DVD's and Films You Have Watched Recently

[KingOfMetal]

 

brilliant piece of anime from the late 80's. A genuine tug at the heart-strings film

[patiirc]

brilliant piece of anime from the late 80's. A genuine tug at the heart-strings film

 

Is that the one about the atomic bomb?

 

[Vito]

Just got back from seeing Star Trek and while the plot was kinda iffy it's a faithful reboot of a franchise which has had its fair share of mismanagement over the years. It's a great, yet slightly flawed, film in the same sort of way the The Dark Knight was and as such I'll definitely be going to see it again.

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

We got sucked into a black hole and instead of being destroyed like we should have been we magically survived and appeared in the past... for some reason.

 

Uh, yeah, okay.

 

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Edited May 18, 2009 by Vito

[Gwailofilms]

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

We got sucked into a black hole and instead of being destroyed like we should have been we magically survived and appeared in the past... for some reason.

 

Uh, yeah, okay.

 

[close spoiler]

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Dumber things have happened in sci-fi, in regular "earth-based" movies, in the Trek franchise itself and, indeed, in the movie called

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

The Black Hole

 

[close spoiler]

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On another note, I'm really glad to see this movie keeps gathering fans. It's my favourite movie so far this year.

[Vito]

At least when Kirk and pals traveled back in time in Star Trek IV they technobabbled their way through the time travel process...

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

in this one they just had lolblackholesurprise. This was, I might add, the same black hole that threatened to tear the Enterprise apart at the end of this film. I don't have a problem with time travel in science fiction and I didn't mind the concept being used again in Star Trek '09, but the way they went about it in this movie just felt really lazy.

 

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[Joe_the_Lion]

At least when Kirk and pals traveled back in time in Star Trek IV they technobabbled their way through the time travel process...

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

in this one they just had lolblackholesurprise. This was, I might add, the same black hole that threatened to tear the Enterprise apart at the end of this film. I don't have a problem with time travel in science fiction and I didn't mind the concept being used again in Star Trek '09, but the way they went about it in this movie just felt really lazy.

 

[close spoiler]

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SPOILER - Highlight the black box to read

 

The previous black holes were created using just a drop of the red matter whereas the one at the end involved the ship ramming into the Romulan ship while carrying all of the remaining supply so you could argue that the black hole at the end is more fierce that the one at the start of the movie that sends Nero/Spock back in time. Also Nero and Spock were caught in the event horizon rather than the hole itself.

 

Clutching at straws is fun.

 

Edited May 18, 2009 by Joe_the_Lion

[Vito]

At least when Kirk and pals traveled back in time in Star Trek IV they technobabbled their way through the time travel process...

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

in this one they just had lolblackholesurprise. This was, I might add, the same black hole that threatened to tear the Enterprise apart at the end of this film. I don't have a problem with time travel in science fiction and I didn't mind the concept being used again in Star Trek '09, but the way they went about it in this movie just felt really lazy.

 

[close spoiler]

");document.close();

 

SPOILER - Highlight the black box to read

 

The previous black holes were created using just a drop of the red matter whereas the one at the end involved the ship ramming into the Romulan ship while carrying all of the remaining supply so you could argue that the black hole at the end is more fierce that the one at the start of the movie that sends Nero/Spock back in time. Also Nero and Spock were caught in the event horizon rather than the hole itself.

 

Clutching at straws is fun.

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

Strictly speaking you have drawn conclusions that I too had considered but it's irritating forcing the fans to cover plotholes because the writers apparently couldn't be bothered to do it themselves. Putting the time travel aside for a moment I wish they'd also elaborated on that little "supernova that threatened the entire galaxy" thing too. Also, where was the Federation fleet and Earth's defenses when Earth was being drilled? It took approximately three minutes to get from Earth to Vulcan yet for some reason nobody was anywhere near Earth to help when it was under attack? Isn't your home base where most intelligent strategists keep their strongest defenses?

 

Mind you, the Enterprise rising from the rings of Saturn was very fucking cool.

 

[close spoiler]

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[JamesTyler]

Dumber things have happened in sci-fi, in regular "earth-based" movies, in the Trek franchise itself and, indeed, in the movie called

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

The Black Hole

 

[close spoiler]

");document.close();.

