Amph [NERRRD] Observations, rhetorical questions, comments & 55 Years of Star Trek (General Thread)

Wrath of Khan will always be the best Trek film, followed closely by First Contact. But Voyage Home is still the hell a good movie.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to add in TUC as one of my top favs. So it should be SFS, TVH and TUC as my top favs of the old cast. Followed by the film in 09 and Into Darkness. Love both of those, even though I'd change some things in the way they characterized Kirk. And let me just say that seeing Into Darkness Live to Picture with a live symphony was a highlight of my year last year.

 

STID gets worse and worse after each viewing for me.

 

Eh, I really enjoy it. I know some people have serious issues with both it and the 09 film. But I'm too big of a Star Trek fan for it to bother me too much. I just enjoy seeing anything Trek with a Kirk and Spock. My biggest issue is how they turned Kirk into a womanizing cheater. And I think so even more after seeing a scene they thankfully left out of the 09 film where he goes up to an Orion girl who looks similar to Gaila and starts apologizing for how he won the test and then realizes she's not Gaila. Of course I understand with the alternate universe thing that the way he was raised influenced how he turned out, so I don't get my panties into too big of a twist over it. And I did enjoy seeing Kirk come around in Into Darkness to align more with how Kirk was in the TOS. I think they probably shouldn't have redone the Khan thing, but hopefully the 3rd movie in the works will be able to stand more on its own.

 

Eh, I'd put First Contact somewhere between 3-5 (in ranking). I'd have The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country as top-2 then alternate between First Contact, The Voyage Home, The Search for Spock therein...

 

It's hard to even imagine someone watching it more than once. I barely made it through my only viewing. Overall the Trek movie franchise is one of the worst outside schlock horror (Friday the 13th!). Wrath of Khan is enjoyable though incredibly campy. My opinion of it has dropped a bit in recent years. 2009 Trek is not bad. My opinion of that one has improved slightly over time.

 

I never really liked The Voyage Home. Too light hearted.

 

Well double dumbass on you then.

 

First Contact remains my top favorite, but Undiscovered Country and Voyage Home are a very close second and third. Wrath of Khan is probably my fourth most liked, followed by Search for Spock. I just love the lighter tone of IV, and the melancholy yet still happy ending of Undiscovered Country (along with some of the best Spock scenes, as he's mellowed out by then, as well as the scene where he is clearly enraged and disappointed in his young protege).

Rewatched several of those movies on Netflix over the weekend, its somewhat bittersweet right now. That and Unification too, still a good pair of episodes. Not much interest in watching nuTrek or, even worse, Into Darkness, ugh.

Even in Final Frontier, the Kirk, Spock and McCoy scenes slightly redeem the movie... well, no, the rest of the movie is still awful. Actually if there was a special cut that was simply the three of them sitting around the campfire, that would extremely improve the movie. Although I would still rank V above STID.

 

The only thing that drives me nuts about Undiscovered Country is when the TOS cast has their signatures end up in outer space at the end. Really odd, don't dig it all, yanks me right outta the flick.

 

That seemed very swan-song-ish to me.

 

What?! How dare they make Kirk into a womanizing cheater! He was such an upstanding gentleman in the Original Series who wouldn't be caught dead shacking up with an alien hottie he just met.

 

I can only muster one. That movie has no redeeming value. But the same can be said of the '09 reboot. They are ST in name only.

 

I was just glad that the actors didn't charge the audience $50 apiece for them (perhaps $80 in the case of Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley).

Seriously though, I've always felt it was a classy way to cap that particular film off. As we later learned, it wasn't exactly the last time many of them would suit up for a Star Trek project, but it was the last time they were all on screen together in a single story and it just feels right to me. The movie's over, the credits are rolling, so that suspension of disbelief is over anyway.

ST: VI isn't necessarily a great film IMO, but it's a good one, and serves as a dignified final voyage for that iconic crew.

 

TMP and TWoK are my favourites, with ST2009 coming a close third. The others have plenty of great moments, some good characterisation, but some pretty poor plots and scripts. After ST:II the comedy starts taking over, the sets, effects and model shots get cheaper and cheaper, and the least said about the last two TNG movies the better.

