Young Kirk n Spock + Lost = new Star Trek movie

this was pretty rad!!

Dude who plays Kirk's dad in the film has apparently been cast as Thor.

I guess "Thor who" would indicate this thread is no place for me.

how Thor was he?

kinda surprised morbs has never heard of the voyage of the kon-tiki

almost made that joke! :)

haha!

I saw this last night with the wifey. It's rare for her to be up for an action-adventure type film, so I'm still surprised she went.

Anyway, putting all the fanboy stuff to one side, it struck me as a better than average space-based shoot 'em up, but not quite up to the top drawer Hollywood stuff. It was entertaining.

The story leaned very heavily on "oh noes weez in danger" elements, which lasted about 5 minutes per menace, with lots of noise, fisticuffs and fireworks. Afterward came a brief respites to let the characters advance the plot or make a joke before the next oh noes. Consequently, character interaction and development was awfuly sketchy, but I've seen worse, so it gets a C+ or a weak B- on that heading.

It avoided the pitfall of too-great seriousness, which was a good choice.

If you want to pick apart its details looking for egregious nonsense, I am surprised that no one has mentioned that, although the Romulan ship was roughly 40 times the size of the Enterprise, yet, once inside the ship Kirk and Spock could make their way from the helm to Spock's captured ship and to the place where Captain Whatsisname was being held as quickly and easily as if the Romulan ship were about the size of one city block instead of Manhattan island.

But filmmakers have known for about a century now that the audiences for shoot em ups don't really care about that stuff, so why should they clutter up the story by forcing it to make realistic sense? All it does is bog down the action.

the one nitpick I have, and someone may have mentioned it already, was that Captain Pike needed people with hand-to-hand combat experience, yet he chose his pilot (Sulu) and engineer (Olson) to accompany Kirk versus any one of his security personnel?

In Star Trek II, it is a ship full of baby-faced recruits, so I think they're trying to recreate that here -- therefore they probably do have the most combat and skydiving experience out of everyone on the ship. The security dudes are just meatheads who don't even know space karate.

"the Romulan ship was roughly 40 times the size of the Enterprise"
most of this mass is pincer/tentacle/drillers? the actual accessible area is probably quite small, maybe the size of a supermarket? (conjecture)

"But also don't nearby planets usually look like, say, Venus or Mars?"
Death Star looked pretty huge from Endor, man. I think that entire sequence is operating on Star Wars rather than Star Trek fandom -- Luke/Kirk chased by monster on Hoth, Spocki-Wan appears waving his hands to ward off monster, tutors young Luke/Kirk on his destiny. Also, Star Wars-style cantina alien. Surprised they didn't cut open someone's belly for warmth.

size of a supermarket

(shrug) in that case, the accessible area shouldn't too hard to distinguish from "the cargo bay", where "if the ship is sensibly designed at all", Scotty tried to transport them.

But, as I said, the effort to impose sense on what was never intended to make any kind of literal sense is futile.

It was funny how the gigantic red ball of doom from Alias got recycled for this movie. JJ Abrams must have a thing for them the way Tarantino loves toes.

this movie basically ruled imo

i was expecting the usual horrible denouement that sinks most jj abrams projects but this was tight throughout. and i agree with the sentiment that karl urban was an incredible casting decision.

Yes, I was too but was pleasantly surprised! Really enjoyed this.

Karl Urban's performance almost tears me up. So fuckin ON.

No love for weegie scotty?

The only problem with Karl Urban was that there wasn't nearly enough of him in the movie.

He was just so perfect from the first word! Amazing, really.

the filmmakers deliberately went for a Star Wars vibe; they hired ben burtt to do sound design and the phasers act more like blasters than the steady beam models

I was pretty happy with all of the performances except, strangely enough, Leonard Nimoy! He seemed like he was on autopilot. It was weird how little Chekov looked like Walter Koenig, but I liked that spin on the character. Really thought the guy who played Kirk was fantastic. He evoked Kirk without imitating Shatner, which is not an easy thing to do.

I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. It was funny, exciting, and still faithful to the canon. What made it work IMO was the excellent casting. Everyone was spot on. I do agree Nimoy came off as a just a little too heavy handed, but that's a minor criticism. One very minor point, there are no sounds in space. I know those "whoosh" noises a spaceship makes as it passes by give the audience a sensation of motion, but there's no air in space, so no noise. Another minor scientific blooper was the ice planet animals. I sat through that entire scene thinking, "There's no way that environment could support animals of that size." I know, too much thinking.