 

On another note, I'm really glad to see this movie keeps gathering fans. It's my favourite movie so far this year.

 

Seconded on both accounts. As for te lack of technobabble... thank fucking christ for that! The technobabble nonsense was part of the reason I started to loathe Voyager and in DS9 (my favourite of the lot) having to explain to the audience always seemed patronizing as fuck.

 

The black hole stuff was reasonable in it's context, though if you want more - http://trekmovie.com/2009/05/09/bad-astron...ence-star-trek/

 

On the spoilers...

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

Plotholes are in every film thus far... but they're not as big as they seem. Some things are just not mentioned on screen, they don't have to be or need to be and it just gets in the way and seems contrived putting them in.

 

The bulk of the fleet, for example, were away. We knew that, thats all we needed to know. The crew knows why so they don't need to be told/reminded and doing so would seem, to me anyway, contrived as fuck. Much like Ezri talking aloud about her plans in one episode of DS9 when she had no need to. The ships at Earth were there, they got fucked up, thats all. Besides - thats far more than any previous Trek fim had, Generations being the worst offender though Kahn had a similar situation and that films the holy grail of the franchise.

 

On the three minutes... time cut. Thats three minutes from Chekov making the announcement to the arrival. Kirk was unconscious due to a strong sedative, everyone else had got changed and settled in their positions. We see Kirk fade out, we cut to the near arrival and Chekovs briefing.

 

Earth defences... a fleet of starships were killed, the ground team would be equally as fucked, if not more. But I don't see these as plotholes as much as things we don't need to be told from what we see in the film.

 

I'll leave the Supernova up to the Bad Astronomy review as it has the same thoughts as my own, but the audience doesn't need to know more than that and for the curious, the Countdown comic books are based around 2387 where all the future stuff happens.

 

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And I promised myself I wouldn't talk Trek today

 

The only part that I'd say seemed too contrived was on Delta Vega, there was a line in the script that was removed (I think before filming) that sorted that nicely and the stuff they removed to beef up Nero... it wasn't needed. Though I'd like to see it on the DVD release.

Edited May 18, 2009 by Evolution

[Carbomb]

What's wrong with Treknobabble? For me, it's part of what made Star Trek what it is. You see CSI and 24 discussing technology specifics all the time, so it would make sense for Star Trek to have its own, and, of course, most of this would be beyond the ken of the average person today.

 

Sure, they tend to overload a little, but come on: all the series and movies are set on board ships or space stations, which are the realms of aeronautics and astrophysics. It's not unrealistic. How many times have you wanted to throttle a computer engineer for talking about stuff you just can't get a handle on (unless you are a computer engineer, in which case, come over here - I want to throttle you).

[Vito]

The link that Evolution posted actually addressed all of the complaints I had about the film in a way that I was unable to articulate, as I said previously I did really enjoy the film and would urge everyone to see it but as a longtime fan of the franchise some of the errors stood out like sore thumbs. Fortunately the action and the comedy were so good that I can overlook even the most heinous of mistakes.

 

Did anyone else think that this newly revamped Star Trek was clearly comprised of the better aspects of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars and injected into the Star Trek Universe?

[Carbomb]

Did anyone else think that this newly revamped Star Trek was clearly comprised of the better aspects of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars and injected into the Star Trek Universe?

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

In terms of the Firefly aspect, I was very slightly disappointed; the one thing Trek never had was cool martial arts sequences, and I was hoping that Sulu's fight scene would provide that. Still, I loved the Futurama reference about his martial arts training, and I also loved the fact that they've given him a wakizashi. The only thing missing from John Cho's performance is the classic George Takei voice, but we can't have everything.

 

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[KingOfMetal]

brilliant piece of anime from the late 80's. A genuine tug at the heart-strings film

 

Is that the one about the atomic bomb?

 

No it's not. Its about a brother and sister who lose their mum and home in an air-raid during World War II. Check it out, think you can get it in HMV for under

[Vito]

Did anyone else think that this newly revamped Star Trek was clearly comprised of the better aspects of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars and injected into the Star Trek Universe?

