The full-spoiler 'Star Trek' discussion thread.

I want to hear what you guys (who I know have probably got into your Trek uniforms and headed to the theather by now) have to say about the new movie.

Feel free to spoil all you like [?=without tags.][/?]

If you don't want spoilers, you've been warned.

It would be nice to have a discussion thread free of spoiler tags to click on for those of us who have already been or aren't going.

Hearing what you guys think about this is alot more interesting than any of the reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes combined considering our origins. So, give me details! Lots and lots of details? What worked? What didn't?

Best Star Trek movie ever! OMG!!!

1. I had misgivings about the Spock/Uhura romance, but it actually came off well and it provides two of the better moments in the movie (Spock/Uhura in the turbolift, Kirk humorous realization about Spock/Uhura just as he and Spock are about to beam onto Nero's ship).

2. While the "Kirk being logical/Spock wanting payback" angle after Nero is on the ropes routine is funny (Kirk: "I was trying to be compassionate. I thought you'd like that." Spock: "Not this time." ), it's a little out of character. And Kirk would've beamed the Romulan survivors aboard, anyway.

3. I nearly died laughing when, during the Kobayahsi Maru test, Kirk tells the weapons officer to target the Klingons, the weapons' officer replies "Their shields are up", and Kirk--lackadaisically biting an apple--asks "Are they?" At which point the computer program glitches... "One photon torpedo each. We don't want to be wasteful." I LOVED that after Kirk's won the no-win scenario, it is revealed that the program's author is...SPOCK!

4. It's really cool that Vulcan kids study calculus, but why on Earth are they using Leibniz's notation and English characters?

5. The "Scotty-trapped-in-a-water-pipe" bit could've been cut with no loss, although it was humorous that Scotty materialized inside the tank.

6. Early in the film, Sarek tells Spock that marrying Amanda was logical. After she dies (and Vulcan is destroyed) and Spock has lost control of his emotions, he confesses the truth: he married her because he loved her. I got a big fat lump in my throat at that point.

Do you find Sylar dreamy?

A lot of these things have been said before.....

1. The engineering set needs a lot of work

2. I liked the shot of the hangar deck.

3. I hope we see Admiral Pike again. The actor did a nice job playing him.

4. I got a lump in my throat at the end of the movie when the Star Trek theme played and Nimoy recited "Space--the final frontier...."

Whut?

I knew about Vulcan bitting the dust, but.......... whut?

Ok, here's the big thing for me.

From everything I read, I felt that TPTB had missed the basic trinity that made Trek work when the lousy effects and cardboard sets couldn't - Spock/Kirk/McCoy. Logic/Command/Emotion.

All the focus seems to now be on Spock/Kirk/Uhura because, well, let's face it, black is big right now and she's a hottie that probably tested well with focus groups. Granted there's no real surprise that's the focus of the marketing, but I've even heard several complaints that McCoy (who many agree is the closest to The Real McCoy) could have used more screen time and importance to the story.

What's the verdict on that one?

She's part of the group that Spock rescues as the planet goes to shit but she plunges to her death before the Enterprise is able to beam them all up.

The music wasn't very good. There seemed like there was an awful lot of slapstick but it almost all hit the mark and I can't remember anything cringeworthy. And while BSG may have desensitized most trekkies to shakeycam it still seemed really out-of-place in a Star Trek movie.

And those are the only legitimate gripes I can come up with, which I guess means the movie is pretty good.

Me and my 12 year old son just celebrated the new 'Star Trek' movie by watching the remastered version of 'Where No Man Has Gone Before'.

I had completely forgot that I let him watch Khan about 3 years ago, and out of the blue, he heard 'Valiant' and said "isn't that the ship Khan took over?".

I've never tried to turn him on to Trek.

He was totally into the show.

Interesting opinions so far. Pretty much in line with everything I though I might have had a problem with.

I'd have to agree. I would've liked MORE McCoy in this one. There's one scene that's a classic Spock/McCoy bicker session, but it's not as strong as you want it to be. (Compare Spock and McCoy debating Genesis in TWOK.)

And I love it that he got the nickname 'Bones' because his wife took him for so much in the divorce, all he had left were his bones.

That's funny. Georgia divorce law. Just as shitty in the 23rd century as it is today.

FUCK THAT MOTHERFUCKING STAR WARSIANS!!

STARTREK MOTHER FUCKING ROCKS!!!

