Comments on: Fan Reviews (Star Trek Film)

By: rlp

rlp — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:41:51 +0000

I missed the new movie this summer due to my father’s death. I was very excited to purchase the new DVD. OH MY GAWD! What have they done to my beloved Star Trek???? I don’t need or want to see Mr. Spock kissing pooing Uhura!!!! Don’t get me wrong Uhura (especially the original) is a knock out beauty, but I just don’t need to see them kissing and groping on the bridge!
I guess I am am an old 54 year old man who has watched the original (over and over) for 44 years. They made star Trek a knock off of Star Wars!!! The ship looked terrible, the aliens were stolen from Star Wars and the plot sucked. And they have mysterious stoic mystical Mr. Spock kissy pooing Uhura having Bridge sex! YUCK!!!! It is a terrible movie, bring them back from what ever time-line the producers stuck them in…I want my heros back in “real” Star Trek time!!!!!!

By: mike

mike — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:05:03 +0000

the situation is what it is! i liked 95% of the movie, the other 5% i would
be nitpicking with thing that may not matter. no more Kahn – any more
than we should repaint the Mona Lisa!, but Kahn could b refered to
in a remake of a time travel “assignment:earth”, “tommorw is yesterday”,
“the changling”, “the naked time” with a twist of star trek 4 save the whales……….
oh yea: i support the “reestablishment ” of canon, via about 10 movies.
but it wuold take to ong to write it here

By: SChaos1701

SChaos1701 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:35:21 +0000

693

By: Lore

Lore — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:44:19 +0000

To quote William Shatner “Get out of your parents basement”. The movie was great. Its a new generation out there.

By: SChaos1701

SChaos1701 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:17:43 +0000

691

They’re allowed to have one. I’m also allowed to say that their opinions are crap.

By: Romy

Romy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:49:58 +0000

#689 & 690

Because of course only people who share your opinion are allowed to have one, right?

By: SChaos1701

SChaos1701 — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:05:10 +0000

689

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Devon…good job on telling off the riff raff who don’t know what they’re talking about. Kudos sir! *high five!*

By: Devon

Devon — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:56:38 +0000

Sucks to be 683, 684, and 687. Buh bye guys!

