Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Saw it the fourth time today, really really enjoyed it again.
I've seen it with a few different people, and most of them are confused as to why it hasn't really been marketed or they haven't heard that much about it because it was very good and enjoyable for all.
Simon Pegg did a masterful job with the script, there is very little wastage in it and it is a very very tight script. Hope he gets offered the next movie, if there is one.
I've seen it with a few different people, and most of them are confused as to why it hasn't really been marketed or they haven't heard that much about it because it was very good and enjoyable for all.
Simon Pegg did a masterful job with the script, there is very little wastage in it and it is a very very tight script. Hope he gets offered the next movie, if there is one.
We can only hope.
I am with geeks and I wished it had because it was a breath of fresh air to all the superhero movies.
Poor Wil, he has a good success record with me agreeing with him, but he's wrong on this one...and I agree with KDB above...did HE really see the same film? Jaylah was a damsel in distress? Uh nope, she wasn't.
Wrong forum, @Phily B . There are places for you to discuss that, and this isn't one of them.
Don't disagree, but the review he posted is quite clearly pushing that kind of narrative. Discussing it in depth is not worthwhile and the guy is as insufferable as his gary sue character.
Well, that is a matter of opinion.
I just saw this film. I'm someone who doesn't find favour with the general aesthetic of the JJ style. It's not a direction that I can really "love" as such. So within that context here are some general impressions of the film:
I found the characterisation of our heroes much more robust and reasonable. I will say, that for me, it does suffer a little bit of what I like to call the "reboot blues". Despite courageous and tighter performances from Quinto and Urban and over with Pegg with his stuff, it lacks the sheer magic of the TOS team. I might be able to get past that but they insist on haunting this film with Prime paraphernalia to salute Nimoy but it had the effect of clawing me back into making comparisons with the original lot rather than getting me to see these characters stand without the crutch of the prime stuff.
Pegg tidies up his own character of Scotty. He tones down the sitcom in that character and makes a much more reasonable presentation of him. That is to be commended.
I don't see much in Pine-Kirk of Shatner that some see. For me it's a darker interpretation of that character and one that finds some favour with me. Whilst watching it, I was slightly in mind of Dalton's treatment of James Bond watching Pine's treatment of Kirk in this third installment.
They insist on chewing on this thing of promoting Kirk in this kind of fabulous way. It's grating and unnecessary. He's cadet to captain in the other film in around a week and now Starfleet is all for offering him a promotion that would've had him go from cadet to Vice Bloody Admiral in less than 4 years despite apparently doing very little in his three years out there. Just cut this garbage out please. It's unnecessary.
I don't care about them blowing up the Enterprise. It's not an Enterprise that I'm interested in. I don't like the chasmatic almost "warehouse" feel of the interior, the camera work rarely ever settles on the ship inside or out, so without much time to appreciate this Enterprise, I don't miss it at all when it's destroyed. And the new Enterprise A doesn't mean much either -- whereas destroying the Enterprise was a poignant thing for me in the TOS films.
I've criticised the other films for lazy writing. I think this film is written in a tighter stronger way but it does have one aspect that I would consider lazy - the making of the Franklin flight ready. Scotty almost has a stroke thinking this 100 year old bucket is space worthy but within a few shots it's performing sophisticated Baron von Richthofen stunts and doing what any other cutting edge, souped up starship might do.
Anyway, I liked the villains. Alot of imagination and thought went into making them unique and there's a twist as to their origins. So, the villains are a strong and fairly original concept. There's two small qualifications I would make here: 1. Having enjoyed Elba's full range in other works of his, much of his ability is submerged in heavy duty make-up and a heavy duty accent so I felt that like alot latter-day Trek films, the top acting talent just wasn't tapped . 2. I'm getting jaded of villains on a revenge-grudge buzz tbh. But I was amused by the fact that the antagonists that destroyed the ship aren't these forbidding aliens afterall but are actually a variety of post-humans and an outgrowth of Federation society itself. That interested me.
I thought they might game the music and the motorcycle scene for laughs. It would be intuitive for them to make this mistake. But they didn't do that and actually that stuff is smoothly executed. So fair juice to them for that.