Dear God in heaven THIS is what StarTrek feels like when it's grabbed by the balls and whipped into shape! THIS is the StarTrek we've been waiting for!! EVERYONE in the house full theater clapped at the end. And I mean EVERYONE!!

I am going again tomorrow!!!!!

Don't hold back man! Tell us what you really think!

I'll give my .. thorough review after my second and third viewing tomorrow. but I will say this - seeing Spock Prime on screen again brought tears to my eyes. And NuSpock's portrayal of an emotionless sadness at his mother's loss was .. to be honest .. very, very well done.

This movie didn't have one single second of boredom to it. NONE. It grabs you from the start and doesn't let go till the end. I know that you are going to hate this movie nonetheless but trust me, this is one hell of an adrenaline ride!!

- Liked the look of the nuEnterprise.
- Urban IS McCoy! Need more of him next time.
- Liked the Spock/Uhura romance...don't see it lasting long-term but it was an interesting development for both characters.
- Liked Bruce Greenwood as Capn Pike
- Chris Pine and Zach Quinto are VERY good choices for Kirk and Spock
- Hell, the casting overall was excellent.
- Chekov's accent is much too thick.
- In the next movie they need a full re-do of Engineering based on Scotty's modifications.
- No way in hell you can see Vulcan from Delta Vega
- Scotty's alien sidekick? Needs to the Jar-Jar treatment.
- McCoy "curing" Kirk was hilarious

More later as I think of it.

Did anyone else catch that bit about Admiral Archer's beagle?

Or Spock giving Scotty the formula for transparent aluminum, I mean distant teleporting?

Anyway, I loved it. The interesting thing though, Kirk's father really reminded me of Trip. Maybe a distant relation?

As I said in my review, i did find it a problem because there was no accounting for why Spock wasn't having difficulty with it. To me, the transporter scene would have been even better of, in the turbolift, he had made some point about how much difficulty he was having with the relationship...sort of the same stuff Chapel got in TOS except that in this case he was trying to overcome it.

OOC, true, but some of Spock's best moments have always been when he broke character just a bit.

All true, but Pine played that whole sequence perfectly.

I don't disagree but i seldom notice stuff like this.

When Kirk realized what had happened, I thught the scene was perfect...but I thought the whole pipe-case bit was the worst part of the whole film. Nothing about it worked for me in terms of the film, or in terms of capturing a "Trek-vibe" as so much of the rest of the movie did.

Very well played. I thought both parents were well cast and played their lines very well.

I think it's true but understandable. Not so much the over-emphasis on Uhura (which didn't "feel right" to me) but just the sense in which it's very difficult to be able to create the Kirk/Spock dynamic from scratch AND spend a lot of time mixing in McCoy's side of the triangle. I think they did everything they did with McCoy exactly right, and definitely laid the groundwork for where he goes in the future relationship wise.

While I would have loved to have seen more of him, at least one extended rant, I completely understand how it came out. I'm sure they will give us more next time.

random thoughts....

*George Kirk as a pure "White Knight" = win. The nameing thing, while obviously hokey (as if any couple is still figuring out the name on the eve of the child's birth) was a nice feel good moment and the way the scene was constructed (cuts, music, etc) was very nice. In fact, that was the one scene where the music impressed me and I think that there are some stylistic nods to NuBSG here.

* I CAN'T BELIEVE that the kid Kirk passed in the stolen 'vette wasn't named "Gary"! D'oh!!

* Orion Babe!!!!!!!!!!!!

* I like the swagger in the bar, I liked the bike giveaway but I can't recall where I saw that same transaction played out before

*Bones on the shuttle was classic, likewise the nickname thing

*Child-Spock's "emotional outburst" rang true

*Loved Sarek's casting and performance

* It's been said too many times but Kirk's cavalier attitude during the KM test was bonerific

* Likewise, the gravity of the debate before the Review Board was a nice counterpoint

* the whole "parking brake" bit was unnecessary and kinda cheap. Do we really want our hotshot helmsman to not know how to make the ship go?

* the running sequence of Kirk with symptoms and McCoy with shots had the potential to play as very juvenile and silly but it worked well. I still think that from a writing point of view it was kind of unnecessary but full props to Pine and Urban for making it work very well.

* The debate on the bridge struck me as very unconventional for a military setting and pointed subconsciously to this being something less than a strictly military type outfit.

* on the other thread someone mentioned the inconsistency of not being able to transport onto the platform but i thought they explained it well and I loved the bit when the Romulan guard got incinerated instantly. When Sulu pulled Kirk up, I was expecting him to say "I'd had enough of that guy" or some such.

