Star Trek Beyond

This doesn't seem to be based on anything in the film, or any understanding how how military capacities of moving ships compare with castles / towns / fucking planets?

Ha ha, this is the very rare example of I think me actually understanding something. When they were at Idris's base, he tricked Uluru and Sulu into sending the fake distress signal, which would lure the federation defenses from the glass planet to the wrong place, and trap them in the nebula. (Right?) That left the glass planet undefended, so he sent his huge swarm to attack it, and they would have succeeded were it not for Kirk et al. showing up and disrupting the swarm with the Beastie Boys. Right? Because what else was the huge indestructible swarm there for but to attack the glass planet?

Ergo, had Kirk not appeared with he Franklin, Krall (Krull? Krill?) would have showed up at the mostly undefended glass planet with his whole beehive fleet.

But you're right, I typically do lack any understanding of how military capacities of moving ships compare with castles / towns / fucking planets. What can you do?

i'm glad we now know the fate of tom paris's great-grandma.

Spock emo-crying at the beginning annoyed me a bit. Spock has been known to show the unexpected emotion but weep-on-command like he's in a Nicholas Sparks movie, no...unless he was under the influence of some virus or something.

This is probably the best of the three so far but still only ok. The relentless and at times incomprehensible crash bang wallop is wearying.

Ha ha, this is the very rare example of I think me actually understanding something. When they were at Idris's base, he tricked Uluru and Sulu into sending the fake distress signal, which would lure the federation defenses from the glass planet to the wrong place, and trap them in the nebula. (Right?) That left the glass planet undefended, so he sent his huge swarm to attack it, and they would have succeeded were it not for Kirk et al. showing up and disrupting the swarm with the Beastie Boys. Right? Because what else was the huge indestructible swarm there for but to attack the glass planet?

I will have to check, but my memory is that Sulu and Uhura (Uluru is the big rock in the middle of Australia) sending the distress signal isn't part of his plan, just that he'd pre-hacked the communication so that any distress calls have their headers rewritten to appear to be from somewhere else. I took this to be one of the first hints that Krall _really_ knows how the Federation works.

The respondents to the distress would have brought some ships, possibly tooled up, but they wouldn't have brought the main planetary defences, as the main planetary defences would be planetary - probably too large to put on a ship, but more to the point the planetary defences will be there to defend the planet. To go back to the analogy, if a fort hears that there's a bunch of horsemen making trouble a couple of miles away, they might send out some horsemen, but they won't trundle the cannons over.

I mean, the plan isn't to take the base with their fleet, because <makes Matthew Perry how-what-how hand gestures> and also because, as you say, they could attempt that at any time with as much chance, but to get inside enough to dump the new toy into the air system. Which is similar to how smaller armies take big cities in general, poisoning wells (or starvation, but the setting obviously complicates that).

In fairness this does mean that after Sabotage, the plan is fucked, but Movie Magic and the necessity to resolve things with a fistfight...

Because what else was the huge indestructible swarm there for but to attack the glass planet?

Well, to seize ships and feed their crew to Krall.

This is probably the best of the three so far but still only ok. The relentless and at times incomprehensible crash bang wallop is wearying.

― Neptune Bingo (Michael B), Monday, 1 August 2016 11:42 (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hugely crazy talk.

This was hugely inferior to the first. Much better than the second. It was about 6/10. The plot was stinking. It looked good. The way they defeated the "wait how did one guy build all this again" alien fleet was the stupidest thing i may ever have seen. The attack on the enterprise was good. The "character development" snippets were about the worst I've ever seen. That one shot of Kirk and swedish alien on the bike may be the worst I've ever seen. Really I may be overrating it at 6/10 now I think of it.

not dumber than Riker Enterprise joystick

Yeah in fairness documenting the full dumbness would require watching with pause button and notepad and thats not gonna happen

Yeah its not as good as the first one actually but all I can remember about the first one is Spock seizing Kirk by the throat and what a shit bad guy Eric Bana was. The more I think about "Beyond" after watching it (which isnt a whole lot) the more shit it seems.

Not a fan of nu-Star Trek tbh but I'm hoping they can pull one decent movie out of the bag

Saw this on the weekend, I thought it was great fun. I'm not a precious Trekkie tho which I'm sure helps. I go into any Trek story expecting plotholes, ridiculousness and easily resolved conundrums, a la any of the TV shows - why would anyone be surprised by this?

I just assumed it was cheekily embracing all the Trek cliches. Like all the "dammit, Jim" stuff ... he pulls off the "Dammit" line, like, 10 times. Or Scottie calling the alien woman "lassie" all the time. We get it, you're Scotty, you're Scottish. I also got a kick out of all the fake rock sets, which seemed very old school Trek as well, especially compared to the expansive, expensive FX.

This is spot on, for eg. I did notice one part with what seemed like obvious rock sets and chuckled to myself, not even realising it might be on purpose, but the "dammit Jim!" stuff was hilarious.

The Beastie Boys thing was stupid, incongruous fun.

My only quibble was how bloody dark half the film was, what was with that? But hey - NO GODDAMN ABRAMS LENS FLARE HUURAAAAH.

