Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

We did the fan sneak showing Wednesday night and arrived real early so we could be in front of the line and be sure to get 10 seats together. Totally unnecessary; the theater was never more than half-full. Of course the rumor is that Shatner will be hosting a Wrath of Khan/Into Darkness double feature at the brew-n-view next Friday, so maybe the fans are just waiting for that.

(UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Trey wrote:

Next weekend's results will really tell the tale, but even so, the "what went wrong?" post-mortems are already underway.

Its going to get crushed next weekend when Fast Six and Hangover 3 hit, both domestically and abroad (Fast and Furious movies are huge internationally). Part of me wants to feel good that they aren't being hugely rewarded for what isn't a very good movie, except that I don't think the things I dislike about it hurt the box office at all. Cinemascore was an A, most people seem to be positive about it, and the fans like me who think it drops the ball all still saw it. This looks more like a case of 2 things, a poor release date (sandwiched between Iron Man 3 and Fast Six), and a ceiling on how large of an audience you're going to get for a Star Trek movie.

I think the real lesson they should be taking from this is that a giant expensive explodey blockbuster is not the right approach, make it about the story, and scale back the budget. There is NO reason Star Trek movies should cost 200 million dollars. If we're lucky they'll take the series away from Abrams/Bad-Robot and let someone who actually understands the series have a crack at it. I think more than anything this movie shows a lot of the weaknesses of Abrams' re-imagining to begin with, by highlighting and magnifying the problems of the first movie. Star Trek should be a fun character driven series about space explorers, NOT an explodey check-your-brain-at-the-door set-piece driven action movie.

If we're lucky they give it to a new set of writers and do some kind of exploration story. I could also see them trying to cut costs and doing a present-day time-travel story a la Voyage Home, that could work because it would force them to hang the movie on the cast interactions (which are the best part about the Abrams movies) and downplay the action/conspiracy stuff.

Unfortunately, given the way Into Darkness goes, it seems likely that what they really want to do is a space war movie against the Klingons, and I think that's again not what this series should be about.

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

switch wrote:

I don't have very high hopes for movies this summer.

http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/blomkamp-elysium.jpg

The hero Hollywood deserves.

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

bullet3 wrote:

I think the real lesson they should be taking from this is that a giant expensive explodey blockbuster is not the right approach, make it about the story, and scale back the budget.

They need to remember that what saved Star Trek was slashing the budget and doing a small story with The Wrath of Kahn.

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Enjoyed this movie well enough.   It totally satisfied my desire to see Captain Kirk share a few scenes with...

  Show
... Robocop.

I think this movie just tried to do too much, though.  I would have enjoyed a movie about this super scary Kahn dude, and I would have enjoyed a movie about an Admiral trying to frame and kill Kirk for what he saw as the greater good.  Combined, though... Just too much happening and no one gets a fair shake.  Reminded me of Episode III in that regard.

Also, for a character named Kahn-something-Singh or whatever... Why can't they seem to find an Indian actor to play him?  Are there just no Indian actors with SAG cards?  Maybe they could have found a Pakistani dude?  I dunno.  Maybe Indian folks just don't have enough experience making movies...

-- Branco

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Branco wrote:

SPOILER Show
Also, for a character named Kahn-something-Singh or whatever... Why can't they seem to find an Indian actor to play him?  Are there just no Indian actors with SAG cards?  Maybe they could have found a Pakistani dude?  I dunno.  Maybe Indian folks just don't have enough experience making movies...

SPOILER Show
Maybe Aasif Mandvi was busy...