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

In terms of the Firefly aspect, I was very slightly disappointed; the one thing Trek never had was cool martial arts sequences, and I was hoping that Sulu's fight scene would provide that. Still, I loved the Futurama reference about his martial arts training, and I also loved the fact that they've given him a wakizashi. The only thing missing from John Cho's performance is the classic George Takei voice, but we can't have everything.

 

[close spoiler]

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I'm not sure what went wrong here but I couldn't read what you wrote in the spoiler tags until I quoted it and it appeared in the message window. Odd.

 

Anyway.

 

SPOILER - Highlight the black box to read

I was a little confused when Sulu revealed that he'd taken the advanced hand to hand combat training only to later admit that he'd trained in fencing, which isn't hand to hand combat at all. Still, how ridiculous did his forward flip look during the swordfight scene? I actually laughed at that because it looked so out of place. In fact that entire scene is exactly why I mentioned Star Wars, if those swords had been glowing it could have been a scene from any of the Star Wars films.

 

A lot of the comedy reminded me of Firefly. Spock's "get out of the chair" line was priceless as was Simon Pegg's entire performance, I'm sure a lot of people will bitch about Pegg but I thought he was fantastic.

 

Edited May 18, 2009 by Vito

[JamesTyler]

What's wrong with Treknobabble? For me, it's part of what made Star Trek what it is. You see CSI and 24 discussing technology specifics all the time, so it would make sense for Star Trek to have its own, and, of course, most of this would be beyond the ken of the average person today.

 

Sure, they tend to overload a little, but come on: all the series and movies are set on board ships or space stations, which are the realms of aeronautics and astrophysics. It's not unrealistic. How many times have you wanted to throttle a computer engineer for talking about stuff you just can't get a handle on (unless you are a computer engineer, in which case, come over here - I want to throttle you).

 

I'm thankfully not a computer engineer, they upset me deeply for that reason

 

The Treknobabble has been good - but it was good to be without it. Might be a geek thing - not a bad thing, I am one - but it's good to a point where it's overused and a bit silly. Voyager was also guilty for the reset button thing which I was glad to see was avoided at all costs in this movie. Things got screwed up, alternate universe evolved and there was no attempt to set things to the 'Prime' time line. Good stuff.

 

The link that Evolution posted actually addressed all of the complaints I had about the film in a way that I was unable to articulate, as I said previously I did really enjoy the film and would urge everyone to see it but as a longtime fan of the franchise some of the errors stood out like sore thumbs. Fortunately the action and the comedy were so good that I can overlook even the most heinous of mistakes.

 

Did anyone else think that this newly revamped Star Trek was clearly comprised of the better aspects of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars and injected into the Star Trek Universe?

 

I thought that link would - the guy who wrote that review had the same thought as me (and yourself), it didn't get in the way of the film that, for example, the plot holes in Generations (the Nexus stuff... forgivable in a way, but Harrimans uselessness. No.)

 

I can't comment on the comparisons (Not seen much Firefly, just Serenity, havent got round to BSG yet and not a fan of Star Wars) but to me they have just injected fresh energy in a group that we remember as being old and bloated.

 

Oh.. and the line in the blacked out spoiler - great delivery and although this Scotty was a bit different I thought Pegg did a nice job in the role. Some Scots have been iffy about his accent but it still sounds more genuine than mine.

Edited May 18, 2009 by Evolution

[Vito]

I can't comment on the comparisons (Not seen much Firefly, just Serenity, havent got round to BSG yet and not a fan of Star Wars) but to me they have just injected fresh energy in a group that we remember as being old and bloated.

Well for starters the humour, specifically the one-liners, in Star Trek were very similar to the kind of humour you'd seen in an average episode of Firefly. BSG used a lot of external shots filed in almost total silence (vacuum, no sound) to emphasise damage sustained to the ships during battles and suchlike. The scene right at the beginning where the crew member gets sucked out of the hull breach and into space, that's the kind of thing you might see in BSG. Star Wars, well, that's pretty much the sword fight, the two predators on that arctic outpost and Scotty's little friend.

 

Oh.. and the line in the blacked out spoiler - great delivery and although this Scotty was a bit different I thought Pegg did a nice job in the role. Some Scots have been iffy about his accent but it still sounds more genuine than mine.

Scotty undoubtedly got a lot of the best lines, but the "Cupcake" parts were just excellent.