Star Trek 09 review thread

[Anguirus]

Tidbits:

-Two references to Nurse Chapel. McCoy calls for her early on, and then one of the nurses carrying Pike away is blonde with a familiar hairstyle. (Though on reflection it may be more Rand-like then Chapel-like).

-The Big Saucer is longer than the Enterprise is tall/wide, even though it is farther from camera. The NCC is in-your-face obvious when it strikes the E's "ample nacelle."

[Dark Lord of the Bith]

If this "red matter" stuff forms a black hole, one wonders why they had to punch through the crust, anyway; why couldn't they just drop the shit on the surface and let it eat the planet up from there?

Did they ever say that the red matter had to be ignited with heat to form a black hole? It would be consistent with when we see it work: dropped into a star, dropped into a planet's core, and shot at in the end. Of course, if this were the case, why couldn't they just drop it on the surface and then shoot it from orbit?

[Battlehymn Republic]

Did anyone else get a Superman, old-school comic books-vibe from the somewhat presence of "Red Matter"?

[Surlethe]

If this "red matter" stuff forms a black hole, one wonders why they had to punch through the crust, anyway; why couldn't they just drop the shit on the surface and let it eat the planet up from there?

Did they ever say that the red matter had to be ignited with heat to form a black hole? It would be consistent with when we see it work: dropped into a star, dropped into a planet's core, and shot at in the end. Of course, if this were the case, why couldn't they just drop it on the surface and then shoot it from orbit?

First, that's not what the visuals suggested at the end when the red matter in the Narada clumps to make a black hole. Second, if it is inert until it's heated to enormous temperatures, why go to the trouble of storing it so carefully? Third, they're high enough that if they drop it it will heat up in its passage through the atmosphere and impact on the ground.

[Dark Lord of the Bith]

If this "red matter" stuff forms a black hole, one wonders why they had to punch through the crust, anyway; why couldn't they just drop the shit on the surface and let it eat the planet up from there?

Did they ever say that the red matter had to be ignited with heat to form a black hole? It would be consistent with when we see it work: dropped into a star, dropped into a planet's core, and shot at in the end. Of course, if this were the case, why couldn't they just drop it on the surface and then shoot it from orbit?

First, that's not what the visuals suggested at the end when the red matter in the Narada clumps to make a black hole. Second, if it is inert until it's heated to enormous temperatures, why go to the trouble of storing it so carefully? Third, they're high enough that if they drop it it will heat up in its passage through the atmosphere and impact on the ground.

Ah, that's true. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the details of the end.

[Patroklos]

That is understandable. Anyone with intelligence was bleeding from the ears by that point.

[DaveJB]

Second, if it is inert until it's heated to enormous temperatures, why go to the trouble of storing it so carefully?

This is probably a nitpick, but just because red matter might require a high energy input to create a black hole doesn't mean it's otherwise safe to handle. In its raw form it might be toxic or radioactive, kind of like how Plutonium won't set off a thermonuclear explosion unless it forms a critical mass, but even so can certainly kill you if it isn't stored correctly.

[Terralthra]

First, that's not what the visuals suggested at the end when the red matter in the Narada clumps to make a black hole. Second, if it is inert until it's heated to enormous temperatures, why go to the trouble of storing it so carefully? Third, they're high enough that if they drop it it will heat up in its passage through the atmosphere and impact on the ground.

The red matter at the end had just been through a starship exploding around it. Surely that counts as "heating" it? The crewmembers aboard the Narada even refer to "igniting" it, though their technical prowess with someone else's magitech is questionable.

The second point has been answered.

For the third point, I got nothing.

[Stark]

I think Surl's point is that most of the red matter at the end DIDN'T react; heaps of it was just floating around in space when the singularity sucked it all in like any other rubbish.

[Havok]

The red matter that is floating around actually "attracts" to itself and becomes the singularity. That's why I mentioned earlier that it seems that either one drop, or the whole ball, it still makes the same size time/dimension portal.

[Stark]

Are you sure? The singularity/lightning cloud is already visible in the heart of Narada when the red blobs are sucked in. This neatly explains why the singularity wasn't bigger or better, since most of thre red matter was wasted in this way.

