Just got back from an early showing of an IMAX showing of Star Trek…and it was pretty good! Not great, and sorta goofy in places (particularly the time travel aspect), but it was entertaining, had decent performances, and great effects. Plus I’ve historically not cared at all about Trek, so the fact they were able to make this somewhat interesting to me is a feat in itself.
Anyone else catch it yet?
So far, I seem to be the only person in the world who didn’t like it, and I’m genuinely bewildered at the acclaim it’s getting. I don’t know, maybe it’s just a case of contrarianism on my part, but I just don’t see what’s supposed to be so good about it, and instead I see quite a bit of bad:
[ul][li]The whole supernova thing: nobody ever cares to explain why it would threaten the whole galaxy, it’s one of many nonsensical things that are just taken for granted.[/li][li]Cancelling it out with a black hole? Even Doctor Who only played that one for laughs…[/li][li]Plus, as I can’t stop myself from pointing out, it’s really just Romulans wanting to one up the Klingons and their exploding moon.[/li][li]Red matter, schmed matter, but why were the black holes so YMMV in their effects? You get either total annihilation, or time travel, whatever the plot needs.[/li][li]The planetary drill creates some interference field, again for what seems totally plot related reasons. Eh, I actually don’t even care about that one.[/li][li]The scene from the trailer with young Kirk racing the oldtimer is symptomatic for the movie – it’s never explained why it happens, if he’s running from something or whatever, it just happens because it looks badass and shows that Kirk’s a hotshot. [/li][li]Nobody’s actions are ever motivated in any way. Why should Spock throw Kirk out on some remote planet? Just to be a dick? Is he going to grow a goatee next, because this film’s events actually lead to the creation of the mirror universe?[/li][li]For that matter, why did Pike make Kirk first officer? Yeah, he’s ‘read his files’, but nevertheless, somebody’s gonna feel a bit cheated out of his promotion… Furthermore, Kirk hadn’t even formally concluded his training yet, was actually suspended, and basically illegally on board.[/li][li]And why’d he then send the guy he’d just made first officer on some ridiculously ill-conceived suicide mission (that ended up having zero effect, too)?[/li][li]How, then, was he able to assume command just like that after getting Spock to freak out? He’d just been thrown over board for mutiny, then entered the ship, illegally, for the second time, to pick a fight with the captain! And like one other person even knew he’d been made first officer by offhand comment of the captain.[/li][li]No relationships were actually established. Kirk and Spock just get together because the elder Spock says so, the Uhura/Spock thingy is ‘established’ when she sticks her tongue down his throat (throwaway line about favouritism notwithstanding).[/li][li]Generally, promotions seem to be earned when a superior officer dies. [/li][li]What sense does it make to man your ultra-new flagship entirely with rookies who have barely completed basic training?[/li][li]The transwarp transporter, again ‘invented’ because the writers couldn’t think of any way to get Kirk off the planet he had no reason for being in the first place, pretty much makes all starship travel obsolete, seeing how it can cross interstellar distances instantaneously. [/li][li]So, Kirk lands on some remote planet, where he’s coincidentally rescued by Spock, coincidentally similarly jettisoned there by Nero (for similarly good reasons), where they coincidentally stumble, in some backwater outpost, over none other than Scotty? I’m surprised Spock didn’t drop dead from a burst blood vessel trying to calculate the odds of that. raises eyebrow[/li][li]You can’t escape the gravitational pull of a black hole going at max warp speed, but creating a big ass explosion behind you will do the trick? I don’t know if they were trying to subvert fan’s expectations, but couldn’t they have Scotty come up with something at least marginally more believable/clever?[/li][li]Almost forgot: Vulcan bullies?[/ul][/li]
However, there were good bits, too:
