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TGM
07-22-2016, 01:52 AM
STAR TREK BEYOND

Director: Justin Lin

imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2660888/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

http://www.desatinoexpresso.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/startrekbeyondposter.jpg

TGM
07-22-2016, 01:53 AM
Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than Into Darkness!

Dukefrukem
07-22-2016, 02:18 AM
Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than Into Darkness!

That was a low, low bar but yes. Having just watched it last night... so yes. Just the fact that there's zero lens flares makes this automatically better.

But really, this is what we get when you hand a competent director the keys to your franchise. You end up with things like, a story arch, multiple climaxes, humor, good dialog, incredible action... Uhura is actually given something to do.

This movie my friends, is better than both Trek reboots (it very well may be the 2nd or 3rd best Trek film), and The Force Awakens.

Lin sets the tone immediately both from a visual eye candy perspective, and magnificent camera work. Our first shot of the Enterprise comes from a slow overhead view, where the Enterprise passes under the camera, to reveal a planet where the opening scene takes place. But this kind of visual is used throughout the movie. There's another scene when they are on the planet, and you see a civilization in the distance and the camera turns and zooms down a valley to reveal what Bones and Spock are up to.

THIS is world building. This is what you want to expand your universe. Our introduction to the space station where the camera is just rolling through a Mass Effect-like Citadel, with towering buildings, transports, people walking the streets, different races of aliens, people using technology and workers building shit. It's just all magnificent.

Spoiler is witnessed in the trailer but I'm just using caution
The attacks on the Enterprise where the artificial gravity gets turned off, and Kirk and Bones are running through the hallways was so well done


I also really liked the way the Enterprise WAS attacked.

My one complaint, which is a common one with blockbusters like this, is our villain seems underdeveloped. I wasn't really all that fearful of him. I didn't know what his master plan was until very close to the end of the movie. I didn't know why he was so mad until the very end. And even now that i know, it still seems a bit far-fetched.

On top of the villain stuff, I still don't have any idea what the weapon is, or how the villain knew about it (did he read logs?) or how he developed a massive army.... with tons of ships? HIs army on the ground does not translate to the size of his base and number of ships. When you see the ships in action, there's hundreds of thousands of ships acting like a swarm of bees, and when we are on the ground, there's like two dozen bad guys. Where are the rest of them hiding?

Anyway, it's super fun so go see it. It's also my pick in the movie draft so give them your $$.

Dukefrukem
07-22-2016, 02:33 AM
Talk about a director on the up and up for blockbuster success.

Star Trek Beyond $TBD
Fast & Furious 6 $238,679,850
Fast Five $209,837,675
Fast and Furious $155,064,265
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift $62,514,415

Morris Schæffer
07-22-2016, 05:59 AM
Nice to hear mcut has also got great words to say about this. I look forward to it. That said, I found into darkness very entertaining, occasionally thrilling and competent too.

Skitch
07-22-2016, 11:19 AM
Anyway, it's super fun so go see it. It's also my pick in the movie draft so give them your $$.

Weekend projection from BOM:

Star Trek Beyond (3,928 theaters) - $59 M

Dukefrukem
07-22-2016, 11:55 AM
Weekend projection from BOM:

Star Trek Beyond (3,928 theaters) - $59 M

Holy disappointing!

Skitch
07-22-2016, 12:04 PM
Rough year for sequels. I blame months of JJ and crew claiming up and down that Cumberbatch was NOT playing Kahn.

Fezzik
07-22-2016, 02:00 PM
I loved this. The action was of almost virtuosity levels (with a few jolts of Lin absurdity for flavor), but the strength, amazingly enough, is in the characters. Pegg did a great job focusing on the crew - we see them interact in ways we haven't before. We see how they fit into each others lives.

Its the equivalent of taking Tony Stark out of the Iron Man suit, in a way.

Also, there was a nice unintended moment near the beginning that made me tear up:

When Bones and Kirk were drinking scotch and toasted the unattended third glass. In the movie, I know it was meant to be a toast to Kirk's late father, but the fact that it was Chekhov's scotch made me think they were saying so long to Anton Yelchin. Got to me.