So overall I think there's strong aspects to this film, the FX stands a bit more beside the story rather than overwhelms it, the characterisations are far stronger in respect to the heroes but I don't think Elba was exploited at all and pretty much any actor could've discharged that role. Cool uniforms though.
I found the characterisation of our heroes much more robust and reasonable. I will say, that for me, it does suffer a little bit of what I like to call the "reboot blues". Despite courageous and tighter performances from Quinto and Urban and over with Pegg with his stuff, it lacks the sheer magic of the TOS team. I might be able to get past that but they insist on haunting this film with Prime paraphernalia to salute Nimoy but it had the effect of clawing me back into making comparisons with the original lot rather than getting me to see these characters stand without the crutch of the prime stuff.
Pegg tidies up his own character of Scotty. He tones down the sitcom in that character and makes a much more reasonable presentation of him. That is to be commended.
I don't see much in Pine-Kirk of Shatner that some see. For me it's a darker interpretation of that character and one that finds some favour with me. Whilst watching it, I was slightly in mind of Dalton's treatment of James Bond watching Pine's treatment of Kirk in this third installment.
They insist on chewing on this thing of promoting Kirk in this kind of fabulous way. It's grating and unnecessary. He's cadet to captain in the other film in around a week and now Starfleet is all for offering him a promotion that would've had him go from cadet to Vice Bloody Admiral in less than 4 years despite apparently doing very little in his three years out there. Just cut this garbage out please. It's unnecessary.
I don't care about them blowing up the Enterprise. It's not an Enterprise that I'm interested in. I don't like the chasmatic almost "warehouse" feel of the interior, the camera work rarely ever settles on the ship inside or out, so without much time to appreciate this Enterprise, I don't miss it at all when it's destroyed. And the new Enterprise A doesn't mean much either -- whereas destroying the Enterprise was a poignant thing for me in the TOS films.
I've criticised the other films for lazy writing. I think this film is written in a tighter stronger way but it does have one aspect that I would consider lazy - the making of the Franklin flight ready. Scotty almost has a stroke thinking this 100 year old bucket is space worthy but within a few shots it's performing sophisticated Baron von Richthofen stunts and doing what any other cutting edge, souped up starship might do.
Anyway, I liked the villains. Alot of imagination and thought went into making them unique and there's a twist as to their origins. So, the villains are a strong and fairly original concept. There's two small qualifications I would make here: 1. Having enjoyed Elba's full range in other works of his, much of his ability is submerged in heavy duty make-up and a heavy duty accent so I felt that like alot latter-day Trek films, the top acting talent just wasn't tapped . 2. I'm getting jaded of villains on a revenge-grudge buzz tbh. But I was amused by the fact that the antagonists that destroyed the ship aren't these forbidding aliens afterall but are actually a variety of post-humans and an outgrowth of Federation society itself. That interested me.
I thought they might game the music and the motorcycle scene for laughs. It would be intuitive for them to make this mistake. But they didn't do that and actually that stuff is smoothly executed. So fair juice to them for that.
So overall I think there's strong aspects to this film, the FX stands a bit more beside the story rather than overwhelms it, the characterisations are far stronger in respect to the heroes but I don't think Elba was exploited at all and pretty much any actor could've discharged that role. Cool uniforms though.
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This sums up a lot of my impressions of Beyond nicely:
We need a good Star Trek movie right now -- especially now -- to remind us of all this. We need Star Trek to remind us that we don’t have to wallow in petty resentment, and nay, that we musn’t do so, if we hope to achieve the egalitarian future Star Trek projects with such optimism and confidence.
Thankfully, Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond (2016) is not just a good Star Trek movie, it is a great one -- the best of the reboots so far -- and perhaps the best motion picture in the franchise since the original series cast said goodbye in 1991’s The Undiscovered Country.
