Arguing over the movie's merits

[Darth Wong]

Debates over whether STN is a good movie are a waste of time, folks. Movies are a matter of taste, and it's really quite subjective.

At the end of the movie, the question is: did you like it? And while movie critics have made careers out of putting flowery language on top of their subjective impression, that's what it is: a subjective impression.

The impression I'm strongly getting is that rabid Trekkies will like the film, moderate will be somewhat ambivalent, and non-Trekkies will think it's crap. You can argue all day about why you think it's either good or bad, but honestly, arguing about issues such as whether a character's death was dramatic enough is arguing about the subjective. Person A feels it was not dramatic because he felt no drama. Person B felt drama so it was dramatic to him.

This is an argument which is inherently impossible to resolve. State your opinions and be done with it. Arguing over them is a waste of time.

[C.S.Strowbridge]

I think there are objective, mostly technical, aspects of a movie we could discuss. Some things are objective and can ruin a movie; was the editing poor, was the sound flawed, was Travolta associated with the movie in any way, etc.

Although, coming up with witty insults could be more entertaining that the film itself.

[Uraniun235]

It also depends on how picky one is.

My mostly non-trekkie friend thought the movie was fairly good. As did I; I think it's the best of the TNG movies. Sure there were moments when I thought they could have written it better, but I thought the overall product was good. I'm not a rabid Trekker; I just don't have very discriminating tastes.

[Darth Wong]

Well, it depends on what you're talking about. If you're talking about whether you identified with a character, whether a death moved you, that's subjective and that's what I was talking about.

However, if you're talking about horrible gaping plot holes or laughable offenses against science or continuity, that's not subjective; you can argue those things on objective facts.

[KrauserKrauser]

You mean like say.... How their ground vehicles are designed.

Ignoring the fact that in modern day we could probably build that vehicle and possibly even something more survivable and durable there is one interesting tidbit that some might have not recognized.

The gun on the buggy was situtated in such a manner that it could only fire in the rear arc of the vehicle. Not only is this an obvious design flaw but what does that tell you about ST tactics. If say it was mounted in a swiveling turret or some such as that then might actually be some use to it but as it stands it's just another example of worthless ST engineering.

I hope ST shrivels and dies from this film.

[Alyeska]

I hope ST shrivels and dies from this film.

Piss off. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

[Stormbringer]

I hope ST shrivels and dies from this film.

Piss off. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

I think that's what most old time fans are doing. Refusing to watch, buy, or in anyway support New Trek in the hopes it does die.

[Eleas]

I hope ST shrivels and dies from this film.

Piss off. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

If I were Trek, I would want to die. It would be a release from B&B.

[Alyeska]

I hope ST shrivels and dies from this film.

Piss off. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

If I were Trek, I would want to die. It would be a release from B&B.

Fine, but you don't have to use such insulting language about the whole series.

I see people saying similar things about the recent works for Star Wars, yet I don't see a single one of you hoping that it "Shrivels up and dies" because of this.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

I thought Nemisis was enjoyable. I also think thats its one of the better trek films made thus far.

[KrauserKrauser]

Hurts....eyes....can't...read lol

If I could remove my scientific understanding of the way things work and could try to remove my ability to apply rational motives to actions in a film that is based in our universe using our universal constraints then I guess I could watch Nemesis and not cringe.

It had action, it tried to have romance, and it did introduce alot of shiny new terminology and gadgets.

Treasure Planet, for instance, also had what most would recognize as abberations of what we know to be true but at no point does it try and convince the audience that the world/universe the film is based on is the same as the one we live in.

Star Trek on the other hand has done this many a time even going so far as having time traveled back to present day and initiating zany shenanigans(sp?). They are establishing to me, the viewer, that their world is my world just put into the future a couple hundred years. They use my version of gravity, they use my understanding of what space is. They use predetermined quantities easily recognizable as ones that we possess now or could possess in the future.

Throughout the earlier series they were true to this premise and followed the idea that if we are trying to show some sort of realism to make this show more acceptable/believeable to the public then we have to limit ourselves to the constraints that the public view as existing with some license allowed as there is some fantasy still expected lol.

However from TOS all the way to Voyager (I stopped watching halfway through) they began to shy away from this with greater and greater frequency. To satisfy the requirements of new plots they started forgetting that physical constants shown in the show are a key to allowing the viewer to understand what is going on. With the introduction of Treknobabble they threw caution to the wind and have not looked back since.

I liked Star Trek, hell I loved it with a passion, but it's just not the same. I don't understand why they try so hard to make things so hard to understand when the draw originally for me was that it was both real and unreal at the same time. I could both understand what was going on without knowing the exact mechanics behind every single thing/ship/organism/phenomena that they ran into for plot purposes.

Well whatever, lol long post I might have gotten lost in there somewhere but basically I understand that is only my subjective opinion that brings me to my desire for ST to fade away but there do exist some obvious quality issues that are being ignored for the most part with Nemesis being a prime example of this. I'm not saying that at one time the show was a science lesson or anything but at least it felt like it might be lol. I could suspend disbelief but at some point their desire for me to take it seriouslly reached beyond my willingness to let them pervert something that I liked.

[Nixon]

Debates over whether STN is a good movie are a waste of time, folks. Movies are a matter of taste, and it's really quite subjective.