Well the whole sound in space thing was addressed rather amusingly with the off-again on-again silences. Effective have your cake and eat it too approach.

It was weird how little Chekov looked like Walter Koenig, but I liked that spin on the character.

I've been figuring that since the original Chekov looked like a Beatle, new Chekov has to look like a baby-faced generic cute boy band member.

this movie basically ruled imo

― u have a new mistress my friend and her name is little debbie (omar little), Sunday, May 17, 2009 7:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think that entire sequence is operating on Star Wars rather than Star Trek fandom

That's the half of this movie that can go fuck itself.

I'm w/ Silent Roger, Nimoy was the only person in this movie.

Haven't seen this yet, and wasn't really anticipating it (I wasn't a fan of the show), but the good reviews and Simon Pegg being in the movie -- he's the guy from Hot Fuzz and Shawn Of The Dead, I think -- have piqued my interest.

I sat through that entire scene thinking, "There's no way that environment could support animals of that size." I know, too much thinking.

My friend was upset that there was a bright red animal on the planet when redness would be an obvious evolutionary disadvantage, but I was too busy saying "HOLY SHIT, HUGE SCARY THING"

Limmy (Scottish internet comic) review. He's no too keen.

He seems to be neglecting the possibility of alternate timelines/dimensions/etc.

let's blow up that possibility. with "Red Matter."

Another thing, if the red matter causes black holes, wouldn't you need a little more than what looked like water and a glass jar to keep it from activating and destroying the Romulan ship? Now really...

Dude, transparent aluminum.

Am really suprised by how good it was. I had been expecting awful things, since the catchcry seemed to be "I don't even like Star Trek and I thought it was awesome" which sounded like the biggest WTF??? for a Star Trek movie. But he pulled it off. I liked Eric Bana...and no that's not jingoism on my behalf (or, hehehe,'dingoism')

Bones was so great. And when Kirk sat in the chair, he WAS Kirk. Good stuff. Didn't like Spock meeting Spock...I was practically whistling for the Time Police by then. But no real quibbles. Hubby's a bigger Trek fan, he's got a laundry list. But he liked it overall, I think.

"I don't even like Star Trek and I thought it was awesome"
ur not ripping off star wars enough: they really should have processed bana's voice or something, the phenomenon of archvillians sounding like twerp regular dudes (dr. doom in ff, evil guy in hellboy II) has got to stop, and you think it would be impossible for stuff like this to get through given the attention paid to sound effects and such. also bana had his blowing up alderan moment but w/o the up close and personal 'choke a nga out for minor incompetence' moments a villain can't really register on screen at this level. khan from the 2nd movie got way more mileage out of that brain bug for instance, and he has a much sillier costume.

Agreed. But he did stab someone in the chest with a spear. That was pretty cool.

the phenomenon of archvillians sounding like twerp regular dudes (dr. doom in ff, evil guy in hellboy II) has got to stop

YES

this was hilarious in ff

this was pretty good, lots of fun. my only objections were that the villain was completely generic/boring and some of the stuff with Nimoy (particularly his last scene) were a little too Simpsons' Monorail Episode-like

the cast of the crew were great tho - thought all of them were pitch perfect. Bones in particular was a lot of fun.

The kid playing Chekov seemed very annoying, but that wasn't a major problem.

He was supposed to be chirpily annoying, though. Classic 17-year-old.

Chekov's pretty annoying in the original series tbh

vhat is zis Monkees bandvagon onto vhich I am jumpink?

yeah, chekov is easily the worst of the original cast. which is basically flawless besides him.

seems like a nice dude irl, tho.

walter koenig, that is.

"yeah, chekov is easily the worst of the original cast. which is basically flawless besides him."

Wha? Why the chekov hate?

I dug Chekov in the movies, don't really remember him in the series.

BOTANY BAY

haha, chekov is pretty funny in khan, yeah.

http://bensbreakfastblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/chekov-ear.jpg

I guess I don't hate him or anything but I'd rather just rather have sulu in all of his scenes instead. if memory serves, sulu missed most of season 2 because he went off to film a movie or something that nobody remembers. so, chekov got all of those parts.