Not as bad as I feared but not as good as I hoped.
Cumberbatch is Khan. Not really impressed with him as an actor. He really did have much to do except sit still and talk in a deep voice or beat people up.
The movie is part Wrath of Khan and part Insurrection.
Basically I feel that J.J. is a hipster Michael Bay.
Would it be possible to have spoilers be spoilerboxed, please?
Worst. Movie secret. Ever.
I like your thoughts on Abrams. Good thing he’ll mess up Star Wars next so we have another franchise incorporate the stupid camera whips and lens flares.
Seriously? It says “Spoilers” in the title. If you don’t want to see spoilers maybe next time don’t click on a thread that says it will have spoilers.
That’s why I put it in the thread title and waited till the second post.
This is a thread for that that HAVE seen the movie.
So, Khan, now is Wolverine without the claws. He just heals instantly and his blood heals others. Even a tribble? So his 20th century human blood can bring a dead tribble back to life?
The Vengence A ship much larger than the Enterprise but only has a crew of 20 or can be run by one person. They say it’s twice as big or 3x as big? The scale shots to the Enterprise make it look much larger.
I don’t think these guys get women at all. The female characters are all pretty vapid, mostly there for decoration. Yes, even Uhura. Generally I like her “expanded” role but in this film she gets all pissy because Spock did something risky. Put his life in jeopardy. And she gets all “You didn’t think about US or about ME!” She is a Starfleet officer. She knows the job comes with risks. What does she want? Spock to quit and settle down?
Alice Eve is there to look pretty and be in her underwear for a bit. Even the face she makes at Kirk for looking when she told him not to look was one of “you naughty boy, you looked when I really wanted you too but was only pretending not to want you to look.”
This sounds like weak writing to me. But then again, there is precedent: SpockPrime got resurrected by [del]a silly plot device[/del] the Genesis effect in ST III. (Conveniently back to the same age he was when he died in the engine room in ST II.)
Fans are wanking that this ship (the Vengeance) is fruits of some reverse engineering of the Narada, which may have had borg tech, too.
There’s a thread with spoilers over on Trekbbs if you’re interested in seeing more nitpicking of the movie. 
Edit, disclaimer: I have not yet seen this film.
Gah – the movie is using “Kirk is a headstrong cadet who needs to learn a lot before he’s ready to be in charge of anything” as a plot point rather than glossing over it as best it can?
J. J. Abrams has less common sense than my cats – they know when they’ve produced a stinky load of crap that should be covered up.
If it says “spoilers” in the thread title, and if there are no spoilers in the OP visible through mouseover, it’s up to the individual to not click into the thread if he or she doesn’t want to read spoilers.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
How much control over the script & scriptwriters did J.J. have in regards to this movie?
Fair enough.
As executive producer and director? Quite a bit of control. He doesn’t sit down and write it but he reads and approves or sends back with notes for rewrites. They took a long time to write this.
This.
Jadxia, Kira, Janeway, are all turning in their graves.
This new reboot has been nothing but a disappointment. Trek is supposed to be at least a little smart (Supernova wipes out planet, really?!?! Dude goes back in time and instead of, oh, I don’t know, warning his people, he figures seeking out revenge against the guy who tried to help is the best way to take advantage of the situation?), it’s also supposed to be about political intrigue and adventure/exploration, it’s supposed to be about interesting characters and their interactions with each other and the technology.
It’s NOT supposed to be about teh SPLOSIONS!!! And teh NINJAS in the sky.
Jeebus.
I had a few questions about the plot and its exposition but I only remember two of them right now:
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When was Khan born? I thought it said the present year is 2259 towards the beginning of the movie, but later they said Khan is at least 300 years old. But surely he wasn’t born in 1959? Did I misread the date?
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What exactly was Kirk communicating to Khan when he asked McCoy about the tribble? I didn’t quite understand what Khan was supposed to understand from that.
A few things I feel like should have been done differently:
A. Spock’s conversation with Spock was ludicrous–“I promised I wouldn’t ever give you timeline-altering info, but anyway, here’s a bunch of timeline-altering info.” It should have been something much more enigmatic. Like finding out Khan is apparently their ally at the time, then emphasizing Khan’s ruthlessness, which would be an ambiguous thing to emphasize. Spock certainly, in my view, already had enough information to be worried and to make plans for just in case Khan turned on them.
B. Kirk’s death scene–I wanted to tweak the dialogue just a little bit. When Kirk asked how not to feel, Spock said something like “I don’t know, right now I’m failing.” This is in tension with what he said before, which is interesting, but the lack of follow up made me unsure the tension was intentional. I would have had him just leave it at “I do not know.” Then perhaps Kirk could say something like “But what you said to Uhura before…” and then Spock could finish the sentence for him, “was a lie.”
C. Admiral Marcus’s reaction to Kirk’s offer to give himself up for the crew made a little less sense than it could have. “I was never going to spare your crew anyway” is both a very mustache-twirly line, and also doesn’t quite make sense in context sense Kirk hadn’t suggested that Marcus would have spared them absent his offer. I’d’ve had him say something like: “That’s a damn fine apology. But you’re the one who decided to put this ‘on the record’ by blasting your loudspeakers for every crew member to hear. I can’t let a single one of you survive. Congratulations, Kirk, you just got your crew killed.”
BTW anyone think in a future Trek film there will be a twist on the Kaatra theme based on the fact that Kirk now has Kahn’s super-DNA in him?
Oh yeah, he was a year behind me in school. Even then he was trying to conquer everything he could get his hands on. He conquered my Lionel train set, for example.
The TV series is supposed to be about exploration. The movies have to work as action set-pieces to be crowd-pleasers.
I liked the film, overall. I thought it was fun. Combining Space Seed, Wrath of Khan, and Search for Spock into one film was a bit of a cop-out, especially since their attempt to keep that a secret failed spectacularly so the surprise twists were a bit of a fizzle, but it wasn’t a bad movie. I was highly entertained.
I do think the near-sacrifice of Spock at the start, and the actual sacrifice of Kirk, was too early in this new series run to have the right level of impact it deserved, but I see how it served the story to help prove Kirk was selfless when he needed to be.
I thought the movie was great! It was better than I hoped it would be. Having Khan back was awesome.
Saw it tonight at 6:00, in a theater with a total of ten people in it. 18-plex was empty when we got there, empty when we left. Did anyone bother to announce that ST was premiering tonight?
I’d put it just behind the first one. Good ride but a distinct lack of freshness and about 50% too much slam-bang-crash for no good reason.
I agree that Cumberbatch was a bit of a letdown.