Star Trek: The Next Threaderation

[BlobVanDam]

Just wondering. Did you like Into Darkness more than you disliked it ?

I'm not even sure of the answer to that one. Don't get me wrong, there was still plenty I liked, but overall I think my dislike probably outweighed it. But I really don't want to answer that one until I see it again some time.
And to clarify, despite my complaints about ST11, I really like that movie a lot, but my complaints about that movie reflect significantly on JJ, and why I don't like him.

And don't tell me Uhura is the new Troi. Female drivers, right?

[jammindude]

The Paramount theme at the end of every TNG episode?

...is the opening notes of the Star Wars theme sped up.

[Kotowboy]

Abrams on Trek 3 : " It’s a valid argument that it’s about time for them to go off and discover and see things that have nothing to do with what we’ve seen before, and I think we’ll always have some overlap. But I’m excited about the next chapter. "

Kurtzman on Trek 3 : " But we always imagined that we were creating an alternate timeline so we could play in harmony with canon. We can see things that were familiar, but also the events themselves might have minor differences, and sometimes major differences. I think that leaves us room to go either way and be unpredictable, which is the whole point of creating an alternate timeline. At the end of the day, because we give so much thought to what the stories are going to be and how to tell them, it’s ultimately about what feels right. Certainly our ears are open to what fans are saying about the show, the movies and our movies, so that all goes into the stew. "

[El Barto]

So in other words, more of the same. Remember, the "fans" like explosions and chases and familiarly named bad guys. The people who want to see actual sci-fi and unknown phenomena are the people like me and BVD, and Abrams and Kurtzman don't give a flying fuck about either of us.

[Kotowboy]

  I don't know one Star Trek fan who liked 2009 & Into Darkness just for LE BANGS AND LE CRASHES.

Hate on them all you want - but the overwhelming message is - more exploration - less set pieces.

[El Barto]

I re-read my post and I don't see the word "just" anywhere in it.

The fact remains that these movies aren't made for the people who grew up watching ST in one of it's various iterations, and the people they are made for will find a true exploration movie dull and boring. You tell me, if the next movie were based on The Immunity Syndrome, or The Changeling would it make half the dough the first two did? They'd bomb spectacularly.

[Kotowboy]

I've been watching Star Trek for 30 years and I adored the last two films.

And I hate stupid brainless action films with no plot.

Guess I must not be a real Trekker.

[El Barto]

I've been watching Star Trek for 30 years and I adored the last two films.

Not something I said or suggested.

And I hate stupid brainless action films with no plot.

Not something I said or suggested.

Guess I must not be a real Trekker.

Not something I said or suggested.

I did ask a question, though.

[Kotowboy]

BRB GOING TO THE FUTURE TO GET THAT ANSWER FOR YA

[Orbert]

J.J. Abrams apologizes for all those Star Trek lens flares

I'm not familiar with the io9 website, so I don't know if this is a joke or what.  It honestly seems to me like it could go either way.

[Kotowboy]

The lens flare thing has been blown out of proportion.

I honestly didn't notice them in "into Darkness" the first time.

Simon Pegg is right - it's become to "in thing" to use to bash JJ's trek films.

It's like a buzzword that people love to throw around but don't really understand.

There's a segment on the making of for 2009 and it shows some shots without lens flare and they just look lifeless and dead.

I like JJ's reasoning behind it too - on home movies - you always get natural flares - so when you see them in a movie -

You subconsciously associate it with being *real*.

TL;DR they don't bother me.

[BlobVanDam]

I can't remember how much it was used in Into Darkness (which is probably a good sign, I guess), but it was overdone in ST11. When I saw it the first time, it stuck out from the first scene, with the sweeping shot of the Kelvin, then the bridge.

It is mostly just the bridge/ship shots, and the CG space shots, but they're plagued by lens flares. It's one thing to want to exploit the look of natural flares for effect (which is not a bad idea), but JJ purposely added extraneous lights to the bridge literally just for the sake of flares. That's the definition of excessive, and even a bit lazy and uninspired.

Whether you understand lens flares, or just think they're ghost orbs, the average person notices them, and they're distracting. Other movies have managed to look visually interesting without hiding under lens flares, especially when your subject matter is spaceships! That's already a goldmine of visual interest.

Maybe they just needed to add more barcode scanners.....

[Kotowboy]

[Kotowboy]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/paulaersly/every-major-sci-fi-starship-in-one-staggering-comparison-cha?6467918=1




Still think Uss Vengeance is ridiculously too big for sci fi ?

[BlobVanDam]

Is the Vengeance on there? I'd like to know how big that monstrosity is supposed to be. Awful, awful ship.

It's bad enough that the new Enterprise is *however the hell big they decide it is today, but either about 650m or 950m depending on what mood they're in*, and the Vengeance completely dwarfed that, so the thing must be several kilometers long.
It makes no sense that in this timeline they'd be making ships that huge, especially when it's a top secret ship with a smaller crew that's only designed for firepower, not its spacious ballroom. It was so big, that it lost all impact (no pun intended )
Not to mention that it's fuglier than the Excelsior / Enterprise B. That's a tough feat.

Ships from other shows have no sense of realistic scale to me, so I disregard them.