By: Avatar

Avatar — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:57:14 +0000

I want to start of by saying that I absolutely loved this movie. The acting was superb, the characters weren’t wooden and forced, and there wasn’t a dull moment. The 126 minutes spent on this movie were thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable. I do take issue with a few things, primarily, a couple of scenes that I thought could have been done better, and a plot which was a little bit hard to accept, that forced a little bit too much “willing suspension of disbelief” to accept.
We start out aboard the USS Kelvin, where Lt. George Kirk is XO. The Kelvin discovers a strange anomaly, which produces a massive Romulan ship. The Romulan whoops on the Kelvin a bit, before demanding surrender of the Kelvin. The captain accepts, telling Lt. Kirk to evacuate should something happen to him. The Romulan commander (Nero)(Eric Bana) asks the captain if he knows where to find Ambassador Spock. The captain has no idea what he’s talking about. Nero demands to know the stardate, and after learning the stardate, he kills the Captain.
On board the Kelvin, the crew sees that the captain’s lifesigns have failed, and they begin evacuation, and prepare to set the autopilot to a collision course with the Romulan ship. We then cut to sickbay being evacuated, with a pregnant woman about to go into labor being rushed into a shuttle. The woman turns out to be Lt. Kirk’s wife, and she is giving birth to their son. The Romulan ship keeps firing at the Kelvin, heavily damaging her, and destroying the autopilot system. Lt. Kirk realizes that in order to save the rest of the crew, he would have to manually pilot the Kelvin to its collision course. This entire scene is powerful and heart wrenching, as the woman gives birth and realizes that her husband has resolved to stay on the bridge to save the rest of the crew. The two talk over the comm for the last remaining minute before the Kelvin is destroyed in a collision with the Romulan ship, deciding to name their son James (after her father) because Kirk always felt that Tiberius (his father’s name) was a terrible name. This opening scene is just excellent, the crisis feels real with the concerned husband trying to keep his traumatized wife calm as his death is imminent, the actors pull this dramatic scene so powerfully, I actually felt my throat tighten up.
The next few scenes catch us up with young Spock and young James Kirk, establishing for us their youths. We see Spock (Zachary Quinto) dealing with conflict from within and without all centered around the fact that he’s half human. Kirk, on the other hand, is unfocused and rebellious, a thrill-seeker and womanizer. This part of the film is done well, because it gives the audience a summary of our two main protagonists, without going into excruciatingly long detail. It’s here to establish Spock’s conflict with his human side, and Kirk’s conflict with himself.
We now join James Kirk (Chris Pine) in a bar, evidently near a Starfleet facility, as the bar is full of cadets. Kirk sets his eyes on an attractive cadet, Uhura (Zoe Saldana). When he hits on her (obviously intoxicated), she blows him off as an uneducated idiot and tells him to leave. He flirts with her some more, before security insists that he leave her alone. Kirk gets into a fight with the security officers, and handles them solo pretty well, until they finally subdue him. The ruckus is broken up when Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) enters the bar, and orders everyone to return to their quarters. Pike then shares a heart-to-heart with Kirk, telling him how much like his father he is, how he’d make a fine captain of a starship. Kirk is dubious of this assertion, until Pike, as he leaves, challenges that Kirk could graduate the academy in 4 years. Kirk responds by saying he’ll do it in 3.
The next morning, Kirk arrives at the boarding station for the academy and boards the shuttle. He is joined by Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban) an angry med student with a southern accent. McCoy isn’t pleased about going into Starfleet, as he is disdainful of space travel, but has no choice because his wife got “everything but [his] bones” in a divorce settlement. I would just like to take an aside for a moment and state that Urban’s performance was flawless. If I weren’t watching a different actor on screen, I would have sworn it was DeForest Kelley himself saying the lines. Urban perfectly captured not only the voice, but also the inflexions and accent established by Kelley as well. Well done, Karl.
The movie cuts ahead again 3 years to Kirk and McCoy talking about Kirk’s second failure of the ‘Kobayashi Maru’ test, a deliberate no-win scenario. Kirk says he’s going to nail it the third time, as he has an idea on how to beat it. We then see Kirk with a woman, who turns out to be an Orion cadet. The two hear the door being accessed, and the woman panics and hides Kirk under her bed, because she promised her roommate that she would stop bringing men back to their room. Turns out, the roommate is Uhura. She comes in and starts talking about how she intercepted a Klingon transmission and decoded it as a distress call from a Klingon fleet that was eventually wiped out by a Romulan ship (this will come into play later). Uhura then stops and asks who the heavy breather under her roommate’s bed is. Kirk is surprised and amused that she can hear him breathing, and leaves rather hastily.
