Star Trek Beyond

[thecapn]

I don't know why, but this is the first Star Trek trailer of the reboot that has left me unmoved...
Hopefully it'll be good.
But for chrissakes, are we back on Earth again?

Huh? Nope. Not for a second. Point of this one is that they're out on the far reaches of the frontier exploring and everyone's going stir-crazy. The Dubai skyscraper scenes are set on the farthest Starbase out there where the Enterprise stops (seems like a couple of times based on the trailer shots). The other planet seems to be a slave planet where the captured Starfleet crew from the attack are taken. Don't know much more than that, but it has been confirmed that this is NOT Earth, and it's a big plot point is that they're out in the middle of nowhere alone (aka BEYOND where they've been before. A stupid title, but it makes sense).

I'm not too keen on the Enterprise getting destroyed, personally, because it's happened SO many times. But that said, the rest of the film looks pretty great. I don't have any idea why people bash Lin so much. He saved the Fast/Furious franchise. I hated it before he took over. But man, the overarching storyline that ties all of them together that he created is amazing. Is it an action franchise? SURE it is. Will this movie have action? Duh. That's what Paramount wants. But he also has a great respect for a storyline that makes sense and has a great ability to give an ensemble cast their due. Each one of the Fast characters has their moments in each film. JJ couldn't give McCoy anything to do in two different films. I'm looking forward to it.

I hate to say it, but as an old-school Trek fan...the Trek we love is dead. We're never going to get another TWOK. It just doesn't work nowadays. People want action. I don't think that means we can't get great storylines - but a cerebral TNG-style trek just ain't gonna happen. We have to adapt.

(FYI I liked the '09 Reboot and hated Into Darkness).

 

[karamazov80]

I hate to say it, but as an old-school Trek fan...the Trek we love is dead. We're never going to get another TWOK. It just doesn't work nowadays. People want action. I don't think that means we can't get great storylines - but a cerebral TNG-style trek just ain't gonna happen. We have to adapt.

Call me delusional, but I disagree. We get ebbs and flows with these things. I do think Trek can go back to its roots and succeed financially. Maybe even in this environment (though studios are too risk averse to try it). But very possible that the paradigm of a successful movie with mass appeal won't have to exclusively be a super hero slugfest, even 3-5 years down the road.

What are they going beyond of?

One step.

 

[a-dev]

I hate to say it, but as an old-school Trek fan...the Trek we love is dead. We're never going to get another TWOK. It just doesn't work nowadays. People want action. I don't think that means we can't get great storylines - but a cerebral TNG-style trek just ain't gonna happen. We have to adapt.

And now for my favourite youtube clip

 

[karamazov80]

Perfect.

thecapn:

 

[Reinhardt]

What are they going beyond of?

The retro poster looks good.

Beyond Star Trek and into Star Wars

 

[a-dev]

Wrath of Khan would have been considered an 'action-heavy' film back in the day. Nowadays it'd probably be considered 'boring'. How things change.

 

[thecapn]

I see the point of things being cyclical. It's definitely true. I'll take back the NEVER gonna happen. Let's say...won't happen RIGHT NOW. Paramount wants Trek to be a summer tentpole. As a tentpole movie, they're not going to take a bunch of risks - karamazov80 is completely right.

That said, the best of the summer blockbusters, as the studios (I hope) have learned (except for the folks making BvS), is that people want action AND a good plot. Like Winter Soldier. That film gave me hope on so many levels for any big-budget film. I like Lin, I like what he did with Fast/Furious, and I like what I've been hearing so far about this one. I definitely have more hope than I did for Into Darkness, that's for sure. Will it rank among the best of the best Trek product? Nah, probably not. But I think it can be decent. It definitely has already remedied a lot of the complaints about the previous ones (bad writing team, JJ's Flare-tastic handheld direction, the horrible production design of the Enterprise, why so much Earth). Honestly, the only thing so far that I dislike is the new uniforms. Thought that was the one aspect of the reboot that looked really good. They look like they're in some sort of futuristic marching band now.

Garak always knows the truth

 

[Spartan Rex]

 

[Sachiel]

Beyond Star Trek and into Star Wars

JJ already turned it into Star Wars. Then he went and turned Star Wars into his Star Trek.

 

[Spartan Rex]

Starbase"Yorktown" on the edge of Federation space.
The Enterprise is in the docking tube (2nd pict)

 

[Adolfo]

Wrath of Khan would have been considered an 'action-heavy' film back in the day. Nowadays it'd probably be considered 'boring'. How things change.

so is almost every film pre Jaws and so many from the 70s and 80s.... by todays kiddie standards

 

[Adolfo]

JJ's Star Treks > JJ's SW TFA

 

[thecapn]

JJ's Star Treks > JJ's SW TFA

You're gonna get some crap for that one...

BUT. I will agree with you on one condition: We say JJ's Star Trek instead of Treks. The less said about Into Darkness, the better.

The amount of plotholes that could've been resolved just by tweaking a line here or there in TFA are too numerous to count.

ANH, on the Death Star: "Many spies died bringing us this information." BAM. Plot point explained (how they got the plans), and makes the world more real.
TFA, on the Starkiller Base: "How do we blow this thing up?" "Oh, I used to pick up trash there, I got this." Whaaaaa? Sure. The lowly Stormtrooper with no formal training besides shooting a gun (and, since he's a Stormtrooper, not hitting anything with said gun) knows how to blow the thing up.

And that's just one example...

