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Post by legios on Feb 13, 2009 22:39:54 GMT
At the very least the novelisation will be competent. I can't recall any time that Foster put in a shift on a novelisation that wasn't at least passable.
Karl
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 27, 2009 11:36:22 GMT
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Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 27, 2009 21:26:28 GMT
I'd spotted Shatner was 78 on the 22nd - never twigged they were born that close to each other !
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Mar 27, 2009 21:29:30 GMT
Shatner definitely looks the healthier of the two!
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 27, 2009 21:36:28 GMT
Nimoy's always looked gaunt though
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 30, 2009 18:23:49 GMT
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Post by blueshift on Mar 30, 2009 18:30:24 GMT
Ahhh Shiny Shelf. It is good to see all the old Dr Who book writers still writing stuff, albeit non fiction.
Also I always liked Star Trek V when I was little!
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Post by The Doctor on Apr 3, 2009 20:25:54 GMT
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Post by Bogatan on May 9, 2009 16:55:25 GMT
Well bloody hell thats how to do a Star Trek film. Loved it, I really did. All the characters seemed like themselves and I was very amused by how clearly they established that they had created an alternate timeline not destroyed the old one.
Oh and Scotty's little friend is brill.
Andy
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Hero
Fusilateral Quintro Combiner
King of RULES!
Everything Rules
Posts: 7,487
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Post by Hero on May 10, 2009 0:38:03 GMT
I quite enjoyed it.  ===HERO |
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Post by Fortmax2020 on May 11, 2009 15:53:02 GMT
It was Star Trek made *for* the big screen rather than simply an upgraded TV episode.
Lots of fun, action, adventure, right balance of energy, good characters and acting, looks gorgeous etc.
Thought Scotty's friend was a bit pointless and annoying and that Scotty was too much of a remoulding of the character. Maybe the acting for him was a little OTT and he did seem to just be slotted in at the last moment. I felt that the depth of the other characters was clearly there and matched the originals well but was sufficiently original to add depth and detail to both old and new.
Enjoyed the alternate timeline take as well. Very nicely done and gives a real reason for the remake rather than just for the sake of making a few bucks.
Nimoy didn't do too badly either - certainly not for a 'mere' cameo! :-)
Will probably try to see this again at some point, maybe on IMAX.
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dyrl
Empty
Transforming robots are no match for combat waitresses from the future!
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Post by dyrl on May 12, 2009 12:26:29 GMT
Yeah... I COULD have lots to say about this movie, except that instead of seeing Star Trek...I saw...17 again with that guy from Friends. All because my girlfriend had her birthday last Friday... no matter how many winks and puppy faces I made at the cinema, she refused to go see Star Trek, instead opting for 17 again... The only good thing I can say about 17 Again is that the protagonist's best friend, who takes up a considerable junk of the movie, wears Spok ears. My girlfriend had no clue Star Trek even existed until I mentioned the new Star Trek movie to her, so seeing the ears she was like "poor man - born with deformed ears..." and was clearly perplexed as to why a holywood actor didn't just go and get some plastic surgery for those ears... After 17 again, I took her to a Star Trek film poster, pointed at Spok and noted Spok's ears. "Him too?" she says, concerned that there is a plague of deformed-ear actors in America... Oh well  She is an incredibly bright woman, but like all of us, there are certain things in this universe that we know nothing about... Hopefully this weekend I'll manage to see Star Trek with her... maybe. Pete |
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Post by The Doctor on May 14, 2009 17:04:14 GMT
On a whim and bored I turned up at the cinema just to watch something, anything. I hadn't been particularly interested in seeing Star Trek at the cinema (none of the ads had said what it was actually about other than 'it's Kirk and Spock!') but it was starting in 2 minutes so I thought 'why not'. I usually enjoy Star Trek movies anyway.
For the first ten minutes I thought: 'wow, this is different, this is bloody good'. But then the film wore on and it became clear it was all style no substance. Every scene had to be really really short! Not too much complicated dialogue! The camera had to constantly move! The pace had to be fastfastFAST! Every shot had to have lense flare in it! The composer played the same fucking tune and over and over and over on every bloody scene, whether it fit or not!
In all honesty, by the time Nimoy turned up I was genuinely bored out of my mind and had been checking how long it had to go on my phone. Very poorly written and directed movie. There was just nothing to it. Which I thought was a shame as some of the cast were putting in good shifts. Those playing Kirk, Uhura, McCoy and Chekov were great, though the chap doing Sulu was really dull and Simon Pegg was just dreadful as Scotty. I never really took to the chap playing Spock. I thought he was boring.
Honestly, I can't see why this is getting such rave reviews. It's certainly no better than the last Trek flick, Nemesis. Great first 10 minutes with the USS Kelvin though.
-Ralph
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Post by The Doctor on May 14, 2009 17:31:19 GMT
And another thing: I like my suspension of disbelief, but the upper decks and lower decks of the Enterprise clearly exist in different universes. Up above it's gleaming and i-mac ish and down below it's apparently a disused factory circa 1983. Er, what?