The purists and nitpickers will complain -- because they always do -- but Star Trek Beyond is a joyous, optimistic expression of Gene Roddenberry’s core ethos and belief system. The future need not be about war or bloodshed. It can be about friendship, loyalty, progress, and the better angels of human nature.
http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevisi...-films-of-2016-star-trek-beyond.html?spref=fb
"Purists" incidentally, are also the backwards, unimaginative people that the movie comments on...so no wonder why the wouldn't like it.
RAMA
We need a good Star Trek movie right now -- especially now -- to remind us of all this. We need Star Trek to remind us that we don’t have to wallow in petty resentment, and nay, that we musn’t do so, if we hope to achieve the egalitarian future Star Trek projects with such optimism and confidence.
Thankfully, Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond (2016) is not just a good Star Trek movie, it is a great one -- the best of the reboots so far -- and perhaps the best motion picture in the franchise since the original series cast said goodbye in 1991’s The Undiscovered Country.
The purists and nitpickers will complain -- because they always do -- but Star Trek Beyond is a joyous, optimistic expression of Gene Roddenberry’s core ethos and belief system. The future need not be about war or bloodshed. It can be about friendship, loyalty, progress, and the better angels of human nature.
http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevisi...-films-of-2016-star-trek-beyond.html?spref=fb
"Purists" incidentally, are also the backwards, unimaginative people that the movie comments on...so no wonder why the wouldn't like it.
RAMA
Since it's been out for awhile, I'm re-posting my review from 6 weeks ago free of the spoiler tags.
As I sit down to write this "review" of Beyond I'm listening to the soundtrack for the first time on Spotify, and I think the sentiments it's evoking are basically the same for the movie. It has all the traits of the new films but adds in far more Trek "flavoring" which seems very familiar to fans and should satisfy them even more. Far from making it more like Guardians of the Galaxy, the movie went the opposite direction, making it for fans..something I wasn't really originally expecting but may also be effecting it's box office.
The 6 original films had a certain "feel", the Next Generation films had one film that felt somewhat like the older films, then 3 with their own tone. The JJ era began with a retro-TOS reawakening of the Roddenberry mission statement from the "Bible": action-adventure, but with a big budget, huge scale that couldn't have even been imagined with STTMP. Star Trek had come of age. No longer was it the bastard stepchild of the studio which was the product of complex cost-to-profit ratios that made the movies feel like glossier tv episodes. No one can say that the first two movies do not have differences beyond all the callbacks to TOS however. In the roughly 2 hour run-time, the entire world of Trek we saw in 100s of episodes has to be distilled down from 4 hours of film. That's the entire backdrop of this universe. It's ripe for all sorts of nit-picking just outside of the story. As such, the movies took awhile to get more quiet and intimate...to have our characters pair off, talk with each other more and really work as a team. So despite two great films in this new "trilogy", with the two over-arching themes being Kirk's development and Spock's trials and tribulations, the films were simply two very well made stand-alones. Beyond brings them both together.
The development of Kirk is happening just as I predicted it: We have the brash, immature Kirk in ST09; the more seasoned but still petulant Kirk who acts on impulse in STID, who makes mistakes but learned from them at the end of the movie; to finally the more developed Kirk who would appear to us to be Kirk from the TV show. This is the exact impression I get from Kirk in Beyond. For all intents and purposes, he starts out in Beyond as the diplomat from certain TOS episodes, negotiating a treaty. As with STID, we have a mission...and exploration again! His scenes with Bones recall similar soul searching from other movies and Tv episodes..he has gotten past the excitement of exploration and now, despite the technology and volume on a huge starship, he is feeling the oppression of being alone in deep space and encountering numerous dangers that take a toll on one's mindset: a theme that runs parallel to the other captain from Beyond: Balthazar Edison. This recognition near the end of the movie dramatically serves to strengthen our empathy with another captain who has gone rogue, but really is just a step or two away from the captains we identify with. Pine is now uncannily TOS Kirk.
Spock's story is less relevant to the film overall, but provides us with further character development as well as memorializing an icon of pop culture. That this film took time to both have a scene on Yorktown and also later in the film is to it's great credit. Justin Lin's direction emphasizing Spock's "aloneness" as he came to grips woth Spock's death is terrific. Quinto's Spock has a relevatory moment towards the end ofthe film as he realizes he doesn't want to leave the Enterprise for New Vulcan. It's one of his best acting moments.
