I thought one of the questions was going to be about why the whole movie was lousy with lens flares and shakey cam. 
“We all know why Zoe Zaldana was casted… she was completely beliaveble as a xenolinguistic”
Nice.
I like the way you think.
He had someone on set whose job it was specifically to shoot a very bright focused flashlight down the lens so that there was flaring all over the place.
“Art”, I believe they call it these days.
Damn kids. Get offa my lawn !!
Cartooniverse
You’re intelligent, but not experienced. Your pattern indicates…two dimensional thinking.
Why does EVERY movie have shakey cam and snap zoom?
No no, why does ANY movie have shakey cam and snap zoom?
I like the way YOU think. Snap zoom? Is that what it’s called when the entire movie is shot with the camera shoved up the actors’ nostrils?
I saw a lens flare in a movie that was great the other day - they were just coming into a sunlit scene or something, and it was a nice touch. All scenes, all the time - not so much.
Sorry, Biggirl, I’m hijacking with my peeves. I actually kind of like the alternate universe thing for the next three movies or so (I’m pretty sure they’ll reset at the end) - it gives them a lot of leeway for unexpected things, like killing off major characters (and planets!).
All right Dopers, everybody take a shot!
To address some issues:
- Nero doesn’t act in a reasonable manner. Of course he doesn’t. He just had effectively his entire people wiped out. Think of how folks were acting after 9/11, or Pearl Harbor. All of the Japanese-Americans living in the western US were rounded up, their properties sold off, and put in fenced-in camps where they could all be concentrated together and watched over, because people from a country that they weren’t even born in attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Was that reasonable? In hindsight? Turns out no. Were people even trying to be reasonable back then? Probably not.
Nero is not acting reasonable because Nero is not a reasonable person. He’s an emotional wreck who has had possibly everyone he knows outside of his ship killed off because the Federation didn’t act faster to save them. Why didn’t they act faster? These are the guys who can turn rocks into replicators, who can make warp drives out of magic pixie dust that they have to invent first, and always in time to save the day. Perhaps he thought the delay was intentional? Again, not rational, but think of who we’re asking to be rational.
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Lens flare, shaky cam, and snap zooms: The latter two are in vogue lately, to give it a more “immersive” feel, like some sap was in a space suit with a camcorder filming everything saying “Oh God Oh God please don’t let me catch a photon torpedo or some chunk of blown up starship why didn’t I stay in school?!” Lens flare I guess is just supposed to be cool, but this is the only movie where I’ve seen it in use with shakycam and snap zoom.
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Spock and Human Emotions: Worth mentioning, if there is a difference between human emotion and Vulcan emotion, it’s not the human emotions that are giving Spock grief, given how most of the other people on the ship manage not to fling people across hallways whenever they loose their cool. Vulcans have very intense emotions, or at least very repressed emotions. When the seal cracks, that’s a lot of steam to come firing out at the nearest crewmate.
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Lack of defenses: Be fair, when is the last time you saw the mighty Vulcan Armada roaming the galaxy fighting threats to the Federation? It really seems like they’ve been content to let the humans run around playing Army, perhaps because the humans certainly seem to enjoy it more. Plus, war is messy, brings up all these… emotions. Who needs that that doesn’t want that?
As for Starfleet, it’s mentioned that most of the fleet is carrying out some sort of operation in the Anteres System, which is implied to be quite a road trip away. The folks who got sent in were basically whatever could be scraped together on short notice from what was left at Earth. Presumably all that was left was static defenses or short range stuff, either of which could probably be expected not to be at its most effective without a fleet to support it. Also, it’s very possible that Nero did get whatever information he needed on Earth’s defenses from Pike (brain slug, remember?). Maybe he was able to spoof his way past the sensor nets and drop in right on top of them to reach out and touch them Khan style. If Khan had a massive ship retrofitted with advanced weaponry and Kirk was somewhere else.
- Drilling the hole. Er… I got nothing. Maybe he just really likes the drill? Could be a phallic thing. Also, as far as attacking the drill goes, you’d have to get past the ship first, which was already shown to be a paragon of ass kicking.
Does “horizontal” even have a meaning in zero-g?
Perhaps it should be the x-axis mambo? Though it they’re doing it right there should be some kind of sine-like function along the y-axis too.
I’m a longtime fan who didn’t mind the idea of a reboot. I just objected to crappy and contrived writing, of which this movie had quite a bit.
Ah, but which crab boat captain? Nero is certainly sharper than Captain Keith.