I just watched JJ Abrams' "Star Trek" for the second time, and here is my very informed and erudite opinion:
That was a good movie!
I'm all tingled up with geeky goodness now. A great job, in what has to go down as one of the greatest retcons in history. Well done, Mr. Abrams!
Feel free to use the comments to tell me how I'm an idiot.
Havent Seen It Yet, First Contact Has Been On TV Though.
If U Want My Opinion Anything Other Then The Original Series Sucks. Too Political. I Personally Hate Gene Rottonberries.
I Did Like The 1st Series Though, Was Kinda Like The Twilightzone, Always Had Very Odd Things Happening.
Dr. McCoy – “He’s dead, Jim” (Poor Red Suits)
I’ve been playing the Star Trek Online beta- between that and the above mentioned movie I’ve spent the last year going from 100% Star Wars fan to, well, 98% Star Wars fan. Can’t wait for the sequel.
My opinion, for what it’s worth:
I thought if they were going to do a reboot, they should’ve actually done a reboot, not make the plot a half-assed attempt to please the hardcore Trekkies. Pretty stinky plot, IMO. Also… Eric Bana? Really? A superbad genocidal maniac played by… Eric Bana?
But despite that, I really kind of dug the movie. The principals really nailed their characters, and avoided making them into parodies. Special FX were gorgeous, of course. I didn’t think it was a GREAT movie, but it definitely interested me enough to want to see where they’ll take it in sequels when (presumably) they won’t have to answer to the Trekkies any more.
@Saturn: Are you allowed to say how you like the STO beta, Saturn830? I doubt I’ll be able to play it on my Mac but it seems interesting from what little I know.
@Imp: Granted I love me some Star Trek so I am not the non-fan target you’re talking about, but I thought all of it was great. The first time through, yes, the effort to say “this is a new timeline” was a bit strained and artificial, but the second time through I must’ve been in a more forgiving frame of mind because it seemed perfectly fine to me.
@DTC: If you don’t like Gene Roddenberry, then you don’t like the original series, as that was all him. It was Next Gen that was done by non-Roddenberrys. So maybe what you mean is, you like him but not what came after?
I was only ever into the original series. I’ve seen next gen and the rest, but I mean how can you have star trek without the Shat? And I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen the other ST movies.
But here’s my take: this was a Star Trek film that for once was not for Star Trek fans. It was epic. It was FUN. The physics was WRONG even! However because it used tried and tested characters with popular young blood, it could (strangely enough) please almost everyone.
I really enjoyed it – both my cool exterior facade and my nerdy fanboy interior could dig this film.
I think we’ve reached a whole new Frontier when you can actually bring a date to a Star Trek film!
@Jeff I Mean Every TV Series He’s Done, Excluding The Original Startrek.
It may have been a good Movie, but it wasn’t good Star Trek!
{And not because of bad physics! Remember, Bones didn’t have to blind Spock, to get rid of the parasite… He could have used 10 million candlepower of UV, which wouldn’t hurt him, because Spock couldn’t see it!} 😀
But, Demented (and others fellow-travelling), it was SUPPOSED to be political…
Precisely because Television in the Sixties WAS so very careful to avoid politics!
Star Trek is about exploration and diplomacy, and the interface between man and technology…
If you want mindless action/adventure with lots of random explosions, go watch ‘Transformers’!
For myself, I’m avoiding it because it’s a re-boot, which is a real shame, since I thought the original Universe had so many stories left to tell…
(I was really sorry that ‘Enterprise’ wasn’t a LOT more like “Star Fleet: Year One”, by Michael Jan Friedman…}
I’ve seen it four times now, twice in the theaters, and I still say, it’s a dang good movie, scientific errors and all. It’s fun, the principal cast did an amazing job of playing their characters without making them stereotypes or parodies, and I think it’s a great way of rebooting the franchise. Yep, can’t wait for the next one.
@Jeff: It has the potential to be a great game. Right now it’s so-so. The basic gameplay, atmosphere and interface gives a good foundation, but it needs more work. I wish Cryptic would take another six months to polish it up and add the details that are sorely needed (ground combat is weak, questing is one-dimensional and repetitive, currency system is screwed up and so forth) but I doubt they’ll do that. (I wish that Cryptic had Blizzard’s work ethic…) It’s also highly buggy and I doubt they’ll be able to work that all out by beta’s end, or the upcoming release date, Feb. 2nd.
Space combat is pretty awesome, though. Not much beats orange and green lasers shooting all across one’s computer screen.
spock on jeff spock on
@Demented: I just looked up Roddenberry’s bio, and he was involved in the first series, and the first season of TNG, but not any of the movies, or the rest of TNG’s run. And as he died before any of the other spin-off series were made, he didn’t have much to do with them either…
I’m like Moonshade, I’ve seen it twice in theaters and twice on DVD. I personally thought it was a spectacular movie. Although I’m more of a Star Wars fan, I still enjoy Star Trek as well.
To all those who are fretting about the bad physics or the political implications (or lack thereof) in the most recent Star Trek movie, I say:
Dudes, lighten up. It’s a movie. A movie based on a 40-year-old TV series, that let’s face it, could be ridiculously corny (“Brain and brain, what is brain?”)
I thought it was an enjoyable piece of eye-candy that didn’t take itself too seriously, and that was one of the things I liked about it. I’m looking forward to seeing it again when it arrives in my Netflix queue.
Zoë Saldana. ‘Nuff said.
… Nah, I’m just kidding 😀
My only real complaint about the movie was “too much lens flare”.
I know I’m a bit late here, but although my overall impression of the movie was good there was one sticking point for me.
The writers of the latest Star Trek movie boldly asked the question “Is it possible to have a Star Trek plot that does NOT involve time travel?” Apparently the answer is a resounding NO!.
The constant tearing of the space time continuum (which apparently has the tensile strength of wet toilet paper)has become a crutch for sci-fi writers lately. Time travel allows lazy writers to cover poor plots and erase mistakes. It’s what doomed Heroes in my opinion, and Lost isn’t much better for its time travel foray.
I admit, I hate it when sci-fi shows play the time travel card. Hate. It. But, given the constraints the team had on this franchise, I think that was the right way to go in this case. It frees them from a lot of problems they’d have had otherwise. And I do love that right there in the movie, Abrams admits he’s cheating by using it. But he was in his own no-win scenario otherwise.
If you’re going to have a time-travel story, this is the way to do it — major things SHOULD happen. And in a way, knowing in-depth about that “original” history — i.e. the entire existing Star Trek universe before this movie — makes the significance of the changes even more wrenching.
So in general, yeah, I hate time travel, but I thought it was done well in this case and is ok with me.
IMO? It was a good Star Wars movie. And a bad Star Strek one. You may like it or not, but the Original Star Trek (and most of Rodenberry’s works) was about political issues, diplomacy, trying to make peace and live together, not blasting things up and spacefights.
I didn’t enjoy it very much, because of this: I wanted, I hoped, it to recapture that feeling. It didn’t, and that spoiled the fun for me.
I’d say that, just as LOTR is a good fantasy movie but a bad adaptation, JJ Abrams (who, btw, never liked star trek in any of its forms) did a good space opera movie but a bad star trek adaptation.