Star Trekkin' into a migraine review by Wishimay

CINEMA

Star Trekkin' into a migraine review

POSTED BY: WISHIMAY
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 09:04
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VIEWED: 5982
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Thursday, May 16, 2013 7:53 PM

Just came home from a double header of Iron Man 3 (Live Free or Iron Harder heh) and Star Trek into Darkness (which ironically had waaay too many lights in it)

I liked Iron Man, and if there's one thing I have to say about it, it's that it has a whole lotta plot-a. I'd have a hard time picking out anything to hate about it, with the exception of the lover's spats... The ending was a little toooo easy of a fix, but at least it was fun. And they live happily ever after *sigh.

In fact if I was to pick one to see on video, I think Star Trek would be it, and that saying something- with us being Benedict-aholics.
I just couldn't relate to this Trek. When Benedict says who he is and they yell his name later, I just wanted to gag. The re-write was decent enough, but it still feels like the grandkids have taken over the ship(and I'M ONLY 33, mind you). Where Bill Shatner had confidence and charm and over acting, Chris Pines' Kirk just seems horny and swagger-y and then depressed(through no real fault of his own, I think, and it probably relates better to some of the guys of today's generation.)

* Only slightly spoiler-y here....

Did it keep my attention? Sure. Did I hate it? No. Did Spock need to cheat? Um, NO. I'm pretty sure he could've come up with "ACTUALLY ARM THE MISSILES" all be himself. But then they couldn't have fit Leonard Nimoy in for one last bit part. And they made Spock look more like he has Aspergers than anything which is ANNOYING. I'm sure to someone who hasn't seen the old movies it's better, but to the old hats, it's a little worn and yeah, rehashed in spots. And there's a lot of head squeezing going on, which was just oddball to me??? (thus the migraine reference of the title)

P.S. at the end of Iron Man 3 it says "special thanks to Joss Whedon" yay.
And the last easter egg at the end of the movie was waaay funnier the way I imagined it. They did not add one at the end of Star Trek, and it would have been soo easy just to have Scotty shaking his head or something.

Also, on the way home I had a vision of the thirteenth re-imagining of Star Trek. Every single character will have had the chance to have yelled that ever important name of the movie, I'm just glad I was around to have seen it done RIGHT.

* Warning, bigger spoiler!

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

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Friday, May 17, 2013 2:31 AM

WISHIMAY

I'm not the only one who was a wee bit disappointed, apparently.

We're both in agreement on Benedict Cumberpatch, though...One hellova screen grabber. I don't think he looks ANYTHING like Jeremy Irons, but yeah, the voice has similarities....

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/movie-review-star-trek-darkness-d
oesnt-feel-star-090050830.html

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Friday, May 17, 2013 2:35 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Haven't seen Iron Man 3 (haven't seen 2 yet, either), but I did get to see Into Darkness last night, and my reaction is probably 180º from yours - I loved it! I think JJ Abrams is the best thing to happen to the franchise since Wrath of Khan. And Cumberbatch is just awesome. Chris Pine *IS* Kirk, and channels Shatner amazingly well, all hamminess and melodrama, but Bones McCoy tends to steal any scene he's in and make it all his.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

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Friday, May 17, 2013 2:47 AM

SISTER

I, too LOVED the 'Trek into Darkness'....seemed to be a homage to all the ones that came before and fit quite nicely into the 'alternate universe' Trek that JJ Abrams has created. The casting is, in my opinion, perfect.
I was a fan of the original Trek long ago and these new films have been fantastic!

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Friday, May 17, 2013 4:14 AM

WISHIMAY

I think some people are just so happy to have a reboot they don't see what IS wrong with it... I like to take a critical eye to anything I watch. I very, very rarely like an entire film. And I didn't HATE this one. So you're only about 60 degrees off from me.

But there were some glaring issues Hubbs and I had with this one. Kicking the reactor back in alignment and it just magically works? Oh, and the little "disarmament of the photon torpedo" and that convenient handhold on the back of the scows in the last fight scene?? Dumbing down Spock?? All those heads of Starfleet in a nice conveniently unprotected glass room?? An engine room that looked more like something from Sonic the Hedgehog? A white boy with an English accent saying "I ahm Kahhhn"?? Don't even get me started on what happened on Chronos...

I'll overlook a couple things, but every five minutes there was another thing that was just off or too convenient to swallow.

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Friday, May 17, 2013 7:31 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
I'll overlook a couple things, but every five minutes there was another thing that was just off or too convenient to swallow.

A good alternate title for this movie would be "Getting Away With It: Or, the Further Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw."