The only stimulation I had in the back half was trying to figure this out!
-Ralph
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on May 14, 2009 18:01:17 GMT
I knocked off early today to go see it. Wasn't expecting a great deal, since I wasn't aware of any great actors among the leads and the classic Trek crew isn't my favourite in any case. It passed the time, but like the first, ninth and tenth Star Trek films, the eleventh is not one I have any desire to sit through for a second time. The did a bloody continuity reboot! Transformers and James Bond have already made me prejudiced against reboots of quality long-running franchises in the same medium (i.e. TF comics and Bond films), but this was an even weaker reboot than most, since it erases all the existing Star Trek series and films, but requires the new continuity to obey all the same rules as the old one, because of the causal link. (The Dominion and the Borg are presumably still in their respective quadrants. Dunno if Spock will think of warning anyone about that though.) And I found it highly unlikely that 25 years after a significant change in the timeline (the destruction of a starship and death of Kirk's father), the same crew still finds itself coming together on the same ship. I'm surprised they were all still born, let alone all still in Starfleet. And not one of the performances, while competent enough, was as good as the top half dozen performances in First Contact - which is the very best Star Trek film in my opinion, in acting, story and direction. I'm afraid it was Daniel Craig's James Bond all over again - the same character names, but none of the magic or fun. Martin |
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Post by The Doctor on May 14, 2009 18:10:25 GMT
I agree.
I'm a die-hard fan of the Star Trek fans. I even like the (fairly maligned, in honesty) 5th one. But this was the first one where I actually felt bored during it.
-Ralph
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Post by Bogatan on May 14, 2009 18:47:44 GMT
Nemisis bored me senseless even though I wanted to like it. In fact I kept thinking how much more I would have enjoyed Nemisis if it the material had been handled in the same way as this film.
Initially I was huh? about the engineering being so industrial but it grew on me pretty quickly. The bridge on the other hand was indeed far to i-mac.
As far as reboots go as I said I liked how this one was handled. Spocks presence and the acknowledgement the other time line was still there worked for me. Seeing the Star Trek universe unfold without all the back story should be good.
On the other hand the fact is that the only Star Trek series that is technically in continuity for the movies (beyond Spocks likely perfect memory) is Enterprise.
Andy
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Post by Bogatan on May 14, 2009 18:57:15 GMT
The did a bloody continuity reboot! Transformers and James Bond have already made me prejudiced against reboots of quality long-running franchises in the same medium (i.e. TF comics and Bond films), but this was an even weaker reboot than most, since it erases all the existing Star Trek series and films, but requires the new continuity to obey all the same rules as the old one, because of the causal link. (The Dominion and the Borg are presumably still in their respective quadrants. Dunno if Spock will think of warning anyone about that though.) And I found it highly unlikely that 25 years after a significant change in the timeline (the destruction of a starship and death of Kirk's father), the same crew still finds itself coming together on the same ship. I'm surprised they were all still born, let alone all still in Starfleet. Martin Im pretty sure that Kirk is one of the younger crew members, Spock, Scotty, Bones (who didnt get enough to do but could potentially be the best bit of recasting) are definitely older and the rest if not older were probably born so near the even that the alteration to the timeline hadn't had timeto make a huge difference.
25 years later and the differencse are more pronounced. There no reason to assume they wouldn't all have still joined Starfleet but getting them all aboard the Enterprise is a little more suspect, particularly Scotty.
I imagine it would have more concequences to TNG DS9 and Voyager, vertainly Tuvok future existence might be in doubt. I suspect he was probably born about the time Vulcan was destroyed.
Andy |
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on May 14, 2009 19:01:44 GMT
Presumably Data's head is still in that cave, destined never to have a body, and Guinan will wait forever and never meet Picard again. It is now a parallel universe Kirk and co. who saved the whales in the '80s, and those who stopped the Borg and enabled Cochrane to have his first warp flight will never be born. Martin |
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Post by Bogatan on May 14, 2009 19:35:12 GMT
It depends on numerous things but the Borg are only a factor if Q alerts them to the Federation. If that doesn't happen then no Borg no first contact.
Actually Picard seems to have come from afairly no Starfleet family so he may very well still exist even if seemingly dozen of ships were destroyed with the loss of thousands of lives that shouldn't have been ended so soon.
I imagine we'll eventually see lots of New TNG/DS9/Voyager books.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on May 14, 2009 20:55:59 GMT
And another thing, why did no-one on Earth think of taking out the Romulan drill when it began its attack? That cop on his hoverbike could have done it pretty easily with a hand-held phaser, judging by what happened on Vulcan, but I'd imagine they have some sort of jet fighter type things they could also attack it with. Martin |
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Post by The Doctor on May 14, 2009 20:58:01 GMT
Ah, well, the movie is designed to be so stupidly fast that all notions of basic plot logic fall out the window.
