Since Oluseyi (or anyone else for that matter) hasn't made a thread about it yet, I thought I'd jump in and go for it myself. Went to see the new movie last night, and overall, I really enjoyed it. SPOILER WARNING!! that's twice you've been warned now, so on your own head be it! It was definitely a big screen popcorn flick. The effects were excellent throughout and the set pieces were suitably over the top (loved the poor "red-suit" heading to his inevitable doom). The alternate timeline story mechanic was a bold move and one that freed the writers from having to listen to over-eager fanboys pointing out tiny inconsistencies with the original series. I was also surprised that they actually allowed Vulcan to be destroyed. Things I wasn't so sure of: - my astro-physics is pretty rusty (non-existent actually), but last time I checked a black hole was not a simple time portal. This is something that can destroy a planet yet 2 ships manage to pass through it to the past? Nit-picky, I know, but even with my limited science knowledge, it jarred. - Bones and Scotty seemed to end up as caricatures of the actors who played the originals. That said, both were funny and the actors playing them will hopefully get better material in the inevitable sequels. - Spock and Uhura? Seemed a bit random, but what the hell. - Kirk just seemed too young. In fact, so did most of the cast. Chris Pine was allowed the most leeway of the actors in that he wasn't asked to do a shat impression, but Starfleet must be pretty hard up if they have to get 90210:Space Academy to command their flagship. But overall those were pretty minor things. You don't go to a Star Trek movie expecting hard sci-fi* and deep philosophical themes. You go for big space battles, crew banter and grand-standing speeches, and it delivered those. Thoughts? *on that note, I'd love to see something really out-there like Banks culture novels or Reynolds Revelation Space made into a movie.

I liked seeing the phaser banks used like the "Goalkeeper" system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goalkeeper_CIWS

What did the car chase scene have to do with anything?

Quote: Original post by smart_idiot
What did the car chase scene have to do with anything?

Couldn't figure that one out myself either. I guess they were trying to portray Kirk as "troubled", but I think the bar fight scene did that. Hated the clumsy Nokia product placement too.

I liked it, wouldn't mind a series, BUT there is plenty to nitpick, I mean replacing a supernova with a black hole... wouldn't the hole suck the planet into oblivion as well? Obviously the Romulans got there at least 40 to 50 years before the planet was under any danger, why not, I don't know... warn them about it? Why carry around such an enormous amount of red matter (not sure if it qualifies as MacGuffin) if only a few drops were required (just one really for the original plan)?

I agree, the car chase was pointless, we don't see the events leading to it or it having any consequences, I call

">big lipped alligator moment.

The whole Eric Bana Villain was a MacGuffin to explain getting the characters together IMHO which is one of the main problems with the film.

As a practically life long fan of Star Trek I have this to say about the film.... awesome.

It kept enough of the 'old' and injected plenty of new to nicely reboot things (I don't think the 'alternative time line' excuse was needed really, just accept it as a reboot and be done with it).

Random plot devices coming out of no where is pretty much a core startrek thing; The Next Generation series spent half their time inverting taction fields to escape problems and Scotty often pulled engineering madness out of no where.

The young crew.... well, at least part of that is somewhat in keeping with TOS in that Kirk was the youngest person to reach Captain at the time.

Car chase; well, that could be seen as putting forward the fact that Kirk was happy to put aside the rules/ignore people when he wanted from a young age, which explains later things.

In the end none of that matters imo; don't worry about the details, accept the reality and watch a well paced, updated, action based story which is one of the few films I've watched where I've come out thinking 'hmmm, when can I see that again?' [smile]

Back to the car chase.

I am actually relieved it was pointless though, from the trailer, that scene as well as the Hoth scene seemed to imply that the movie was going to go in depth into Kirk's character development, you know the whole "what motivates the character to join the fleet and the hardships he goes through to become captain" story, instead he makes the leap from cadet to captain in less than a day which is lazy writing, but at least is not boring.

I thought Spock saving Kirk was a little too random.

Oh, and the music from the trailer seemed more epic than the soundtrack itself. Bummer.

I enjoyed the ride, though. Will go see future episodes.

I liked it. Having never seen any of the old star trek episodes (I have seen all the episodes of voyager) this was a cool introduction. The only part that bothered me was when young Spock put Kirk into a pod and launched him to the tundra planet and he met the old Spock like right next to where he landed. But I quickly wrote it off as fate when they met Scotty a few moments later.

There was a strong sense of "destiny" in the writing. Things just happened in a such a way that everything turned out pretty much the same in that all the crew found each other.

That red suit guy scene was hilarious. I forgot where I heard about the people in red dying but I was sitting there in the theater and was like "oh man that guy is so dead...".

Going back to the beginning of the movie I love those epic beginnings in movies. That firefight was so cool.

That just reminded me. When that one guy forgets to turn off the outer inertial dampeners and they finally go into warp did anyone realize when they got out of warp and there were already ships completely destroyed. Anyone find that really fast how quickly the other ships were destroyed.