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Some questions / points:

  Show
1. Why did one stun shot knock out Khan on the bridge of the dreadnought for over a minute, but during the climactic punch-up, Uhura's many stun shots were brushed off like mosquito bites?
2. Why did detectors only detect one life form on Kronos, when there were heaps of Klingons?
3. What are the rules of the transporter? Every single time there's a transporter situation, the rules are different. It can't transport because of speed, distance, radiation, interference, lack of power, shields, etc. At other times, it can transport into a warp ship from across the galaxy, or between any two points in the universe.
4. Ditto for warp drive. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. Whatever the scriptwriters need at that time. Likewise, "Starfleet Protocol says we can't do this." Other times: "fuck the rules, we'll do whatever we want." In summary, all these things (e.g. warp, transporter, protocol, malfunctioning technology) are just arbitrary constraints upon behaviour, like a knob that can be twiddled on demand. And it feels really ARBITRARY. Oh so now they can't do this. Now they can. Now they can't. Whatever.
5. The technology and design aesthetic of the bridge don't look anything like the brewery down below.
6. Why continually have to run between the bridge and the transporter room? Inefficient design. Build a smaller transporter section on the bridge.
7. Star Trek 1966 was ahead of the Zeitgeist, but Star Trek 2009 is not ahead of its time. Just the same ol' no-stakes indestructible PG-13 runn'n fight'n shoot'n 'splosions as every other tent-pole.
8. Can't they just remote-pilot a 'cold fusion' device into the volcano? Or beam it down from orbit? Why did they have to park the ship underwater? Wouldn't the natives have seen it entering the water?
9. Why does the captain repeatedly have to stay on the bridge while the rest evacuate as if they ship can't do anything on its own? That's such a cliche. "Oh no, don't sacrifice yourself." "But I have to." But it doesn't matter anyway, because all main characters get saved/resurrected one way or the other. So stop pretending this scene is so tense and emotional, because in two minutes, everything will be okay again.
10. Khan from Wrath of Khan was far nastier. PG-13 tends to water-down the drama.

not long to go now...

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

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Why did Spock blame Kahn for Kirk's death? It was Peter Weller that damaged the ship. All Kahn did was beam Kirk back the the Enterprise, before Spock blew up Kahn's ship (furthering damaging the Enterprise).
I guess it was just an excuse to yell "KKKAAAAAAHHHHNNNNNNN!!!!!!!"   neutral

Last edited by Snail (2013-05-20 17:11:03)

"Life is about movies; anything else is a bonus!"- Me   cool

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

avatar wrote:

Some questions / points:

  Show

10. Khan from Wrath of Khan was far nastier. PG-13 tends to water-down the drama.

  Show
So, 1980's PG is nastier than 2013 PG 13...

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

I've found that a lot of the problems with these sorts of contemporary action movies stem from an apparent lack of questioning in the writing room. No-one seems to have asked why such and such is happening. And perhaps more importantly, no-one seems to have asked whether the same effect can be achieved by other 'better' means that don't undermine story or character. On the face of it, there's nothing wrong with most of the stuff that happens in this and the previous Trek, it's just that the actions preceding and leading to that moment or scene aren't efficiently thought out or drafted. For instance, there's nothing wrong with

  Show
Spock being in a volcano and the Enterprise having to rescue him
, it's just the set up for that isn't done as well it could be. No-one appears to have sat down and thought about why all the bits are the way they are and how they fit together to arrive at X, and analysed the problems that arise from doing so.

It's no wonder the story does things that feel arbitary, the construction of the story is arbitary.

Maybe this questioning does all occur and it simply gets dismissed and/or ignored...

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

avatar wrote:

Some questions / points:

