Star Trek 09 review thread

[Master of Ossus]

I just got back from seeing it, and frankly I thought it was terrible. In fact, I honestly can't see how someone can look at this and believe it to have been a great movie. I can see people thinking it an entertaining film, but a great film, like the reviewers were promising? This was a 1.5; maybe a 2 star movie, but I can't honestly see anyone wanting to watch this film over Transformers.

Here's what worked:

1. Bones was okay.
2. Captain Pike was great.
3. Leonard Nimoy was back; he was reprising his old role, and it was fun. It was actually sensible.
4. The setting was actually okay: it came up with a way of allowing for differences between this Kirk, Spock, etc. and the original cast: it's essentially a universe-within-a-universe, and it's okay--I'm willing to meet them that far.
5. Spock+Uhura was interesting.
6. The special effects really were good.

Here's what was awful:
1. Nero=Shinzon v. 1.5. He's a better villain than Shinzon. He still sucks.
2. Frankly, I hated the changes they made to the characters. None of it worked. Spock didn't work. Kirk was terrible. Scotty was over-the-top and unfunny comic relief (when he finally came in). Uhura was useless. Chekov was a joke--think of Terry Pratchett's Igors and that's exactly how they play Chekov. Only Chekov is less believable (they let a 17 year old ensign address the entire ship and explain the plot up to that point while the competent and able-bodied captain looks over his shoulder from 4 feet away?). Sulu is the guy who plays Harold from Harold and Kumar, and he actually puts in a good performance, but his character is ridiculous. Turns out, Sulu's a great fencer. Just for emphasis, the bad guys happen to use bladed weapons rather than phasers or disruptors or guns or marbles so you can see Sulu in action. I felt like they looked over a character bio of each character from wikipedia, focused on one characteristic from each one, and then turned them into caricatures of that trait.
3. Red-matter.
4. The plot was... Nemesis v. 1.5.
5. Police Academy. Sorry, STAR FLEET Academy. I got a little mixed-up with those two, and I don't feel the least bit bad about it.

Frankly, a pathetic effort, all told. The Futurama movie series is both more intellectually interesting and much, much funnier (and, yes, a substantial fraction of this Star Trek is played for laughs). Futurama should be funnier than Star Trek--it's a comedy film. It should not have better, deeper characters, equally believable plots, and raise more thought-provoking questions.

[CaptainChewbacca]

This stuff about Kirks unusually quick promotion has reminded me of something I didn't really understand in the movie: Uhura looked like a cadet at the time they left for Vulcan, she was wearing the cadets uniform and still seemed to be living in a university accomodation setup, but when they leave then she's a lieutenant, indicating she's been a full officer for some time, and she was decoding Klingon transmissions in the academy, which seems a bit advanced for cadets.
Honestly is there a problem with these facts or do I just not understand something about the military?

All of the cadets changed out of their uniforms, not just Uhura. I imagine being put into active service they were required to dress per their assigned operational spec. It would be confusing and difficult to find a medic or engineer if everyone was still in their academy reds.

I know they said 'three years later', but Pike said graduation took 4 years, so it would seem to me Kirk, Uhura, and Bones were all not fully-commissioned officers.

[Worlds Spanner]

This stuff about Kirks unusually quick promotion has reminded me of something I didn't really understand in the movie: Uhura looked like a cadet at the time they left for Vulcan, she was wearing the cadets uniform and still seemed to be living in a university accomodation setup, but when they leave then she's a lieutenant, indicating she's been a full officer for some time, and she was decoding Klingon transmissions in the academy, which seems a bit advanced for cadets.
Honestly is there a problem with these facts or do I just not understand something about the military?

All of the cadets changed out of their uniforms, not just Uhura. I imagine being put into active service they were required to dress per their assigned operational spec. It would be confusing and difficult to find a medic or engineer if everyone was still in their academy reds.

I know they said 'three years later', but Pike said graduation took 4 years, so it would seem to me Kirk, Uhura, and Bones were all not fully-commissioned officers.

And then Kirk said he would do it in three.

Lingering question: Uhura and almost everyone on the "recruit transport" were already in reds - were they actually new recruits? Or were they current students who ere away from the Academy? (In Iowa? Maybe a tour of the shipyard?)

[Patrick Degan]

I have to say that I actually liked this film, and I was quite prepared to be disappointed. Granted, this is with the caveat of the plot-holes and plausibility issues which have been raised in this thread and by a couple of reviewers: Starfleet's screwy ranking structure, command arrangements and promotional set-up, and the lack of development of Nero as a character —who was a more solid villain that Shinzon with a far better motive but had less on-screen development than Picard's Evil–Clone Skippy™ did in Nemesis; also no real explanation as to why Nero, who's out to undo the existence of the Federation, chooses a time period in which the Federation solidly exists instead of going back a little bit further in time before Earth and Vulcan even had spaceflight capability and destroying both worlds then, when he'd have no opposition to face. Really, this was the plot-logic of a comic book we got here.