The characters have urgently necessary arguments about the morally, ethically, and procedurally correct thing to do in a crisis, then Kirk makes a unilateral, straight-from-the-gut decision that worsens everything; and yet somehow at the end he’s rewarded, or at least not seriously punished.

Sometimes the reward is quite deliberate — as in the end scene, which finds Kirk being celebrated as a hero after making what looked to me like a series of catastrophic rookie mistakes that ended dozens of lives. Other times it’s as if the cosmos itself is protecting Kirk, as when he loses command of the Enterprise for his behavior on the primitive planet, then gets it back thanks to another sudden plot twist.

Both the opening mission and a subsequent intergalactic act of aggression are presented as having grave consequences if they fail, then the film just sort of writes them off with a shrug, as if to say, “Well, that’s all in the past, and as long as it doesn’t happen again, no harm, no foul.” (Has anyone in the Federation actually honored the Prime Directive?)

Too much of "Star Trek Into Darkness" has what I call a “playground storytelling” sensibility: “Lie down, you’re dead. Never mind, you’re alive again — now fight!”

www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-trek-into-darkness-2013

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Friday, May 17, 2013 8:02 AM

ECGORDON

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

I won't argue with anyone who likes Abrams' Trek films. All I'll say is they are generic SF action films, with only cursory nods to Roddenberry's vision. They are popular for a reason, all flash, very little substance, which is what I could say about almost any SF film these days. I saw the first one once, probably never will again. Won't bother with this one either.

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Friday, May 17, 2013 10:17 AM

ZEEK

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
I won't argue with anyone who likes Abrams' Trek films. All I'll say is they are generic SF action films, with only cursory nods to Roddenberry's vision. They are popular for a reason, all flash, very little substance, which is what I could say about almost any SF film these days. I saw the first one once, probably never will again. Won't bother with this one either.

This is something I touched on talking to one of my friends recently. JJ's Star Trek seems so generic that I wonder what he'll do differently with Star Wars. My guess is nothing. There will just be lightsabers in the same kind of action packed adventure ride through plot hole nebula.

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Friday, May 17, 2013 2:49 PM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
. . . same kind of action packed adventure ride through plot hole nebula.

"Watching it is like talking to a salesman who stops every 40 seconds to ask if you're still with him, and then slaps you in the face just to make sure."

"The writers throw old-school Trek-heads a bone every few minutes, but these mostly serve as unwelcome reminders of how faithless the movie is to its source material, and how lacking it is in what made that series great: ideas, characters, stories that meant something"

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/16/movie-review-star-trek-darkne
ss/

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Sunday, May 19, 2013 9:28 AM

HKCAVALIER

I watched every episode of TOS dozens of times with my brother growing up, to the point that I could name any episode within the first 20 seconds of the teaser. Aside from the dozen or so best TNG episodes, I've always prefered TOS.

I always thought the movies sucked. I saw the first and I thought it was so bad that I skipped the next two and came back for The Voyage Home, which I liked. I still have never seen The Search for Spock. After that, I saw the rest of them, but I can't remember a thing except for the hokey Zardoz "God" that they meet on styrofome planet #454. And all TNG movies were just utterly gawdawful embarrassing.

Then about a month ago I saw TWOK for the first time, and like so many sacred bovine from my childhood which I never saw until I was grown, I was a tad shocked at just how embarrassingly bad it was. The two leads ran out of plywood scenery long before they stopped chewing. The Mullet. And that creepy blond Son of Kirk and their creepy reconciliation after the death of Spock. I will give it this: the only time a Star Trek movie made me cry was inside the reactor room with Kirk and Spock.

I never even thought of Star Trek as "science fiction" in any serious sense. If I hadda categorize it I'd say it was "utopian futurism." Their technology has always been purest magic. What brought me back again and again was the pure delight in watching the main characters do their thing. The show was always about delight and charm and the movies were always so utterly wooden and plodding and bad.

So, J.J. comes along and resets the whole thing and brings delight back to the table. The chemistry between the leads and their astonishing impersonations of these beloved characters from my childhood is simply a joy to watch.

Select to view spoiler:

And, of course, with Darkness, I got to see a version of TWOK that I could actually recommend to someone who hasn't seen it. I was crying throughout the movie instead of just that one moment when Spock said "I have always been and will ever be your friend" in the original. The lover's spat in the shuttle craft was brilliantly handled and heartbreaking once we heard what Spock's deal was. And, and! J.J. did the only sensible thing with Khan at the end. Don't maroon several dozen superbeings on a planet, just put 'em back in their little boxes! Shelve 'em and forget 'em like the Ark of the Covanent. No fuss, no muss.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, May 20, 2013 5:09 AM

STORYMARK

I was very conflicted on Star Trek - the movie is a hell of a lot of fun, but it doesn't hold up to much thought, and bordered on spectacularly stupid in places. So many plot contrivances and conveniences.