Other characters are well served and contribute to the plot moving forward but the real fun is watching them work together, this has really become a family and it appears the off-camera "team" gets along way better than the original actors. This comes across well. Of obvious note, McCoy gets more screen time here and is the heart and soul of many a scene.
Jaylah is a welcome addition to the characters, and it's nice to see another female character take center stage. She's a renaissance woman! Engineer, ninja, tattoo artist, music fan.
The plot here is not complex..it IS a revenge story so again with these things, it's the telling that's more important than the details. Is it any more or less compelling than Khan? Nero? Shinzon? Khan lost an empire and a wife. Nero, an entire world. Shinzon was emo. Krall couldn't adapt to a new way of life. He existed at the time of a great paradigm shift from a regional space culture with Earth centrism, to an interplanetary UN(ironically these points are more relevant than ever with devisive conservative movements all over the world trying to break up factions of human beings. The message of unity in this movie is so refreshing and a metaphor for the UFP!). He seemed to go along with it all, but when his ship crashed, and no one came to help him and his crew, he went off the deep end. His mind twisted by alien tech, lonliness and philosophical differences. Despite being able to leave at some point, his twisted mind led him to stay and plot against the UFP.
Unlike some reactions to the film, I think this background to an "alien" character actually helps the film. When I saw Idris' face, I knew there would be more depth to the madness. To my surprise, Krall was in many more scenes of the film than expected, contrary to reports he disappeared in parts of the film..he is there throughout and very much an acting presence.
Another thing I like about Krall and the Swarm..I'm just so happy it's not Klingons or Romulans and that both their appearance and tech are totally different. The attack on the Enterprise was much longer than I anticipated and a much better set-piece sequence than even the commercials let on. Never have we seen movement through and around the ship with such detail..crewman running through corridors seen from outisde, panning, sweeping shots of relative positions of what is occurring. Yes we've seen ship destruction before, but again how was it accomplished? Surely this is better than any similar scenes we've seen before.
So we have terrific character work, a good message and a good "villain". Does it pay off? Well there is a "MacGuffin". That's not a dirty word, and of course the popularizer of the term: Alfred Hitchcock, used them more than a few times. It serves well enough to provide character motives for the rescue mission and for everyone meeting up at Yorktown at the climax.
As someone pointed out on Twitter, Beyond is the first time there is a plot where a black man has been defeated by white rappers. Oddly enough, in my review of "The Swarm" on the Voyager forum, I declared simply jamming the frequency between Swarm ships was too easy a resolution to the puzzle, and of course they used the same solution here, but this time with VHF 20th century classics. This is one of the weaker points of the movie though the result is an epic chain reaction. There probably is very little science behind ships bursting into flames from sound waves unless it somehow affected the mechanism used to generate them as they shut off abruptly.
The final scenes in Yorktown were more compelling. Krall's fighter chase was thrilling with some of the most spectacular visuals in Trek history, and the scenes of the fight and chase in lower gravity were something closer to what I would have liked for Kirk's death in Generations if the fight had boiled down to fisticuffs as it did.
Miscellany:
Justin Lin was a great choice for director. By comparison, the outisde "action" director Stuart Baird really infused very little style or nuance into Nemesis despite making the best looking film since STTMP. He is no one trick pony.
The "look" of the movie was darker and more muted but still had a technological glow to it. We had some of the best scenes of Starfleet and Federation world building ever. The cinematography was probably the best of any ST movie.
Despite a different FX company, the movie continued and probably exceeded the very real looking, solid CGI work that we saw in Into Darkness. I might give a slight edge to the spaceship work of ILM, but everything else was probably better.
The "Easter eggs" were fantastic, and definitely increased my enjoyment of the film because of the 50th anniversary. My favorite was possibly the nod to "Corbomite Maneuver" and the unexpected byproducts of exploration..complete surprise of the scale of a situation.
The aforementioned soundtrack. It's simply the best one since the 1980s. Nostalgia fuel.
