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Star Trek Into Darkness Full Spoiler Discussion — Page 7

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Just got back, really enjoyed it.  Can't wait to finally read this thread!

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timdiggerm said:

greenpenguino said:

TREKBBS

Oh gosh how long has that been around?

A decade at least, (I used to be a member) but I don't think it was ever something you dialed up with your trusty modem on a IBM PC XT clone or anything. ;)

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Did anyone notice the transgender (?) officer (?) on the bridge?

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TV's Frink said:

Did anyone notice the transgender (?) officer (?) on the bridge?

You're either thinking that cyborgs are transgender, only transgender people look like women but shave their heads, or are talking about someone I missed.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

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timdiggerm said:

TV's Frink said:

Did anyone notice the transgender (?) officer (?) on the bridge?

You're either thinking that cyborgs are transgender, only transgender people look like women but shave their heads, or are talking about someone I missed.

I think this is who I'm talking about...

 

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Darwin

 

Although I'm not 100% sure because I don't remember her having any lines.  She may not be transgender, but she had big arms, a bald head, and some distracting makeup.

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TV's Frink said:

timdiggerm said:

TV's Frink said:

Did anyone notice the transgender (?) officer (?) on the bridge?

You're either thinking that cyborgs are transgender, only transgender people look like women but shave their heads, or are talking about someone I missed.

I think this is who I'm talking about...

 

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Darwin

 

Although I'm not 100% sure because I don't remember her having any lines.  She may not be transgender, but she had big arms, a bald head, and some distracting makeup.

I thought that was just a bald lady... or a deltan like ilia. Not sure what was up with Lobot being in a Trek movie though.

<span style=“font-weight: bold;”>The Most Handsomest Guy on OT.com</span>

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I thought it was a Ilia reference too. There was also an alien gal who looks like H.R. Giger's girlfriend. I think she was on the bridge in the last movie as well?

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I didn't notice her on the bridge in ST09, and I just watched it last week.  And it wasn't really the bald head that stood out as much as the arms and makeup.

 

I wouldn't have any problem taking a piss in front of her, anyway. ;-)

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TV's Frink said:

Although I'm not 100% sure because I don't remember her having any lines.  She may not be transgender, but she had big arms, a bald head, and some distracting makeup.

I was thinking transgender too when I saw her. But I guess she could just be a bigger framed girl who likes that close cut look.

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Pretty sure the actor and character is a woman [100%] but one of my friends did lean over and quote Lafayette from True Blood when she sat down. http://trueblood.wikia.com/wiki/Lafayette_Reynolds I think she did have a line at the end but i'm getting kinda hazy on the details. Really need to see it again. The bald guy at the back of the bridge did concern me though - He appears to be an android but looks far more real than DATA who was meant to be a technological marvel 100 years further in the future. Rule of cool, i guess. I might be wrong but I think Silverwook was referring to the gal with the raised lines on her face..
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I thought it was an Ilia reference as well, especially considering she took over navigating after Chekov was moved somewhere else.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Finally saw this.

Definitely the best film I have seen this year, makes Iron Man 3 look like a TV movie. I don't understand any of the criticism Trek fans have levelled at this. For shame, you got a terrific, fantastic movie that is the best thing to happen to the series in almost 20 years and people are disappointed. Good grief. I loved the twists and turns, the cast is fantastic and the action scenes were suspenseful and expertly crafted. There are very, very few criticisms I can think of for this film. If you want to nitpick every film has plot holes and flaws--Star Wars, Dark Knight, Wrath of Khan--but when films deliver you don't really care about them or notice in the moment. This film was like that. I'll be seeing this again while I can and I'm pretty pumped for what Abrams will do with Star Wars.

But honestly guys, how THE FUCK can people here dislike the film? I can understand if you didn't think it was great. But seriously guys, just enjoy the film, barring Man of Steel this is one of the best science fiction blockbusters of the last decade.

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Because after four years all they could come up with is Wrath of Khan redux?