Dukefrukem
07-22-2016, 02:07 PM
Nice catch there with the whiskey!

I forgot to mention one of my favorite things about this movie that Fez just reminded me:

It turns into a journey/meet up movie... which is like... my favorite thing in movies.

Peng
07-23-2016, 03:09 PM
Mild yay. I am probably not the one to ask for opinions about Star Trek, since I somehow liked Into Darkness quite a bit, despite having seen TMP and WoK and should feel it a cinematic sacrilege. Along with Prometheus, this has made me long realize that I can put up with a level of blockbuster "bullshit" if your cinematic sensibility or directorial storytelling can match and doesn't sink along with it in the moment (unlike, say, Man of Steel's tornado scene).


I bring this up first because despite feeling that Beyond has a very solid story and a terrific sense of teamwork/character dynamics, it leaves me cold a bit. I am reminded of Spielberg's Tintin, where if I feel so continuously overloaded on sensation, without enough downtime, that it just grows somewhat numbing. Lin's action scenes are very good. The cast feeling more diverse, more distributed in story involvement, and more like a "family" (probably imported from his Fast & Furious films) also inject a lot of humanity into the busy plot and sensory overload. Ultimately though, Lin isn't as adept in creating a strong narrative flow and momentum as Abrams is to me, but a lot of people's mileage will probably vary from this, obviously.

number8
07-23-2016, 11:33 PM
Really really good. This feels like a bombastic big budget episode of TOS. Which admittedly means it's the most disposable and perhaps deliberately least thematically heavy of the three, but I'll fucking take it over the travesty of Into Darkness. This a solid, engaging space adventure that everybody got to be great in. I would take a few more of this.

Skitch
07-24-2016, 10:03 PM
Surpassed every expectation. Wonderful writing. I'll be real interested to see what this does week two, hopefully it has some legs. It deserves it.

Dukefrukem
07-26-2016, 12:19 PM
So any of you guys weren't thrown off by the number of ships versus number of enemies?

Oh and how did they get those ships?

Skitch
07-26-2016, 04:57 PM
Duke, you could nitpick any film. He got the drone mining force and turned them into an army, its assumed thats where they came from. Where did the raiders in Seven Samurai get their horses? How did Bruce Wayne travel from one country to another? I don't think these are great plot holes. Let a flight of fancy fly a bit.

number8
07-26-2016, 05:12 PM
I actually don't think I understand the question... Number of ships vs enemies? You mean why there are more drones than there are humanoid villains?

Dukefrukem
07-26-2016, 05:32 PM
I actually don't think I understand the question... Number of ships vs enemies? You mean why there are more drones than there are humanoid villains?

Is it the wrong assumption that all of the ships in space- the swarm- were unmanned? (Even though the two they showed they boarded had 2 pilots)

number8
07-26-2016, 05:46 PM
Ah, no, all the swarm ships were manned. It's the pilots (the insect-looking cannon fodder robots) that are drones. The film said they're native to the planet and were left behind. Krall took control of them and made them his soldiers. But they're incapable of doing tasks without orders.

Dukefrukem
07-26-2016, 05:48 PM
I totally missed that. Where was that dialog?

DavidSeven
07-26-2016, 05:52 PM
Entertaining enough, I suppose, but this felt so perfunctory to me. A movie that exists simply to exist. As a self-contained "installment" of a multi-episode franchise like James Bond or Fast and Furious, where the goal is to simply churn out episode after episode, then something like this is definitely passable. Not in any way memorable, but enough to kill two hours of your time. If, rather, the idea here is to create something with an growing and interesting cinematic mythology, then this comes up pretty far short. I can't think of a single emotional beat or set piece in this entire film that adds anything to the franchise's legacy. If they made another, could one really say this has to be seen first?