[ul][li]The fanservice. Having Kirk attempt to bone a green skinned alien girl? Killing the redshirt (though merely by his own stupidity, not as a means to show the severity of the danger)? Our plan has 4.3% chance of succeeding? All ace, and there’s more I’m forgetting.[/li][li]The designs, both of creatures and ships. Except for the Romulan one, which just was a horribly confused mess of scary spiky things and other stuff. [/li][li]The acting, for the most part; nothing spectacular, but generally solid. The guy who played McCoy I thought really nailed the characters mannerisms. I was a bit surprised that I didn’t like Simon Pegg as Scotty, but the whole character just seemed a parody of himself, and not a very good one. But maybe that was due to the synchronisation. [/li][li]There also were some genuinely funny moments, and some that really showed heart, particularly where Spock breaks through emotionally. [/li]li Spock definitely was the most well done character, for the first time actually acknowledging his split heritage, even building upon it. Plus, I never thought ‘live long and prosper’ could sound so much like ‘fuck you’ as when he rejected the offer of the Vulcan science council. [/li][li]Space fights looked awesome, and particularly the space jump was thrilling (ridiculous as it was in and of itself; I’ll just assume they had some magical gizmo negating re-entry heat).[/ul][/li]
Other than that, I can’t think of terribly much, though. It just seemed all surface and no substance, and while that looks pretty as long as you keep the hot air inside, it just ends up an ugly mess on the floor if you start poking holes into it. Nothing made sense, which was covered up by not making an effort to have anything make sense. It’s all one huge tangled mess of coincidences and plot devices, glued together with glitzy designs and in-jokes.
But everybody else loves it. What am I not seeing here? Am I just examining things too critically? Am I that subconsciously outraged at all my pointless Trek knowledge now being even more pointless that I need to attack the movie to validate myself? What exactly is there that everybody seems to love?
Do they? I *liked * it, didn’t love it. And a lot of the reviews seem the same way. As mentioned, I’ve historically not given a damn about Star Trek, which I imagine helps when watching a reboot.
I found it enjoyable as long as I didn’t think about it too hard. And I gotta give kudos for not having sound in space…sometimes.
Well, Metacritic currently has it at 86%, IMdB at 8.3/10, and Rotten Tomatoes at 94%, with 102 ‘fresh’ vs. 7 ‘rotten’ reviews… I don’t even remember when I’ve last seen such an unanimously positive reaction to a movie. Granted, it’s still very early, and all those numbers are likely to go down a bit, but still, that’s a pretty overwhelmingly positive response, it seems to me; so maybe not ‘everyone but me’ loved it, but it still seems that my reaction rather is in the minority.
Loved it. About ten minutes in I was already wanting to buy a ticket for the sequel. I’m a very light Trek fan otherwise. Maybe that factored in, but I thought it was a hell of a ride.
What drastic said.
Honestly, I think you might have gone into the movie expecting to despise it, HMHW. That, or you may slightly misjudge the origins of the series – it’s NEVER been hard science, never been all that incredibly coherent. Yes, making a black hole eat a star (and what the hell is red matter, anyway?) is silly. Yes, there is no good reason for Spock to punt Kirk from the ship except for generalized pique apart from the possible fanwank that a man that annoyingly clever and charismatic would probably figure a way out of the brig. My personal fanwank for the ridiculous Scotty-Spock-Kirk coincidence and a few of the others is a crossover with Terry Pratchett’s history monks to make sure the right people are in the right places at the right time… 
There are plot holes, though they’re hard to hang onto as quickly as the movie goes, but the movie was freakin’ fun, and I think the franchise has lost a good bit of that fun in the last few years. I could start refuting each one of your points, though I agree with some of them, but they’re not the point. I loved the fanservice, though it went beyond even green-skinned alien chick banging. The actors obviously studied the mannerisms of their previous counterparts (though new-Uhura had little resemblance to Nichelle Nichols’s portrayal) to the point of new-Kirk tilting his head in the same way, new-Spock’s subtle expressions of emotion in little more than a subconscious twitch of muscle, and new-Bones’s annoyed glare and trademark grumbling.