However, where this movie does work is in it's casting, the handling of the characters overall (though using Scotty as comic-relief was a waste of both the character and the acting skills of Simon Pegg, who could handle a more solid dramatic part), and unloading a ton of excess baggage which Star Trek has built up over forty years. For this cast, I'd say the ones who shined the most were Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban, with Ben Cross delivering a rather decent Sarek for this film.

This movie also actually felt like a movie rather than just a blown-up TV episode, an experience I'd not enjoyed in a Star Trek film since The Undiscovered Country. It was also a film which, despite it's gaping defects in logic, didn't have me groaning at its stupidities; instead, I was actually able to enjoy this film. It had good pacing, took full advantage of the sweep of a cinematic stage, had several good character moments, didn't really have anybody who was truly unlikeable (the closest is Nero, but he's more of a cipher than an irritant), and most of it's humour worked. For the record, however, Shaky-Cam Must Die; it should be stricken from every manual of cinematographic style and it's practitioners ruthlessly purged from the industry.

Not a perfect movie by any means: I have issues with the overly convoluted doomsday weapon, the plot-holes in Nero's scheme, the goofy set up of Starfleet as an organisation, and both Kirk and Scotty's origin points could have been handled a lot better (Scotty really should already have been on the Enterprise under Capt. Pike, which would have made a lot more sense). Getting Kirk ejected from the Enterprise and marooned on Delta Vega was a clumsy way of getting him together with old Spock so he could serve the info-dump function. It worked where it needed to work the most, however, and that was in getting us to buy into a new set of actors playing the classical characters.

Now, for the next film, they just need a better, more logical plot.

[Kuja]

also no real explanation as to why Nero, who's out to undo the existence of the Federation, chooses a time period in which the Federation solidly exists instead of going back a little bit further in time before Earth and Vulcan even had spaceflight capability and destroying both worlds then, when he'd have no opposition to face. Really, this was the plot-logic of a comic book we got here.

Actually, the movie does explain that part: the timewarp was a result of Nero's ship fucking with Spock's whirlygig. Nero didn't apparently have any control over where he was sent, (which was why he asked the Kelvin's captain the stardate) he just made the best of his situation. Preseumably once he'd smashed both Vulcan and Earth he would have slunk off to Romulus to present himself to the Empire.

[Gil Hamilton]

I don't think Nero had a choice when he was due to go back in time. In the movie, Nero and Spock's ships get sucked into the Red Matter Hole and get sent back in time, but not by choice. It wasn't a controlled experiment. Once they ended up there and Nero realized that they were in the past, that's when he decide to wait for Spock to show up and then go on a rampage.

His first bit was to wait for Spock to come back in order to kill him. Then he captured the captain of the Kelvin and realized that for sure they were in the wrong time period. Then it became "OK, once Spock gets here, we'll steal the Red Matter and blow shit up." Vulcan was the first obvious target, because he wanted to punish Spock and because as a Romulan, the natural first choice in any action, from deciding on breakfast to what CD to put on for bedtime, is something anti-Vulcan. Then Earth, because it's the capital of the Federation, and based on how people tend to use "human", "StarFleet" and "Federation" interchangably, in Nero's perspective would represent the destruction of the Federation.

So Nero's plan was hatched after he landed in the past, not as a goal of travelling to the past.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I liked Nero. He wasn't a megalomaniac, he wasn't trying to conquer known space or unlock the secrets of infinity... he was just a blue-collar guy who'd lost everything and wanted to fuck the federation's shit up.

[Patrick Degan]

I don't think Nero had a choice when he was due to go back in time. In the movie, Nero and Spock's ships get sucked into the Red Matter Hole and get sent back in time, but not by choice. It wasn't a controlled experiment. Once they ended up there and Nero realized that they were in the past, that's when he decide to wait for Spock to show up and then go on a rampage.

His first bit was to wait for Spock to come back in order to kill him. Then he captured the captain of the Kelvin and realized that for sure they were in the wrong time period. Then it became "OK, once Spock gets here, we'll steal the Red Matter and blow shit up." Vulcan was the first obvious target, because he wanted to punish Spock and because as a Romulan, the natural first choice in any action, from deciding on breakfast to what CD to put on for bedtime, is something anti-Vulcan. Then Earth, because it's the capital of the Federation, and based on how people tend to use "human", "StarFleet" and "Federation" interchangably, in Nero's perspective would represent the destruction of the Federation.