I like Lin -- I continue to believe Fast Five is one of the finest pure action movies of the past decade, and his work on TV was a revelation. So, I was considerably disappointed that the action in this film felt so indistinct. The first extended action sequence on the Enterprise was an endless and incoherent mis-mash of boring fistfights and things crashing into each other. And nothing that comes later lives up to the cinematic promise of Abrams' 2009 reboot, which I felt brought a sense of true image-making to the franchise. The character dynamics here felt pretty redundant, and Idris Elba was reduced to a monster-of-the-week.

It's certainly a competently made sequel, more accomplished all-around than the dreck that was the third installment of X-Men. But it just feels like this thing went through the motions and gave us nothing of lasting significance, besides the image of a two-second back rub.

Dukefrukem
07-26-2016, 06:12 PM
Entertaining enough, I suppose, but this felt so perfunctory to me. A movie that exists simply to exist. As a self-contained "installment" of a multi-episode franchise like James Bond or Fast and Furious, where the goal is to simply churn out episode after episode, then something like this is definitely passable. Not in any way memorable, but enough to kill two hours of your time. If, rather, the idea here is to create something with an growing and interesting cinematic mythology, then this comes up pretty far short. I can't think of a single emotional beat or set piece in this entire film that adds anything to the franchise's legacy. If they made another, could one really say this has to be seen first? .

I'm confused by this. Are you looking for a Star Wars-like story arch? Or an ongoing continuity like the MCU?

Enough to NAY this no less... really?

DavidSeven
07-26-2016, 06:21 PM
I'm confused by this. Are you looking for a Star Wars-like story arch? Or an ongoing continuity like the MCU?

Enough to NAY this no less... really?

Nah, doesn't have to be some big continuous arc.

I just don't think they had a story to tell with this movie -- not even a self-contained one. It was just time to make another installment. What is this movie about? It's about 2/3 uninteresting action (though the use of Rage was pretty good) and 1/3 of totally Point A-to-Point B plot which was of utterly no interest to me. Maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see the story here. It's all empty plot and action. I think you can grow a cinematic mythology by simply making diverse and interesting movies within the bunch. I didn't see that here; I saw another widget on the blockbuster assembly line with no meat on it. Thus, the nay.

number8
07-26-2016, 06:55 PM
It's definitely a self-contained TOS episode on a bigger budget, like I said earlier, but I do think it is about something. Kirk's anxiety about growing older and having his feelings about his dad's death be his argument against Krall, whose motivation is specifically about him being unable to adapt to a society that has changed around him, all tie into Star Trek's mission statement of being about progress and the ideological dangers that face a utopia, and more importantly, is a fairly current social commentary on traditionalism. It's thin, but it's there and feels more Star Trek than the 9/11 Truther metaphor in Into Darkness.

I think the behind-the-scenes drama with Orci leaving mid-production and Pegg/Jung/Lin having to meet a set release date definitely hurt it, because I can totally see another pass on the screenplay that gives that metaphor more weight, perhaps by moving up the Krall reveal and having the whole crew sit with that for a bit rather than just having Kirk hear it and immediately rebuff, all within one fistfight.

DavidSeven
07-27-2016, 04:51 AM
Nice input. I agree, giving more clarity on the parallelism with Krall and emphasizing his perspective some would've made this more interesting to me. Never felt the film gave us a great handle on him; thus the monster-of-the-week feel.

Stay Puft
08-01-2016, 07:58 PM
A mild yay, I suppose. It's easily the most enjoyable of the reboot series, as it carries forward the summer bombast while also, as others have pointed out, manages to feel like a self-contained episode of TOS. I can appreciate that. And however lacking it is for more time in the proverbial oven, it doesn't feel any worse off than the previous two (again, the themes are actually Trek, which I can dig, whereas I cannot abide whatever the fuck they thought they were doing with Into Darkness).

Still a bit of a wash, though. It's fun, but it's still an underdeveloped, half-baked Hollywood blockbuster. Superficially slick, yet largely routine and forgettable.