[Kotowboy]

Is the Vengeance on there? I'd like to know how big that monstrosity is supposed to be. Awful, awful ship.

Uss Vengeance is 1400m long. Which is like a mm on that chart.

I love Uss Vengeance . I love the design and the look of it.

[BlobVanDam]

Is the Vengeance on there? I'd like to know how big that monstrosity is supposed to be. Awful, awful ship.

Uss Vengeance is 1400m long. Which is like a mm on that chart.

I love Uss Vengeance . I love the design and the look of it.

Is that all? That puts it at a max of twice as long as the JJ-prise. I recall it looking a lot larger in comparison on screen.
But the JJprise was ridiculously overscaled as is (longer than any other original universe Enterprise, including the D/E), so to have a ship twice as big as that is even more ridiculous, for the reasons already stated. And the ship looked so phoned in.

What I love about classic Trek ships is the thought that went into their design (even though there were some major mistakes there).
Even now you can ask any of those Trek guys (such as Sternbach, Probert, Drexler), and they had those ships planned out with a lot of care and thought, and knew what every little greebly on the ship was, and could describe those ships as if they were real technology that follows the rules of the "universe". It made the universe feel that much more real if you were so inclined to care about it.

The Vengeance is not surprisingly following the Star Wars method of just making ships giant unbelievably huge blocks, with random greebly detail all over it that means nothing. It's just a giant thing that was designed only to look big and imposing. But it doesn't look real or believable, or well thought out at all. It looks like someone slapped it together in a couple of days with no care at all, because it didn't matter.

[Kotowboy]

The vengeance was designed to be big and imposing.




You'd never guess it was designed by a savage tyrant bent on destroying under the control of a warmongering admiral who wanted to militarise Starfleet but whatever.

[BlobVanDam]

Don't get me started on the concept of a dinosaur from the 1990s being at all useful in designing a warship 300 years in the future. In his time they didn't even have warp drive, or any phaser weapons. It would be like getting Edison to help design the next Pentium processor. And he shouldn't have had any idea where the thing was even located. And again, why was it so damn huge? And again, how the hell does the product of superior breeding end up with blood that cures death and radiation poisoning, and how does that go unnoticed?


Gah, don't even get me started on that movie again (as if I stopped ). It completely baffles me how Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are allowed to write science fiction, or write anything for that matter.

[Kotowboy]

Cool. Then I;ll continue to post why I like it and you can stop finding fault with my every opinion.

[BlobVanDam]

Um, it's a forum, for discussion. If I find fault with something being discussed, I'll discuss it.
Kind of ironic for you to take issue with criticism.

[Kotowboy]

It's nowhere near as big as it was in the concept art.

[Vivace]

Star Trek Into Darkness was a great idea, middle managed into a trite movie. I was really hoping to like it but it's pretty dumb when compared to the great movies like Undiscovered Country or Wrath of Khan. I kinda felt as if I was watching some weird hybrid of a Michael Bay movie and Tony Scott movie that tried to be a Star Trek movie. Ugh... At least the action sequences were okay.

I have started to watch Star Trek Voyager. Wow... talk about a series that gets your hopes up only to shatter them in a single pilot.

[rumborak]

I have ST TMP running in a window on my laptop right now. It's at 32 minutes into the movie, and the Enterprise finally leaves spacedock

[BlobVanDam]

Judging by when you posted that, I'm guessing you're almost done with the wormhole scene by now.

[rumborak]

Seriously.

Another thing that had me giggling when I heard it:

Spock:  "I believe the closed orifice leads to another chamber."

[Orbert]

 

[Orbert]

[sueño]

 

https://mentalfloss.com/article/53236/now-you-can-rickroll-your-friends-or-enemies-klingon

[Dream Team]

Can't believe it took The Agony Booth this long to post a ST09 review:

https://www.agonybooth.com/movies/Star_Trek_2009.aspx

[Kotowboy]

" He attacks Spock’s ship, but the red matter creates a black hole that sends both ships back in time (of course it does)."

Yep. It's fiction.

[Dream Team]

" He attacks Spock’s ship, but the red matter creates a black hole that sends both ships back in time (of course it does)."

Yep. It's fiction.

And they come out 25 years apart? And what has Nero been doing these past 25 years?

[Kotowboy]

He was in a Klingon prison. But that scene was not in the final film.

[El Barto]

But that scene was not in the final film.

That seems to happen a lot. Doesn't it seem to you that perhaps all that time Kirk spent running from whatever sort of frost troll he found on the Spock planet might have been better spent on the plot elements that wound up on the cutting room floor?

[BlobVanDam]

But that scene was not in the final film.

That seems to happen a lot. Doesn't it seem to you that perhaps all that time Kirk spent running from whatever sort of frost troll he found on the Spock planet might have been better spent on the plot elements that wound up on the cutting room floor?

Yep, that's one of my major beefs with ST11 (and JJ in general). They favour action over actual plot every time. The plot on its own makes almost no sense as a coherent scifi story.
Some of the scenes they deleted were imo important in helping the story work (without expecting people to read a comic to fill in the blanks that should be in the damn movie), and also important character moments. They cut out a scene that would have made me a lot more sympathetic to Kirk, but instead in the final movie he just looks like a rebellious dick for the sake of trying to force a badass character that didn't relate to the Kirk character we already knew.