The 1701-A! Similar, but different. They chose a good way to show us. I liked this scene way better than the end of STIV, which disappointed me.
My only decision...I rated it an "A" on the poll, but I feel it's on parallel with ST09 in overall quality, so I had to decide if it will replace that as my number 1 film in Star Trek history. At this time I'm going to put it there, though I'll make a more concrete decision after I see it in the theater again.
1. STB
2. ST09
3. STID
4. STII
5. STFC
6. STIV
7. STNEM
8. STIII
9. STVI
10. STINS
11. STTMP
12. STGEN
13. STV
As I sit down to write this "review" of Beyond I'm listening to the soundtrack for the first time on Spotify, and I think the sentiments it's evoking are basically the same for the movie. It has all the traits of the new films but adds in far more Trek "flavoring" which seems very familiar to fans and should satisfy them even more. Far from making it more like Guardians of the Galaxy, the movie went the opposite direction, making it for fans..something I wasn't really originally expecting but may also be effecting it's box office.
The 6 original films had a certain "feel", the Next Generation films had one film that felt somewhat like the older films, then 3 with their own tone. The JJ era began with a retro-TOS reawakening of the Roddenberry mission statement from the "Bible": action-adventure, but with a big budget, huge scale that couldn't have even been imagined with STTMP. Star Trek had come of age. No longer was it the bastard stepchild of the studio which was the product of complex cost-to-profit ratios that made the movies feel like glossier tv episodes. No one can say that the first two movies do not have differences beyond all the callbacks to TOS however. In the roughly 2 hour run-time, the entire world of Trek we saw in 100s of episodes has to be distilled down from 4 hours of film. That's the entire backdrop of this universe. It's ripe for all sorts of nit-picking just outside of the story. As such, the movies took awhile to get more quiet and intimate...to have our characters pair off, talk with each other more and really work as a team. So despite two great films in this new "trilogy", with the two over-arching themes being Kirk's development and Spock's trials and tribulations, the films were simply two very well made stand-alones. Beyond brings them both together.
The development of Kirk is happening just as I predicted it: We have the brash, immature Kirk in ST09; the more seasoned but still petulant Kirk who acts on impulse in STID, who makes mistakes but learned from them at the end of the movie; to finally the more developed Kirk who would appear to us to be Kirk from the TV show. This is the exact impression I get from Kirk in Beyond. For all intents and purposes, he starts out in Beyond as the diplomat from certain TOS episodes, negotiating a treaty. As with STID, we have a mission...and exploration again! His scenes with Bones recall similar soul searching from other movies and Tv episodes..he has gotten past the excitement of exploration and now, despite the technology and volume on a huge starship, he is feeling the oppression of being alone in deep space and encountering numerous dangers that take a toll on one's mindset: a theme that runs parallel to the other captain from Beyond: Balthazar Edison. This recognition near the end of the movie dramatically serves to strengthen our empathy with another captain who has gone rogue, but really is just a step or two away from the captains we identify with. Pine is now uncannily TOS Kirk.
Spock's story is less relevant to the film overall, but provides us with further character development as well as memorializing an icon of pop culture. That this film took time to both have a scene on Yorktown and also later in the film is to it's great credit. Justin Lin's direction emphasizing Spock's "aloneness" as he came to grips woth Spock's death is terrific. Quinto's Spock has a relevatory moment towards the end ofthe film as he realizes he doesn't want to leave the Enterprise for New Vulcan. It's one of his best acting moments.
Other characters are well served and contribute to the plot moving forward but the real fun is watching them work together, this has really become a family and it appears the off-camera "team" gets along way better than the original actors. This comes across well. Of obvious note, McCoy gets more screen time here and is the heart and soul of many a scene.
Jaylah is a welcome addition to the characters, and it's nice to see another female character take center stage. She's a renaissance woman! Engineer, ninja, tattoo artist, music fan.