So Nero's plan was hatched after he landed in the past, not as a goal of travelling to the past.

Alright, that makes a bit of sense and thinking back on the events of the movie appears to be the answer: Nero was essentially stuck in the time period his ship ended up in with no way to get back.

[Kuja]

The one part of the movie that really broke my suspension of disbelief was on the ice planet.

Kick gets kicked off the Enterprise? Um, okay, I guess I can buy it, he'll find a way to catch up again.

Kirk finds a cave and happens to run into Future Spock? Uh, that's stretching it a bit, but it makes a bit more sense after the explanation, though it was incredibly lucky of him.

Then Kirk and Spock run into Scotty, again completely by coincidence? Sorry, that's going too far for me. That was just too lucky, to the point where you're wondering of some kind of Hand of Fate is at work.

And then Scotty finds a way to beam them onto the Enterprise while at warp (based on an equation from an alternate reality where warp speed clearly works on a different scale) when minutes earlier Chekhov couldn't get a transport lock on a falling woman? Okay, tell me another one.

[Patrick Degan]

The one part of the movie that really broke my suspension of disbelief was on the ice planet.

Kick gets kicked off the Enterprise? Um, okay, I guess I can buy it, he'll find a way to catch up again.

Kirk finds a cave and happens to run into Future Spock? Uh, that's stretching it a bit, but it makes a bit more sense after the explanation, though it was incredibly lucky of him.

Then Kirk and Spock run into Scotty, again completely by coincidence? Sorry, that's going too far for me. That was just [/i]too[/i] lucky, to the point where you're wondering of some kind of Hand of Fate is at work.

And then Scotty finds a way to beam them onto the Enterprise while at warp (based on an equation from an alternate reality where warp speed clearly works on a different scale) when minutes earlier Chekhov couldn't get a transport lock on a falling woman? Okay, tell me another one.

Definitely one of the clumsiest bits of the film. They really needed more time at the keyboard on that one.

[Knife]

On the military promotion bit; and I'm not too thrilled about the bump to O6 at the end, but there are things like battlefield promotions and bervet billets. As the actual CO of the Enterprise, it was well with in Pike's authority to make an ensign or midshipman as XO. While an XO would normally be a LtCmdr or Cmdr, there is no actual laws against Lt's being an XO of the ship depending on the ship and scope of mission.

There is an old saying in the military, 'don't confuse your rank with my authority'. There are plenty of times where in a unit structure, a person with inferior rank can be and will be technically in charge of a higher ranking personnel. Same with all the cadets on the ships, I'm sure they all got a 'bump' to ensign or Lieutenant upon getting activated for duty, as a temporary commission or by virtue of their billet.

All that said, I'd had preferred if they would have ended this movie with Kirk as XO and they could ahve jumped a couple years at the start of the next movie (lets face it, there will be another one) with Kirk as CO.

[tim31]

Agreed. I couldn't help but fanboyishly enjoy the sight of Kirk in gold, crosslegged in The Chair, but it really was character wank. However, I also really don't care. I enjoyed it too much.

First repeat viewing is this Thursday, though.

[Oskuro]

Hehehe, we finally get a Trek movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, and here we are, taking it seriously.

[Aaron]

If there was a situation where a young officer somehow legally ended up in command of a vessel in real life and during the course of his actions very publically saved the lives of every single person in the United States or Canada, you don't think the real life military would let him stay a captain at the end of it?

No I don't, I would expect him to receive a reward of some type. Perhaps confirmed at Lt. or Lt. Cmdr and given his choice of posting but not to remain as Captain. A brevet or field promotion is still subject to confirmation and there's no guarantee that he would get to keep it.

[Havok]

when minutes earlier Chekhov couldn't get a transport lock on a falling woman? Okay, tell me another one.

Not accurate. He had the lock on Spock's mother. She fell out of the lock when the cliff collapsed in mid transport. And you can't really compare it to Kirk and Sulu's fall because Chekov had more time to establish the lock than the half second between Amanda's fall and presumably her death from impact. Especially with the time the transporters take in this reality.

[Stofsk]

If there was a situation where a young officer somehow legally ended up in command of a vessel in real life and during the course of his actions very publically saved the lives of every single person in the United States or Canada, you don't think the real life military would let him stay a captain at the end of it?

No I don't, I would expect him to receive a reward of some type. Perhaps confirmed at Lt. or Lt. Cmdr and given his choice of posting but not to remain as Captain. A brevet or field promotion is still subject to confirmation and there's no guarantee that he would get to keep it.

He did get a medal, but the promotion being confirmed may well have been a part of the reward as well.

