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joiedecombatSo. Star Trek. Thoughts, with spoilers.
The Good:
The Power Trio - Chris Pine as Kirk. Zachary Quinto as Spock. Karl Urban as McCoy. All three of them were good in their roles, especially Quinto and Urban as Spock and McCoy, especially Urban, who I think stole pretty much every scene he was in. Scotty was also pretty good, though he had less to do on account of not being picked up until something like halfway through the movie. I am really hoping that they make another movie with the same main cast because I would love to see more of these guys in these roles.
Sulu should have had a retractable saber from the beginning of the series. The jerky fight cinematography meant he didn't really get to show to full advantage but it was still pretty awesome, and while John Cho isn't quite as cute as George Takei was back in the day, really, who is?
Spock quoted Sherlock freaking Holmes! Word for word! I had such a moment of holy crap fangirl squee right then. You have no idea.
"I got your gun." Made of win.
The Bad:
I think they really wasted an enormous amount of potential by using the plot that they used in the way that they used it. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against time travel plots; I like time travel plots fine, and they are a well-established feature of the Star Trek series. And establishing this as a divergent timeline is a handy defense against criticism from the kind of obsessive fan who would nitpick endlessly about what was depicted in the movie versus the throwaway details mentioned back in the original canon. Fine.
However... setting the movie at the initial convergence of the Enterprise's crew and having it show how they all came together on the ship and became a working unit provided a gold mine of potential for showing the iconic characters forming their iconic dynamics, a potential which was in many ways wasted by having so much of the plot informed by future!Spock and having Kirk spend so much of the movie mostly away from the rest of the crew. Probably the thing I like best about the original series is the interaction between the core cast members, especially the power trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and I was looking forward to seeing how they handled the initial formations of those dynamics. The answer is that, for the most part - they didn't. Kirk and McCoy's relationship got fast-forwarded through their three years at Starfleet Academy after their initial meeting, and Kirk and Spock's dynamic got massively bootstrapped by old!Spock, and Spock and McCoy had a grand total of one conversation.
Basically I was expecting a Year One, and this movie is not a Year One story even though for the sake of accessibility that is what it was marketed as. So I was disappointed at not getting to see the character interaction and development that I was hoping to see.
And I feel a little uncomfortable about this because, so far, I seem to be the only person who feels this way. The most I can hope is that there will be a sequel which will provide more of that, but even then, it's still not quite the same as the amount of opportunity that was lost by doing the plot the way that they did it.
Also, the more things change, the more they stay the same: Uhura is pretty much wasted. She looked like they might do better by her earlier in the film, but no. Once they got her into her classic role as communications officer, that was more or less it. And the only other female character of any note was Spock's mother, who got stuffed into the fridge. Meh.
Not all of the continuity nods and mythology gags worked naturally; McCoy's obligatory "I'm a doctor not an etc." was particularly forced, and, let's face it, the original canon for Kirk's pwning of the Kobayashi-Maru (in which he reprogrammed the simulation so that when he hailed the Klingon ships their captains went "oh crap, it's Captain Kirk!" and backed off, and got away with it via an Ain't No Rule loophole) would have been cooler to see than the alternate universe's version (in which he simply hacked the simulation to make the Klingon ships vulnerable and then blew them up, and would probably not have gotten away with it had it not been for the combination of an emergency breaking out and McCoy doing him a big favor). This is admittedly a minor quibble - it was only to be expected that a) there would be a number of mythology gags and b) not all of them would work very well.
Needs more Spock-McCoy snarkfests.
The WTF:
Spock/Uhura? Seriously? Seriously?
I'm not sure I'd have bought it even if they'd bothered to develop it. But they didn't develop it at all. Yes yes you can claim that the bit about Spock trying to avoid the appearance of favoritism was setting it up, but based on their characters as established up to that point, it was not nearly enough of a setup. Their relationship literally developed offscreen right up until the scene in the lift when she started kissing him for no apparent reason. His reciprocation near the end of the movie was likewise not set up at all. And therefore did not work at all, especially not given that Spock's entire character is centered on emotional repression. (Granted he's much less repressed in the alternate timeline, but still, you can't have a romantic subplot with a character like that and have it happen almost completely offscreen.) Seriously, WTF?
TL;DR non-spoilery version - I enjoyed it, I thought the main cast did fantastic jobs and I really hope there are more movies with these actors, but I thought that using the plot that they used wasted a lot of the potential available to the movie, which is a shame, because even if there are more movies, not all of that potential can be regained. Bummer.
The Good:
The Power Trio - Chris Pine as Kirk. Zachary Quinto as Spock. Karl Urban as McCoy. All three of them were good in their roles, especially Quinto and Urban as Spock and McCoy, especially Urban, who I think stole pretty much every scene he was in. Scotty was also pretty good, though he had less to do on account of not being picked up until something like halfway through the movie. I am really hoping that they make another movie with the same main cast because I would love to see more of these guys in these roles.
