Star Trek Into Darkness: Pre-release Discussion - Page 4

It SHOULD be Tumescent Montalbahn Penis, dammit.

Alice Eve's character revealed at the official J.J. Abrams press-event today.

...And it's someone a lot of us have speculated quite a lot on lately.

 

Sigh. I'm getting to be like a ping pong ball of pre-hating/loving this film.

 

Wasn't Khan supposed to have ruled the Earf briefly in the 1990's in TOS?

Tell you what, if Cumberbatch really is playing Khan I will tolerate NO pectoral downsizing. here's the brass ring, Benedict:

 

 

Look at them, will you. You could race ATVs across them vest puppies.

 

This trend needs to continue to its fullest.  I want fucking Jason Voorhees to be arrested in what turns out to be a genius master plan.

Wasn't there a scene in DEEP BLUE SEA where a shark did that? Hard to top that, though Voorhees comes close.

 

Jason X.  He does this to fulfill his lifelong desire to be an astronaut.

I may be way late on this, but didn't Karl Urban already let it slip that Cumerbatch is playing Gary Mitchell?

 

It's been speculated that that might have been deliberate disinformation.

The new trailer is just.......WOW! A lot better than the first one really feels like Star Trek even more so than the last movie. Also I don't care if Cumberbatch is playing Khan or a herald of Khan his character really is creepy and truely scary in some ways reminds me Hopkins' Hannibal Lechter in terms of his acting and slightly intimidating/creepy speaking tones. So far I love his character from what I gather a lot more than Bardem's from Skyfall. Who funnily seems to get captured in the same way, though the show commonly did this so that dosent seem that bad.

Also love the opening monologue of the trailer especially the shots of the interior of the Enterprise and of a bright alien world. Just awesome I wasn't sure about this film before, especially when i first heard the title but this is going to rock and might give Wrath of Khan a run for its money though I sort of wish Cumberbatch was playing an alien especially a warlord terrorist Klingon but whatever this still looks amazing!

Yeah OK this trailer turned me around. But fuck what was up with that teaser? It's like Hollywood has forgotten how to market films except when the Internet gets upset.

I don't know, I'm still not really sold on the tone, and I'm not sure I want to sit through another revenge Star Trek.

If the revenge is for something that actually happens in the movie that would be better. That's one of the more tiresome things about revenge plots - they're usually based on something that happened offscreen that they have to sit down and tell you about later. It's weird that this of all series keeps falling back on that not very Trekky idea again and again.

Well, as far as these things go, there have only been three movies where the villain wants revenge on a principle member of the cast/the federation, now it looks like we have another one back to with the last (which also followed one of the others) so now we're really three for three with Trek revenge villains. It's almost like Wrath of Kahn is somehow being misconstrued as the one and only way to do Star Trek these days.

 

While not out for revenge and certainly better written than Picard-Hardy or Nero, General Kang in Undiscovered Country is very much in the vein of Khan. First Contact inversed it a bit and had Picard out for revenge against the Borg. So that's actually five Khan-flavored films.

Alright, Jesus. Let's just go back to NASA craft develops a conscious. Maybe the public will like the movie this time.

Yeah, those are the only two options.

And WHALES!!!!!

What if... the Whales go back in time and are after revenge for young Kirk and young Spock for kidnapping them and taking them to the fucking future.

"What doesGod need with a starship?"

MYSTERY BOX.

I guess that they're Kahn-flavored in an abstract sense, but at least they're interesting variations variations that aren't "I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE." And I'm not really sure Chang is that much in the vein of Kahn. He's not out for revenge as much as he's a disappointed political dissident involved in a coup. His motivation isn't "I will have revenge against the protagonist that wronged me."

Maybe in the third Star Trek they can team up with the Whaliens from Voyage Home who need help defending their planet from vengeance-seeking Ishmaelites?  

 

There must be someone at the studio wanting a backstory for them so as to destroy that mysterious (wonderfully so) element from ST:TVH.

So John Harrison is a "Starfleet officer turned Galactic terrorist" looking for revenge, "responsible for a very violent, horrific attack in London and then one in the States."(according to Empire magazine).  

 

I find it ironic that JJ, a man who made his name on presenting deep mysteries in sci-fi is taking some of the most pedestrian and tired roads with his Star Trek movies...a series that would greatly benefit from his M.O.  I thought Trek was about boldly going where no man has gone before?  Exploring the final frontier.  They've got JJ and all the money in the world and THIS is what they come up with?  Galactic Space terrorist threatening earth?  Pass.

I am glad to hear that "The United States" is still a going concern in this new Star Trek universe. In Trek, you don't know the threat is for real till they've hit America.

Every report on this project I read seems filled with even more dire portent than the last. This sounds nothing like the kind of Trek film I'd like to see.

 

 

None of the Trek movies apart from TMP and IV bear any resemblance to TOS or TNG. RedLetterMedia does a great rundown of how the TNG films in particular degenerated into Pseudo-Tentpole Action Flicks with Picard being converted from an enlightened, ethical and wise leader into John McClain in space.

 

Trek movies have been on the down swing for a long time in terms of quality, no one is disputing that, but they stuck fairly close to the basic premise of "boldly going...".  And TNG movies already had the goodwill of their excellent TV run...they earned the right to McClane it up a bit, so I didn't mind that so much.