  Show
1. Why did one stun shot knock out Khan on the bridge of the dreadnought for over a minute, but during the climactic punch-up, Uhura's many stun shots were brushed off like mosquito bites?
2. Why did detectors only detect one life form on Kronos, when there were heaps of Klingons?
3. What are the rules of the transporter? Every single time there's a transporter situation, the rules are different. It can't transport because of speed, distance, radiation, interference, lack of power, shields, etc. At other times, it can transport into a warp ship from across the galaxy, or between any two points in the universe.
4. Ditto for warp drive. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. Whatever the scriptwriters need at that time. Likewise, "Starfleet Protocol says we can't do this." Other times: "fuck the rules, we'll do whatever we want." In summary, all these things (e.g. warp, transporter, protocol, malfunctioning technology) are just arbitrary constraints upon behaviour, like a knob that can be twiddled on demand. And it feels really ARBITRARY. Oh so now they can't do this. Now they can. Now they can't. Whatever.
5. The technology and design aesthetic of the bridge don't look anything like the brewery down below.
6. Why continually have to run between the bridge and the transporter room? Inefficient design. Build a smaller transporter section on the bridge.
7. Star Trek 1966 was ahead of the Zeitgeist, but Star Trek 2009 is not ahead of its time. Just the same ol' no-stakes indestructible PG-13 runn'n fight'n shoot'n 'splosions as every other tent-pole.
8. Can't they just remote-pilot a 'cold fusion' device into the volcano? Or beam it down from orbit? Why did they have to park the ship underwater? Wouldn't the natives have seen it entering the water?
9. Why does the captain repeatedly have to stay on the bridge while the rest evacuate as if they ship can't do anything on its own? That's such a cliche. "Oh no, don't sacrifice yourself." "But I have to." But it doesn't matter anyway, because all main characters get saved/resurrected one way or the other. So stop pretending this scene is so tense and emotional, because in two minutes, everything will be okay again.
10. Khan from Wrath of Khan was far nastier. PG-13 tends to water-down the drama.

  Show
1. He was faking unconsciousness on the bridge so that he could get the drop on Marcus and Kirk.

2. Don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure the Klingons followed them to that area. There was no one there but Harrison when they scanned.

3. Warping has always been problematic. The rules don't make a lot of sense, but it didn't bother me that much.

4. Same with this one. But that was always a problem on the original show too.

5. So?

6. Yeah. Whatever. It makes things more exciting.

7. So? They weren't trying to be hugely influential. Star Trek 1966 has already been done. There's no point in trying to have the same impact that it did all over again.

8. Because then there's no tense opening action scene.

9. The captain goes down with the ship. Same as in Titanic and every other movie about ships, space or otherwise.

10. Ooh, gotta disagree with you here. 1980s Khan mainly snarled and quoted classic literature. 2013 Khan is crushing people's skulls with his bare hands. New Khan is WAY nastier than Old Khan.

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2013-05-20 17:33:25)

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Might as well dive in...I'm probably 80% with DocSub, and about 20% with those that didn't like it. I liked it a lot, and despite the gripes you'll see below, will continue to enjoy it on what I imagine will be many repeat viewings in the theater and on Blu Ray.

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First thing I'd like to point out is that any criticism that stems from "Last time with Kahn..." immediately causes your argument to be invalid. Throwbacks and references aside, this is intended to be it's own film series. I'm so bored by those complaints at this point. They don't have TOS to build off of, because TOS doesn't exist in this universe. In fact, the events clearly show that both 2009 & Darkness actually take place before the TOS tv series anyways. So either swallow the 'reboot' pill and get over it or stop watching altogether because you'll never, ever, be satisfied.

There's honestly a bit much to speak to in this thread, so I'll just jump into Bullet3's list as a starting point.

1. Cumberbatch insta-teleporting across the UNIVERSE from Earth straight to the Klingon homeworld. The hyper-teleport was literally the worst, most series-breaking thing that was introduced by the 2009 reboot, and they not only go out of their way to remind us that it exists, but use it in an even more ridiculous way. At this point, there's no reason we can't teleport a character anywhere in the universe at any time to suit the needs of the plot.

2. You have like 5 different people tell Kirk he's about to unleash a war with the Klingons, only for the Klingons to completely vanish from the movie after 1 scene, with no mention of them afterwards (presumably this is something that will matter in the sequel, but its a pretty GIANT loose thread and sloppy storytelling, why introduce them in the first place if they're just going to be a plot device in 1 scene).