I liked the characters. I liked the world. I like this Kirk kid, I can actually see Spock’s appeal to Uhura, I want to give Bones a great big noogie, I want to have a drink with Scotty, and I want to make borscht for Chekov. I want to know where Sulu got his origami katana, too…
And I like no sound in space. I know it’s probably a stupid thing to love in the face of everything else, but damn it… 
I agree with most of the criticisms that you listed, yet for some reason I liked the movie as a whole.
I would have liked it much better if it had an intelligent plot. You’re right that it didn’t. And that is disappointing. (I didn’t expect much better, though, given that it was written by the team that brought us the Transformers movie… maybe low expectations helped me out here?)
I was mostly taken in by the re-imagining aspects of it. I was really pleased–maybe even thrilled–at the overall aesthetic of the thing. Everything looked right, even when it was different from what I’m used to. And the performances from the Main Three were, I thought, great. I believed they were Kirk, McCoy and Spock, even though they were not doing anything like impressions of the actors playing the characters formerly. (The actor doing McCoy came closest to this–but did, I thought, such a good job acting the part rather than simply imitating it that I was pleased with his performance as well.) The movie felt like Trek, yet the aesthetic and (to a much lesser extent, and mostly due to Quinto) the performances made it much more visceral and immediately engaging than Trek productions that have come before–and I say that as a fan of what came before.
Characters other than the big three were fine as well, though I hope to see more (and better) from them in future episodes.
[ul][li]The whole supernova thing: nobody ever cares to explain why it would threaten the whole galaxy, it’s one of many nonsensical things that are just taken for granted.[/li][/quote]
I agree. We don’t need much. The series has never been on the hard side of sci-fi. Just state that there was something different about this nova, something that sent the force of its explosion through warp bubbles of some kind or something.
[quote]
[li]Cancelling it out with a black hole? Even Doctor Who only played that one for laughs…[/li][/quote]
I was thinking this could be made to work if the black hole is supposed to be large enough to be able to act as a kind of shield, standing between the planet and the supernova so it will suck in the brunt of the force of the blast. Would have to be a planet-sized black hole though, which is pretty dang big for a little ship like Spock’s to carry. Or something–because I guess he wouldn’t be carrying the hole, but the red matter. How much red matter? “Red matter”? WTF?
Yeah. I feel ya.
[quote]
[li]Plus, as I can’t stop myself from pointing out, it’s really just Romulans wanting to one up the Klingons and their exploding moon.[/li][li]Red matter, schmed matter, but why were the black holes so YMMV in their effects? You get either total annihilation, or time travel, whatever the plot needs.[/li][li]The planetary drill creates some interference field, again for what seems totally plot related reasons. Eh, I actually don’t even care about that one.[/li][/quote]
Not sure what you’re referring to here.
[quote]
[li]The scene from the trailer with young Kirk racing the oldtimer is symptomatic for the movie – it’s never explained why it happens, if he’s running from something or whatever, it just happens because it looks badass and shows that Kirk’s a hotshot.[/li][/quote]
Kirk raced an old-timer? I missed it.
[quote]
[li]Nobody’s actions are ever motivated in any way. Why should Spock throw Kirk out on some remote planet? Just to be a dick?[/li][/quote]
I took it that this was supposed to be symptomatic of his supposed reduced capacity for rational control. What actually motivated him was, he was pissed. But he pretended to himself that he was casting off a mutineer in desperate times.
[quote]
Is he going to grow a goatee next, because this film’s events actually lead to the creation of the mirror universe?
[li]For that matter, why did Pike make Kirk first officer? Yeah, he’s ‘read his files’, but nevertheless, somebody’s gonna feel a bit cheated out of his promotion…[/li][/quote]
Yep. When McCoy said “And we don’t have a first officer to promote to captain!” I was thinking, wouldn’t the chain of command be a bit longer than two people?
[quote]
Furthermore, Kirk hadn’t even formally concluded his training yet, was actually suspended, and basically illegally on board.