The next day, we see Kirk and the other cadets in the simulator, re-playing the ‘Kobayashi Maru’ scenario. Kirk seems to be in a pleasant spirit, while everyone else (expecting outright failure again) is tense. The situation seems dire, when the simulated Klingon ships lose their shields and are easily destroyed. In the observation room, the instructors are perplexed, as the scenario was designed so that it couldn’t be beaten. We now cut to Kirk before a board of review, to defend himself for changing the conditions of the test so that it was possible to win. Kirk demands to face his accuser, who turns out to be Spock, the developer of the problem. Deliberations continue before they are interrupted by a call for help from Vulcan. Kirk is suspended pending judgment, and all cadets are assigned ships to go investigate the situation at Vulcan.
McCoy and Kirk go to the shuttlebay to find that McCoy has been assigned to the Enterprise, while Kirk was unassigned, because of his pending case. Kirk is outraged, but McCoy comes up with an idea to get him onboard the Enterprise. He injects Kirk with something that makes him sick, and uses that as an excuse to get him to the Enterprise, to receive medical attention. The get to the Enterprise, and McCoy injects Kirk with the antidote. At the same time, the Ops officer, Ensign Chekov (Anton Yelchin) is explaining what they do know about the situation at Vulcan. The circumstances register as familiar to Kirk, as they sound like the same circumstances surrounding the death of his father. Kirk then finds Uhura and asks her again about the Klingon distress call she decoded earlier. While this is happening, Kirk is having an allergic reaction to the antidote given by McCoy, so McCoy is following him around, injecting him with different things to heal him. The writers here did a good job of mixing comedy and dramatic plot build up here, and this is something you’ll see throughout the film.
So Kirk heads off to the bridge to warn Captain Pike that he believes the fleet is warping into a Romulan trap. Pike is angry that Kirk stowed away, and is not inclined to believe Kirk’s assessment of the situation, nor is Spock, who points out that Kirk couldn’t possibly have enough data to come to the conclusion that it’s a trap. Kirk lays out the circumstances of his father’s death, the Romulan attack on the Klingons, and now this. Pike agrees that there may be a correlation, but the Enterprise can’t contact the fleet to warn them.
The Enterprise comes out of warp and is shocked to see that the fleet was destroyed. Pike orders red alert, and begins attacking the Romulan ship. The Romulan ship had deployed some sort of beam drill, which was interfering with communications and transporters. Aboard the Romulan ship, Nero recognizes the Enterprise and orders cease fire to his crew. He then demands that Pike come aboard and discuss terms of surrender, Pike agrees, much to the objection of Kirk and Spock, as they are certain he will be killed. Pike agrees, but says he will be the diversion so that the Enterprise can destroy the drill that is boring a hole into Vulcan, and afterwards, come get him if they can. Pike puts Spock in command, and makes Kirk his acting first officer. So Pike, Kirk, a Redshirt, and Sulu (John Cho) board a shuttle and move towards the Romulan ship. As they get close, Kirk, Redshirt, and Sulu orbital skydive onto the drill platform. Kirk and Sulu make it safely, but the Redshirt, who thought he could maneuver closer, landed wrong and got incinerated by the beam drill. Sulu and Kirk fight some Romulans and then use the Romulan disruptors to damage the beam. Sulu accidentally falls, and Kirk goes after him. Kirk reaches him, and deploys his parachute again, but the straps break under the weight of the two of them. Kirk desparately calls for beamout from the Enterprise. The transporter chief is having a problem locking onto them because they are moving so fast, but Chekov is certain that he can do it, and successfully beams them aboard just in the nick of time.
Nero learns that the beam was damaged, but that they had nearly reached the core of the planet anyway, so he deploys the ‘red matter’. Now, it is never really explained to my satisfaction what red matter is, just what red matter can do, which I’ll get into later. So the red matter is deployed, and a black hole begins forming at Vulcan’s core, and it will swallow the planet in 3 minutes. Spock beams down to collect the Vulcan ruling council and his mother an father. The reach the beamout site, and are all beamed away, but Spock’s mother is swallowed with the planet, and Enterprise loses her signal. Everyone else made it though, and Spock returns to the bridge in time to see Vulcan implode. That’s right, Vulcan is gone. Nero, knowing that Spock witnessed the destruction of Vulcan is pleased and states to Pike that he plans to wipe out the entire Federation, as he holds them responsible for the destruction of Romulus in the future. He sets a course for Earth and goes to warp.
What follows is what I felt was a very poorly written scene. Spock, obviously shaken by the destruction of his home planet, the murder of his mother, and billions of Vulcans, leaves the bridge via turbolift. Uhura follows him and stops the lift once she’s inside, and starts macking on him, and tells him that if there’s anything she can do to help him feel better, she’ll do it, and then continues to mack on him. Now as the film will reveal to us more clearly later, Uhura and Spock have a romantic relationship. But that is not made clear before this, or really during this. I guess I got the impression that Uhura was attempting to sleep her way up the ranks. Especially with Spock’s reaction to her advances, it came off wrong. Maybe I was the only one who saw it this way, but that’s what I got until it was defined more clearly later on.