I had to see it in 3D because my local theatre has figured that they can get people to pay the 3D tax by not offering the version people want to see. There was one scene where the only thing I could make out was a gleam across the floor.

Wait the very first shot was lens flare.

there was prob a bit but jja was completely over the top with his use of it in comparison it was in every damn scene. it's fresh in my mind cos I saw it last week

i am not a precious trekkie but i do have some self respect. this was fucking garbage

Clearly JJ Abrams thinks Star Trek is boring, and it shows.

― schwantz, Monday, 25 July 2016 21:31 Bookmark

so true

ding ding

he only produced this one tho

Yeah he wasnt the director of this?

Justin Lin of Fast and Furious fame

vin diesel should play this guy next movie:
https://michaelstvtray.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/ted-cassidy-star-trek1.jpg

This was garbage.

saw this last night (wife wanted to see it for her birthday) and I enjoyed it fine. The right cast and tone and design go a long way for me. Yeah there were plotholes and some dumb moments here and there but I dug it, it was basically just one long episode and it hit all the right character beats without being crammed chockfull of easter egg callbacks to other shit. Really dug the design of the Yorktown and the random plant/animal/rock details of the planet, and the way the underlying Trek ethos of utopian multiculturalism got sprinkled throughout. Walking home afterwards that got me thinking about why exactly I prefer Trek to Star Wars by such a wide margin - Star Wars isn't really about ideas or even science fiction, it's essentially a classic mythological dynastic drama. It's central theme is about succession/family/destiny and the sci-fi stuff is just window dressing. But Trek comes out of the sci-fi tradition of imagining a better world, of projecting an idealized future that reflects our fears/hopes of the present, and as such it feels much richer to me. It's about envisioning a functional utopia - the crew! everybody different but committed to each other. The utopia is intermittently silly and ridiculous, sometimes self-consciously so, but that gets mined for laughs (Trek def seems more humorous to me in general than Star Wars, another point in its favor).

I totally agree except the movie sucked.

haha well there ya go

I admit that by the last big battle sequence I basically didn't give a fuck about the central conflict/threat/whatever of course Kirk was gonna get saved by Bones and Spock duh

Just experienced a nerd self-backpat from the picture above: "Ruk!"

I disagree and this movie sucked

Good post, Shakey.

"i liked this movie that got me thinking what i like about trek is everything this movie ignored" dumbass

Who are you addressing?

Justin Lin

I was p clear that this movie *did* emphasize what i like about trek - the multiculturalism, space utopias (what else would you call the yorktown? It was basically a mccall painting), the crew/cast's commitment to each other, the humor.

Xp

yorktown was like they were fighting & chasing inside an escher drawing

but i still dug it

it's very diluted star trek, though for some reason that doesn't bug me as much as it should

Liked this movie for the most part. I like these characters, but I don't love them like the originals.

The main thing that bugged me was calling the starbase 'Yorktown'. That was the original name for the Enterprise in Roddenberry's proposal to NBC and is mentioned in the show and is assumed to be comparable to Enterprise. They're both named after WWII era carriers. The original ocean-going Yorktown was named after the American Revolutionary War battle. This all made sense in the mid-60s pitching an American show to an American network during the Cold War.

I'm sure Pegg (or whoever) meant it as a nerdy tribute, but calling a stationary base "Yorktown" is very wrong (and something Roddenberry would have never allowed!). Also, it seems like the base is a testament to the cosmopolitan nature of the Federation, so why would it be named after an old earth battle?

Also, it was too big. The recent movies always get the scales wrong. The earth starbase in the TOS films was huge but conceivable. Yorktown is SOOO big.

Finally, why is it "commanded" by a Starfleet admiral? It would seem that millions of people should have an elected governor at least.

because the federation is basically a military dictatorship

Speculative revisionism!

Oh dear, this wasn't very good, was it?

In the end, I think I preferred the ambitious claptrap of Into Darkness than this cover band greatest hits version of Trek. Anyway - TV show in a couple months, so who cares.

This was entirely unmemorable, Karl Urban is starting to piss me off with his almost parodic performance, and they stole the "classical music" joke almost verbatim from Futurama.

I have retained very little memory of this movie.

This year's laudable 'enterprise' rocketed past every reheated rehash you've seen before. One of America's most able directors effortlessly applying his artistic legerdemain. Legendary, ostensibly what every enthusiast needed.

I very much doubt they're going to do another one of these, and I guess I'm fine with that.

"classical music" joke was also in a 1965 episode of Doctor Who where they watch the Beatles on a tardis TV.

I watched this (ST Beyond) last night. It had about enough plot to fill a smallish teacup and the characters had nothing of interest to do, except insofar as being in danger and fighting will seem to be interesting for a while, just because we all have monkey brains. This movie is what the word shite was coined to describe.

Are the plot holes big enough to fit a space station? yes!

Are the characters totally basic? yes!

Did I care? nope. I'm probably going to watch it again so I can give it the proper praise it deserves. Justin Lin directing a sci-fi action movie written by Simon Pegg is very much what I hoped it would be.

tombot otm

love the 70s-paperback-cover look of this movie

oh I said that upthread before

me otm, i guess