Tobar said:
DominicCobb said:
The other thing people forget is that they are MOVIES. With a TV show you have more time to explore those things.
Most Star Trek episodes are self-contained stories. They have about 45 minutes after commercials to tell a complete story and were easily capable of doing so. With a movie you have anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes to tell a story.
That excuse does not compute.
DominicCobb said:
What I always loved in the original Star Trek was the adventure and the character dynamics. As far as I can tell JJ's got that, so I am satisfied.
TOS had a charismatic captain that adamantly believed in what the Federation stood for and strived to follow its laws and edicts to the best of his ability. It had a half-Vulcan First Officer who quietly struggled with his humanity. Lastly, it had an honorable if ornery Chief Medical Officer who found joy in taking jabs at his green blooded friend.
JJ Trek has a reckless maverick with a complete disregard for the rules who skirts by on the seat of his pants. It has a pointy eared psychopath who regular pummels others when he loses control of his constant seething rage. Lastly it has an ornery Chief Medical Officer who doesn't get to do much.
JJ Trek just takes the pop culture stereotypes of the characters and turns up the dial.
Also and here is a big point the biggest reason I liked Kirk when I was a kid was that he was a man of honor and didn't expect others to fall on the sword or lie for him, when he broke the rules he owned up to it. Remember that the premise of Star Trek is that these stories are taken from Kirk's official logs so every time we hear about him breaking the rules he told those above him in the chain of command what he did and why he did it but he didn't expect his crew to lie or get in trouble for him. Every time we saw Kirk called out for breaking the rules he was honest and told the truth, that is why he got away with it because his commanding officers knew they could trust him and that if he broke the rules there was a good reason for it. In Star trek 3 Kirk gives his crew every chance not to go along with him and in Star Trek 4 there is no question that when they return to earth they will plead guilty instead of trying to cover up or make excuses for their crimes and in Star Trek 6 Kirk takes responsiblity for the actions of crewmen who he had n way of stopping while he is on trial.
Compare this to the last Star Trek movie where not only does Kirk lie to Pike but he then treats Spock like dirt for not lying as well when he knows full well Vulcans don't lie, and then he tries to pressure Scotty to sign for something that puts the whole ship in danger. There is nothing of the old crew dynamic in JJ's Trek and the plot is stupid, if someone with half a brain or any kind of sense of honor were put in charge of the ship for thirty seconds every single one of the villain's plots would fail.
Oh and were we supposed to be surprised by the twist where the guy who plays the villain in every movie and Tv show turned out to be the villain?
The really sad part is this movies didn't have to be bad and they didn't have to give up having action scenes in order to be good. Look at GOTG, there are scenes in that movie that give us a sense of wonder while we are in space and give you an idea of what the politics of the galaxy are and they make the villain relatible without making him so nice that we are rooting for him and Starlord is given the exact same character arc they tried to pull with Kirk and James Gunn pulls it off with less then half of the run time of JJ's movies, so it can be done.
Another good example of how they could have made these good comes in the form of the book and film series Hornblower. The books about the adult Hornblower were one of the things that inspired the character of Captain Kirk so why not use the books about the teenage Hornblower as a blueprint for what to do with Kirk in the new movies? You want it action based, fine then make it action based but make it smart and write the character so I can root for him. Put the Federation at war with the Klingons and have it be a coming of age tale of a boy who is learning the ropes and making mistakes but his Captain sees something special in him and helps him learn at a realistic pace and watch this boy have to out think the Klingons and form bonds of friendship that will last the rest of his life. You don't even have to read the books to see how this works, just watch the TV movies, they all had a run time of just 100 minutes and they all were smarter, had more plot, and had a more compelling character moments and bonds then both of the last two Star Trek movies combined and none of the characters had to act like idiots to make the plots work.
What makes me mad is that these movies didn't have to lose the heart and soul of Star Trek or not be smart in order to give Paramount what they wanted in big screen Trek but JJ and his team were lazy and took the easy rout and just remade the Transformers movies with the names of Star Trek characters and places and that is just sad if you ask me.
This is why I wish NM was directing the next movie, because he like Roddenbury was inspired by the Hornblower stories and knows how to handle this type of action adventure story and could make it work while still letting it focus on action scenes.
I guess to me JJ Trek is like the zombie of someone I once loved, sure it may look like that person and even be walking around but the heart and soul are gone so it's just a rotting corpse. Everything I love about it died a long time ago.