The plot here is not complex..it IS a revenge story so again with these things, it's the telling that's more important than the details. Is it any more or less compelling than Khan? Nero? Shinzon? Khan lost an empire and a wife. Nero, an entire world. Shinzon was emo. Krall couldn't adapt to a new way of life. He existed at the time of a great paradigm shift from a regional space culture with Earth centrism, to an interplanetary UN(ironically these points are more relevant than ever with devisive conservative movements all over the world trying to break up factions of human beings. The message of unity in this movie is so refreshing and a metaphor for the UFP!). He seemed to go along with it all, but when his ship crashed, and no one came to help him and his crew, he went off the deep end. His mind twisted by alien tech, lonliness and philosophical differences. Despite being able to leave at some point, his twisted mind led him to stay and plot against the UFP.
Unlike some reactions to the film, I think this background to an "alien" character actually helps the film. When I saw Idris' face, I knew there would be more depth to the madness. To my surprise, Krall was in many more scenes of the film than expected, contrary to reports he disappeared in parts of the film..he is there throughout and very much an acting presence.
Another thing I like about Krall and the Swarm..I'm just so happy it's not Klingons or Romulans and that both their appearance and tech are totally different. The attack on the Enterprise was much longer than I anticipated and a much better set-piece sequence than even the commercials let on. Never have we seen movement through and around the ship with such detail..crewman running through corridors seen from outisde, panning, sweeping shots of relative positions of what is occurring. Yes we've seen ship destruction before, but again how was it accomplished? Surely this is better than any similar scenes we've seen before.
So we have terrific character work, a good message and a good "villain". Does it pay off? Well there is a "MacGuffin". That's not a dirty word, and of course the popularizer of the term: Alfred Hitchcock, used them more than a few times. It serves well enough to provide character motives for the rescue mission and for everyone meeting up at Yorktown at the climax.
As someone pointed out on Twitter, Beyond is the first time there is a plot where a black man has been defeated by white rappers. Oddly enough, in my review of "The Swarm" on the Voyager forum, I declared simply jamming the frequency between Swarm ships was too easy a resolution to the puzzle, and of course they used the same solution here, but this time with VHF 20th century classics. This is one of the weaker points of the movie though the result is an epic chain reaction. There probably is very little science behind ships bursting into flames from sound waves unless it somehow affected the mechanism used to generate them as they shut off abruptly.
The final scenes in Yorktown were more compelling. Krall's fighter chase was thrilling with some of the most spectacular visuals in Trek history, and the scenes of the fight and chase in lower gravity were something closer to what I would have liked for Kirk's death in Generations if the fight had boiled down to fisticuffs as it did.
Miscellany:
Justin Lin was a great choice for director. By comparison, the outisde "action" director Stuart Baird really infused very little style or nuance into Nemesis despite making the best looking film since STTMP. He is no one trick pony.
The "look" of the movie was darker and more muted but still had a technological glow to it. We had some of the best scenes of Starfleet and Federation world building ever. The cinematography was probably the best of any ST movie.
Despite a different FX company, the movie continued and probably exceeded the very real looking, solid CGI work that we saw in Into Darkness. I might give a slight edge to the spaceship work of ILM, but everything else was probably better.
The "Easter eggs" were fantastic, and definitely increased my enjoyment of the film because of the 50th anniversary. My favorite was possibly the nod to "Corbomite Maneuver" and the unexpected byproducts of exploration..complete surprise of the scale of a situation.
The aforementioned soundtrack. It's simply the best one since the 1980s. Nostalgia fuel.
The 1701-A! Similar, but different. They chose a good way to show us. I liked this scene way better than the end of STIV, which disappointed me.
My only decision...I rated it an "A" on the poll, but I feel it's on parallel with ST09 in overall quality, so I had to decide if it will replace that as my number 1 film in Star Trek history. At this time I'm going to put it there, though I'll make a more concrete decision after I see it in the theater again.
1. STB
2. ST09
3. STID
4. STII
5. STFC
6. STIV
7. STNEM
8. STIII
9. STVI
10. STINS
11. STTMP
12. STGEN
13. STV
Who you callin' a purist?
No idea...whomever the term fits.Who you callin' a purist?
Generally, it's not the people that say.."I dislike this film/show, because.." It's the people that say: "This is not how I pictured it in my midget little mind based on something 30, 40, 50 years old.".