3. 2 villains, both under-developed.
We know nothing about Khan for half the movie (neither through background, nor through his actions, aside from the fact he knows kung fu), then have him suddenly break out into a monologue to explain his entire backstory in a single scene. Wrath of Khan sort of does this too, but it also gives you lots of time with him to show you the guy's character, he's theatrical and has a personality. All Cumberbatch does is stand around and glower at people, he's super wasted and not given a personality. I actually thought they might be doing a cool thing here where in this timeline he'll be a good guy and team up with Kirk, but nope, gotta callback to Wrath of Khan.
Admiral Marcus is also super under-developed, he wants war with the Klingons because??? He's been building weapons tech in secret in a giant secret military facility over by Jupiter, which coincidentally has 0 security of any kind, then when Kirk uncovers this plan, he PERSONALLY pilots a ship to murder him and dispose of the evidence? That's like the president of the US personally flying an F-22 to blow up the 9/11 truthers.

4. Carol Marcus, what the hell is she even doing in this movie. You'd think she's there to be a romantic foil for Kirk, but the movie doesn't have time for that, so we'll just throw in a bikini shot of her for no reason and move on. If the movie narrowed its focus and only had 1 antagonist, the admiral, then she might have some interesting interplay there, but as it is, she's completely useless to the story (she literally gets beamed to her father's ship, gets her leg snapped, beams back aboard the enterprise, and vanishes).
5. Speaking of security, both Earth and the Klingon homeworld apparently have no defenses or any ships in orbit of any kind, a lazy oversight done purely so that the Enterprise won't be able to call anyone for help.

6. The awful 10 minute stretch where they butcher the most iconic scene from Wrath of Khan. Spock and Kirk have been friends for like a year at this point, this moment is not at all earned. It serves no character purpose, because Kirk has needed to learn humility, not self-sacrifice, and its a complete fan-wank waste of time anyway, because we've established Khan's magic blood already, so we know Kirk's not going to die anyway. If they actually had the balls to go through with it and kill of Kirk permenantly, I might actually be ok with this moment, but as is, it's terrible. And Spock yelling "Khan!!!" is such an unfathomably bad choice, something straight out of an SNL parody, I still cannot believe they did it.

7. The aforementioned magic blood is the kind of thing that would get you kicked out of a 1st year screenwriting class. Not only is it a cheap copout, but it re-fucks up the Star Trek canon that the last movie cleverly freed us from. Now these characters exist in a universe where you can at any moment teleport to any other point in the universe, and be brought back from the dead with magic blood.
And that's not even getting into the fact that Kirk is a total utter fuck-up, and would be in jail at the end of the movie for getting the city of San Francisco flattened by a giant space-ship.

1. Agreed. What's more annoying to me is the ease of the fix. Upon first viewing I thought that he had transported to a ship, then gone to Kronos, then transported down to the surface. The movie cuts go: Transports from fighter (nighttime), transports to Kronos surface (unknown time), back to Star Fleet (daytime). It wasn't super clean, but I had thought that was an indirect way of saying "time passes", which would have been fine. But then Scottie shows the transport coordinates and I was like "WHY?!?!" They couldn't just say Scottie figured out what ship he beamed to, and that ship looked like it was headed to Kronos? That would have been easy, almost as quick (as to not effect pacing), and wouldn't have been ridiculous.

2. Yeah, but the events after they visit Kronos are pretty linear and take place relatively quickly. I would have been more annoyed had the Klingons somehow been shoved into the final act when the events that happened on Kronos had only just happened. I guess I could see some complaining that the "year later" speech thing didn't mention anything about Klingons, but I mean...it was a criminal who killed the Klingons, a criminal who Star Fleet captured and brought to justice. I could easily see that as an added tension between the Federation & Klingons with out actually driving them to war.

3. Eh, both a little underdeveloped, but it didn't bother me. Making Kahn less flamboyant isn't a problem to me, and Cumberbatch did a fine job conveying Kahn and his motivations, which despite all the connections to Wrath, this seems more like Kahn from Space Seed. Kahn isn't as much out for revenge as he is trying to liberate his crew and get back to the cleansing. There's certainly some Star Fleet hate there, but Kahn isn't Ahab in this film, so I thought the back story and development was fine.

