Star Trek XI

[l33telboi]

Surprised to see there's no thread on this yet. In any case, I just got back from the movies and it is indeed good. A brief summary:

Characters: Kirk & Spock are perfect. McCoy and Scotty are good, and the others are seen too little to really make a lasting impression. Nero, I feel, is wasted potential. He seemed like an interesting character, but he got too little story, which is sad, because Bana clearly knew what he was doing.

Story: It was good, but it suffered from too fast a pacing, things just advance too quickly, and a lot of time you with it would just spend more time on certain aspects of the story. The destruction of Vulcan and the Kirk/Spock/Scotty meeting are two scenes that could've done with more time. There was also pretty much zero technobabble.

Audio/Visual: I've seen nothing like it, it's simply stunning, everything is. What stuck out was jumping into warp, dear sweet Jesus the effect is orgasmic, and seeing the fleet around Earth jumping to Vulcan in succession was beautiful. Also - no sound in space. Well, not really, the movie seemed to strike a perfect balance, it had several scenes where sound had been removed completely to add dramatic effect, and others where there was sound because the movie would've suffered without it. And I thought the balance simply stunning.

The movie left me wanting more. It was two hours long but it felt like fifteen minutes.

In any case, anyone here seen it yet?

[watchdog]

Not yet, I plan on going shortly after work today, I will give my impression then.
I dont know how many of you have seen the preqil comic that was published recently, that had Nero's back story. he was a part of the Romulan mining guild and supported Spock (who had recently become a Romulan citizen) when Spock informed the Romulan senate that their sun was about to go supernova. they were ignored of course. Being Spock he of course has a plan to prevent the tragedy, but they are too late and Romulus is destroyed (Neros wife an unborn child were still on the planet).

The shockwave from the dying star is unusual and is spreading and threatining Vulcan and Earth, with the help of captain Data of the starship Enterprise (he was downloaded into B-4) and ship designer Geordi LaForge, Spock runs a suicide mission to create an artificial black hole to consume the dying star, Nero meanwhile has grown bitter with grief. When the Romulan senate appear having just barely escaped Romulus, Nero kills them, he uses their official codes to commandeer an experimental romulan ship that uses borg components and heads for Vulcan. He comes across Spock just as he creates the black hole and they are both sucked in.

There is a whole lot more to the prequal story than that but that is the main sequence of events, oh and by the way, the tattoos the Romulans have are symbols of their grief, it's a pretty good comic.

[Mike DiCenso]

Surprised to see there's no thread on this yet. In any case, I just got back from the movies and it is indeed good. A brief summary:

I'll give you some feedback in about 4 or so hours when I've seen it in one of the local theaters. :-)
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Okay I just back and I can only say right off the bat... fracking brillant and amazing job on this movie! I went fully expecting to be disappointed and let down, but I wasn't. The opening of the movie with the fight of the U.S.S. Kelvin with Nero's ship, the Narada and George Kirk's heroic sacrifice to save his crew, his wife and son was a tear-jerker.... you are grabbed on by this movie and it never lets go; special effects, characterizations, acting, just about eveything. Fast paced, too. The two hours felt like forty and found myself wanting more. I also love the ending credits which evoke the original series and dare I say it... sets up a prototype for a new series' opening title?

One of the few problems, I still don't like the old/new Enterprise, even though it looks better in the final movie production than the first release still from several months back. However I did like the scene of the Big E rising out of Titan's atmosphere.

Spock and Uhura having a relationship? This has a great deal of potential!

Interesting thing, the hand phasers look and sound a bit more like Star Wars blasters.

I loved the other starships, especially the Kelvin!

A cute reference to ST:ENT when Scotty describes the fate of Admiral Archer's beagle...

Karl Urban earns massive kudos for channeling DeForest Kelly in his protrayal of McCoy, and still making the role and performance his own.

Interesting tech note; a mining ship from the 24th century is advanced enough to kick not one, but seven top of the line starships of the 23rd century just as the Defiant from the 23rd century was able to kick ass in the 22nd century of the Mirror Universe.

Anywy, that's all for now. Just go, go now and enjoy this wonderful movie.

Most important: TREK IS BACK! :-)
-Mike

[Sandyin]

I saw the movie today and I got to say it kind of ruined my day.

*Spoilers in the following*

There are tons of problems with the movie. Things that should make Trekkies mad and things that sound standout as strange to non-Trekkies.