RAMA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About my review: Credit to Pegg in the VHF Beastie Boys broadcast...he had Yorktown pick up the signal and also broadcast it. I missed that in the first viewing.
No idea...whomever the term fits.
Generally, it's not the people that say.."I dislike this film/show, because.." It's the people that say: "This is not how I pictured it in my midget little mind based on something 30, 40, 50 years old.".
RAMA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About my review: Credit to Pegg in the VHF Beastie Boys broadcast...he had Yorktown pick up the signal and also broadcast it. I missed that in the first viewing.
I hate the purists. They have a talent for pissing me off...
After watching beyond, I am over the purists. before, their comments about how inferior the new films are to the older films used to piss me off but I am now over it.
this new films were a gift and I plan to have them on rewatch for a long time.
Nothing can be inferior to Nemesis and live. They really hit rock bottom with that one.
Just a few thoughts:
I finally saw Beyond the other day. I was in two minds about whether to go and see it or not, because I've been to see every Trek movie since I was old enough to go to the cinema with my dad, but he's been ill. I waited a month to see if he would be well enough to go with me, since it's always been our father-son thing that I really looked forward to, but he wasn't. He told me to go anyway, and I promised to take the blu-ray round to his with some beers when it comes out.
While I was sad that he couldn't go with me, I was glad to get the chance to see it on the big screen.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, it's definitely the best of the JJ-Verse films, and a great Star Trek film in its own right. As of now it's in my top 3 Trek movies (I haven't decided exactly what position, but top 3 for sure). It remains to be seen whether it'll stay up there, as I remember coming out of the cinema thinking Into Darkness was really great, only for my opinion of it to diminish with later viewings. I have a feeling it will though.
I've been a long-time fan of Simon Pegg going way back to his Spaced days, and his (and Doug Jung's) script really shines. All the characters have a decent amount of screen time, they all have something useful to do and it feels like a Star Trek film to me. There's loads of little references to Treks gone by (and even one to the aforementioned Spaced - shout up if you caught it!), and a good amount of humour too. And I loved Jaylah, I hope she comes back in the future.
I like the more mature Kirk, it feels like he's moving more towards the Kirk we knew - he'll probably never be exactly the same as Prime Kirk, but he's had a pretty good arc over the three films and you can tell he's now a competent and respected Captain who puts the ship and crew above himself and his own urges and recklessness.
I liked that we got to see more of the Spock/McCoy relationship, that seemed glossed over or barely touched upon in the previous films, indeed in the first one it came off as genuine hostility. The scenes with them together on the planet were among my favourites in the whole film.
I think they way the cast were paired off on the planet was very clever, as apart from Spock/McCoy they're all pairings you wouldn't necessarily have thought of. All the characters get their chance to shine and it doesn't feel like lip service.
The loss of the Enterprise, well, it was obvious from the trailers that she was a goner in this film and having already seen her pretty much destroyed in the last movie too it wasn't that much of a shock or a surprise. She was never really treated as a character as such to the extent that she was in TOS or the first 3 original movies either, more a vehicle/plot device to get the crew together, so I wasn't very sad to see her go either. I do like the changes they've made with the Enterprise-A though, including moving the nacelles further apart. It always struck me as goofy looking how close together they were.
Jaylah, as I mentioned above, I thought was just a great character, and with her entering the Academy at the end of the film, I hope she turns up in future instalments. I wonder if her character would be the natural choice to replace Chekov, given the tragic passing of Anton Yelchin? (On Chekov, I hope they don't recast him. Anton was the perfect reimagining of Chekov, and I think it would be to the detriment of the films, and a disservice to Anton if they did. I also hope they don't kill his character off in-universe, a simple line of dialogue saying that he's been reassigned somewhere else would be enough).
Very little to complain about really, if I had to nitpick I thought Krall's reasons for hating the Federation were a little flimsy but he's certainly not the worst villain we've seen. I wish they'd have got him looking fully human by the climax of the movie though, I think it would have had a bit more impact if he regained his humanity but still hated the Federation enough to go through with his plan - or maybe conceded Kirk was right, but decided he'd come too far.