Weller was serviceable. Nothing more, nothing less. The "guy who wants/thrives on war" trope has been done to death, and I'm not sure there's much they could have done to make me find it more interesting. He served his roll.

4. *Shrug* I agree she's a bit pointless, but I didn't care. It was an intro to her character, with the beginnings of the romantic relationship for Kirk. That I find amusing/annoying, because for all Kirk's man-whoring in TOS, he actually stayed away from his crew. The idea that he'd start a relationship with Marcus now that she's under his command seems to stray from Kirk's character. We'll see how that plays out, and I reserve the right to be pissed about it later, but it's pretty non-offensive in this flick.

5. With you on that, though it didn't bother me a ton. I mean, it's a movie and those sorts of conveniences happen all the time. They had a 'special' ship for Kronos, so whatever. Earth should have had some ships in space dock, but things happening so fast and all...it didn't pull me out of the movie.

6. Not at all earned? I think you might be looking at this scene in the wrong way. In Wrath, it was a lesson for Kirk about humility, told by breaking apart a long established friendship. The scene in Into Darkness wasn't about Kirk learning a lesson, it was about building that friendship. It was about Kirk and Spock continuing to build a deep bond between them by displaying a mutual respect and understanding of how the other person works. Spock did what Kirk would do, and Kirk did what Spock would do -- it's the first time that their differences in character (Gut & Head) were both acknowledged and empathized with by one another, revealing that despite all the bickering and head butting, they share a common purpose/resolve...a fact that I'm not sure ever really lines up (at least in the character's eyes) until that point.

7. First off, Kirk wasn't dead. Bones specifically says there was still brain function. The time of someone being dead, even brain dead, and coming back could be an issue, but it wasn't like you could dig up a corpse and make a zombie. As for the "magic blood' specifically -- the idea of blood platelets having regenerative properties isn't fiction. Both Orthokine and Platelet-Rich Plasma procedures are rooted in this concept. Kahn's 'magic blood' could easily be seen as an extreme extension of the current research into these sorts of things. I'm not saying that it's possible science...but Star Trek isn't 'hard' Science Fiction anyways, so taking a concept from the current world and pushing it to the extreme shouldn't be that hard a concept to accept for Trekkies.


Ok...that ends the first run down.

As a sidenote, someone else mentioned the idea that there were 72 more bodies on board, so they didn't need Kahn. The frustrating part of that point is that the movie actually answered that question...then went back on itself. Bones states early on that he doesn't know how to work the tubes. This could easily explain why they need Kahn's blood: because they don't know how to unfreeze anyone else without further study of the tech. This would have been fine, except the movie then ruins that explanation by having them remove one of the bodies from a cryotube, alive and kept in a coma, and then freeze Kirk. It would have been so easy to just have Bones to take the "apparently dead" Kirk and just stick him in a status field or something. A quick "I can't save him, but this could give him just enough time to get Kahn back" would have been all they needed. Frustrating.

But again...I'm addressing the things I took issue with. I still had a great time, saw it twice in the same day, and will probably see it a third and possibly forth time before it's out of theaters. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it more than 2009, which I also enjoyed (at least superficially) as well.

Final thought for now: I'm really curious how all this will play with the fact that all this took place before the 5-year mission. I could imagine Kahn returning, too, with full Kahn-Kirk history established. Also, with JJ leaving, I can imagine several big names taking over and really getting some different creative looks at the Star Trek universe.