[li]And why’d he then send the guy he’d just made first officer on some ridiculously ill-conceived suicide mission (that ended up having zero effect, too)?[/li][li]How, then, was he able to assume command just like that after getting Spock to freak out? He’d just been thrown over board for mutiny, then entered the ship, illegally, for the second time, to pick a fight with the captain! And like one other person even knew he’d been made first officer by offhand comment of the captain.[/li][/quote]
Agreed, agreed, agreed. I really do wish the movie had had an intelligent (-ible?) plot. It would have made it much better.
[quote]
[li]No relationships were actually established. Kirk and Spock just get together because the elder Spock says so, the Uhura/Spock thingy is ‘established’ when she sticks her tongue down his throat (throwaway line about favouritism notwithstanding).[/li][/quote]
All nonsense, I agree. Dammit I agree!
I’m okay with the idea of a Spock/Uhura love connection. I do think it was handled very clumsily. But I understand they were trying to sort of make it a big surprise.
[quote]
[li]Generally, promotions seem to be earned when a superior officer dies. [/li][li]What sense does it make to man your ultra-new flagship entirely with rookies who have barely completed basic training?[/li][/quote]
Did they say anything about the role the Enterprise was supposed to have? I kind of thought maybe it was a training ship. Pike was on there, after all, and he seemed to have something to do with recruitment and with the Academy in general.
[li]The transwarp transporter, again ‘invented’ because the writers couldn’t think of any way to get Kirk off the planet he had no reason for being in the first place, pretty much makes all starship travel obsolete, seeing how it can cross interstellar distances instantaneously. [/li][li]So, Kirk lands on some remote planet, where he’s coincidentally rescued by Spock, coincidentally similarly jettisoned there by Nero (for similarly good reasons), where they coincidentally stumble, in some backwater outpost, over none other than Scotty? I’m surprised Spock didn’t drop dead from a burst blood vessel trying to calculate the odds of that. raises eyebrow[/li][/quote]
I even groaned a little at this. It is a stupendous coincidence. I can only fanwank it by saying maybe the planet is in the same solar system as Vulcan (which would explain the otherwise bizarre fact that Spock could see his planet being destroyed very clearly in the sky of the ice planet) making it quite a bit more likely (but still improbable) that, if the two are going to be marooned, they’d end up being marooned on the same planet. … But in the same general area of the planet? :smack:
[quote]
[li]You can’t escape the gravitational pull of a black hole going at max warp speed, but creating a big ass explosion behind you will do the trick? I don’t know if they were trying to subvert fan’s expectations, but couldn’t they have Scotty come up with something at least marginally more believable/clever?[/li][/quote]
If we accept the conceit that you can escape from a black hole by going fast enough (using a “warp drive”) I don’t know what’s to block what amounts to part of the same conceit–that adding some velocity might get you out of the black hole. How the explosions were supposed to add much velocity rather than simply dissipating, though… :smack:
The stuff you listed is somehow what sold it for me.
I hope the next movie has a better plot, and takes on some Big Idea or other without cheesing it out. But for now, the things you listed as positive seemed to be enough for me. It was what I was looking for, for the most part. I’ll look for decent plotting next time.
[quote]
[ul][li]The fanservice. Having Kirk attempt to bone a green skinned alien girl? Killing the redshirt (though merely by his own stupidity, not as a means to show the severity of the danger)? Our plan has 4.3% chance of succeeding? All ace, and there’s more I’m forgetting.[/li][li]The designs, both of creatures and ships. Except for the Romulan one, which just was a horribly confused mess of scary spiky things and other stuff. [/li][li]The acting, for the most part; nothing spectacular, but generally solid. The guy who played McCoy I thought really nailed the characters mannerisms. I was a bit surprised that I didn’t like Simon Pegg as Scotty, but the whole character just seemed a parody of himself, and not a very good one. But maybe that was due to the synchronisation. [/li][li]There also were some genuinely funny moments, and some that really showed heart, particularly where Spock breaks through emotionally. [/li]li Spock definitely was the most well done character, for the first time actually acknowledging his split heritage, even building upon it. Plus, I never thought ‘live long and prosper’ could sound so much like ‘fuck you’ as when he rejected the offer of the Vulcan science council. [/li][li]Space fights looked awesome, and particularly the space jump was thrilling (ridiculous as it was in and of itself; I’ll just assume they had some magical gizmo negating re-entry heat).[/ul][/li][/quote]
By the way, though it has a rating of 94% at RT, reading through the actual reviews shows that they generally agreed that the plot was laughable, but there was enough other stuff that was good enough to make the movie good overall. It’s kind of like everyone gave it seven out of ten stars, but RT only counts reviews as “good” or “bad” so that seventy percent rating got translated to 94% on RT.