The writers have no idea what kind of range the transporters are capable. First, Kirk and Scotty transport onto the Enterprise despite the fact that has to be at least an hour away at high warp. Then they transport Kirk and Spock from one of Saturn’s moons to the Romulan ship that is orbiting Earth. Well over the 40,000 km max range in the 24th century.

Why do the Romulans not look like Romulans? Why does Kirk even see a Romulan? Humans aren’t supposed to see Romulans until TOS’s “Balance of Terror”.

Why does the ice monster spit out a perfectly good snow-cat-meal and chase after Kirk? Why did Spock throw Kirk off the ship in the first place? The brig too good for him? Lock him in a broom closet for f**** sake.

Why does Uhura try to make out with Spock after he loses his mother, his planet, and his people? “I’m sorry your planet has been destroyed and your mom is dead, maybe some sex or make-outs will cheer you up.” Not to mention his mom should be alive for another 40 years or so.

Why are the Romulans bothering to drill to the core of the planet? A black hole with destroy a planet just as nicely on the surface. I didn’t find the Nero character interesting at all. “You didn’t save my family, so now I’m going to kill billions!” It must have been one hell of an unexpected supernova if he couldn’t get his family off the planet on his own. I read they were trying to capture a Wrath of Kahn vibe in the film and it’s pretty damn obvious. Dead wife, mind controlling slugs, doesn’t like Kirk, those sorts of things.

What the f*** is with all the lens flare? It’s like there first experience with photoshop and adding lens flare makes everything art. I didn’t like the way the action sequences were filmed the camera is show shaky and the cuts are so fast you can’t really tell what’s going on. Which I grant is the point. It’s supposed to make you feel like you’re in the scene and no one knows what’s going on. But it just makes me disengage from the film.

That’s all the negative things I can think of right now but I think that’s plenty to start with. Now there were things that I liked. There were a lot of good moments, a lot of fan service, and some very funny moments. But none of that matters when you crap all over everything that has come before.

I know it’s supposed to be an alternate timeline/universe but that’s a BS excuse. If I’m seeing a movie about young Kirk and Spock, guess who I want to see. If you said an alternate versions of young Kirk and Spock, you’re wrong and a moron. I don’t care that the writers and argue that movie doesn’t effect the rest of Star Trek and that Star Trek is a multiverse (I know it’s a multiverse, I actual watch the shows). The minute you start arguing with the FANS you’ve already lost. If the wanted to do a story like TNG’s “Parallels” where they deal with the multiverse directly that’d have been fine. But don’t just set it up as if it were an alternate universe and tell me it’s arguably okay.

And I want to say that throughout most of the film I found it mostly enjoyable (things popping on here and there that kept me from loving it). If it was the first thing ever to be Star Trek it’d have been fine but it’s not and the as it started winding down and there was less and less time for this alternate timeline to be erased my enjoyment plummeted.

I try not to see much about a movie online if I have any intent on seeing it so I avoided a lot of the info that was released before the film but I did see a few things where the crew said things to the effect of wanting to say true to the franchise and wanting to keep the fans happy. And to be fair they did remain fairly true to the characters but they didn’t seem to give a damn about continuity.

Does anyone else feel a twinge of disappointment and anger to read that, “They hoped to bring the feel of the original Star Wars trilogy into the movie, since Abrams has often said he's more a fan of Star Wars than Star Trek.”?

[l33telboi]

However I did like the scene of the Big E rising out of Titan's atmosphere.

Big being the accurate word. It's supposed to be 900m long. From what I gather, that's far longer then the old version. And it certainly feels big too, with the absolutely humongous internals.

Interesting thing, the hand phasers look and sound a bit more like Star Wars blasters.

Only in that they fire pulses rather then beams. I loved them though. The Romulan weapons were good too, and felt more like assault rifles then anything else, with the high rate of fire and extremely fast moving bolts.

On that note, we should get around to quantifying the stuff in this movie. It had some really interesting stuff in it.

[Mike DiCenso]

However I did like the scene of the Big E rising out of Titan's atmosphere.

Big being the accurate word. It's supposed to be 900m long. From what I gather, that's far longer then the old version. And it certainly feels big too, with the absolutely humongous internals.