The magic blood was beyond stupid, and its use was terribly telegraphed. Why have starships if you can teleport literally ANYwhere in the galaxy? Why would the Klingons completely abandon an entire section of their planet, when it seemed perfectly inhabitable. Why don't the Klingons have any planetary sensors or defenses? Why would a top-secret shipyard have zero security, and broadcast on an unsecured chanel? And since when does it take less than 5 minutes to travel between Klingon space and Earth, even at warp??

Yeah, it was fun - but it saddens me that Star Trek has joined the "turn your brain off" club. That's not what Trek should be.

Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.

"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Monday, May 20, 2013 5:12 AM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
I won't argue with anyone who likes Abrams' Trek films. All I'll say is they are generic SF action films, with only cursory nods to Roddenberry's vision. They are popular for a reason, all flash, very little substance, which is what I could say about almost any SF film these days. I saw the first one once, probably never will again. Won't bother with this one either.

Yep. They're fun and popular because they appeal to the lowest common denominator at every turn.

Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.

"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Monday, May 20, 2013 5:45 AM

WISHIMAY

Quote:
Originally posted by Storymark:
Why would the Klingons completely abandon an entire section of their planet, when it seemed perfectly inhabitable. Why don't the Klingons have any planetary sensors or defenses?

That bothered me, too...They showed just a flash of the Klingon Moon Praxis as having ALREADY exploded when in The Undiscovered Country Kirk was about to retire at the time Praxis exploded. Apparently, the moon having already exploded is why the Klingons were in disarray... (with John Harrison having had a hand in blowing it up??)

But then, in rewrites who cares who you confuse in order to contrive a plotline...

Found this about it...
http://trekmovie.com/2013/05/15/trekmovie-uncovers-hidden-john-harriso
n-starfleet-memorandum-on-into-darkness-viral-site/

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Monday, May 20, 2013 9:30 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
I won't argue with anyone who likes Abrams' Trek films. All I'll say is they are generic SF action films, with only cursory nods to Roddenberry's vision. They are popular for a reason, all flash, very little substance, which is what I could say about almost any SF film these days. I saw the first one once, probably never will again. Won't bother with this one either.

This is something I touched on talking to one of my friends recently. JJ's Star Trek seems so generic that I wonder what he'll do differently with Star Wars. My guess is nothing. There will just be lightsabers in the same kind of action packed adventure ride through plot hole nebula.

Welcome to Star Wars! The difference is, that approach actually works for Star Wars. Hopefully Abrams will avoid the weird child-romances and brother-sister incest stuff and stilted emotional reactions/dialogue that George liked to throw in. Otherwise, I don't really have too many worries here.

I don't know much about Star Trek, never got into them because it was all too philosophical for my tastes while ignoring the big obvious questions that the setting seemed to raise (and only Deep Space Nine dealt with those). But I imagine most of you serious Star Trek fans are probably not very happy with this direction.

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013 2:07 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Storymark:
Yep. They're fun and popular because they appeal to the lowest common denominator at every turn.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

You got to consider that Star Trek plays worldwide www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=startrek12.htm

Imagine you are a twelve year old boy watching this movie in Shanghai and you don't speak English. The movie would look brilliant. It is the greatest Star Trek with the biggest special-effects budget in your short lifetime! It is music, fights, and starships crashing faster than you can read subtitles. Who reads subtitles to explain Kirk in bed with the long tailed cat women? Or drunk Scotty? Or that "John Harrison" is the villain? Or that there are (spoiler) two villains? The next Star Trek 3 needs three main villains or you're not getting your money's worth.

If all you had in Shanghai was the Chinese subtitles to explain the story, you won't have time to read them, because of all the action, and won't realize what's wrong with this movie. But if you do understand English and you didn't notice what's wrong, your spoken English comprehension skills need improvement to better than lowest common denominator levels of a twelve year old boy.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013 6:43 AM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
Quote:
Originally posted by Storymark:
Yep. They're fun and popular because they appeal to the lowest common denominator at every turn.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"
You got to consider that Star Trek plays worldwide www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=startrek12.htm

Imagine you are a twelve year old boy watching this movie in Shanghai and you don't speak English. The movie would look brilliant. It is the greatest Star Trek with the biggest special-effects budget in your short lifetime! It is music, fights, and starships crashing faster than you can read subtitles. Who reads subtitles to explain Kirk in bed with the long tailed cat women? Or drunk Scotty? Or that "John Harrison" is the villain? Or that there are (spoiler) two villains? The next Star Trek 3 needs three main villains or you're not getting your money's worth.

