlike you apparently, I have to see a movie in order to form an insightful opinion on it.

Saw the movie. I am not nearly as enamored with it as the general population of Earth seems to be. Its a good summer blockbuster popcorn movie - and I mean that as a good thing and as an absolutely terrible thing.

Spoiler:

It did a lot of things right - great casting (aside from Chekov, who was terrible. And I don't know what to make of Uhura but I think that was more the screenplay than the actress), great SFX, interesting premise and a lot of cute continuity jokes.

However, there are some... bumps in the road. The opening was impossibly cloying. YOUR FATHER WENT DOWN WITH HIS SHIP SAVING HIS SON AND WIFE AND HUNDREDS OF OTHER PEOPLE came across as just a bunch of cliches put together with a potato masher (the food preparing device, not a german grenade) and served up with a giant helping of THIS IS A TRAILER THIS IS A TRAILER THIS IS A TRAILER sense of editing and pace and all that.

The camerawork was awful. It looked like someone was in college and decided to make his film interesting, he was going to use a bunch of obtuse wideangle lenses and then shake the camera a lot. The camera shake effect is awful, and Star Trek is probably the second worst one I've ever seen after the third Bourne movie (or Gladiator?). Also, the fight on the giant laser drill was ... impossibly stupid. Why does the asian guy come with a foldable katana? I'm sure theres some Asian social groups out there vaugely offended by this.

Something that *should* have worked - the destruction of Vulcan - came off as in bad taste. As a friend put it, it was as if JJ Abrams decided to say "Hey, lets give this some weight by... HAVING A HOLOCAUST." It just came off as, well, almost in poor taste. The concept isn't bad but the execution was.

As for the directing... lets just say I didn't need fucking Alias references in my Star Trek movie, goddamn it.

Rating: 3 Stars

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by sprouticus

There's a joke about you thinking your opinion is important somewhere in here but I just can't find the right words for it.

So you can't bother seeing something to pass judgement on it... and you can't bother finding a joke when its right in front of you? Your back must hurt from carrying around that much stupid.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

Spoiler:

The actor himself said he was concerned about an Korean-American portraying a Japanese-American. If Asians don't care about that, they probably won't be worried about trifles like assuming an Asian guy knows some sort of martial arts.

(Also, I giggled at the thought of Sulu knowing karate. Thanks Futurama.)

I don't disagree at the sentiment. But ... would you send Chekov down with a fucking mail-order bride or Scotty down with a bottle of bourbon?

Spoiler:

(Also - what was with Scotty being "hungry" all the time? Are they attempting to supplant the idea that Scotty isn't a drunk anymore? :\)

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Grail

Spoiler:

So if I understand this statement correctly, you are not thrilled with the idea that this movie went ahead and, instead of tarnishing the original story, the original Star Trek universe by trying to create some backstory to the original Captain Kirk and probably pissing off hundreds of thousands of Trekkies, Paramount instead came up with a plausible, but highly unlikely scenario so that they could preserve the Original Star Trek Universe while at the same time giving people unfamiliar with Star Trek a chance to jump in and see what all the hub bub is about?

If I may interject?

Spoiler:

I think what everyone is worried about is that this new timeline - however good it may be - is going to supplant the last 30 years of block-building we've gotten from 10 movies and 25 seasons of TV shows. Part of me feels that this new series "killed" TNG stuff (as if Nemesis didn't do that already?) and I realize thats just me being me. Theres a hesitancy to let go, especially that this movie was "more successful" than the other ones and its a totally different animal with its faster pace and less emphasis on plot (though that could be more having to do with it being an introduction movie), so I'm willing to wait and see what the sequel is like before praising it or damning it like everyone else.

I just don't like the ST I grew up with being ousted for some newcomers. Its off-putting.

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

Define "all the time". I only got the impression from the first meeting that he was hungry a lot.

Well, the TOS series had him constantly drinking. In fact, thats how he defeated someone who hijacked the Enterprise once. So this whole other approach seemed weird and a little glib to me? Not that they can't change things but changing an alcholic to a "hurr hurr hurr foods" slant seems dumb.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by sprouticus

I actually saw the movie yesterday morning and thought it was an absolute blast from start to finish, with very few glaring flaws to be found. With the exception of a few baffling things (the Beastie Boys song and Nokia product placement), I think Abrams knocked it out of the park.

Thats nice for you. I happen to disagree. The end.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by The Dopefish

I didn't watch much of TOS so I missed this plot point.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/By_A..._Name_(episode)

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Araes

If they do take this down the route of sequels, or a new spinoff TV series, my hope is that they at least stick to their own path and not try to do reworks of all the old stuff. "You know, that 'City on the Edge of Forever' ep. was good, but it really needed more 'splosions."

I agree completely. As much as I want the next movie to acknowledge that the original timeline continues to exist and flourish seperate from this new one - I also know that in doing that would be really goddamned dumb.

The movie made 76 million this weekend. Pretty impressive numbers.

Jam it back in, in the dark.