-Ralph
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Post by The Doctor on May 15, 2009 16:48:24 GMT
And another thing, the alternate timeline stuff is just wank. It means I can't invest in these characters because well, it just reminds me that more interesting original versions of them still exist in this continuity, just somewhere else. What a load of shite. Either do a proper reboot or not. This isn't even the beginning of a completely new version of Star Trek or 'the early adventures of the characters we know and love'. It's a half-and-half version. Pish!
And don't even start me on Kirk going from cadet to Captain in one mission. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. Thing is though, one line could have patched it, if it was implied a significant chunk of the fleet was wiped out at Vulcan by Nero then there would have been justification for promoting fast to fill out key roles, as happens in war-time.
-Ralph |
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Post by Bogatan on May 15, 2009 17:15:58 GMT
Thats how I interpreted events. Still a stretch but it appeared to be pretty wholesale carnage.
Andy
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on May 15, 2009 17:33:02 GMT
And another thing, what's with this "Get him off this ship" guff? Don't they have a lockable room to keep him in? Nope, look, we're passing a planet, let's drop him onto it. He might get eaten by gratuitous CG monsters, or he might have the incredible chance of landing at the one spot on the planet right next to a cave containing an essential element of the plot. What are the odds!
Martin
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Post by The Doctor on May 15, 2009 17:42:29 GMT
Ah, but to do otherwise would have required intelligent plotting!
-Ralph
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on May 15, 2009 19:40:19 GMT
I've just re-watched First Contact. It came across even better than usual, watched the day after that new one failed to impress. First Contact is just showing off really. After years of only having one actor of Patrick Stewart's calibre in Star Trek, they put in not one, not two, but three guest stars in the same league. And made the film about the most important event in the timeline. And gave it the top villains. And the best Jerry Goldsmith score ever. And the best direction. And the best script. Heck, they even made Worf good by giving him lines made for him like, "If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand!"
The Picard/Lily scenes, particularly the force-field window and the Captain Ahab scene, are sublime. And then there's the pay-off of first contact: "Live long and prosper." "Thanks."
No wonder the last two TNG films were crap. They must have crumbled at the challenge of doing anything like as good.
Martin
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Post by The Doctor on May 15, 2009 21:21:06 GMT
First Contact is tosh done well. It allows scenes to breathe, and just has a good solid story.
-Ralph
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Post by legios on May 19, 2009 19:43:40 GMT
Well, I took advantage of the fact that the cinema is usually fairly quiet on a weekday afternoon and dondered along to see this - as I had been warned that it probably wasn't something that would be worth seeing on the small screen at a later date.
That advice was well-founded - this is not a film that is going to play particularly well on the small screen as it is primarily driven by visual spectacle. I didn't find it entirely to my taste I'm am sorry to report. It felt quite light on plot, with what plot there was primarily existing purely to set up the next stunt sequence/eye-candy. The individual set-pieces were competently executed, but I didn't so much get the sense of the plot progressing through them, as that the film strung them together end-to-end until it was almost done and then tapped an ending on to hold the set-pieces in place. In the end the way the film was paced didn't really work for me. I think I would have prefered it if they had slowed down once or twice to take a breath instead of rushing onto the next cool idea they had.
The production design didn't really work for me either - different decks of the Enterprise didn't actually look like they were in any way shape or form part of the same vessel, because there was no real carry-through of design elements. The
enemy vessel meanwhile appeared externally to be comprised of a bundle of spare chaosdeathspikybits with an engine glued on, and on the inside to be a giant pit with some ledges running around/across it. Which didn't so much look like alien design as quite irrational.
On the bright side, I thought that some of the cast did a decent job. The bloke playing young James Kirk hit not only what the script was looking for, but also a performance that allowed you to see elements of the previous version of the character hinted at. The actor playing Christopher Pike was wonderful. He had the decisive military leader thing down-pat and was very credible in the role, he also had some quite enviable screen presence. (Actually, I do think that a story with that actor playing that character in the lead role would be quite good).
The first ten minutes of the film were also very good. It just felt unfortunately that too much of the rest of the film was playing a game of oneupmanship with itself and that story took a back seat to squeezing in as many set-pieces as possible.
It delivers action and spectacle but I never really any sense of attachment to what happens. There isn't enough in the characters for me to really feel I care what happens to them.
It aims for showy spectacle and a constant stream of stunts buffered by some of the same rather broad humor that the writers brought to Transformers and I guess in terms of its own aspirations it succeeds in doing what it set out to do.
I just found it rather a charmless affair to be honest.
Karl
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Gav
Drone
John Travoltage!
Posts: 2,047
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Post by Gav on May 20, 2009 21:43:33 GMT
I found it to be rather the opposite for me, really. The film charmed me in such a way that I was completely disarmed for the duration.
I've never been too enamoured with the original Star Trek. I'm a much bigger fan of The Next Generation in all its early 90's dayglo glory. Something about this film just sucked me in, in a way that no big summer movie has managed in years. Going in expecting dumb leaps of faith and explosions is a given with these kinds of things - finding something a little more is a welcome surprise.
That said, I always feel a little happier about a film on Orange Wednesday. Haha
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