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238

Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

avatar wrote:

Some questions / points:

  Show
1. Why did one stun shot knock out Khan on the bridge of the dreadnought for over a minute, but during the climactic punch-up, Uhura's many stun shots were brushed off like mosquito bites?
2. Why did detectors only detect one life form on Kronos, when there were heaps of Klingons?
3. What are the rules of the transporter? Every single time there's a transporter situation, the rules are different. It can't transport because of speed, distance, radiation, interference, lack of power, shields, etc. At other times, it can transport into a warp ship from across the galaxy, or between any two points in the universe.
4. Ditto for warp drive. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. Whatever the scriptwriters need at that time. Likewise, "Starfleet Protocol says we can't do this." Other times: "fuck the rules, we'll do whatever we want." In summary, all these things (e.g. warp, transporter, protocol, malfunctioning technology) are just arbitrary constraints upon behaviour, like a knob that can be twiddled on demand. And it feels really ARBITRARY. Oh so now they can't do this. Now they can. Now they can't. Whatever.
5. The technology and design aesthetic of the bridge don't look anything like the brewery down below.
6. Why continually have to run between the bridge and the transporter room? Inefficient design. Build a smaller transporter section on the bridge.
7. Star Trek 1966 was ahead of the Zeitgeist, but Star Trek 2009 is not ahead of its time. Just the same ol' no-stakes indestructible PG-13 runn'n fight'n shoot'n 'splosions as every other tent-pole.
8. Can't they just remote-pilot a 'cold fusion' device into the volcano? Or beam it down from orbit? Why did they have to park the ship underwater? Wouldn't the natives have seen it entering the water?
9. Why does the captain repeatedly have to stay on the bridge while the rest evacuate as if they ship can't do anything on its own? That's such a cliche. "Oh no, don't sacrifice yourself." "But I have to." But it doesn't matter anyway, because all main characters get saved/resurrected one way or the other. So stop pretending this scene is so tense and emotional, because in two minutes, everything will be okay again.
10. Khan from Wrath of Khan was far nastier. PG-13 tends to water-down the drama.

DocSub alread answered most of these, but I wanted to address a couple as well:

  Show
2. That's what the "random patrol" line was about. They were spotted on their way in by a random patrol and that patrol alerted others presumably. Now, if you want to take issue with the "random patrol"...I won't stop you. Movie convenience at it's best!

3. Yeah, the transporters (other than the "hyper transport" nonsense) is tricky. I guess I explained it in my brain -- total retcon on my own part, mind you -- that the "lock on" is the key to process, and since teleporter tech is still relatively new, there are still some limitations. When going from the pad, locking on is easy and therefore even if that spot is moving, the added power and processing capability allows for more difficult beaming situations. However, "pulling" a signal is tougher, since the lock-on has to be established remotely. It seemed that whenever there is a transporter issue, it was that either a) no transport was possible at all, or b) they could only  transport TO the spot, not from. I could be wrong, but if that's the case, at least there's some sort of consistency -- even if it's likely that it just worked out that way and wasn't a pre-determined restriction.

4. To quote Guy Fleegman: "Did you ever WATCH the show?

Honestly, based on this comment...I don't know how you can enjoy any Star Trek.

8. "Interference" answers the remote piloting and beaming issues. During the cross-talk, I want to say someone said "line of sight" and "proximity" were required to get Spock back. The second would limit the "orbit" move. And really, trying to beam the thing to a 10 square foot rock through all that interference even with a line of sight could account for that.

As for parking in the ocean...they could have done it at night. It's not like the inhabitants of that planet had spotlights or sensors. Unless there was literally a random guy at the cliff (which the Enterprise could obviously check for), it's not hard to imagine the ship moving in and setting down without being noticed in the dark.

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Comparing Blakes' 7 teleport to Star Trek's transporter....

The rules for Blakes' 7 were more defined and rigid. 1. You needed a teleport bracelet. 2. You needed to be within close range, usually low orbit above the destination point, implied as line of sight.

