Going Boldly — With Spoilers
If you haven’t seen the new Star Trek yet, or if you don’t care about spoilers, then go ahead and click through. Everyone else — move along.
UPDATE: Will Collier has his review posted.
Loved the new movie (review below), but there were some problems. Here’s the place to hash them out — along with a few praises I couldn’t sing without spoilers.
My biggest beef was with the death of Spock’s mother, Amanda. First of all, what was the reviled human female doing deep in the Vulcan holiest of holies? Well, she was there as a plot device, so that Spock could try (and fail) to save her. Otherwise, there’s no reason for her to be there, and lots of reasons for her not to be.
Spock’s recurring theme, his arc, was having to choose between his Vulcan and human heritages. Wouldn’t it have been better to have turned his mother’s death into a choice? He could save Vulcan’s cultural archives, and thus preserve his preferred race, or he could save the human mother he loved. Of course he’d choose the archives. Spock’s Vulcan-ness would then have come at a terrible price, giving his character a tragic depth. This was the only place the writers really chickened out, other than Spock Prime’s lousy, non-sensical exposition.
The engineering room looked like the inside of that German warehouse in J.J. Abrams’ “Mission: Impossible III.” The Enterprise is big, but she ain’t that big. Give us a little claustrophobia, or we won’t believe we’re inside a ship.
For me anyway, the destruction of Vulcan was dramatic only in retrospect. When the plot uses time travel, and something horrible happens, you (or at least I) instinctively dismiss it. “Hey, they’ll just use some more time travel to bring Vulcan back.” So — good on the filmmakers for not cheating and undoing Vulcan’s Big Implosion, but the immediate moment lacked the impact it should have.
McCoy hardly said anything that wasn’t a McCoyism. They were crowd-pleasers, all of them, and Karl Urban delivered them flawlessly. But he almost became a caricature of himself.
I liked the Spock/Uhura romance, just because. But it seems unlikely for a guy hell-bent on denying his humanity. And in future movies it could be used as a really awful plot device.
But no one I’ve read or talked to has mentioned the best news of all. Sure, the black hole messed up all the continuity, giving us all-new adventures with our favorite old characters. But some of the older cannon remains unchanged. Somewhere out in space, unmolested by the ravages of a black hole or a supernova, floats the Botany Bay.
Your spoileriffic complaints or praises?
Okay, good.
(1) That was the worst and more glaringly placed expository lump I’ve seen since I wrote a “Now tell me, Professor” in a story when I was about 13. In fact, the only way I can explain it is that Abrams just decided that nothing better could possibly work, so he stuck it there in the middle of the second act like an intermission.
(2) I think Regulation 619 is going to come back to bite them on the ass; its the Prime Directive problem — if Kirk has to relinquish command every time he’s emotionally compromised, he’s not going to be a captain much longer than his dad was. The best thing they could do is film a scene for the extended DVD where a Court of Inquiry says “What were we thinking!?“, removes the event from Spock’s record and makes Reg 619A say “We don’t talk about this.”
(3) What’s up with all the lens flare? I kept thinking my glasses were dirty.
Now the good parts.
If they’ve got the guts to stick to it, Abrams has killed off the “back in time to fix things” thing forever. It’s always been a cheat, both dramatically and logically. Abrams has replaced it with the opposite: if you’re in a parallel time line that’s been altered by a time traveler, that’s still your history. It’s nice that new time line Kirk knows old time line Kirk knew his father, but new time line juvenile delinquent Kirk still grew up with a dead father, an absent mother, an adrenaline jones and a chip on his shoulder. None of this “I know the time line is wrong and I can fix it.”
McCoy now has, dramatically, the backstory he had in the Ancestral Trek bible. Bad divorce, off to join the Foreign Legion. In fact, there’s a little Foreign Legion flavor to the whole of Starfleet. There are people there now because it was their last chance.