All in all, just a great, enjoyable Trek movie. I liked the fact it didn't rely on things like Spock Prime (I'd like to think that even if Leonard hadn't passed away that Spock Prime's influence on the film would be minimal), or rehashing previous Trek lore like Into Darkness did. It felt fresh, it was fun, it was vibrant. Can't wait for my dad to see it.
I didn't like the new uniforms much though.
I finally saw Beyond the other day. I was in two minds about whether to go and see it or not, because I've been to see every Trek movie since I was old enough to go to the cinema with my dad, but he's been ill. I waited a month to see if he would be well enough to go with me, since it's always been our father-son thing that I really looked forward to, but he wasn't. He told me to go anyway, and I promised to take the blu-ray round to his with some beers when it comes out.
While I was sad that he couldn't go with me, I was glad to get the chance to see it on the big screen.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, it's definitely the best of the JJ-Verse films, and a great Star Trek film in its own right. As of now it's in my top 3 Trek movies (I haven't decided exactly what position, but top 3 for sure). It remains to be seen whether it'll stay up there, as I remember coming out of the cinema thinking Into Darkness was really great, only for my opinion of it to diminish with later viewings. I have a feeling it will though.
I've been a long-time fan of Simon Pegg going way back to his Spaced days, and his (and Doug Jung's) script really shines. All the characters have a decent amount of screen time, they all have something useful to do and it feels like a Star Trek film to me. There's loads of little references to Treks gone by (and even one to the aforementioned Spaced - shout up if you caught it!), and a good amount of humour too. And I loved Jaylah, I hope she comes back in the future.
I like the more mature Kirk, it feels like he's moving more towards the Kirk we knew - he'll probably never be exactly the same as Prime Kirk, but he's had a pretty good arc over the three films and you can tell he's now a competent and respected Captain who puts the ship and crew above himself and his own urges and recklessness.
I liked that we got to see more of the Spock/McCoy relationship, that seemed glossed over or barely touched upon in the previous films, indeed in the first one it came off as genuine hostility. The scenes with them together on the planet were among my favourites in the whole film.
I think they way the cast were paired off on the planet was very clever, as apart from Spock/McCoy they're all pairings you wouldn't necessarily have thought of. All the characters get their chance to shine and it doesn't feel like lip service.
The loss of the Enterprise, well, it was obvious from the trailers that she was a goner in this film and having already seen her pretty much destroyed in the last movie too it wasn't that much of a shock or a surprise. She was never really treated as a character as such to the extent that she was in TOS or the first 3 original movies either, more a vehicle/plot device to get the crew together, so I wasn't very sad to see her go either. I do like the changes they've made with the Enterprise-A though, including moving the nacelles further apart. It always struck me as goofy looking how close together they were.
Jaylah, as I mentioned above, I thought was just a great character, and with her entering the Academy at the end of the film, I hope she turns up in future instalments. I wonder if her character would be the natural choice to replace Chekov, given the tragic passing of Anton Yelchin? (On Chekov, I hope they don't recast him. Anton was the perfect reimagining of Chekov, and I think it would be to the detriment of the films, and a disservice to Anton if they did. I also hope they don't kill his character off in-universe, a simple line of dialogue saying that he's been reassigned somewhere else would be enough).
Very little to complain about really, if I had to nitpick I thought Krall's reasons for hating the Federation were a little flimsy but he's certainly not the worst villain we've seen. I wish they'd have got him looking fully human by the climax of the movie though, I think it would have had a bit more impact if he regained his humanity but still hated the Federation enough to go through with his plan - or maybe conceded Kirk was right, but decided he'd come too far.
All in all, just a great, enjoyable Trek movie. I liked the fact it didn't rely on things like Spock Prime (I'd like to think that even if Leonard hadn't passed away that Spock Prime's influence on the film would be minimal), or rehashing previous Trek lore like Into Darkness did. It felt fresh, it was fun, it was vibrant. Can't wait for my dad to see it.
I didn't like the new uniforms much though.
That's funny because a man's heart is often where his stomach is....
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