With Star Trek, anything goes.
Blake's 7 still found contrivances to intermittently lose teleport capability to ratchet up tension (e.g. a crewmember would lose their bracelet, or an enemy ship approaching meant they had to move out of orbit and lose teleport capability). But the rules were consistent, adhered to, and made conceptual sense. With Star Trek, it feels entirely arbitrary.
The scriptwriters don't want beaming to be possible? Just say 'too much radiation' or 'moving too rapidly' or 'too much interference' or 'not enough energy' or whatever. The scriptwriters want beaming to other side of the galaxy... sure, just insert techno-babble.

Why even have space ships if you can beam anywhere, anytime?

not long to go now...

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

avatar wrote:

Why even have space ships if you can beam anywhere, anytime?

Because spaceships are awesome!

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

redxavier wrote:

I've found that a lot of the problems with these sorts of contemporary action movies stem from an apparent lack of questioning in the writing room. No-one seems to have asked why such and such is happening. And perhaps more importantly, no-one seems to have asked whether the same effect can be achieved by other 'better' means that don't undermine story or character. On the face of it, there's nothing wrong with most of the stuff that happens in this and the previous Trek, it's just that the actions preceding and leading to that moment or scene aren't efficiently thought out or drafted. For instance, there's nothing wrong with

  Show
Spock being in a volcano and the Enterprise having to rescue him
, it's just the set up for that isn't done as well it could be. No-one appears to have sat down and thought about why all the bits are the way they are and how they fit together to arrive at X, and analysed the problems that arise from doing so.

It's no wonder the story does things that feel arbitary, the construction of the story is arbitary.

Maybe this questioning does all occur and it simply gets dismissed and/or ignored...

Now that we're in the 20-teens and the PG-13 tentpole for this era is becoming well-defined, we're seeing that all these movies have the same basic structure and same basic flaws.

The ratio of action to humour to romance to spectacle to exposition is roughly the same. The $100M+ budgets are roughly the same which get spent on cast : FX : production in a certain formula. The returns of $500M-$1B are virtually guaranteed for the brand franchise instalments. Scriptwriting never seems to get a high priority, and so plot holes abound. But plot holes don't prevent box office, because you only notice them after you've spent your money.

The metaphor I reach for is the iphone and the changeable skin. The underlying movie is always the same, but the skin is different. Guy Pearce wants to be a war-profiteer in Iron Man 3. Marcus wants to be war profiteer in STID. Avengers and Dark Knight Rises ends the same way, with a bomb being carried off. Skyfall, STID, ST2009, TDKR and a million others have some villain that's been aggrieved in the past and now 'demands satisfaction'. The last 10 minutes will always involve a WWF punch-up.

Final Draft should have a PG-13 Tentpole template.

JJ Abrahms seems to have internalised 'the Hollywood PG-13 Tentpole Formula', His temperament is well suited to Star Wars. They'll be teenagers running, shoot'n, jump', fight'n against a background of sparks and 'splosions for 120 minutes. Everyone will breathe a sigh of relief that it's not as bad as the Prequels. There'll be predictable nods to the original series with repeated catch phrases, just like Star Trek did. The hard core nerds will whine about breaches of canon. At the end of the day, we'll have seen it all before.

I think someone on this forum nicknamed these types of films "McMovies", and that's an appropriate phrase.

not long to go now...

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Well, I saw it.  In all honesty I was more entertained than I was by Iron Man III, but that's not saying a lot.  It's a collection of really well-crafted moments of action and stuff, but always motivated by [insert implausible justification here].   

Really, it's Prometheus again.  Beautiful eye candy with a semblance of meaning, but all happening for reasons that are completely ridiculous.    As hard as we were on Prometheus for being ignorant of  how reality works, Into Darkness deserves the same treatment.  If anything, this Trek is even more Written By A Kid than Prometheus.

Most especially, for me, this scene:

SPOILER Show
Hey Bones - why are you injecting Khan's blood into that dead Tribble?

Because I'm obviously not a real doctor.  I'm clearly a lunatic.

You find me a legitimate medical lab anywhere on the planet where somebody is injecting human blood into a dead rat and expecting something to happen, and I will pay you one meelion dollars.