Post-Holocaust Vulcans are going to be very different. Now, we always knew Vulcans are Jews, but the new Vulcan will be a very different place. And that’s good: the Ancestral Vulcans were the world’s most obnoxious older cousin who went to seminary and came back not just holier than thou, but holier than everybody.
The dumbest Star Trek Movie of all time.
What? They couldn’t afford an actual writer? One whose plot sense might be able to save his life if faced with the choice of jumping off a high cliff now or just going back to the house for another cocktail?
DAMN! And there is so much to work with.
PLOT HOLE MAXIMUS can be defined as: the foundational story assumption is so stupid as to negate the entire story being told. As in like, umm, let’s see here—how about the crazy guy from the future who’s so pissed off at the destruction of his home world (Romulus) (in the future) uses the next hundred years at his disposal (before destruction of said planet) to, oh I don’t know, like save the damn planet? Nope, never occurred to this bad guy, what a frakin’ genius. Khan would be embarrassed. No, he wants to torture Spock and destroy planets instead. A productive use of time and materials.
But it was a fun movie, I enjoyed it. The casting worked out far better than I’d expected, and Karl Urban knocked the McCoy character right out of the ballpark. Sulu? Not so much.
Still, the dumbest Star Trek Movie of all time so far.
Didn’t like:
1) The ending. Something about the tone of Kirk’s offer to rescue the Romulans. Funny, but “off”.
2) And the ending with the 2 Spocks. “Put aside logic”? “Do what feels right?” Malarkey!
3) Kirk’s meteoric rise to Captain was a bit much.
In it’s favor, it does have that particularly brilliant joke where Kirk asks Sulu about his combat training.
Here’s a synopsis of the movie:
Romulan ship comes out of lightning storm and attacks USS Kelvin. The captain is killed, leaving Papa Kirk in command. He orders evacuation of Kelvin while setting a collision course with the Romulan ship.
“We should name him Tiberius.”
“NO WAI! Let’s settle these plot points quick before I die. Let’s call him Jim. GAAHHH!”
“Jimga? How about just Jim?… Honey?”
FLASHFORWARD
Young Kirk steals antique car, turns on stereo to listen to classical music (Beastie Boys).
Decides to drive it off a cliff for some damn reason. Car crashes at the bottom, Kirk hangs on to the edge of the cliff and manages to pull
himself up to face the cop chasing him. Whoa, wait, “Sabotage” is still playing? Man, that’s some durable car stereo, there. Cop asks him “What is your name?” Kirk says, wait a second, maybe it was the cop that has Beastie Boys playing on his cycle. Did the music start when the chase started? Now I can’t remember.
Meanwhile on Vulcan: unemotional Vulcan kids unemotionally taunt Spock with unemotional sarcasm. Years later joins Starfleet after Vulcan elders insult Winona Ryder.
Kirk mistakenly calls big bald guy “Cupcake” instead of Uhura, gets into fight. After the fight, Bruce Greenwood tells Kirk “I like the cut of your jib. Join Starfleet”. Kirk realizes this would be a better life, expand dating pool, and joins Starfleet.
(SCENE changes to Kirk’s Kobayashi Maru test)
KIRK (eating apple): “OM NOM NOM. Yeah, so there are Klingons or something? Whatever. Fire photon something or others.”
(These are actually pretty close to direct quotes)
Kirk successfully completes Kobayashi Maru, does touchdown dance.
KIRK: “Huh, wonder how they figured out I cheated.”
In what I’m pretty sure is not typical naval procedure, the officers academy’s students are immediately pressed into service upon reports of seismic disturbances within their territory.
Dr. McCoy gets Kirk onto Enterprise through an act of medical malpractice.
Kirk hears about a lightning storm, rushes to the bridge.
“Lightning cloud! Trap! Bad!”. Captain Pike, confused by the technical jargon, proceeds anyway.