I'm sure younger fans will love it. It's a well made film, but I don't love it like I did the 2009 film. I simply have no desire to see it again at the moment.

If the powers that be don't give a damn about the older fanbase, I'll find something else to spend my money on.

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I thought it was plenty different enough, yet still had nice homages to TWOK.  This Trek will never be the original Trek, but I enjoyed this one for what it was.

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zombie84 said:

For shame, you got a terrific, fantastic movie that is the best thing to happen to the series in almost 20 years and people are disappointed. Good grief.

I dunno, zombie.  All I saw was a pointless, soulless, heartless film about absolutely nothing more than explosions.  I will give you the point that the cast is good.  They were good in the '09 film too.  But then again, they're written as nothing more than caricatures of themselves.  I'm not going to lie and say I had a bad time watching it.  After all, I was in a drive-in theatre, and that's just fun.  My first time to ever be at one.  But it was just a pretty forgettable experience overall.  I wish these guys knew how to tell a story, but they just... don't.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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In the '09 film they were impersonating the original crew, because that was kind of the thrust of the film. Here, they really didn't have to worry about that, and I noticed a big difference, they really came into their own, probably partly because there was a real story, whereas the point of '09 was more Star Trek Junior High The Movie, and necessitated more of that self-conscious prequel mindset. It worked in that film, but I was glad to see that the characters and actors are more immersed in the roles and carving out the characters. McCoy was doing a bit of caricaturing in Into Darkness, but it's not very in your face, and the McCoy role is so bold it's hard not to without seeming inauthentic.

I don't understand for the life of me how anyone can call this film a bit shit. It's a bit brilliant. I understand that it's a fast-paced military thriller, but the two best Trek films by Meyers were like that too. Who cares if it's re-using WOK/Space Seed elements, it's a prequel/reboot so you have to expect it to touch upon the classics. Next film will probably involve the Klingon war and god knows every TOS movie ever made involved them in some capacity, but that's just the way ST is. I'm a lifelong Trek fan but I don't care what changes they make as long as it serves a good purpose. The script to this film was very good and touched upon all the classic Trek morality issues that the best episodes were about, while simultaneously giving us great characters with believable and interesting dialogue, lots of humour, an unpredictable storyline, plenty of surprises, while also crafting a tense thriller that used and even inverted the best parts of WOK while giving twist after twist and keeping you glued to the screen. And on top of it--it's just a fucking great action thriller, ST or not.

I was 100% spoiler free going in--didn't know about the Klingons or Nimoy, heard rumours of Khan but sort of brushed them off--and this film impressed me immensely every minute of screen time. Not saying it's perfect--the WOK throwbacks were a bit too heavy at the end for my tastes and I saw the Kirk resurrection a mile away--but honestly guys, I really don't understand how this did nothing for you. People hate on Dark Knight too, but what in the name of fuck is their problem, that is a great movie as well, it's stuff like this that feed the lame "can't please everyone" excuse that idiots use to defend the crappy movies they like (cough, Attack of the Clones, Transformers). Everything is relative, so if this movie is a disappointment it defies medical science how anyone here made it out of the Phantom Menace screenings still alive. To be fair, part of the problem is that ST is very diverse and different people like it for different reasons, but if you don't like Into Darkness it baffles me how you could profess to like WOK, Undiscovered Country, and episodes like Galileo Seven and Doomsday Machine, which are two of the best episodes and also are fast-paced military themed stories about morality issues--heck, so was the original Space Seed.

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I'm sorry, but I just don't see this is as "can't please the Trekkies" film.  I love The Dark Knight.  I loved it so much that the first time I saw it in theatres, I had to go back the same day and watch it again.  I honestly can't imagine how anyone could compare the two.  To use a Trek example, if The Dark Knight is "The City on the Edge of Forever," this film is "The Way to Eden"!