An aside, but:

I'll admit the only reason I saw it is because it was screening in something called Barco Escape, which I had never heard of before (I think it's the first time we've had one in Toronto?), but the concept is not novel. The theatre is equipped with three screens, so the action wraps around your field of view (it covers the entire first section of seating, so if you were near the front you literally could not see all of it in a single glance), but that's something I've definitely seen before by other names (I remember going to an exhibition years and years ago that had landscape documentaries projected on panoramic screens that wrapped all the way around a room). Anyways, it's pretty neat. Only about 20 to 25 minutes of it was actual Barco footage, but my favorite part is the Chekov scotch scene where they used the other two screens to show the warp drive effects as a way of providing ambiance during a more intimate dialogue sequence. It was surprisingly effective. Otherwise, a bit hit or miss. Perspective can mess with the quality of the image, and I gathered while watching that it's most effective to just stay focused on the primary screen and let the periphery details remain as such (at least when dealing with a film like this, with special effects sequences retrofitted for Barco; the color timing was noticeably off in a couple parts that tried to digitally expand scenes with real actors, and a few other shots were partly zoomed and resulted in degraded image quality). When it hits, though, it's fairly impressive. Some of the sweeping shots of Yorkville were overwhelming in scale, and some of the money shots during the climactic space battle were astonishing. I'd be curious to see another film in this format when one is actually designed from the ground up to support it fully over the runtime.

TGM
08-03-2016, 02:57 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-J64AkvuK8

Watashi
08-09-2016, 07:35 AM
Not as bad as Star Trek Into Darkness, but very dull and boring. I still think Trek 09 holds up, but this film was a bunch of noise and flying objects. There's some fun quips and each member of the crew gets their trademark spotlight to shine in, but there's no meat on this film. The initial attack on the Enterprise has zero stakes. Despite the Enterprise being torn apart, I never felt real danger or was worried any harm would happen. Anytime something worse would happen to the ship, Scottie or Chekov would pipe in that there is some back-up generator whatnot to get them out. The new female warrior member is a non-entity. I think Scottie calls her "lassie" more than anyone refers her to her actual name. We don't get a sense of who she is or her family. She just has nifty tricks and somehow that's character development.

The little nod to the old TOS crew at the end made me wish for a more faithful Trek film in the true Rodenberry spirit. It's a shame that Star Wars and Star Trek have become inseparable.

Oh well, there's always Discovery coming up.

Morris Schæffer
08-18-2016, 10:58 AM
Yay for me, but huge reservations. I mean, after all the uproar with Into Darkness and how it didn't have an original bone in its body, Paramount (and writers) has had the staggering audacity to release the same movie again.

I mean, Captain Edison was a revered Starfleet officer, a soldier as he is refered to, who was stranded and abandoned by the same people that employed him and has been biding his time and waiting for revenge all these years.

True, he's not genetically engineered, but fuck fuck fuck. What's more, the whole mining thing I'm sure is straight out of 2009 Star Trek, but my memory is hazy on that one. Wasn't Nero's ship The Harada a mining vessel?

Edit: Nay for me. Not a total loss, but too similar to what came before. I just don't feel anything anymore when the Enterprise gets cut in half for the millionth time. Indeed, rebuilding her is literally shown as a time-lapse sequence.

number8
08-18-2016, 02:11 PM
Huh? None of that happened to Khan. He wasn't employed, or stranded and abandoned. The Starfleet officer thing was a cover story. He was a hostage.

Morris Schæffer
08-18-2016, 04:44 PM
Huh? None of that happened to Khan. He wasn't employed, or stranded and abandoned. The Starfleet officer thing was a cover story. He was a hostage.

Ok i forgot about that. Anyway, still another revenge story. But i liked at least the revelation about Krall because for the longest time i was wondering where his story was going. That took too long as others have said.

Dukefrukem
08-18-2016, 06:33 PM
The Nays here are baffling me.

Russ
08-18-2016, 10:33 PM
It was like a box of cereal, with some colorful designs on the outside of the box.

But make no mistake, that was one empty box of cereal.

transmogrifier
08-20-2016, 11:57 AM
It was like a box of cereal, with some colorful designs on the outside of the box.