Crew of Enterprise discovers what is a given in any version of Star Trek: outerspace lightning storms are bad news. Captain Pike makes Kirk first officer, due to aforementioned jib. Kirk, Sulu, and over-eager security officer with giant bullseye on forehead head down to disable drill, survive. For the most part succeed.
But they’re too late! Winona Ryder exits the series. Pike is captured, Kirk yells at Spock (who is not a jib fan) and gets marooned on nearby planet.
Kirk is visited by the Ghost of Spocks Past, introduced to Scotty, who figured out a way to warp anywhere. They beam onto Enterprise, Kirk reveals Spock’s jib is unfit for duty, Kirk becomes Captain.
Kirk and Spock beam aboard the Romulan vessel, rescue Pike and the Red Jello. The Entreprise fires torpedos and lasers at the Romulan vessel, because apparently a freaking black hole isn’t enough. Kirk and Spock make out.
Kirk is congratulated by an Admiral, who makes him Captain officially, gives him the Silver Star, the Latinum Star, the Yellow Moon, other Lucky Charms, the Womanizing Merit Badge, fuck it, just go ahead and make him an Admiral while you’re at it… Bruce Greenwood shows up. “I like you, You can come over to my house and fuck my sister.”
THE END.
DF –
Oh, please. That is so totally unfair. Greenwood invited Kirk over to fuck his daughter.
I forgot to note in my review: first-ever product placement ad in a Star Trek movie. Not a good sign.
But I did like it, just not as much as Steve did.
About the Botany Bay – at some point, isn’t Spock Prime going to dash off a note to Starfleet saying – “There’s a 21st Century Earth Sleeper ship at XYZ coordinates. Send a ship to defrost them and offer them an uninhabited planet that’s not in the Ceti Alpha system.”
Spock Prime clearly is unafraid of his knowlege of the future causing time paradoxes. While he may be accepting of living in this alternate reality and rebuilding the Vulcan heritage, logic would dictate that he determine what future events are unlikely to have been affected by the timeline split and direct Starfleet to head those off. So the locations of Khan, the Doomsday machine, Nomad, V-Ger, Talos IV, and eventually the Borg should be noted, and plans made to deal with them before they cause the damage they caused in his timeline.
Here’s another thing that’s neither here nor there, but should be noted- the Klingons just had 46 Warbirds destroyed by what they believe to be the Romulans. I’m guessing that means no Klingon-Romulan peace treaty in this timeline. On the other hand, there’s also likely no Organian peace treaty. (In fact, with Spock’s foreknowlege, the best tactic here is to simply ignore the Organians – let the Klingons discover them without the Federation present and the Organian Peace Treaty is likely to become more of an Organian-imposed unilateral Klingon disarmament treaty.)
Just to make clear – I loved the movie as a movie. I just have reservations about it as a reboot. I don’t think Abrams and co. clearly thought out where we go from here.
Of course, with Vulcan gone, once Spock dies there’s no way to reunite his katra with his body, thus preventing old spock from going back in time, thus preventing kirk from stopping Romulan bad guy, thus preventing whatever ticked off said Romulan in the first place, thus preventing this whole gorram alternate universe from happening in the first place.
Here’s the real review y’all need to read, written by me, who is a nobody, to be sure, but a MAJOR Trek fan. It’s a negative review.
http://thoughtgun.squarespace.com/posts/2009/5/10/star-trek-shields-up.html
Jeff
It’s a negative review.
Well, then, it’s clearly incorrect.
Eric J –
With respect to V-Ger: using Old Spock’s foresight, StarFleet can now avoid making a really terrible movie about dealing with it…
Q: How do you know when the writing staff has completely run out of ideas?
A: When the plot synopsis involves time travel.
You can learn everything you need about what made Star Trek a great TV show by watching the closing credits of the original show. Bongo Drums, Greem women, college age men and women on shore leave on strange planets, miniskirts, miniskirts with knee high boots,miniskirts with knee high boots and camera angles at seat level, access to weapons of amazing firepower just for being on duty and did I mention bongo drums?, yes thats right – bongo drums. Bongo drums can mean only one thing, fun is probably right around the corner. You cannot not have fun if there is someome slapping the skins of a bongo drum. Its like the word “Aloha”, you may not know what it means, but you know that someone is close to a beach a beer and a babe when they say it and that just cant be bad.