* Checkov being the guy who could do the magic transporter trick - AND the idea he could run from the bridge to the T-Room while Kirk and Sulu were in free fall and make it in time was cheesy but I can live with it

* Spock going after his people was classic

* Amanda's death was striking for what is otherwise mostly old-school storytelling

* I thought AnalSpock was remarkably patient with Kirk's arguments before he had to call redshirts on him

* Dumping him off ship though? the Brig couldn't hold him? That was an obvious contrivance in order to bring Spock Prime into the story...but since it did that, I'm cool with it.

* Other than the misplaced "I have been" line, the meeting was perfectly done. Spock says who he is and Kirk's instant reaction: "Bullshit"

*Scotty's alien sidekick was cute on the planet, but bringing him on Enterprise was...ill conceived. At least he doesn't speak.

*the bit about Archer's beagle was classic. Though some have referred to him as Porthos and - unless something has radically changed, the time's are to distant to be the same dog. Honestly, Archer himself would have to be ancient. But even if it doesn't ad up it's a perfect bit of name-dropping.

* I get Spock's showing off the future tech (of Scotty's later invention) but I would assume that he afterwards removed the evidence, else a lot of future storylines will have to "forget" he knows how to do that.

* "Isn't that cheating?" was a nice touch.

*the water-pipe chase was the most useless and weakest part of the film, IMO. Far too bafoonish for our heroes (albeit his materializing inside the tank was a nice touch)

* the "Kirk provokes Spock" scene could have been ripped straight from "This Side of Paradise" but I liked it for just that reason

* Boarding a Romulan ship and stealing their secret weapon? Ha! But the way they fell into the teamwork was warm fuzzies.

* The Enterprise showing up for the big rescue was bonerific

* I HATED the whirly-gig future-ship by the way. On the outside, the inside was oddly cool

* Speaking of how things look, the Big E looked a lot better on the outside in motion than in stills, but the bridge looks worse. They REALLY need to mute it a bit. Other things, like the shuttle bay, I thought looked good. I reserve comment on Engineering under the assumption that we never saw the main control room (at least i hope not)

* By the time he takes command, Pine is as fully Kirk as Urban was fully Bones from the start. Quinto played a good Spock, but I'm not 100% sold that he played Nimoy's Spock. However, for some reason I think that His Spock seems a better precursor to the Mellow Older Spock (post-TMP) than the Spock in TOS.

*Nimoy rocked every scene he was in. Words can't describe and I'd go so far as to say that in a real sense his presence did just the one thing it HAD to do - it legitimized this crew as the same characters.

* The alternate universe explanation seemed to me, on the whole, far more logical than the usual Trek reset button on time-travel

* If you really really wanted to think hard about it, the Kelvim incident can't really account for ALL the differences in events and design and so forth we see. Some of it you have to suspend disbelief on (like the different ship design, for instance) - but it does nicely account for Kirk's not having been a gung -ho 17 year old enlistee in the Academy

* BTW, mustent we assume that you can enlist in SF as young as 13 given that Chekov is not a cadet but an officer on the ship at 17? that bothered me more than 95% of the nitpicks others have mentioned. he could have been 22 and we'd have lost nothing.

* as much as I liked the movie, I still get the feeling that this story works best as a series. Somewhere deep down i want to see these characters/actors every week and watch all the little character-building interactions that so often get short-shrift in films.

"Fire everything we've got."
Really? Everything? Are we oriented so that "everything" can be brought to bear? Are we at the right range to safely fire it all? Ya wanna maybe pick a target or two? It's a pretty big ship you're shooting at, you know. Not that the audience, from their "shaky cam" point of view, can really make sense of the zappy little slivers of light that now represent phasers and photon torpedoes, anyway.

The transporter trick could have easily benefitted from a little more explanation. Like, "I'll have to bounce our signal off of a few subspace relay stations" or something. The Enterprise had to be at warp for..what? An hour or more? C'mon. Throw me a bone, here.

Vulcan/Delta Vega. Eh. I can get over it.

Old complaint, but please put up some safety railings on the catwalks inside your giant Romulan mining ship before your crew unionizes and goes on strike. A mining ship which seemed awfully well-armed, by the way. Must've spent those 25 years building weapons and launching systems.

Nimoy Spock seemed just slightly off somehow. A bit rushed and condensed, maybe. Quinto Spock could stand a little less "glib" in his sarcasm.