Spock orders the Enterprise to rendezvous with the rest of the Federation fleet, as they can’t catch Nero unless he was to drop out of warp. Kirk insists that they should be allocating engineering crews to try to push the engines faster, as he believes they should try and stop Nero from destroying Earth. They argue, Spock orders Kirk to be escorted from the bridge, and when Kirk resists, Spock orders Kirk off the ship. So the Enterprise drops Kirk off on the frozen wasteland of Delta-Vega, and resumes it’s course for the fleet. I thought this part in particular was out of character for Spock. Spock may have locked Kirk in his quarters, or even in the brig, but he definitely would not have put him off the ship. It was a plot convenience more than anything else.
So Kirk gets out of the pod they marooned him in, and learns there is a Federation outpost 14Km from where he is. He starts out, but some native beasts start chasing him. He stumbles into some caves, where the beast is fended off by an elderly Vulcan, who is, you guessed it, Spock from the future. Spock is surprised, but happy to see Kirk, who is disbelieving that Spock is who he says he is. After some dialogue back and forth, Spock melds with Kirk, because it’ll be quicker than verbalizing. It is here that the Nero’s motivations are explained. In the year 2387 or so, a star goes supernova and threatens many systems, one of which is Romulus. Spock has an idea to use red matter to create an artificial black hole to swallow up the supernova. Spock’s plan works, but not before Romulus is destroyed. Nero, a miner sees this and is enraged at Spock for failing to stop the supernova in time, and at the Federation, because, somehow, Romulus would have been better off without dealing with the Federation in the first place. The black hole pulls in Spock and Nero and sends them to two different time periods, about 25 years apart. Nero captures Spock’s ship and planned to use the red matter to destroy Vulcan (with Spock watching) and then the rest of the federation. As mentioned before, red matter is never really explained, it’s just a plot device. Red matter can inadvertently cause time travel, which is how Nero gets to this time period. This is the absolute worst part about this film. The motivation for Nero to decide that destroying Vulcan and the rest of the Federation in the past, is completely absurd. Moreover, blaming Spock and the Federation for not stopping a naturally occurring event without thinking that destroying them all in the past still won’t stop the supernova is just backward. Nero has in his possession something that can cause time travel. Wouldn’t it have been more prudent then to figure out a way to control the reaction and go back in time and prevent the destruction of Romulus? This whole part of the plot is what drags down an otherwise perfect movie, we have to forcibly accept that Nero blames Spock and the Federation for the destruction of Romulus, rather than just the pure grief of losing your home in a tragic natural disaster (not to mention why he wouldn’t wonder why his OWN government did nothing to avert this disaster). We are to forcibly accept that Nero would think mass destruction would satisfy his idea of revenge, while ignoring the fact that he could have used the red matter to find a way back in time to prevent the disaster completely. It’s just poorly done, and I’m not certain how this happened this way, considering how good the movie is otherwise. Oh, and, for some reason Spock blames himself for this whole debacle, because he failed to stop the supernova in time. See above. It’s not logical for Spock to feel this way.
So anyway, Spock tells Kirk that he must provoke his younger self to anger in order to relieve him of command of the Enterprise, essentially to do whatever it takes to take command, because only a man of Kirk’s caliber can spearhead the effort to take down Nero. Kirk agrees and they head off to the Federation outpost, and it is here that we see Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg) for the first time. This was another part that bothered me. Evidently Scotty was assigned to this remote outpost as administrative punishment for a transporter foul-up involving Admiral Archer’s (if you can bear the painful thought of Star Trek: Enterprise for a moment) pet beagle. This part didn’t feel like Scotty at all. The character of Scotty was a brilliant, creative engineer who was stone cold serious when the chips were down, but was friendly and humorous when off-duty. The character here was a brainy screw-up who was for the most part, over the top, almost like he was purely comic relief. That’s not Scotty. Perhaps they intend to re-make the character, as they are doing with Spock in that they are showing more humanity with him, but I don’t know for sure, it just didn’t seem quite right. At any rate, Spock explains that Scotty of the future will eventually invent ‘transwarp transportation’, essentially, you could beam enormous distances, something you could not have done before this. Seems convenient, but let’s go with it. So Kirk and Scotty get ready to beam aboard the Enterprise, but Spock says he must stay, as he can’t let his younger self see him yet. Kirk says his farewell, and Scotty and Kirk beam out.
The pair materialize in the engine room, and proceed to the bridge. Spock is surprised to see them, but not impressed, and orders security to the bridge. Kirk starts digging into Spock about how unfeeling he is about the destruction of Vulcan and murder of his mother. Kirk keeps digging on this until Spock loses his temper and starts pounding Kirk around the bridge. He subdues Kirk, and almost kills him, when his father, Sarek, calls his name. Spock then regains control of himself, and relinquishes command to Kirk (as Pike’s order of placing him second in command still stands), and then leaves the bridge. The bridge crew is rather uncomfortable with this, but return to their duties.