The Meyers films, especially The Undiscovered Country (which I love) were military thrillers.  This... again, I just can't understand how the comparison could possibly exist.  The Meyers films actually were about the ethics of militarism.  This movie is just an excuse to have a big, Texan-drawling, black hat admiral with a big ship to fire at the Enterprise.  There's no moral quandary.  Okay, well, that's not entirely true.  It's presented in a completely black and white way, given the tiniest bit of lip service when it's first introduced, and then completely done away with to make room for more space battles and then never, ever, EVER touched on again.

And I'm right there with you with the philosophy of, "I don't care what changes they make as long as they serve a purpose."  I've been screaming that philosophy for the past four years now.  I guess the difference is, is that I just don't see them doing that.  The changes they have made have been mostly superficial in terms of ramifications and more just to get an acknowledgement out of old-school fans that they actually are doing something "different."  But it's to service nothing more than a gimmick.  "Oh, look, we blew up Vulcan."  "Oh, look, it's the exact death scene from TWOK, word for word, except we reversed the roles and removed all context and consequences."  In fact, until I saw this movie, I loved the destruction of Vulcan in the last film.  It gave me hope that maybe they'd have the balls to actually do something interesting.  But then, as I was watching that death scene in this film, it finally dawned on me that neither one of them means anything or services any kind of STORY.  All they can do is throw shock and awe at you, but without any context or themes or meaning, they just fall completely flat.

I should also mentioned that I also went in completely spoiler free.  I never saw a single trailer, I didn't follow any of the pre-release stuff.  Like you, I thought Khan was going to be in it but never bothered to confirm that.  But I actually had high hopes going into this one, that maybe, since they wasted two hours last time in another "nexus" plot that did nothing but justify its own existence, maybe this time they'd actually tell a story.  Sadly, in my opinion, I was wrong.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Gaffer Tape said:

The Meyers films, especially The Undiscovered Country (which I love) were military thrillers.  This... again, I just can't understand how the comparison could possibly exist.  The Meyers films actually were about the ethics of militarism.  This movie is just an excuse to have a big, Texan-drawling, black hat admiral with a big ship to fire at the Enterprise.  There's no moral quandary.  Okay, well, that's not entirely true.  It's presented in a completely black and white way, given the tiniest bit of lip service when it's first introduced, and then completely done away with to make room for more space battles and then never, ever, EVER touched on again.

 

I will agree with you that Undiscovered Country was more complex--it's the most complex film in the whole franchise, and in my opinion the best--but is WOK not black and white? Is it not an excuse to have a superhuman mastermind blasting the shit out of the Enterprise? A chess game played with photon torpedoes and weapons of mass destruction?

Yes. It is.

But it does it SO WELL.

So does this film. And this is what I mean about the double standard. Plus, UNLIKE WOK, this film raises moral questions about whether it is right to kill the threat or have him face due process, whereas WOK was mainly about "how soon can we kill Khan?", and even though WOK raised the issues of "the needs of the many" at the very end, the whole concept of "what would you do to save your family, however you define that term", or "what do you do when your friend could die", or "at what point do you disobey orders" and "how far would you protect the system you serve, even when you think it is wrong", and what are the responsibilities of a captain--these are central issues in Into Darkness but either marginally touched upon in WOK or not touched upon at all. The most profound aspect of WOK was the realization of aging, that you really can't cheat death, and that's reflected in all the ways Into Darkness philosophizes about morality in the ways that WOK chose to do it in another manner. They are equally profound--if any of them are profound at all--but they go about it in slightly different ways. In WOK, they are expressed in slower, conversational scenes mainly, whereas in Into Darkness they are expressed through action scenes (or much tenser, edge of your seat conversational scenes), but in equal depth, and I think the fact that they are tied into action and violence gives the misleading impression that WOK is somehow more intellectual.

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If you want to see the fandom split down the middle on a Trek film, dig into some old Starlog issues at archive.org, and read the reactions to TMP. Even TWOK wasn't universally beloved by everyone back in the day.

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