Sulu should have had a retractable saber from the beginning of the series. The jerky fight cinematography meant he didn't really get to show to full advantage but it was still pretty awesome, and while John Cho isn't quite as cute as George Takei was back in the day, really, who is?
Spock quoted Sherlock freaking Holmes! Word for word! I had such a moment of holy crap fangirl squee right then. You have no idea.
"I got your gun." Made of win.
The Bad:
I think they really wasted an enormous amount of potential by using the plot that they used in the way that they used it. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against time travel plots; I like time travel plots fine, and they are a well-established feature of the Star Trek series. And establishing this as a divergent timeline is a handy defense against criticism from the kind of obsessive fan who would nitpick endlessly about what was depicted in the movie versus the throwaway details mentioned back in the original canon. Fine.
However... setting the movie at the initial convergence of the Enterprise's crew and having it show how they all came together on the ship and became a working unit provided a gold mine of potential for showing the iconic characters forming their iconic dynamics, a potential which was in many ways wasted by having so much of the plot informed by future!Spock and having Kirk spend so much of the movie mostly away from the rest of the crew. Probably the thing I like best about the original series is the interaction between the core cast members, especially the power trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and I was looking forward to seeing how they handled the initial formations of those dynamics. The answer is that, for the most part - they didn't. Kirk and McCoy's relationship got fast-forwarded through their three years at Starfleet Academy after their initial meeting, and Kirk and Spock's dynamic got massively bootstrapped by old!Spock, and Spock and McCoy had a grand total of one conversation.
Basically I was expecting a Year One, and this movie is not a Year One story even though for the sake of accessibility that is what it was marketed as. So I was disappointed at not getting to see the character interaction and development that I was hoping to see.
And I feel a little uncomfortable about this because, so far, I seem to be the only person who feels this way. The most I can hope is that there will be a sequel which will provide more of that, but even then, it's still not quite the same as the amount of opportunity that was lost by doing the plot the way that they did it.
Also, the more things change, the more they stay the same: Uhura is pretty much wasted. She looked like they might do better by her earlier in the film, but no. Once they got her into her classic role as communications officer, that was more or less it. And the only other female character of any note was Spock's mother, who got stuffed into the fridge. Meh.
Not all of the continuity nods and mythology gags worked naturally; McCoy's obligatory "I'm a doctor not an etc." was particularly forced, and, let's face it, the original canon for Kirk's pwning of the Kobayashi-Maru (in which he reprogrammed the simulation so that when he hailed the Klingon ships their captains went "oh crap, it's Captain Kirk!" and backed off, and got away with it via an Ain't No Rule loophole) would have been cooler to see than the alternate universe's version (in which he simply hacked the simulation to make the Klingon ships vulnerable and then blew them up, and would probably not have gotten away with it had it not been for the combination of an emergency breaking out and McCoy doing him a big favor). This is admittedly a minor quibble - it was only to be expected that a) there would be a number of mythology gags and b) not all of them would work very well.
Needs more Spock-McCoy snarkfests.
The WTF:
Spock/Uhura? Seriously? Seriously?
I'm not sure I'd have bought it even if they'd bothered to develop it. But they didn't develop it at all. Yes yes you can claim that the bit about Spock trying to avoid the appearance of favoritism was setting it up, but based on their characters as established up to that point, it was not nearly enough of a setup. Their relationship literally developed offscreen right up until the scene in the lift when she started kissing him for no apparent reason. His reciprocation near the end of the movie was likewise not set up at all. And therefore did not work at all, especially not given that Spock's entire character is centered on emotional repression. (Granted he's much less repressed in the alternate timeline, but still, you can't have a romantic subplot with a character like that and have it happen almost completely offscreen.) Seriously, WTF?
TL;DR non-spoilery version - I enjoyed it, I thought the main cast did fantastic jobs and I really hope there are more movies with these actors, but I thought that using the plot that they used wasted a lot of the potential available to the movie, which is a shame, because even if there are more movies, not all of that potential can be regained. Bummer.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-09 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 03:44 am (UTC)Spock/Uhura made me wtf so hard my head almost fell off my neck I tilted it so hard. It's not that I object to the characters as a couple, but it came out of left field. Also reducing Uhura to love interest ftl. :( and Spock as a young man unbending enough to have a romantic relationship with a human? And a subordinate at that? Whaaaaaat?!
But holy crap for the most part I loved it SO HARD!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 04:01 am (UTC)Poor Uhura, someday you will get to kick ass to your true potential!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 04:14 am (UTC)Uhura did appear to get the conn for about 5 minutes while Checkov went to transport Sulu and Kirk, but it wasn't clear.
Sulu's telescoping saber was made of awesome.