There are only two episodes involving time travel and one of them had Teri Garr, and for that they get a special dispensation against punishment. That episode could have been about “Small Engine Repair” and it would have been fun to watch, if only to catch Miss Garr in her early 20′s. Please don’t mention the “Nazi Episode” or the “Gangster Episode” or “The OK Corral Episode” those weren’t time travel, that was “planets eerily close in evolution to earth but not earth”, its not the same thing.
I still want to see this movie, but I have to say my desire to see the movie has fallen off considerably since I read of the time travel plotline. Didn’t we kill Spock off four movies ago? Doesn’t he deserve to die? After all, he is Sybocks brother and that along can get you the death sentence in most solar systems in the galaxy. You are well past your shelf date, Mr. Spock.
As of today, I want a 10 year moratorium placed on all ‘Time Travel’ stories. Please place all the writers 5 x7 cards with words “go back in time and set things straight” written on them in the burn pile right next to other hackneyed and overused plots and stereotype characters like, “long lost twin brother”, “evil corporate business man”, “hooker with heart of gold”, “nerd who wins the cheerleader”, “US Military madman who wants to kill civilians just for the fun of it”, “sensitive guy who beats the quarterback”, “two cops, one by the book, the other a crazy whackjob who breaks all the rules”, “oppressive Suburban father”,”pedophile priest”, “a woman lawyer working to prove herself against the system by saving an innocent man on death row”, “doctor who breaks all the rules but is better than all the other doctors so even though he breaks all the rules, he gets to stay because “hes just so damn good..“.
Cant we have a nice simple science fiction story that doesn’t involve going back in time to make things right? It might be fun and on occasion it might make some sense, but it’s just so damn lazy that I have no respect for it. Why isn’t Harlan Ellison out ‘breaking balls’ on the people who write this crap? Isn’t that what we pay him for? And don’t tell me Ellison wrote a “Time Travel” episode too because he wrote a treatment, it got soundly rejected. Its not the same thing, and Joan Collins was involved which is sort of a reverse dispensation.
If we can go back in time so easily, how about we kill the producers and writers of movies who suggest such things? Think about it, we could go back in time and stop Lucas from giving us Jar Jar Binks, Ewoks and dare I mention it. the 1977 Star Wars TV Christmas special(with Art Carney, Bea Arthur and Jefferson Starship!) and worst but not least – “Howard the Duck”.
That I would watch. Hell I’d even invest real cash to see it carried out, but the whole “Time Travel” gig is as out of date and hackneyed as the giant seaweed sea monsters roaming the sets of Irwin Allen TV Shows of the 1960s.
Put a fork in it boys, its done. Its been done, and it needs to stop, ok?
Frank, go read the fifth graf in my comment: they pretty much have put a fork in it. Now, people have to live with their time lines and histories as they happened in thier world-line; Kirk the fatherless can’t become Kirk of the happy childhood.
After due consideration, I side with Frank here. Star Trek has beaten time travel entirely to death. It’s their fall-back position when they can’t figure out what to do next. I’ll buy it here (barely) for the purposes of jump-starting this cycle of new stories, but enough is enough.
How about they build a time machine and send bulls-eye guy back to track down the inventor of time travel and strangle him in his crib?
I don’t think anyone disagrees; Harlan Ellison could get away with it once on the theory that the Guardian had some extra effect. But from the first, there was this notion that if something messed wih your history, you could know it and repair it, which is silly — if your history is changed, your history is changed, but it’s still your history. If you are the time traveler, like Spock from the ancestral timeline, your world line may include a loop, but that doesn’t restore the Universe from backups.