That Enterprise is nowhere near 900 meters long. Just wait for good screencaps of the scenes of the shuttles docking inside the hanger bay. Each of those shuttles would have to scale to something like 30 to 40 meters long, if the E was 900 meters. But the shuttles were clearly only about 12 or so meters long. Kirk's pod being ejected and the bridge viewscreen/window among others show it to be substantially smaller... maybe 400 or so meters at the top end. But that would make that big spacedock station we saw at the begining of the movie well into the 30 km wide range!

The Narada on the other hand, is flat out now the largest Alpha quadrant starship ever seen, it is easily several kilometers long, and this ship is from the original timeline. All I can say is that the Romulans sure do love to build 'em big!

Interesting thing, the hand phasers look and sound a bit more like Star Wars blasters.

Only in that they fire pulses rather then beams. I loved them though. The Romulan weapons were good too, and felt more like assault rifles then anything else, with the high rate of fire and extremely fast moving bolts.

That is one thing I really liked about the weapons is that the FX crew was able to GGI animate fast bolts of phaser fire instead of the painfully slow beams or bolts we've often seen in Trek and Wars alike at times.

On that note, we should get around to quantifying the stuff in this movie. It had some really interesting stuff in it.

Indeed.

The Big E maneuvers around the debris of her fellow starships as well as when fighting the Narada at the end of the movie with a very impressive amount of maneuverbility... very fighter-like. The rate of fire of both the Kelvin and the E from their phaser cannons and turrets is very impressive. The Narada in the collision between it and the Kelvin takes a fair amount of KE given the size and speed of that ship.

Speaking of the Big E at Titan... it is really impressive that she could warp into the big moon's atmosphere like that, but this, along with the NX-01 flying around inside a gas giant's atmosphere and Earth's, among other instances of starships in Trek only goes to show that the ships may not be able to land back on a planet most of the time, but nothing precludes them flying around inside them at all.

Population figure is given for Vulcan by Spock Prime: 6 billion. If that is used as the benchmark for Federation members... it works out to 900 billion for just the member worlds alone (assuming 150 member planets by the TNG-era). So a 1 trillion plus population is the absolute minimum for a Federation population when colonies and protectorates are factored in.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

That Enterprise is nowhere near 900 meters long. Just wait for good screencaps of the scenes of the shuttles docking inside the hanger bay. Each of those shuttles would have to scale to something like 30 to 40 meters long, if the E was 900 meters. But the shuttles were clearly only about 12 or so meters long. Kirk's pod being ejected and the bridge viewscreen/window among others show it to be substantially smaller... maybe 400 or so meters at the top end. But that would make that big spacedock station we saw at the begining of the movie well into the 30 km wide range!

900 meters is what the people who designed the ship said it was. And to be honest, the docking shots pretty much verify that, as does the increased crew-counts on even small ships, such as the Kelvin.

The Narada on the other hand, is flat out now the largest Alpha quadrant starship ever seen, it is easily several kilometers long, and this ship is from the original timeline. All I can say is that the Romulans sure do love to build 'em big!

8km long, according to the people who designed it.

[Mike DiCenso]

The writers have no idea what kind of range the transporters are capable. First, Kirk and Scotty transport onto the Enterprise despite the fact that has to be at least an hour away at high warp. Then they transport Kirk and Spock from one of Saturn’s moons to the Romulan ship that is orbiting Earth. Well over the 40,000 km max range in the 24th century.

I honestly didn't care since if you'd watched DS9, it was established that transport across light years was possible, at least using Dominion transporters. Also they explictly stated that this technique was something Scotty would invent called "Transwarp transportation", and Spock gave the younger Scotty the equations for it. As for the max range, that is something that was never clearly established in "A Matter of Honor" they established it not a maximum range, but the safe range for transport.

Why do the Romulans not look like Romulans? Why does Kirk even see a Romulan? Humans aren’t supposed to see Romulans until TOS’s “Balance of Terror”.

Because of the Narada's incursion and identification during the battle with the Kelvin. And they did look like Romulans... green blood, pointed ears... they just styled themselves differently because they were a rogue faction. I mean that was all made fairly clear.

Why does the ice monster spit out a perfectly good snow-cat-meal and chase after Kirk? Why did Spock throw Kirk off the ship in the first place? The brig too good for him? Lock him in a broom closet for f**** sake.

Because Kirk ran. And the second part of your question is easily answered by Spock's traumatization by his mother's death and the loss of Vulcan as well as Spock probably not wanting someone as devious and clever as Kirk simply locked up where he can escape and cause problems.