[Havok]

Pretty sure. The ship crashes into the Narrada then the focus goes to the RM floating in space and it all coming together in the center of the ship/impact spot. After that is when the "black hole" appears.

[Stark]

Hurm. I've only seen it once, but I was pretty sure I noted at the time that the lightning business had already started by the time the red-matter was drawn in. :S

[tim31]

This thing's going to bust some chops when the DVD comes out.

[Darth Wong]

This thing's going to bust some chops when the DVD comes out.

I'm probably going to get the BluRay. Special effects films look better on BluRay, and you can get far better screenshots off them anyway (assuming you know how to do it, which I do).

[Vympel]

I wonder how the Star Wars films are going to look on Blu-Ray. There was a 1080p sample of ANH footage on the Clone Wars movie Blu-Ray, but it wasn't terribly interesting footage for the most part.

A friend of mine said that AotC in particular may well look awful (relatively speaking) because it wasn't designed to be viewed at such a high resolution, and it was filmed digitally when the technology wasn't as well advanced as it should be. Don't know how that works.

[tim31]

I probably should have said home release comes out, but yeah, I'm looking forward to hi-def screencaps and a renewed shitfight just like everyone else

[Uraniun235]

A friend of mine said that AotC in particular may well look awful (relatively speaking) because it wasn't designed to be viewed at such a high resolution, and it was filmed digitally when the technology wasn't as well advanced as it should be. Don't know how that works.

I thought AotC had a digital release in theaters that supported it... and if I remember right, those theater digital projectors do something like 4000+ pixels horizontally (compare with 1080p which has 1920 pixels horizontal).

[DaveJB]

I believe that AOTC was actually shot at 1440x1080 resolution and then horizontally stretched, as there weren't any decent true 1080P movie cameras around at the time of its production. The quality will probably be degraded a bit compared to the other films, but not by a huge amount.

[Ugolino]

About the destruction of the Starfleet ships: maybe their shields were down when they emerged from warp.

[Darth Wong]

I wonder how the Star Wars films are going to look on Blu-Ray. There was a 1080p sample of ANH footage on the Clone Wars movie Blu-Ray, but it wasn't terribly interesting footage for the most part.

A friend of mine said that AotC in particular may well look awful (relatively speaking) because it wasn't designed to be viewed at such a high resolution, and it was filmed digitally when the technology wasn't as well advanced as it should be. Don't know how that works.

It's not just the resolution of the cameras. The special effects were done on a budget, as the technology wasn't as advanced as it is now. I saw AOTC in an IMAX theatre and you could see the deficiencies in the presentation in that format. They could actually be quite distracting. Of course, a home HDTV set is not an IMAX theatre.

I know people don't think of the Star Wars movies as if they were done on a budget, but Lucas did try to keep costs to a minimum. You can think of them as the most expensive small-budget indy films ever made. AOTC cost $115 million to make, but keep in mind that the animated movie "Lilo and Stitch" (released in the same year) cost $80 million to make. It certainly wasn't a "cost no object" movie like "Titanic", which cost $200 million and was made 5 years earlier, and AOTC was ridiculously heavy on special effects; virtually every single scene had some kind of special effects in it.

[tim31]

Amazing how we scoff, isn't it. Watch Willow again and see if you can spot the bits that aren't real

It certainly wasn't a "cost no object" movie like "Titanic", which cost $200 million and was made 5 years earlier

Director with mental illness + phoned in love story + sinking ship = 500%+ return & Oscar sweeps. HOW?

[Vympel]

Hey, don't knock Willow. That movie fucking rocks.

[Themightytom]

Hey, don't knock Willow. That movie fucking rocks.

Its never good when you step in Troll Poop.

[Richardson]

A rather large thought for our day:

When Pike pitched starfleet to Kirk, his words were, and this is a direct quote, emphasis mine:

"You understand what it is, don't you, it's important, a Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Armada."

In fact, at no time in the new movie do we get an impression that the primary focus is science and exploration.

Even the Kelvin just seemed to be on guard patrol, and happened to catch the portal, and go investigate. It seems there is a fundamental shift as to what Starfleet does primarily, and the design of the Enterprise supports this. She's been re-engineered for massive shuttle ops, and more heavily armed, tying in with her suggested peacekeeping mandate .

Am I wrong, or does anyone else note this?