The changes in the timeline don't explain the changes to the ship. THE ship. They just did that for the hell of it. Which I'll eventually get used to, I suppose, but they need to polish the presentation a little. Give everything more sense of unified purpose, and less of random pipes, beams and screens inside, glowing domes and multicolored shooting stars outside. And for fuck's sake move away from any suggestion that warp drive is acheived by any kind of visible "thrust" from the rear.

I can live grudgingly with Kirk's quick rise to command, the way his father's death and subsequent changes to the timeline erased events that were fundamental to his character's background. They didn't need to fudge it all together like that just to pointlessly assemble the crew earlier in everyone's lives, but it's done. They are together, inconsistencies, unlikelihoods, and unnecessary coincidences notwithstanding.

I make these nitpicks, but they had me entertained enough to pay attention and notice them, and despite a few jarring moments, I think this cast works, individually and with each other. What they need is time to develop, which in a way makes me wish I'd just watched the pilot episode of a new TV series, because I'm not sure you can develop that enough in movies alone. Love to be proven wrong about that, though.

Overall, I think I'm happy with what I got for my $9, believe it or not.

They should have done this direct to dvd, as it is illegal to masturbate in theaters.

It's that good.

IMO, the triumvirate worked perfectly in this movie. Yes, McCoy could have used more screen time, but when he was on screen with either Kirk or Spock, and in his general contribution to the plot, he was there 100%.

Right, I'll expand on ym earlier brief post:

THE GOOD
The opening few minutes is among the most powerful in ST history. Terrific use of music, brilliantly edited, I had a lump in my throat. It's up there with the end of TWOK.

The actors are generally all good - they'll never replace the originals, and when I think of Kirk I'll still think of Shatner rather than Pine, but once you accept that the parts have been recast, they all do a good job. Special mention to Greenwood as Captain Pike, particularly excellent and perhaps the exception to the above rule.

Emotional heft to the storyline - both Kirk and Spock have a strong personal stake in events, because his father and his people respectively. You feel that.

The reboot - I liked how they handled it. To be frank, it was needed at this stage, and was done in a way that to my satisfaction didn't "erase" anything from TNG etc. - the words "alternate universe" was used. Now we can look forward to 23rd century Trek that isn't weighted down by having to adhere to many hundreds of hours of TV show canon.

I liked the sets and general "look" of the world(s).

The BAD
Lens flare and shaky camera syndrome - tolerable for a while, but left me dizzy, not to mention detracting from the experience by not being able to tell what's going on half the time.

There's too much comic relief - that's all Scotty does. There are several other extended gags involving Kirk, Chekhov and much else besides. A little is okay. This much is jarring and ruins the mood. 6 billion people just died, but hey, there's a funny-looking alien sidekick.

The whole cadets to officers things isn't credible whatever way you swing it. I don't care that it's the 23rd century and they have different procedures. This is their most advanced ship and their flagship. Other than Spock and Scotty, it's now captained and crewed by a load of cadets. Kirk in particular should be seen as a loose-cannon by the heirarchy despite his victory over Nero.

Several plot points strain credibility as well - the chance meeting of old Spock, Kirk and Scotty on Delta Vega due to wildly improbable events in each case, the disappearance of NEro for 25 years without explanation etc.

Too much CGI. Models look real because they are real. They should start using them again.

Product placement - No. Just no.

So 6/10, which means that I enjoyed it, with reservations.

I *think* that Archer was supposed to have died the day after the Enterprise launched...but I might be wrong...

Re: Shaky camera syndrome...

I am probably the must susceptible person I know to that effect....gives me motion sickness if I watch too much of that type of thing. Which is why I'venever been able to watch Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield. Oddly, nuTrek didn't bother me in the least, so I have to assume the shaky-cam wasn't too bad. I don't recall noticing it in particular.

Totally agree on the lens flares, however.

It happens. The Mrs. & I didn't have a name for our Youngest until that first night in the hospital after his birth. We had a girl's name ready, but obviously we couldn't use that, and we'd burned our best boy's name on his older brother. So while a little far-fetched, I can easily suspend disbelief. Hell, I know of some folks who want to wait until the kid comes out so they can see what name the baby "looks like"!

Now that I think of it, we needed a Sarek/Amanda scene. One is shown in the trailer, but it doesn't happen in the movie. It would've been nice to see some interaction between them similar to that in 'Journey to Babel.'

This is an annoying trend in movie-making these days - shoot a good character scene, cut it "for time," then toss it into the trailer anyway.

Maybe it was preserved in the novelization.