And don't even get me started on

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an Enterprise that operates in atmosphere and even goes underwater.   Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

There's really no need to list all the bogus nonsense in the movie, or argue about it, or try to explain it.  The explanation for all of it is simple - the filmmakers didn't know jack, and they either didn't realize they don't know jack, or they didn't care.    They didn't even care about - or understand - Trek's canonical made-up science to stay consistent with that.

So me, I'd call it a really entertaining movie, as long as you ignore how completely stupid it is.

Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Trey wrote:

Really, it's Prometheus again.  Beautiful eye candy with a semblance of meaning, but all happening for reasons that are completely ridiculous.    As hard as we were on Prometheus for being ignorant of  how reality works, Into Darkness deserves the same treatment.  If anything, this Trek is even more Written By A Kid than Prometheus.

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Sébastien Fraud
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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Speaking of whom:

Damon Lindelof admits the Star Trek underwear scene was "gratuitous"

Now if we can just get him to admit the same about the rest of the movie...

Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Trey wrote:

Speaking of whom:

Damon Lindelof admits the Star Trek underwear scene was "gratuitous"

Now if we can just get him to admit the same about the rest of the movie...

It was hardly a "scene". 1...2 seconds max? Should have been more of it. It's the punch-ups that are gratuitous and over the top. 10 minutes of unrealistic indestructible punch-ups and 2 seconds of underwear flash - that's American mentality. If it was European production, those would be reversed.

not long to go now...

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

Trey wrote:

Really, it's Prometheus again....Into Darkness deserves the same treatment.  If anything, this Trek is even more Written By A Kid than Prometheus.

Only Phantom Menace and Transformers 2 belong in the lowest circle of hell with Prometheus. This Star Trek film was just out of same sausage-factory as all the other Marvel/DC or recent summer blockbusters, with the same quality control. No more, no less. It ticked all the boxes. It'll ultimately earn 2X-3X its budget to get another formulaic forgettable sequel greenlit.

not long to go now...

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

avatar wrote:
Trey wrote:

Speaking of whom:

Damon Lindelof admits the Star Trek underwear scene was "gratuitous"

Now if we can just get him to admit the same about the rest of the movie...

It was hardly a "scene". 1...2 seconds max? Should have been more of it. It's the punch-ups that are gratuitous and over the top. 10 minutes of unrealistic indestructible punch-ups and 2 seconds of underwear flash - that's American mentality. If it was European production, those would be reversed.

The fact that it was only two seconds was what made it gratuitous. It was thrown in purely to titillate the audience. Completely unnecessary otherwise. The "unrealistic" action scenes (and if you're really complaining about that in a Star Trek movie, you were never going to like this thing) are absolutely necessary. It's an action film.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

You know, now that I think about it, McCoy injecting the blood into a DEAD tribble makes no fucking sense. Why wouldn't he use just an injured tribble, if he wanted to study the blood's healing effects? Unless tribble biology is completely backwards, that blood isn't pumping through a dead animal.

The blood itself having healing properties is dumb, yeah, but it didn't bug me. But the way that Bones discovers it is actually super dumb.

...

Okay, FINE, this movie was dumb as hell all around. Still fun though. Not conceding that point. I'll almost certainly watch it again. The emotional beats work and the action is great. I wasn't asking for anything more. It wasn't all serious about itself and its themes like Prometheus, so I really can't hate it. Still, good thing that none of these writers are working on Star Wars VII. Abrams is a talented director who can turn out great product if he's got decent material to work with.

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2013-05-21 01:56:12)

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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249

Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

It's not just that

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it's dead -  injecting the blood of one species into another has been known to be a bad - or at best useless - thing for quite a while now.   

Dr. McCoy lives on a starship in the future, and the best medical test he can come up with is something you'd expect to see on Game of Thrones?   

So yes, super dumb.

Re: Star Trek Into Darkness

This is cool, but slightly irrelevant to current topic at hand:
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/ … r-veterans

God loves you!

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