Star Trek Beyond

I thought it was decent fun but I'd like to see one of these with a little less camera movement. also 3D sucks.

where were they during all that action?

They were rescued from Krall's base by Sulu and Uhura, and then Bones was patching them up.

xp thanks mh!

i'll be seeing hunt for the wilderpeople next for sure

they need some extended scenes where he absorbs those little dudes from the intro. I don't want harm to come to them, I just want to see him get all small and ridiculous

i enjoyed this: def more enjoyable than into darkness, but that's not saying much.

the dutch angles & rotating cameras got hella confusing in the final yorktown scene, i couldnt tell where anyone was!

loved that pine dropped into a classic jim kirk karate stance in the opening scene when the little guys started popping off

This was pretty generic, which for Trek is ... yeah, fine. I thought it had some really cool visual ideas, which is ironic, since as usual I had no idea what was going half the time, visually or otherwise. So the bad guy (spoilers?) is a former star fleet guy who was lost in space hundreds of years back, who somehow found some way to live forever, and then amassed a huge loyal army and unconquerable fleet and turned into an alien, and his ultimate plan was to patiently search for the missing component of some ancient bioweapon so that he could finally exact his revenge on the Federation by ... waiting for them to build a huge peace planet he had no idea they were going to build and then release the bioweapon there and kill everyone? I was totally lost. Why couldn't he just attack it with his unconquerable fleet after he lured away their defenses with the false beacon?

Anyway, lots of little things but they didn't seem to matter, not even the fact that the giant attack on the peace planet looked exactly like the end of Guardians of the Galaxy (maybe Zoe could have told them). I like the cast, and I liked all the character beats, the relationship stuff, and I liked the alien make-up.

this was ok, entertaining enough. going Mass Effect in the final sequence was good after half a film of poorly lit scenes on that planet.
big spoiler was RUINED for me because the reveal "video footage" was shown in some trailers/commercials. what a bunch of idiots.
fucking sabotage.

Apparently the woman-of-many-traps character is called Jailah as it's a shortening of the placeholder "Jennifer-Lawrence-In-Winters-Bone" that was used all the way through the writing of the script.

couldn't tell from the backwoods accent?

The lighting was very bad. Half the time I thought it was the 3D.

So it wasn't just me? I saw it in 2D but there were lots of scenes where it was so dim I thought it was the theatre, that the screen was too dark.

I think my main issue with this movie was that while it had a lot of the atmosphere down, as opposed to the previous Trek film, it didn't really amount to much in the end once it became "OMG baddie is headed for the good guys with something that will kill them all".

had it just been focused on the crew's escape/slow reveal of Idris Elba's true identity, it would have been more interesting. Plus all of the "well there's a 3% chance this will work O WOW MIRACULOUSLY IT WORKED" moments get to be eye-rolly.

not bad tho.

I just assumed it was cheekily embracing all the Trek cliches. Like all the "dammit, Jim" stuff ... he pulls off the "Dammit" line, like, 10 times. Or Scottie calling the alien woman "lassie" all the time. We get it, you're Scotty, you're Scottish. I also got a kick out of all the fake rock sets, which seemed very old school Trek as well, especially compared to the expansive, expensive FX.

The Idris reveal, as such, was handled terribly. It was really strange, actually. You get him in alien mode for most of the movie, then they reveal who he is in the video - Idris! - but then the next several shots they go to great effort to obscure his face on the Peace Planet, shooting from behind or just off to the side, leading up to a second reveal where ... he still looks kind of alien-y. Would have been more effective if they eventually had him revert back to human/Idris mode at the last minute rather than just dogface hybrid. Wasn't sure what they were going for.

(Or why he looked like an alien to begin with.)

yeah the pacing of that was weird, they decided to cram an assload of exposition into a 5-minute pocket

Star Shrek amirite?

shoutout to the space hand was nice. Would like to see even more of the 60s trek vibe next time.

lol even my novice Trek ass got the space hand reference, enjoyed that

i loved that the offworld lanscape was v brightly colored in places

I thought it was dark but that's because I spent the first half wearing my sunglasses instead of the 3D glasses

Why couldn't he just attack it with his unconquerable fleet after he lured away their defenses with the false beacon?