Why does Uhura try to make out with Spock after he loses his mother, his planet, and his people? “I’m sorry your planet has been destroyed and your mom is dead, maybe some sex or make-outs will cheer you up.” Not to mention his mom should be alive for another 40 years or so.

Hello! Timeline altered by Nero's incursion! Hello? Vulcan isn't supposed to be imploded into a mini-black hole, either. But Nero wanted his revenge for the death of his wife and the loss of Romulus and so he proceeded to do the things he did. It was also nice to see this relationship between Spock and Uhura, and in a highly traumatic event like this, I can see what happened. It is a realistic reaction and it was believable since the two of them had obviously been working together for a while longer than anyone else.

Why are the Romulans bothering to drill to the core of the planet? A black hole with destroy a planet just as nicely on the surface. I didn’t find the Nero character interesting at all. “You didn’t save my family, so now I’m going to kill billions!” It must have been one hell of an unexpected supernova if he couldn’t get his family off the planet on his own. I read they were trying to capture a Wrath of Kahn vibe in the film and it’s pretty damn obvious. Dead wife, mind controlling slugs, doesn’t like Kirk, those sorts of things.

It wasn't just his wife, it was the loss of Romulus as well in the supernova that drove him over the edge. As for the drilling, they aren't shooting a little black hole down into the planet's core, the "red matter" apparently had to be injected deep enough inside were it could be made to react with enough normal matter to create one.

I try not to see much about a movie online if I have any intent on seeing it so I avoided a lot of the info that was released before the film but I did see a few things where the crew said things to the effect of wanting to say true to the franchise and wanting to keep the fans happy. And to be fair they did remain fairly true to the characters but they didn’t seem to give a damn about continuity.

They did keep quite a bit of continuity... it was all over the place, if you'd payed a bit more attention. The whole point of this that it is a reboot. They gave enough respect to the old continuity, and are now starting over. That was fairly obvious. And I for one am very happy that the reset button was not hit at the end, and that Spock Prime did not disappear once the crisis was over.

Does anyone else feel a twinge of disappointment and anger to read that, “They hoped to bring the feel of the original Star Wars trilogy into the movie, since Abrams has often said he's more a fan of Star Wars than Star Trek.”?

No. It looks like it's only you. Frankly speaking, this movie had something special about it that was clearly far and away missing from the abortion that is the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy; fun, interesting characters who are highly competent, but also very flawed and only when they work together do they overcome those flaws.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

That Enterprise is nowhere near 900 meters long. Just wait for good screencaps of the scenes of the shuttles docking inside the hanger bay. Each of those shuttles would have to scale to something like 30 to 40 meters long, if the E was 900 meters. But the shuttles were clearly only about 12 or so meters long. Kirk's pod being ejected and the bridge viewscreen/window among others show it to be substantially smaller... maybe 400 or so meters at the top end. But that would make that big spacedock station we saw at the begining of the movie well into the 30 km wide range!

900 meters is what the people who designed the ship said it was. And to be honest, the docking shots pretty much verify that, as does the increased crew-counts on even small ships, such as the Kelvin.

An increased crew count doesn't mean anything when even today sea-going ships, especially passenger liners, with far smaller gross registered tonnage (the measure of enclosed volume) than even modest sized starship can easily carry in the hundreds or thousands, if need be. There is a debate going on the Trek BBS site over the purported new E's size, and someone even offered up a conflicting offical site number of 2,500' (762 meters). It was also pointed out and screencaps linked to showing the original TOS E's hanger deck. The thread and screen shots are all found here

The Narada on the other hand, is flat out now the largest Alpha quadrant starship ever seen, it is easily several kilometers long, and this ship is from the original timeline. All I can say is that the Romulans sure do love to build 'em big!

8km long, according to the people who designed it.[/quote]

If the alternate E's size was pegged at 900 meters, the Narada would be much bigger than that. Here's a screencap of theE facing off with the Narada over Vulcan. Just that bow section alone is more than 4 km long (a ratio of 4.5 to 1 over the E), assuming a 900 meter E, and that is only the very most forward part of the ship, which if you look at the offical site's file on the ship shows that is not even half of it, maybe a third of the ship's length at most. The Narda would easily be an Executor class super star destroyer sized vessel. The funny thing about this is, if that is true, regardless of size, it shows that a Trek power in both the prime and alternate realities have the industrial capacity build a warp-capable starship in the Starbase 74 size range.
-Mike

[sonofccn]

Saw it last night. I enjoyed myself and thought it was a fine movie. It however felt like Star Wars with a Trek paint job. I'd recomend you go see, you'll like it, but yeah this isn't your daddy's TOS. In terms of caste I think the "McCoy" character was the best with "Spock" next. The rest weren't bad but didn't stand out to me. My biggest complaint is the Spock-Uhura affair. It is out of character for Spock, pre temporal interfernce presumbly, to have one. Again in my opinion he should have been struggling with his human half during the film and only coming to terms with his love for her at the end at most.