If all you had in Shanghai was the Chinese subtitles to explain the story, you won't have time to read them, because of all the action, and won't realize what's wrong with this movie. But if you do understand English and you didn't notice what's wrong, your spoken English comprehension skills need improvement to better than lowest common denominator levels of a twelve year old boy.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

Is there a point in there somewhere? Do you not realize they dub most big movies for foreign release (as they did for this one)?

Hell, the 2009 Trek was the first one to even do much business overseas - and even then, it made twice as much money domestically.

Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.

"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Wednesday, May 22, 2013 4:03 AM

WISHIMAY

Heh.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2328966/Star-Trek-Into-Da
rkness-writer-Damon-Lindelof-apologises-including-misogynistic-Alice-Eve-underwear-scene.html

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Monday, June 10, 2013 10:49 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Just saw ST - Into Darkness.

To quote Max Guevara - " You're not even trying "

As before, the cast was awesome. But the story ... meh.

And to be honest, I'm really over this alternate universe crap. Where we kinda sorta see reference to the original series, but not really, where events and people are still a part of THIS crew's 'verse, but more in a Fringe sort of way, and not so much in Dr Whovian sort... I don't know.

Wake me if something interesting shows up.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, June 10, 2013 7:59 PM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Just saw ST - Into Darkness.

To quote Max Guevara - " You're not even trying "

As before, the cast was awesome. But the story ... meh.

I get that they are rebooting the franchise and largely I am not that concerned about faithfulness to continuity. It is more how they constantly treat basic suspension of disbelief with a shrug of the shoulders. In the 2009 film, Captain Kirk went from a fledgling ensign to a full ship’s captain in the space of a day. In 2009 they invented Scotty’s transwarp teleportation – in 2013 Benedict Cumberbatch casually uses it to teleport all the way from Earth to the Klingon Empire. This is never more evident than during the opening scene where Kirk tosses aside the Prime Directive with a shrug of his shoulders, whips out a handily concealed scroll and pins it to a tree during their flight from the natives causing them to all fall in worship, they then dive off the cliff to find the submerged Enterprise before conducting a miraculous teleport rescue of Spock from the exploding volcano. The original and next-gen series involved technobabble solutions but there was the sense beneath all the talk of positronic circuitry, dilithium matrixes and inverse tachyon pulses where you could at least believe that the writers had invented a consistent science-fictional technical schema tying everything together; but here you get the impression that Kurtzman, Orci and Lindelof are thinking why does it matter what happens when all of it is BS. The film almost feels like a constant series of improbable deus ex machina plot devices – Scotty turning up in Marcus’s ship at a convenient moment, the miracle cure of Khan’s blood, the scroll – produced out of the hat to save the day.

Perhaps the worst part of this is the climactic scene where [PLOT SPOILERS] Chris Pine’s Kirk enters the warpcore to reactivate it, in doing so giving his own life. This is a clear homage to the moving death of Spock at the end of The Wrath of Khan – but in being replayed here, it lacks any pathos. We, for one, can guess that the film is not going to kill off the franchise’s central character (The Wrath of Khan at least lacked that certainty, being given real world boosting by Leonard Nimoy’s constant vacillation over leaving the franchise). Moreover, the inherent tragedy of the scene is undercut by its coming in such obvious quotation marks where Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof seem to think it is clever replaying the scene but with the twist reversal where it is Kirk being killed and it is Spock who roars “Khaaaaan!”. The subsequent realisation that Kirk can be revived by a sample of Khan’s blood is a plotting wave of the magic wand that becomes a comic-book death of the first order. http://moria.co.nz/sciencefiction/star-trek-into-darkness-2013.htm

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Tuesday, June 11, 2013 2:01 AM

WISHIMAY

Quote:
Originally posted by two:
... but here you get the impression that Kurtzman, Orci and Lindelof are thinking why does it matter what happens when all of it is BS.

Sums it up well...

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Tuesday, June 11, 2013 9:04 AM

VERASAMUELS

As soon as it was revealed that it was a re-tread of aprevious movie, I was severely unimpressed. Unoriginal, sloppy and lazy.

However, the cast acted their socks off, even so.

Devout Keeper of Jayne's Lunchbox

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