But make no mistake, that was one empty box of cereal.

It's somewhat empty, but I'll take that over the overstuffed MCU, which mistakes cameos and call backs for depth and complexity. But the world building here is leagues above that of the MCU, which always just seems like a stack of individual origin stories flung together and then swirled around a bit for the Avengers and latest Captain America, rather than a tangible universe with its own culture, technology, point of view. The space station is a much more impressive setting than anything I can remember in any MCU movie, which is just a bunch of generic places where shit has to go down, rather than something that seems organic and designed.

Having said that, what will it take for these types of movies to break away from the McGuffin + secret weapon nonsense that so often drives the plots? Why can't it be more like a war movie, where the threat is tangible and clear and already there, and the movie is just about tactically outmaneuvering it? Why does so much time have to be taken up with tiresome searches for some generic plot piece and the impending doom of a one-off strike weapon?

number8
08-21-2016, 01:19 AM
Ok i forgot about that. Anyway, still another revenge story. But i liked at least the revelation about Krall because for the longest time i was wondering where his story was going. That took too long as others have said.

This isn't so much a defense but the last time I rewatched TOS I did notice how many of the episodes were about Starfleet captains going crazy and wanting to kill everyone because of something or other.

Irish
09-30-2016, 10:32 AM
Generic sci-fantasy adventure. Change up the uniforms and logos, call it the League of Planets and Galactic Command, does it make any difference? Nope. Because this sure as shit ain't Star Trek.

Morris Schæffer
09-30-2016, 10:45 AM
Yeah, basically all that Irish. In their defense, all the shit with switching directors may have harmed the movie. Although I don't doubt for a second all Paramount wants is action action action. It's like they got so burned with some of the older movies that they're afraid to go back to something with 20% action.

Skitch
09-30-2016, 12:08 PM
Hmmm, I wouldn't say that you are wrong Irish, but maybe my expectations for a Star Trek picture are far lower than yours. After all, this is a series that time travelled with whales for crying out loud. I know ST is revered as the smart and hopeful future, but theres an assload of mindboggingly dumb stuff its heralded since it began. Tribbles.

Dukefrukem
09-30-2016, 01:12 PM
Wow. Irish and my's (me's? I's?- why can't i think of how to write this?) interest seems to diverging in complete opposite direction. But I loved this Trek. So much that it will be the only one out of the three new ones that I own.

Irish
09-30-2016, 03:27 PM
Hmmm, I wouldn't say that you are wrong Irish, but maybe my expectations for a Star Trek picture are far lower than yours. After all, this is a series that time travelled with whales for crying out loud. I know ST is revered as the smart and hopeful future, but theres an assload of mindboggingly dumb stuff its heralded since it began. Tribbles.

Voyage Home was a caper movie wrapped in sci-fi, but even that managed to present more genuine ideas than Beyond. (And shit, it more or less did that in about 20 minutes of screentime compared to Beyond's 2 hours.)

I don't mind silly elements if they help the story get going or they're tonally consistent with what a show is trying to do.

But I do get annoyed when writers base their stories on coincidence, McGuffins, and stock villains. Too much of the writing here was either trite or awkward.

I get what you're saying about nitpicky criticisms (and Star Trek is always an easy mark) -- but Beyond was much more of a big, dumb blockbuster than it was a Star Trek movie.

Sometimes I can dig that, but this time I couldn't.

Morris Schæffer
09-30-2016, 03:42 PM
Time-traveling whales sounds somewhat silly, but in the end those are just 3 words. I think the movie wrapped around it simply works and is a bit lighter than usual while still offering an entirely captivating what if scenario. There's an undercurrent too in The Voyage Home about protecting the environment and its ecosystem, so it never played out as silly. Though never on the nose either.

I think 80's era San Francisco beats the new planet in Beyond. Which is crazy.

Same with Tribbles. That's not dumb (insofar as I remember it right). That's playful. Trials and Tribble-ations is one of the top 5 Trek TV episodes of all time, but admittedly far more resonating than the original Tribble episode.