All right, I said I wouldn’t, but…
<fanwank>
In the same general area because the computer -did- mention there was a Federation outpost within 14 kilometers. It makes sense that Kirk would land there – those shuttlecraft seem none too maneuverable, and apparently his autopilot was not capable of getting him closer more safely. How Spock got there… mmm. Luck, I’m afraid. But yeah – they’re IN our solar system, they never go past Saturn; pray, what other Class M planets do we have around here? It’s a fair jump anywhere else. Or is Vulcan supposed to be not in Earth’s solar system? For some reason I always thought it was.
</fanwank>
It was never firmly established in the original series, but it is generally agreed that Vulcan is in the 40 Eridani system, approximately 16.5 light years from Earth.
Just got back. I didn’t like the tacked on love story* or the coincidental marooning either; overall, I agree that it was, simply, fun. And I am a pretty big Trek fan.
Unless I heard it wrong, the planet was Delta Vega. I had no idea Vulcan was so close to the galactic rim. 
Above all, the most fun for me as a huge friggin’ geek was all the references they made to other installments. Indulge me:
[ul]
[li]The Centaurian eel in me knows I need more brainstem in my diet. But the Ceti eel larva in me is crazy for the frosted cerebral cortex![/li][li]Sulu’s knowledge of fencing[/li][li]Pike in the wheelchair[/li][li]Vengeful, shaven Romulans with brightly colored doomsday weaponry[/li][li]Delta Vega being a backwater facility[/li][li]Spock is to the transwarp equation as Scotty is to transparent aluminum[/li][li]Kirk provoking Spock in a similar way to “This Side of Paradise”[/li][li]Kirk eating an apple in a scene involving the Kobayashi Maru[/li][*]Anyone else catch the thing about the Beagle?[/ul]
Liked it, big piles o’fun. Engineering looks like a brewery, space battles are all messy and chaotic, the command staff of the USS Kelvin were uniformly hot, the Xindi arc from Enterprise gets a fresh airing, and apparently Dave Lister made Chief Engineer.
But Spock kissing Uhura on a transported pad? That’s just not right.
[quote=“Khan, post:10, topic:495640”]
[li]Anyone else catch the thing about the Beagle?[/list][/li][/QUOTE]
Porthos!!!
Cough and sputter.
What? You thought what?
Why?
The reason they were using Saturn in the movie was because Nero set a course to destroy Earth after destroying Vulcan. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been in the home solar system at all.
I thought it was a pitch-perfect Star Trek movie. Star Trek is nonsensical at times, it’s campy, it’s goofy, it’s intense, it’s hopeful, it’s fun. It felt like a giant love letter to everything that makes Star Trek truly wonderful. The characters were all intelligent, capable, exceptional people. The tension between Kirk and Spock was genuine, and completely a result of their personalities. It was exactly the sort of tension you’d expect from two alpha males with drastically different styles, and yet, we also got to see exactly why they have the greatest friendship any two people could have. Uhura was beautiful and brilliant, exactly as she should have always been. And the romance was not tacked on–in S1 of TOS there was a bit of subtext between them, especially when she sang while he played that instrument. Also, we know that Spock had relationships when he was younger. I was sucked into the action. I thought Nero was genuinely scary. I felt real moments of fear, even though I knew how the heroes would always survive.