I frankly don't see a huge problem with this. Starfleet seems to be a hyper-meritocracy. If you are talented, you get promoted. Also, Starfleet lost 7-8 ships in orbit of Vulcan, so maybe they have personnel shortages at that moment. There may not even be an officer who could take command of Enterprise, and since Pike gave Kirk a brevet promotion, why not honour it?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The way they promoted Kirk in my opinion was too contrived. He jumped from a mere cadet to the rank of Captain? What? I would rather have him at the start of the crisis as a lieutenant and then he got bumped up fast because of his exemplary performance. That aside, character development could have been done slightly better with respect to the villains. We had a rather short on-screen time of the villains and not much to speak of.

The Red Matter bit though, does take the suspense of belief to the high end. That stuff is incredibly deadly crap that ought not to be even containable.

[La Maupin]

when minutes earlier Chekhov couldn't get a transport lock on a falling woman? Okay, tell me another one.

Not accurate. He had the lock on Spock's mother. She fell out of the lock when the cliff collapsed in mid transport. And you can't really compare it to Kirk and Sulu's fall because Chekov had more time to establish the lock than the half second between Amanda's fall and presumably her death from impact. Especially with the time the transporters take in this reality.

Is it just this reality, though? There are very very few instances of a transporter beaming somebody who was not moving in a highly predictable way (i.e. standing on the deck of a ship moving at warp is one thing, quite another is somebody from under whose feet the ground just fell out.

[Gandalf]

when minutes earlier Chekhov couldn't get a transport lock on a falling woman? Okay, tell me another one.

Not accurate. He had the lock on Spock's mother. She fell out of the lock when the cliff collapsed in mid transport. And you can't really compare it to Kirk and Sulu's fall because Chekov had more time to establish the lock than the half second between Amanda's fall and presumably her death from impact. Especially with the time the transporters take in this reality.

Don't forget that there was a black hole forming under her. That could have been a problem.

Also, the Scotty to Enterprise transport was transporting from a transporter. The Vulcan to Enterprise one was to a transporter. That could have been a key factor.

[Aaron]

He did get a medal, but the promotion being confirmed may well have been a part of the reward as well.

I frankly don't see a huge problem with this. Starfleet seems to be a hyper-meritocracy. If you are talented, you get promoted. Also, Starfleet lost 7-8 ships in orbit of Vulcan, so maybe they have personnel shortages at that moment. There may not even be an officer who could take command of Enterprise, and since Pike gave Kirk a brevet promotion, why not honour it?

IU it's in line with what we've seen from past Trek, so it fits and as long as the story is good then I'll be able to ignore it when I see it. That's really all I can ask out of fiction, right?

OOU, it is contrived but as someone mentioned before, it would have been a let down had Kirk not been given command.

[ray245]

Just wondering, how do you guys find the Star Trek movie soundtrack?

[Havok]

Well hearing it twice now, I really liked it. The subtleties of the original TOS score worked into it don't overpower and give just enough of a nod, while establishing that this is indeed a new Trek.

[Coyote]

Grow up. Are you saying he just gets... whatever he wants? He's got 'command potential' (ps lol) and the Genie says he's great shit... but it's not even the same man the Genie is talking about. If I save a guy from a burning building, do I get to skip all the procedure to become a firefighter too? What if I catch a bankrobber?

Not entirely the same; remember that Kirk had, in fact, already enrolled and completed his initial cadet training-- he had already become a 'firefighter' properly but had some discipline issues on his record when the event came up that allowed him to be a hero.

[Coyote]

Don't forget that there was a black hole forming under her. That could have been a problem.

Also, the Scotty to Enterprise transport was transporting from a transporter. The Vulcan to Enterprise one was to a transporter. That could have been a key factor.

All that, and, Chekov had to maintain the lock on everyone else.

[Anguirus]

Nero is at least as developed as TWOK Khan. Khan is a screaming plot device in Star Trek II. He gets the benefit of his "Space Seed" backstory, but then he is squandered. He doesn't get to use his intellect or anything else that made him dangerous, he's just a madman played by a charismatic actor.

Frankly, Star Trek II is a fun movie but it's no better than this movie. Neither of the films deserve the frantic fellating they get in reviews (especially non-professional ones) but both are a good time.

I'll also chime in that the ice planet scene was really the clunkiest part of the film. Only the performances saved it, the story logic is terrible and the monster was just a waste of screen time and money.

Also, while the fight on the drilling rig was a bit silly (like the rest of the movie, shocker) do note that both of the Romulans were packing disruptors (or whatever) that were wrestled or kicked away. At the close quarters that we saw it seemed pretty plausible.