We then cut to a scene with Sarek and Spock that I think was pretty good. I mentioned earlier that the writers appeared to be re-writing Spock to show more of his human side. For years and years, we saw the stone-cold Vulcan composure that Spock exhibited, and the issue of his humanity and exploration of his humanity is mentioned in passing only, if not outright missing. This scene seeks to explore Spock’s humanity as he tells Sarek of his desire for revenge. Sarek reassures him that emotions run deep in both humans and vulcans, perhaps more so in vulcans, but because of his human side, these feelings are natural. He assures Spock that he too feels emotions, that he didn’t marry Spock’s mother just because it was logical, but because he loved her, and that he was never ashamed that his son was only half Vulcan. Spock ponders on this for a moment and then returns to the bridge.
In the mean time, using Scotty’s transwarp transporter calculations, they have determined that once they enter the Sol System, they can beam to Nero’s ship. Kirk tells Spock he’s going aboard to stop Nero and rescue Pike, Spock agrees, but says he’s going too, because now that Vulcan is destroyed, Earth is the closest thing he has to a home planet. It is here on the transporter pad that we are finally clued into the fact that there is a serious relationship going on between Uhura and Spock. Again, this might just be me, but that’s just how I saw it. Scotty says he’s got a lock on Nero’s ship, and that he thinks he’ll be beaming them into a cargo bay. He energizes, and the pair beam out.
Turns out Scotty was wrong, the beam right into a control center of sorts, crowded with romulans. There’s a brief shootout and they find old Spock’s ship, containing the red matter. Spock says he’ll take the ship and destroy the beam drill that is already drilling into the Earth, while Kirk will go and rescue Pike. The two part ways, and Spock blasts his way out of the romulan hangar. He finds the orbital tether that the drill is attached to and destroys it. Meanwhile, Kirk is making his way to Pike, but is forced to fight Nero. After Spock destroys the beam drill, Nero leaves Kirk to his henchmen, and returns to the bridge to destroy Spock. Kirk fights off the henchmen, and kills the last henchman in a classic ‘cocky henchmen forgets to safety his gun’ scene. He regains his bearings and goes and finds Pike, and frees him. Nero is blind with rage and fires all of his weapons at Spock’s ship, which is on a collision course for Nero’s ship. The Enterprise intervenes, and provides covering fire for Spock, destroying Nero’s torpedoes. Scotty, meanwhile is working the transporter control, and successfully beams Kirk, Pike, and Spock out of their respective locations. Kirk and Spock return to the bridge together, to see old Spock’s ship collide with Nero’s. The red matter causes a black hole which begins to swallow the ships. Kirk hails him and offers assistance, to which Spock (once again showing his human side) objects, and suggests to Kirk they just destroy Nero. Nero adamantly refuses the help, and Enterprise opens up on Nero’s ship, destroying it.
They’re not out of it yet, as the Enterprise is being pulled into the black hole, too. Scotty suggests that they jettison the engine core and detonate it, and the resulting explosion would propel them a safe distance, while the black hole collapsed. He does, they do, and the Enterprise is safe. We now find ourselves again before a group of admirals, but this time, they are commending Kirk for his heroism and bravery in saving Earth and the Federation from Nero. Pike is promoted to Admiral, and Kirk is promoted to Captain, and given command of the Enterprise.
In the hanger bay, Spock catches a glimpse of an older looking Vulcan, and thinks it’s his father. Turns out it is old Spock, and they talk about what has happened, and that old Spock has already found a new planet for the vulcans to repopulate. Young Spock wishes to leave Starfleet to help rebuild the Vulcan race, because it is the logical thing to do. Old Spock, however, urges him to stay in Starfleet, and not to act purely on logic in his decision, but to do what feels right (once more, building on Spock’s human side). Old Spock literally wishes young Spock good luck, and they part ways. We then see young Spock report to the bridge of the Enterprise, and submits himself as a candidate for XO, to which Kirk happily agrees. All is well that ends well, and the movie closes with Leonard Nimoy (for the second time in the movie series, no less) reading the Enterprise’s Charter (“Space…the final frontier…etc.).
This movie was absolutely fantastic, the acting overall was good, the movie never really bored us, and of course the special effects were fantastic (although there’s no reason to not be awesome in this regard these days). I really like in particular how they made the engine room, for example, look like an engine room, and not a conference hall with a colorful lightshow in the middle. It was cluttered and used up, it looked like a machine room. The movie was also written in a fashion that all audiences could enjoy it, you didn’t need a Star Trek fandom background (something Rick Berman, writer of all of the TNG movies, never grasped). It was all good, the only thing that keeps it at a 4 is the just plain flimsy plot and Nero’s motivations for his actions. It made Nero a poor character, because it forced the actor to try and make a character out of shallow motivations and it showed. I still give this movie a solid 4, I would put it at #3 Star Trek movie of all time, behind Star Trek II, and Star Trek VI. Excellent job, J.J. Abrams.