I don’t care if the plot itself didn’t make sense. Most Star Trek plots don’t. I think when Star Trek really shines is not in the plots themselves, but in how the characters deal with intense, frightening, and unexpected situations. Why pick apart the movie? Would you pick apart The Arena? Or Amok Time? Or Shore Leave? Or Seeds of Paradise? Or The City on the Edge of Forever?
Karl Urban is an exceptional actor. When I saw him play Woodrow Call in Comanche Moon last year, I knew there was nothing to worry about. He has this amazing ability to strike a balance between owning a role and paying homage to his predecessor.
Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have read the comic beforehand, which makes even less sense and is basically just a string of excuses to shoehorn in old beloved characters. But I went into it with a big, excited grin and an annoyed girlfriend because I’d been giddy like a schoolboy all day long. For some reason, I just couldn’t hang on to that; with each new preposterous plot contrivance, my heart sank a little, until in the end there was just not enough left. If I’m bitter, then only because I’m disappointed that I found myself unable to enjoy it.
The science was not my main problem – that’s always been hokey, and I’ve swallowed far more implausible things than were in the movie and kept my fanboyish grin. If it serves to move a good plot along, tell a good story, heck, just to make some ham-handed moralizing statement, re-route that shit through the deflector dish all you want! It just seemed so transparent, and what’s more, avoidable in this film – we have Kirk at A, need him at B, let’s invent supertransporters! It felt like the writers just weren’t willing to try and come up with something halfways believable.
I liked all that, too. Loved to see the characters on the big screen again. But that was it, basically, and what’s worse, there wasn’t even an effort made to make more out of it. This could have been so much more with a decent plot, believable character motivations, better development of their mutual relations (there were hints of that, for instance with Bones and Spock, and I loved those!), and, well, a reason for the things that were happening to happen! But instead, the movie contented itself with just having these things happen (and awesomely, in many cases). Nothing seemed organic, everything was secondary to getting people to where the plot needed them to be. And I just thought that was a shame; they could’ve done so much more with this, but apparently, didn’t really care all that much.
Actually, I loved that too – the scene where somebody was sucked out of the ship in the first battle, and the camera followed, and all the ruckus of combat, screams, explosions, suddenly turns dead quiet? That was brilliant!
Yes, it was amazingly well done – maybe I should focus on that, and view this movie as merely establishing a world for a new version of Star Trek, and hope that they’ll eventually come up with stories to do this world justice. After reading the reviews, I was just hoping that they’d maybe got it in a hole in one. I also agree about the performances – Pine, Quinto, Urban, I bought them as the big three. So I guess I can always hope for the future; that’s what Star Trek’s all about, anyway…
Well, if the red matter makes black holes that transport you through time, I’m fine with that – but then, it should have ejected the energy from the supernova at some point in the past, which wouldn’t exactly have solved anything. So that’s kind of what’s bugging me: red matter apparently creates black holes that are either destructive or tunnels through spacetime, wholly depending on plot needs. All those bits of technobabble sold separately I would have bought, but put together it just ends up being self-contradictory. This can surely be fanwanked, but, just as easily, the writers could have come up with some explanation ('s kind of their job, after all), they just didn’t care to.
As for the Klingon thing, I was referring to the moon of their homeworld exploding in Star Trek VI, which then destabilizes the empire and leads to peace talks between them and the Federation. To now have a sun explode that destabilizes the Romulan empire… well, it didn’t exactly strike me as original.
Well, when he was fleeing from the cop on the hoverbike, the car he then careened over the cliff. It’s just never established why that happens, at all. He’s probably running from home, or something, but all in all, this scene, and large parts of the movie, feels like the writers have internalized ‘show, don’t tell’, but never really feel the need to make plausible what they are showing.
Well, all in all, I’ve reconciled with the movie a little, and I apologize if my initial outburst seemed a little over the top. I was just so frustrated both by what I felt was a missed opportunity for realizing this reboot’s full potential, and by my own failure to be entertained by the result nevertheless. Because I know Trek’s shortcomings, and I’ve always been able to appreciate what it was for what it was, and that I couldn’t, in this case, that maybe it just isn’t for me anymore, well, it made me a little bit sad, truth be told. But I think I’ll deal, somehow.