Skitch
09-30-2016, 04:09 PM
Guys I havent met the Star Trek I dont like. Im a fan. But sometimes its ridiculous. Thats all Im saying.

Dukefrukem
09-30-2016, 04:15 PM
Voyage Home was a caper movie wrapped in sci-fi, but even that managed to present more genuine ideas than Beyond. (And shit, it more or less did that in about 20 minutes of screentime compared to Beyond's 2 hours.)

Well for me a Star Trek movie doesn't need to be all that thought provoking. And honestly the time travel element in Voyage Home felt more of a cop out to me than any other Star Trek we've seen.

Script Writer: "What can we have them use in the past that will be silly... I know, let's have them speak into a mouse"

Irish
09-30-2016, 04:26 PM
I get that; I'm saying there's a difference between "dumb" and "ridiculous," if you'll let me parse things that finely.

Time travel, AI, clones, all this modern day sci-fi shit is ridiculous. Whether it's dumb is in the presentation. (eg: The Island was dumb, Moon was not.)

Voyage Home had a premise based on man's place in the universe and a plot that had no villain. When was the last time you saw those kind of ideas in a big studio movie? I mean, sure, "time traveling whales" might be silly on the face of it, but there was some real cleverness around how that was executed.

Then look at Beyond. Forget Star Trek for a minute. Forget science fiction. This wasn't even a good blockbuster movie. The whole project felt warmed over.

No wonder audiences turned away from shit like this, X-Men, and Ghostbusters. They were all the same. Totally perfunctory.

[ETM]
09-30-2016, 10:59 PM
"Audiences turned away" and none of the above actually bombed?

TGM
09-30-2016, 11:57 PM
No, but they did underperform. Though then again, most movies this year underperformed it seems, so...

Irish
10-01-2016, 04:28 AM
All the movies I mentioned (and let's throw Independence Day: Resurgence onto the pile, too) were released in 4,000 theaters across the U.S. All of them had similar budgets (and presumably a similar P&A spend).

None of them made back their budget at the domestic box office.

Star Trek: Beyond (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=startrek2016.htm) -- $185MM budget ($158MM domestic)
Ghostbusters (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ghostbusters2016.htm) -- $144 ($127)
X-Men: Apocalypse (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=x-men2016.htm) -- $178 ($155)
Independence Day: Resurgence (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=id42.htm) -- $165 ($103)

Tack on another $50-100MM for prints & advertising, which means the studios spent anywhere from $200MM to $250MM each on these titles.

All of them had a similar foreign return (with the exception of X-Men, which fared a little better). Studios aren't looking for such a thin margin on these movies. They're looking for big box office, which they didn't get.

Tepid domestic box office is an indication that these movies did not have return business or good word of mouth. Everybody saw the ads. The movies played at a theater nearby. They didn't give a shit. The mass audience simply wasn't interested. Or, to put it another way: The audience turned away from these movies.

There were a ton of articles about this summer's slump.

- Summer 2016 Box Office: Are Sequels, The Critics Or Bad Movies To Blame? (https://deadline.com/2016/09/summer-box-office-2016-sequels-1201811614/)

- Most of 2016’s movies have been soulless, noisy, and dull (https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2016/09/01/the-two-hour-movie-borrowed-time/iFA45LocGdgugfeSkDvsZN/story.html)

- Summer Box Office: Feast or Famine as Blockbusters Either Hit Big or Flop Spectacularly (https://variety.com/2016/film/news/summer-box-office-finding-dory-secret-life-of-pets-suicide-squad-captain-america-civil-war-1201850401/)

- The summer of our discontent: When franchise overload killed movie originality (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-looking-back-on-summer-2016-20160826-snap-story.html)

- Why Audiences Keep Choking On A Diet Of Sequels (https://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/how-to-save-the-summer-sequel)

And on a wider scale, the same thing happened in China.