At the end of the movie, the question is: did you like it? And while movie critics have made careers out of putting flowery language on top of their subjective impression, that's what it is: a subjective impression.

Of course art is subjective, but all works of art are not necessarily of equal quality. Is classical music better than rap? Although that is a matter of subjective taste, there's no reason arguments can't be made why one is better than the other. One can argue classical music has more complexity to it, where as rap by most musicians can hardly even be called music since it lacks a great deal of harmony, melody, and structure. The varying degrees of quality to art is where the crux of art debate comes from. If there can be no debate to art, then there is no effort to bring to light what is good quality art. Objective arguments such as salient facts to a movie, can ultimately be given a conclusion where a consensus can be made. A good premise with a conclusion that logically follows says a lot and goes a long way. But to say that means arguing whether a movie is good or not is pointless only because it's subjective, says that artists cannot improve their craft, make a better product, etc. Does your art make sense? Does it follow the continuity of previous works of art you established? Are you successful at establishing a suspension of disbelief? Do the characters have depth? Is there structure?

I'm currently a music student in college, and while I often disagree with my professor's interpretation of how I should play my instrument or how a tune should be played (Which I don't let them know of my disapproval for fear of receiving a bad grade), I need that insight to gain a better understanding of things I never considered to make my art......better.....to pick and choose what criticisms I like or that make more sense to me, and above all else to let my ego be destroyed once in a while to understand why what I was playing was crap. Otherwise there's no growth, there's no effort, there's no point. Why not grind out the same shit year after year and just throw up your hands and say....well it's subjective, screw you if you don't like it.

[matus1976]

Debates over whether STN is a good movie are a waste of time, folks. Movies are a matter of taste, and it's really quite subjective.

At the end of the movie, the question is: did you like it? And while movie critics have made careers out of putting flowery language on top of their subjective impression, that's what it is: a subjective impression.

Of course art is subjective, but all works of art are not necessarily of equal quality. Is classical music better than rap? Although that is a matter of subjective taste, there's no reason arguments can't be made why one is better than the other...Otherwise there's no growth, there's no effort, there's no point. Why not grind out the same shit year after year and just throw up your hands and say....well it's subjective, screw you if you don't like it.

Good points Nixon. I am reminded of a part in Richard Feynmans 'What do you care what other people think' In which Arlene is practicing her chinese caligraphy and Feynman joins in, she tells him he did it wrong and hes like 'whats wrong? its all subjective anyway, theres no law of physics that dictates the way chinese charachters must be written' But after she showed him the difference between a good one and a bad one, he realized that while it is all subjective and arbitrary social constructs, there can be 'better' and 'worse'

Just as, in music, the vast majority of people will recognize out of key music as unenjoyable, unintelligible plots and confusing charactherizations will make most people recognize a film as unenjoyable.

There is likely some predefined component that many people share to aesthetic values. Getting closer to matching this may be what we consider to be 'better' and getting farther away, on average at least, may be what most people consider 'worse'

Just last month in Scientific American an article was done on Pollack's artwork. Pollack was the guy whos paintings consisted of dripping paint onto a canvas in an apparently random manor. I didnt think much of those paintings "hes just ramdonly splashing paint on the canvas" was what I remember thinking. This particular article In SciAm was about how his paintings progressively approached a repetitive fractal pattern in their organization. Fractal patterns are patterns that repeat as you zoom in or out. As the author noted, his earlier paintings which Pollack didnt like much were not very close to fractal designs and were much more random, however as he progressed, a very consistent trend emerged in his paintings that continually approached a true fractal pattern. Similiar pollack looking paintings done by people who just tried to replicate them showed no fractal repitition in the mathematical analysis. So it turns out that Pollack, even though he didnt realize it, had as a goal to create a pattern that repeated indefinately in scale.

Interesting stuff

Matus

[Eleas]

If I were Trek, I would want to die. It would be a release from B&B.

Fine, but you don't have to use such insulting language about the whole series.

I see people saying similar things about the recent works for Star Wars, yet I don't see a single one of you hoping that it "Shrivels up and dies" because of this.

I don't because I liked Attack of the Clones, and some other stuff shows promise. But for Trek? Honestly, Alyeska, you'll have to go back a few years to reach anything remotely watchable.

[Uraniun235]

Define "watchable".

For me, Star Trek 5 is more watchable than Insurrection, Generations, or even First Contact. I think the movie is simply more fun; the pace doesn't drag too badly (except in one spot), the writing is fairly solid, and quite frankly at least they tried to do something with Final Frontier. First Contact doesn't even try.

I hope ST shrivels and dies from this film.

It doesn't matter whether ST is on the air/screen or not. If you don't like it, you don't watch it, it's that simple. It's not like it's very existance is an affront to humanity, and it's certainly not draining talent away from more-needed projects; we all know about the writing, and the CGI people have demonstrated time and again that when it comes to drawing up a battle, they're utterly incompetent. It's not like the fan base will *suddenly* up and migrate to whatever your pet series is and it's not like the fan base would suddenly up and disappear if all ST projects were cancelled, either.

Why should it matter whether it dies or not?

[Darth Wong]

Why should it matter whether it dies or not?

It doesn't. So why do you get upset when people say it will?