Those are... different levels of military might? Like, taking down a spaceship and taking down a planet in the canals of which these spaceships can frolic are ... different tasks?

I don't know, those spaceships seemed to be doing an okay job. The only reason they didn't work against the peace planet was because they were distracted by the Beastie Boys, but the way they were introduced there is no reason to believe a bunch of ruthless ships could not take down a planet made of glass.

In fact, had they not gotten the Enterprise involved he could have lured away the defenses and taken down the planet with no problem. Serves him right for messing with the Enterprise!

This doesn't seem to be based on anything in the film, or any understanding how how military capacities of moving ships compare with castles / towns / fucking planets?

Ha ha, this is the very rare example of I think me actually understanding something. When they were at Idris's base, he tricked Uluru and Sulu into sending the fake distress signal, which would lure the federation defenses from the glass planet to the wrong place, and trap them in the nebula. (Right?) That left the glass planet undefended, so he sent his huge swarm to attack it, and they would have succeeded were it not for Kirk et al. showing up and disrupting the swarm with the Beastie Boys. Right? Because what else was the huge indestructible swarm there for but to attack the glass planet?

Ergo, had Kirk not appeared with he Franklin, Krall (Krull? Krill?) would have showed up at the mostly undefended glass planet with his whole beehive fleet.

But you're right, I typically do lack any understanding of how military capacities of moving ships compare with castles / towns / fucking planets. What can you do?

i'm glad we now know the fate of tom paris's great-grandma.

Spock emo-crying at the beginning annoyed me a bit. Spock has been known to show the unexpected emotion but weep-on-command like he's in a Nicholas Sparks movie, no...unless he was under the influence of some virus or something.

This is probably the best of the three so far but still only ok. The relentless and at times incomprehensible crash bang wallop is wearying.

Ha ha, this is the very rare example of I think me actually understanding something. When they were at Idris's base, he tricked Uluru and Sulu into sending the fake distress signal, which would lure the federation defenses from the glass planet to the wrong place, and trap them in the nebula. (Right?) That left the glass planet undefended, so he sent his huge swarm to attack it, and they would have succeeded were it not for Kirk et al. showing up and disrupting the swarm with the Beastie Boys. Right? Because what else was the huge indestructible swarm there for but to attack the glass planet?

I will have to check, but my memory is that Sulu and Uhura (Uluru is the big rock in the middle of Australia) sending the distress signal isn't part of his plan, just that he'd pre-hacked the communication so that any distress calls have their headers rewritten to appear to be from somewhere else. I took this to be one of the first hints that Krall _really_ knows how the Federation works.

The respondents to the distress would have brought some ships, possibly tooled up, but they wouldn't have brought the main planetary defences, as the main planetary defences would be planetary - probably too large to put on a ship, but more to the point the planetary defences will be there to defend the planet. To go back to the analogy, if a fort hears that there's a bunch of horsemen making trouble a couple of miles away, they might send out some horsemen, but they won't trundle the cannons over.

I mean, the plan isn't to take the base with their fleet, because <makes Matthew Perry how-what-how hand gestures> and also because, as you say, they could attempt that at any time with as much chance, but to get inside enough to dump the new toy into the air system. Which is similar to how smaller armies take big cities in general, poisoning wells (or starvation, but the setting obviously complicates that).

In fairness this does mean that after Sabotage, the plan is fucked, but Movie Magic and the necessity to resolve things with a fistfight...

Because what else was the huge indestructible swarm there for but to attack the glass planet?

Well, to seize ships and feed their crew to Krall.

This is probably the best of the three so far but still only ok. The relentless and at times incomprehensible crash bang wallop is wearying.

― Neptune Bingo (Michael B), Monday, 1 August 2016 11:42 (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hugely crazy talk.