- China Box Office Slumping, Official Numbers Show (http://chinafilminsider.com/china-box-office-slumping-official-numbers-show/)

- What's Behind China's Sudden Box-Office Slump? (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/whats-behind-chinas-sudden-box-912718)

- China's Box-Office Slump Deepens After Drought of Summer Hits (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-30/china-s-box-office-slump-deepens-after-drought-of-summer-hits)

- After years of steady growth, China's movie-ticket sales cooled this summer for the first time in nine years. Here's why. (http://www.wsj.com/video/chinas-summer-box-office-sales-slow/46D90758-7CFF-41CE-99C5-EA31FD954607.html)

So. I didn't use the word, but how do you define "bomb"?

TGM
10-05-2016, 03:15 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fymz7yoELS4

Dukefrukem
10-05-2016, 12:32 PM
Fuck. Yeh, that was what pissed me off with Into Darkness. Now I hate this movie.

megladon8
11-12-2016, 07:59 PM
I had a lot of fun with the first two, but this was bad.

Worst villain I've seen in any film in a long time. What exactly was his motivation? "I'm a soldier, and peace is boring!"

Bad bad bad. Action scenes weren't even good, and some horrible effects. That shot of Kirk and Layla or whatever her name was on the motorcycle together was shameful.

Dead & Messed Up
11-24-2016, 07:15 PM
I'm on the train that says this is the best of the reboot series. It's a fun, self-contained adventure that overdoes the bombast-spectacular at times but has a deft, loving touch.

The film effectively splits up the cast and gives the character stories the right amount of time, so they feel light but also true. In all, the character story is basically, "Should we still be doing this?... (movie) ... yep." But Lin directs action more effectively than Abrams - the piece-by-piece dismantling of the Enterprise by the swarm keeps a clear geography and sense of escalation (it recalls that Spielbergian Indy spirit of out of the frying pan, into the fire, into the furnace), and he somehow keeps the MC Escher climax comprehensible, if not quite as thrilling as it could have been, because...

like others also, I agree that Krall's motivations should've been introduced earlier and developed further. It's all a little abstract by the end, and what poignancy there is comes from Elba's playing of the role. It also would've been nice if Boutella's Jaala (sic) had some more involvement with the climax re: facing Krall. After all, she's experienced the "frontier" as well and makes the choice to trust and engage with the Federation, and her story revolves around Krall destroying her family.

[That late-reveal villain motivation is a current pox on pop cinema; crazily, it was the same problem with, of all things, Zootopia. I feel like, in most cases, the sooner we know what a villain is after and why, the sooner we can truly invest in the conflict. There's this weird mass confusion among Hollywood that it's better to be clever than it is to be clear. Think of how it takes three-quarters of BvS for us to learn that Luthor wants Superman dead because he threw his daddy issues into a fascist reading of Epicurus.]

The nod with the original photograph of the crew made me feel feelings. It didn't play as just some retro nod, because the film genuinely believes in the camaraderie of its heroes. When the ending closes with the "Space, the final frontier" dialogue, and it's read by all members of the crew, closing with Uhura, it's a reminder that Lin - in his very best moments - carries a bit of the spirit of Hawks. Not his mastery, by no means, but his enthusiasm and genuine interest in the good faith and trust of "the team." This is the guy who turned the Fast series into a billion-dollar saga about car crashes that truly believes it's all about "family." He was a good choice to helm this entry, which is never deep, never great, but almost always entertaining.

It's a bit of a bummer that this series seems destined for the summer blockbuster mentality, but if the continuing series can carry this one's coherence and enthusiasm, I can't beef. The whole attitude is summed up by Kirk rejecting an admiral position at the end by saying, "Where's the fun in that?"

Sidebar: the use of Beastie Boys during the climax is introduced in such a laborious way that it circles back to being funny. The second they need to find a way to "jam" the enemy craft, you know what's coming. And then there's two or three more scenes of them working their way up to the moment.

Grouchy
01-30-2018, 04:21 PM
I guess with this one, I've finally accepted that I don't like Star Trek as a concept/franchise. The two Abrams movies were kind of bad, but with this one, I can realize that it's better made, more entertaining, but still, this universe leaves me cold.