 

But this rebooted Trek with the hot, young sexy cast, the Joseph Campbellian storytelling tropes, the black hole of talent in the writing team, and pushing further and further into mindless summer blockbuster territory (and now aping TDK)...it just seems like Paramount is desperately milking a cow that is long past its expiration date and transfiguring it for teenagers in order to have another summer slot.  At least in my eyes.  If others enjoy it, more power to them.

That's why Star Trek : Generations is my favorite Trek film. It manages to capture that unique spark that makes TNG special, and is filled with a sense of exploration and wonder. There is action and danger, but it's all in service of a larger, more philosophical tale. In that sense Generations truly is 'the best of both worlds'.

 

I think it gets a lot of guff for not giving Kirk the kind of ending TOS fans wanted, but since my loyalty was always to the Enterprise D, I didn't feel slighted by the smaller, more personal scale of Kirk's final battle.

The last good Trek movie was THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.  All the TNG movies sucked except for FIRST CONTACT which was pretty bad but at least it had the Borg in it.  As for GENERATIONS, that movie was the most clueless, ill thought out way of passing the torch that's ever been attempted on the silver screen. Horrible on so many levels.
 

what was wrong with the last Star Trek movie? I mean the villians kind of sucked and the ice planet scene was kind of lame but everything else worked and was really entertaining.

 

Read the post-release thread.  

Nothing that really matters in the grand scheme of things was wrong with it. There's a backlash now for some reason but it's still the best anything with the name Star Trek from the last 20 years.

 

Apparently the movie going full derp for five minutes on the ice planet invalidates absolutely everything else, even though that stuff is mostly just clunky exposition that doesn't affect the rest of the story or characters much either way.

 

Okay okay there are a few other dumb things as well but honestly it does more right than most here give it credit for. It's the third or fourth best Star Trek movie at absolute worst, which isn't bad considering the top two are really pretty good.

Generations was too bloated. Shoehorning in Kirk, plus the Duras sisters, plus destroying the Enterprise D, plus Picard's family trouble, Data's emotions chip and the nexus. It was just too much.

TNG was totally robbed as far as movies go, but that's just them being a victim of their time. The characters were always great, it's just that no one who had any vision or understanding of the characters were involved in the writing process.

They tried too hard to make the TNG crew into Kirk and co. Shit they even destroyed the Enterprise in order to bring one in that resembled Kirk's Enterprise.

How did the Enterprise E look like Enterprise B or C? It really stood out from any of its predecessors, since it was the first one that was designed with widescreen in mind.

 

Not to mention completely unnecessary, considering Kirk's voice over at the end of Undiscovered Country handled the same thing in a much more elegant and efficient manner.  all of TNG movies are poorly conceived, even the borg one (by far the best of the lot).  They never could get Picard right.  When he wasn't painfully boring, they tired to make him Space Rambo.

No, that would be the full run of DS9. You Silly Billy.

 

If Babylon 5 hadn't come along then you'd be right.

 

 

 

And I say, you are both right!

The only reason this discussion is going on is because Galaxy Quest technically wasn't called Star Trek 7: Gene Roddenberry's New Nightmare.
 

I feel about Trek 09 in much the same way I do about Avengers: the plot is simple and kind of stupid, yes, but the plot's not really the point. The point is to bring all these characters together as a team and let them bounce off each other. By that standard, it succeeds rather marvelously thanks to the cast, Abrams' terrific direction, Giacchino's great score, and the overall writing.

 

Also, I will be the first to say that I don't much care if Trek does straight-up science fiction or not. That can be great, as in the better episodes of the original series, but it can also be ham-handed and silly in a bad way, as in the worst episodes of that series or any of the other Trek shows. I find Trek a lot more palatable when it concentrates on character, and how THAT relates to either higher science-fiction matters or action-adventure stories; especially considering that, yes, action-adventure has been part of the series' DNA from the get-go.

 

Avengers does have a much better villain, though. If they had kept some more of Nero's tragic backstory in the film, he would have been a much more interesting threat. As it is, Eric Bana gives a strong performance for a weak character.

As for Into Darkness, I say bring it on. Aside from Alice Eve's hilariously unconvincing scream, there's nothing in the trailers that's made me go "This might be terrible". I've been waiting for Cumberbatch to get a plum villain role for quite some time, even if they are blatantly stealing from Nolan's Joker, Loki and/or Hannibal Lecter. And if he's related to Khan somehow... well, then he's related to Khan somehow. If they have a good new take on that character, great! If not, so what? We still have Space Seed and Wrath of Khan for all that Montalban-y goodness.

 

With that cast, Abrams as director (he might not be great as a writer, but he's a DAMN good director by this point), and the intriguing visuals on display (there are not enough words on this Earth to say how much I don't care about the Enterprise's unlikelihood of actually going underwater), I'm looking forward to it.

 

Babylon 5 had the Trek name on it?

 

Also, Babylon 5 was...not that good.

 

In a weird way Bana gives his performance too much intensity given how weak the role was written. I mean "You didn't try hard enough to save my planet" is just so fucking dumb. Strike or no, Abrams should have re-written that shit. One line of dialogue might have fixed it.

My biggest issue with the last Star Trek is that with all the characters and setting having already been thought up by someone else decades ago, it really had no excuse for being as cliched and dumb as it was. I mean, all those moments with Kirk doing double-takes to check out female crew members so we know ABSOLUTELY FOR SURE he's a skirt-chaser? So so dumb.

No offense, but that strikes me as an insanely petty complaint. Especially since this is explicitly a younger, less mature Kirk.

 

Fixed!