Trek Into Darkness has a pretty bad script but it's not the worst of the franchise by any means, nor is it the worst ripoff of Wrath of Khan (cough, Nemesis, cough). It's a pity there wasn't an ENT/TNG/TOS crossover dedicated to the Soong/augments/Khan story (or an ENT film at all). If there was ever a time to have a Spiner cameo in NuTrek it was in Into Darkness, but that ship has probably sailed (unless NuTrek 3 is going to tie up all the continuity elements, fingers crossed). Dorn seems a lot likelier, given that we haven't seen the Klingons yet, and if there is a TNG cameo I'd rather Dorn play a Klingon admiral or emperor than have Worf inexplicably joining the crew again. He could boast he was in all 3 incarnations of Trek films...

It's a long shot, but does anyone know if Nimoy filmed any more scenes for NuTrek before he died? It would be amazing to see him turn up one last time.

 

Ummm, V2, we have seen the Klingons. Khan single handedly schooled an entire squad of Klingons in STID. As for a Michael Dorn cameo, I'm down with that. I kind of like the idea of Michael Dorn playing Mogh.

 

Granted, but that's not the picture he was portrayed as when he was at the academy in TOS. Gary Mitchell in TOS called him a walking book stack with legs. I think in the 09 they should've at least had him change the test to where it gave him a chance to win, not just completely cheat. But that's my opinion. We're not ever told, beyond he changed the conditions of the test, how TOS Kirk won the test.

Also Kirk of TOS, at least in the tv series, never fished off the company pier. Not that I can remember. And I would call TOS Kirk more of a charmer than a womanizer. Women just fell at his feet, he didn't actively chase them down with cheesy come-on lines. *cough*Uhura*cough*

 

D'oh, yeah you're right. Still we haven't had them as the big bad yet, and I think the Fed/Klingon war is yet to happen..?

 

I actually do like the background plot of Into Darkness, Admiral Marcus is a Section 31 spook who unthaws Khan to help fight against Klingon aggression. This is all background stuff to the flick but fleshed out rather awesomely in the "Khan" IDW mini-series (and it even explains why Khan looks like Bennedit Cumberbatch too! Marcus wiped his memory / changed his look so he could be "John Harrsion". As the movie shows, it didn't work out.)

If Into Darkness is any indication, the grand arc of the JJ-verse Trek flicks should eventually lead into a larger Federation / Klingon war. Admiral Marcus was right!

Then, if we're going by TOS storylines, the Klingon / Federation war is stopped by an angelic dude in a terrycloth robe or something.

 

As much as JJ's 2009 re...whatever was a breath of franchise-reviving fresh air, Into Darkness left a bad taste in my mouth despite some good moments and amazing set pieces and I think they need to shake things up a bit. What I really want from Star Trek 3.0 is a little more substance. Less popcorn, more meat and potatoes. I'd be more than happy to sacrifice big action scenes and ship to ship battles for a return to exploring the mysteries of the universe ala The Motion Picture (but obviously executed better) and the human condition ala Wrath of Khan. If they could find a way to fuse those two together it could make for one Hell of a picture.

 

I'm hoping they focus a little more on the developing dynamic between Kirk, Spock and McCoy in 3, with a good plot along with it. Like to see at least a shade of what they had in TOS. That was one of those things that was sparse in Into Darkness. There was a little bit of relationship development between Spock and Kirk, with the 'I'm going to miss you' from Kirk and then his dying scene and Spock's 'Because you are my friend' light bulb moment.

 

Yeah, that dynamic has gotten a bit of a short shrift thus far; particularly Bones and Spock. There are quippy exchanges, but little meaty development. I think part of it is because they decided to make Spock and Uhura a thing, and there's just not much room left over. Speaking of which, that relationship kinda needs to just put a bow on itself and be done as a dramatic plot device. It's Kirk's turn now, and hopefully they keep Carol Marcus around for ST3.

 

In ST3 Kirk-Carol Marcus and Spock-Bones bromance?

 

I'd be happy if they left out out the romances full stop. There weren't any really in the TOS movies, and it was mainly tongue in cheek in the tv series, where Kirk charmed some woman to get the mission to go right, but they don't focus on it much except in a few episodes. I mean I'm okay with the Spock/Uhura, but like you said there's only so much time available in the movie and I'd like to see that in the Kirk/Spock/McCoy development and not on Uhura or Marcus and Kirk. It would be fine if it was a tv series because they'd have time for it, but not in movies. Plus, while I'm sure the guys liked the Marcus in underwear scene, I thought it was completely a waste of time. Think the writers of Into Darkness just wanted to see Marcus's actor get nekid and if that's the case then they need to share the love and have Kirk topless or something.

I also think there are things they could put back in to make it feel more Trekish, like Kirk always managing to rip his shirt. They touched on the red shirts dying one, as all of them died that went down to confront Khan/Klingons.