Eh, the movie was ok. As another commenter noted, the basic premise that drives the movie is mind-F******ly stupid. They actually had the stupidit to say that they thought the supernova was going to destroy the galaxy. Come on. Even non geeks ought to have figured out how big a galaxy is by now. Sigh. I keep hoping they will write a star trek movie that is NOT premised on utter idiocy.
Also, I hope Nimoy dies soon. Ok. That’s mean, he can live but somehow they HAVE to stop casting him in movies. He looks like hell. I mean his eyes look like they are actively rotting in his skull. MAKE IT STOP!
I also am not a fan of all the tedious little trekisms. I wish they would spend their money and effort trying to create some descent science fiction movies that have nothing to do with star trek. Hell, pick a Hugo Award winning novel at random and make a film… But I do have to agree that despite all the flaws and problems it was a fun movie to watch, and the effects were all well done.
But the film did little to change the fact that Star Trek is stupid…
Given what our news media say routinely about stupid little shit, I’m willing to give a pass on this one. In a way it adds verisimilitude to the idea this is our future they’re talking about.
Hey, I don’t begrudge people suspending their disbelief. You HAVE to if you want to enjoy Star Trek. It doesn’t by any means ruin the film. But it does annoy the hell out of me. And the followup premise that once a star explodes you could suck all the ejecta back in with a black hole is equally stupid. Well, it is at least if the lethal radiation has escape velocity, which it almost certainly does.
And hell, even if all that werent true, the shock wave would take YEARS to get to even the nearest stars, so Spock would have had to have been slow as fuck to not make it in time, which seem reasonable to assume given he is practically dead.
So the star was Romulus star, since if it were even stopping the shock wave couldn’t save Romulus. So we are asked to believe that in the many many many years between this nova and it hitting Romulus, Spock could not get there to implement his completely pointless and stupid black hole rescue?
Im sorry, it is just beyond moronic. It’s like they think we are more stupid that Barak Obama does.
So the star was Romulus star”
Sigh, I can’t type today. That should say the star was NOT Romulus’ star.
It was stupid, yes. That said, was it really any stupider than “Go back in time by slingshotting around the Sun to save whales so that their songs make aliens content and stop them from boiling Earth”? How about mind-controlling ear slugs? And remember, those are the good Trek movies. It had cool action scenes, attractive women, enough plot to let you mostly suspend disbelief, and enough badassery for two Kirks. It was fine.
Personally, I loved the movie. I accepted the whole alternate reality thing as a necessary evil. Even if Abrams and crew decided to do everything they could to make this true to the original canon, they would have to spend every movie making sure they didn’t contradict something. And we’d also have the fact that we would know that no one could die, etc, because we had seen them in the future.
My favorite part of the movie? In the very end, when the Enterprise was breaking up while being pulled into the singularity, I was convinced they’d be pulled into it and it would act as a nice big reset button, setting everything back right with the universe.
Glad to see that they didn’t take that easy out.
And just like Kirk’s appearance in Generations, the original cast member in the new movie turned out to be the weakest part of the movie.
Bob nailed it. Y’all can whine all you want about time travel, but Abrams had to do something to avoid all the crap he was sure to have gotten if he just tried for a bog-standard “prequel,” because then all the fanboys (Jonah Goldberg included) would wet their pants about X, Y, or Z being impossible, or a contradiction, or that something wasn’t “canon.”
Am I the only person who remembers that -according to “canon”- the Feds didn’t know what Romulans looked like until the Enterprise ran into that Warbird? So how come in the movie Spock is all about “I’m the better choice to beam over, since Romulans and Vulcans are similar?” Ok, I know the answer, and it starts with “Brannon and Braga are idiots,” but still…
Abrams had to find some way to avoid the crushing weight of all that “canon,” else only about five dozen fanboys would watch the bloody thing. An alternate future was the simplest, cleanest way to avoid that.
In fact, the complainers are starting to remind me of the folks who bitched when Moore turned Starbuck into a chick.