This was hugely inferior to the first. Much better than the second. It was about 6/10. The plot was stinking. It looked good. The way they defeated the "wait how did one guy build all this again" alien fleet was the stupidest thing i may ever have seen. The attack on the enterprise was good. The "character development" snippets were about the worst I've ever seen. That one shot of Kirk and swedish alien on the bike may be the worst I've ever seen. Really I may be overrating it at 6/10 now I think of it.

not dumber than Riker Enterprise joystick

Yeah in fairness documenting the full dumbness would require watching with pause button and notepad and thats not gonna happen

Yeah its not as good as the first one actually but all I can remember about the first one is Spock seizing Kirk by the throat and what a shit bad guy Eric Bana was. The more I think about "Beyond" after watching it (which isnt a whole lot) the more shit it seems.

Not a fan of nu-Star Trek tbh but I'm hoping they can pull one decent movie out of the bag

Saw this on the weekend, I thought it was great fun. I'm not a precious Trekkie tho which I'm sure helps. I go into any Trek story expecting plotholes, ridiculousness and easily resolved conundrums, a la any of the TV shows - why would anyone be surprised by this?

I just assumed it was cheekily embracing all the Trek cliches. Like all the "dammit, Jim" stuff ... he pulls off the "Dammit" line, like, 10 times. Or Scottie calling the alien woman "lassie" all the time. We get it, you're Scotty, you're Scottish. I also got a kick out of all the fake rock sets, which seemed very old school Trek as well, especially compared to the expansive, expensive FX.

This is spot on, for eg. I did notice one part with what seemed like obvious rock sets and chuckled to myself, not even realising it might be on purpose, but the "dammit Jim!" stuff was hilarious.

The Beastie Boys thing was stupid, incongruous fun.

My only quibble was how bloody dark half the film was, what was with that? But hey - NO GODDAMN ABRAMS LENS FLARE HUURAAAAH.

I had to see it in 3D because my local theatre has figured that they can get people to pay the 3D tax by not offering the version people want to see. There was one scene where the only thing I could make out was a gleam across the floor.

Wait the very first shot was lens flare.

there was prob a bit but jja was completely over the top with his use of it in comparison it was in every damn scene. it's fresh in my mind cos I saw it last week

i am not a precious trekkie but i do have some self respect. this was fucking garbage

Clearly JJ Abrams thinks Star Trek is boring, and it shows.

― schwantz, Monday, 25 July 2016 21:31 Bookmark

so true

ding ding

he only produced this one tho

Yeah he wasnt the director of this?

Justin Lin of Fast and Furious fame

vin diesel should play this guy next movie:
https://michaelstvtray.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/ted-cassidy-star-trek1.jpg

This was garbage.

saw this last night (wife wanted to see it for her birthday) and I enjoyed it fine. The right cast and tone and design go a long way for me. Yeah there were plotholes and some dumb moments here and there but I dug it, it was basically just one long episode and it hit all the right character beats without being crammed chockfull of easter egg callbacks to other shit. Really dug the design of the Yorktown and the random plant/animal/rock details of the planet, and the way the underlying Trek ethos of utopian multiculturalism got sprinkled throughout. Walking home afterwards that got me thinking about why exactly I prefer Trek to Star Wars by such a wide margin - Star Wars isn't really about ideas or even science fiction, it's essentially a classic mythological dynastic drama. It's central theme is about succession/family/destiny and the sci-fi stuff is just window dressing. But Trek comes out of the sci-fi tradition of imagining a better world, of projecting an idealized future that reflects our fears/hopes of the present, and as such it feels much richer to me. It's about envisioning a functional utopia - the crew! everybody different but committed to each other. The utopia is intermittently silly and ridiculous, sometimes self-consciously so, but that gets mined for laughs (Trek def seems more humorous to me in general than Star Wars, another point in its favor).

I totally agree except the movie sucked.

haha well there ya go

I admit that by the last big battle sequence I basically didn't give a fuck about the central conflict/threat/whatever of course Kirk was gonna get saved by Bones and Spock duh