I think because I only paid mild attention to TOS when I watched it with my grandfather and the first time I ever wondered about an actual planet Vulcan I was met with this. My geek is truly classic. This was also why I was not surprised to hear that Vulcan was going to blow up.
I figured this was even a wee Kirk being a very passionate person. His mom’s off planet, so says the Cell Phone Of The Future, and his stepdad/uncle/whoever actually owns that car definitely likes it more than he likes this screw-up kid. I never got the sense that he was running away, I more figured he was going for a joyride that got rather out of hand and kept pushing the envelope further and further. Is Kirk afraid of getting nabbed by the authorities on a planet? No. Is he afraid of damaging something because someone in authority will be upset? No. He’ll deal with the consequences when he has to, but he’s a wild and undisciplined child who grows into a similarly wild and slightly disciplined adult.
I was also quite pleased to note that despite hints in the trailer Kirk and Uhura do NOT get it on. I think that was being heavily foreshadowed and expected, leaving the actual relationship to make me stifle a cackle in the theater.
The theatergoers loved it, by the way. There were huge cheers for “I’m a doctor, not a physicist!” and the green chick and “She can’t take much more o’ this!” And I got the Star Trek pint glass the Drafthouse was hawking; I couldn’t resist.
To me, a very amazing thing was how they managed to be quite (though not totally) faithful to established canon, yet also reboot to an entirely changed universe.
We see young Spock being teased, Kirk’s reprogramming of the Kobiyashi Maru, Sulu’s fencing skills. Scotty is older than the others, and Chekov is younger. I reluctantly expected the too-glitzy Enterprise, and was reassured by the lack of a second door to the bridge, and lack of a ready room.
OTOH, future Trek projects must deal with a universe of 10,000 Vulcan people without a planet. Sarek but no Amanda. Pike is shown in a wheelchair, presumably while recovering from his ordeal; he may or may not someday go on that training mission where he got so disfigured.
When I saw that Vulcan was not only threatened with destruction, but actually being destroyed, I was disappointed. I knew that before the movie would end, we’d see another time-travel device restore everything to as it was. It took me quite a while to realize that it is not going to happen, and that we must get used to the “new normal”. The new Spock will have to deal with his mixed heritage in ways that the old Spock did not: His human parent is gone, and his Vulcan planet is gone. He still has his Vulcan father, but (as he said) Earth is now his only home. I suspect that this is why Our Spock felt the need to parent his younger self so directly.
I absolutely loved the Kobiyashi Maru scene, and the banter between Kirk and Spock about it. Kirk’s extreme casualness (eating that apple!) comes from his confidence and preparedness – exactly as he will later on, deep inside The Genesis Planet. I only regret that they did not show Kirk’s famous “commendation for original thinking”.
That was one of the times I went ‘Oh yeah, they did that on Enterprise, that show no one watches, so this’ll look fresh’.Visible damage to the ship? The messy cluttered space fights-holy shit, actual debris?! (OK, don’t remember much of that on ENT,) but the final fight(s) on Nero’s ship was right out of ENT.
Think this was done as a way to balance off the narratively necessary flashbacks to wee Spock punching out schoolmates who called him mom a whore. (Bitchy Vulcans-another ENT thing!). Just showing one character’s childhood would have looked weird, unless that character is the only main character, which is not the case in ST.
I was going goofy throughout the movie trying to think who Chris Pine’s voice reminded me of-
Christian Slater, with less buzzsaw to it
(Spolied because it’s one of those things you just can’t un-hear afterwards)
I totally agree.
It appeared to me that Spock was totally planning on entering the science council, but only until the leader mentioned Spock’s “disadvantage”, which was the one, and only, yet sufficient, reason to do a total about-face. (It reminded me of the pilot episode of Commander in Chief, when Geena Davis’ character is willing to resign, but does an about-face in reaction to Donald Sutherland’s remark about her being nominated only to get votes from the soccer moms.)