By: David K. M. Klaus

David K. M. Klaus — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:10:37 +0000

You’re conducting a poll right now as to what fans want in the next STAR TREK film.

I want *my* STAR TREK back. I want my Kirk who almost married Carol Marcus. I want my Kirk who advanced through the ranks in a normal, albeit quickened progression, and who was promoted to Captain after learning the responsibilities of being an officer by rising through the ranks. I want my Spock who did the same. I want my Kirk who was a “stack of books on legs” in whose class you “either think or sink” because he saw the importance of learning, not one who started bar fights with four other men simultaneously while trying to pick up a woman. I want my Kirk who didn’t believe in the no-win scenario as a matter of how he lived his life, not a smart-ass eating an apple. I want planet Vulcan back, the intellectual light of the Federation. I want back a STAR TREK written and produced by men who actually served in a real military and understand how it functions and its role in a democratic republic, not by men who did nothing but go to film school and have no idea of what the military virtues are or why men and women hold to them so strongly.

I want an Engineering Deck designed to *be* the engineering deck of a faster-than-light vehicle, not a dressed-up brewery floor with the same steel I-beams supporting the ceiling as in the basement of my century-old house brick house!

I want a re-reboot, back to what STAR TREK was intended to be, not this overly flashy, badly written imitation put together by people without a clue as to its original creators’ intentions.