[l33telboi]

An increased crew count doesn't mean anything when even today sea-going ships, especially passenger liners, with far smaller gross registered tonnage (the measure of enclosed volume) than even modest sized starship can easily carry in the hundreds or thousands, if need be.

To me, it seems there's definitely something amiss when suddenly a small survey ship, like the Kelvin, carries more then twice the amount of people as the Enterprise.

There is a debate going on the Trek BBS site over the purported new E's size, and someone even offered up a conflicting offical site number of 2,500' (762 meters). It was also pointed out and screencaps linked to showing the original TOS E's hanger deck. The thread and screen shots are all found here

Where was the 762m figure reported?

...And that hangar bay is positively tiny compared to the one on the Enterprise, you probably couldn't even fit more then a few shuttles in there, while the hangar bay on the new Ent had rows of shuttles on each other lining the walls. There are something like 9 shuttles seen in the new enterprise hangar bay when Kirk and McCoy first arrive on it.

If the alternate E's size was pegged at 900 meters, the Narada would be much bigger than that. Here's a screencap of theE facing off with the Narada over Vulcan. Just that bow section alone is more than 4 km long (a ratio of 4.5 to 1 over the E), assuming a 900 meter E, and that is only the very most forward part of the ship, which if you look at the offical site's file on the ship shows that is not even half of it, maybe a third of the ship's length at most.

I'd have to disagree with you there, if anything that pic supports the 900m and 8km figures. The Narada is about 6 lengths of the Ent in that shot, which means we see 5400m of it, so a little over half is visible there, and that fits with the overall dimensions of the vessel seen in the movie.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The Narada, or a multi-kilometer long abuse of hair gel.

[watchdog]

Well I was planing on going to see this film last night but I fell asleep, I got to see it today however and, WOW, that was incredible. It's nice to see a good Star Trek movie again. I agree that they could have done more with Nero, I dont think his full reasons or motivations were explained enough, I already know the back story that was in the companion comic book, Link to the first issue;
http://mycomicpost.com/?p=12913

The jump to warp speed was better than anything before, the many homage to the series was enjoyable, from McCoys "I'm a doctor not a Physiscist" line to the crazy, suicidal redshirt and his fully expected fate (the theatre got a good chuckle at that guys expense). I did hear Uhura mention a Cardassian drink early on in the bar scene though, and all of the product placement was a bit interesting (invest in Nokia and Budwieser), I like that we finally got to see Kirk with a green Orion woman, and I want Sulu's folding katana (almost like a light saber).
I totally enjoyed everything about this movie and I look for a sequal.....I do however still hate the ship design and most likely always will.

One last thing for now, about Nero's ship the Narada. The comic I mentione above like I've said gives Nero's back story, his ship was small originaly but he was given access to advanced Romulan technology, the 3rd book says; Behold the most advanced weapon system in the galaxy. We retrofitted Borg technology and applied it to Romulan designs. It will give our surviving fleet superior warp, cloaking and sensor capabilities beyond the wildest dreams of the Federation.
And it learns. Self-repairing nanotechnology not only fixes any problem, it anticipates potential threats and modifies systems accordingly, literaly growing the ship to adapt.
Your "simple mining vessel" would make a fine prototype for it.
He applies this to his ship and goes on to tear through several Federation ships and a Klingon fleet on his way to Vulcan, I recomend the comic if only for a bit more background. The above link will lead to the first book (out of 4), you may need to download CDisplay to read it (CBR file) or you can change the file from cbr to rar and open it with winrar or whatever. you may need to register for free to get to the link, and links to the other three comics can be found on the page.

[watchdog]

I think I'll lurk over to SD.net and see what they have to say, I'll bet Mike Wong will find some reason to hate the film, he was already preparing to hate it months ago. I wonder if he'll actually see it or simply rely on second-hand reviews like he appears to have done with some of the previous movies.