I'm not saying the 09 movie didn't have it's faults. The fact that Kirk goes from cadet to captain in the span of one mission is utterly ridiculous. But other than that, it holds together pretty well. Besides the lens flares.

 

[a-dev]

I'm not saying the 09 movie didn't have it's faults. The fact that Kirk goes from cadet to captain in the span of one mission is utterly ridiculous. But other than that, it holds together pretty well. Besides the lens flares.

Nah, it doesn't hold together at all for a big reason.

In Star Trek there is always an attempt to right the wrongs of time travel or to use time travel to prevent something disastrous. And yet in the '09 film something massive happens, Vulcan gets wiped out.....and no one does anything. They all just accept it. What?!?

Spock prime actually knows how to time travel, he personally executed it himself in Star Trek IV to help save Earth.....but he can't/won't do it to save his own planet? Makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[karamazov80]

In Star Trek there is always an attempt to right the wrongs of time travel or to use time travel to prevent something disastrous. And yet in the '09 film something massive happens, Vulcan gets wiped out.....and no one does anything.

Yeah, but in the traditional Star Trek universe, you have progressive, moral human beings attempting to explore the cosmos, but in the process, "do the right thing" in various ways. In the new films, there is no broad philosophy underpinning what these people do. It's more like a sitcom. They develop these wacky, simplified versions of the characters that have been well established elsewhere, and put them in wacky situations, with some wacky goals in mind like, ape the ending to Wrath of Khan in a slightly different way, make Kirk more of an annoying **** than he ever was, make Spock get angry and punch the hell out of someone, etc.

 

[a-dev]

Yeah, but in the traditional Star Trek universe, you have progressive, moral human beings attempting to explore the cosmos, but in the process, "do the right thing" in various ways. In the new films, there is no broad philosophy underpinning what these people do. It's more like a sitcom. They develop these wacky, simplified versions of the characters that have been well established elsewhere, and put them in wacky situations, with some wacky goals in mind like, ape the ending to Wrath of Khan in a slightly different way, make Kirk more of an annoying **** than he ever was, make Spock get angry and punch the hell out of someone, etc.

I should take that as further criticism of the Abrams movies rather than an attempt to refute what I said, right?

 

[karamazov80]

 

[Khev]

The amount of plotholes that could've been resolved just by tweaking a line here or there in TFA are too numerous to count.

ANH, on the Death Star: "Many spies died bringing us this information." BAM. Plot point explained (how they got the plans), and makes the world more real.
TFA, on the Starkiller Base: "How do we blow this thing up?" "Oh, I used to pick up trash there, I got this." Whaaaaa? Sure. The lowly Stormtrooper with no formal training besides shooting a gun (and, since he's a Stormtrooper, not hitting anything with said gun) knows how to blow the thing up.

And that's just one example...

I know, so stupid. And to think all they had to do was an add an extra line of dialogue of Finn confessing that he actually had no clue on how to disable the shields and that he assumed they'd just figure out a way when they got there...

 

[thecapn]

Nah, it doesn't hold together at all for a big reason.
Spock prime actually knows how to time travel, he personally executed it himself in Star Trek IV to help save Earth.....but he can't/won't do it save his own planet? Makes no sense whatsoever.

Time travel mechanics are messy in Trek and aren't really defined well - different stories seem to have different takes on it. The one we're all familiar with and seems to be the most commonly accepted is the simple back and forth idea - we go back, we change stuff, or not, we come back forward - as in the Gabriel Bell incident and Tribbles in DS9, Yesterday's Enterprise and All Good Things in TNG, or even more commonly known, STIV. Also, we never actually see them go into the future...right? Just into the past and exactly back where they came from. Like they were tethered (All Good Things notwithstanding, but that's Q for you). Seems like future Starfleet would have that ability with Captain Braxton and the timeship from VOY, but that doesn't mean Spock could.

There is a Temporal Prime Directive in place in the Prime timeline too - basically, you can only mess with time to correct it. You can't actively change it. How much drama would there be if you could just warp back and stop, say, the Borg from existing...that'd be boring. And you can't give people knowledge of future events.

Then you have Enterprise (which, sadly, is canon), which adapted the newer scientific string theory that when you go back, you don't REALLY change the timeline per se, you create a new one at that point. It seems to indicate that the Enterprise's actions in First Contact split the timeline and created the Mirror Universe. And of course, the Temporal Cold War seems to point to the same thing, pulling at different strings to create an "ideal" timeline.

I'm not sure if it's considered canon anymore now that Orci's been ousted, but the Countdown comic leading up to the 09 movie indicated the same thing, and that the Prime universe kept going as it was after Spock and Nero went into the black hole, with the opinion that both were lost entirely. We'll see if the new Trek series takes the same point of view or not (or if they'll even go far enough into the future to comment on it).

So, Spock really didn't HAVE to save his planet. It was still there...somewhere. In another universe. And if he did go back to try to stop Nero, assuming that he can't switch universes (I'm combining the two theories here), he'd only be able to go back to the point Nero first showed up and try to stop him, which would probably still cause a massive Temporal Prime Directive problem with the Kelvin (not that he seemingly cares much about that, with him giving Scotty the transwarp beaming formula and all). And if he CAN switch universes and go back to the prime timeline, wouldn't he only be able to go back even further, and not into the future? I suppose he could try to go back to First Contact's time and hitch a ride with the Enterprise...

Timelines are so complicated...I prefer not to even think about them lol.

 

[The Ween]

You pretty much have to take the JJ Treks and treat them totally separate from the old Treks.

I like them all. I'll be seeing this one day one.