Watching the Star Trek Movies (SPOILERS)

[The Baron]

Thought it would be fun to re-watch these, since I finally picked up a copy of Star Trek - Into Darkness from the cheapie bin, which  means I now have copies of all of them.

 

So, on into space, the filmic frontier...

[Ron M.]

Shatner's Kirk: "We come in peace--shoot to kill!"

Good to have in an emergency but don't ask him to talk somebody down off a roof.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Ron M. said:

Never read any of the Bond novels so I don't know if the new guy is playing him according to the books, but he's definitely not like the earlier guys. Didn't even know his drinks should be shaken not stirred. I get he's supposed to not be the classic Bond yet (and this new Kirk isn't supposed to be the guy Shatner played yet) but I don't see them becoming the characters they're supposed to be playing. Just like Cyclops from the past doesn't seem much like Stan and Jack's Scott, or even Roy and Neal's. Just the current writer's Scott acting like he's from the past.

It can be done. Will Murray has done an excellent job of giving us as close as possible to Lester Dent's Doc Savage without calling Dent up from his rest.

As somebody who has never read any of the James Bond stories -- and likely never will -- I have a complete lack of interest in how much the movie James Bond is like the James Bond in the novels.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Mark S. Ogilvie said:

I think the main difference between this Kirk and the one I knew was responsibility of command. I know he was old but the Kirk in the series seemed to me like a real commander, not just a military one but one who understood and cherished the core values of Starfleet (at least most of the time, not all scripts are equal). This new Kirk didn't seem to have that.

PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod said:

Old?

Old enough to shave, at least ...

[Captain Comics]

Catching up on this thread, I have to go back to Generations! Let me add to the chorus that it was OK, but Kirk's death was kinda meh. And what was Malcolm McDonald doing? Trying to get happy, wasn't it? Yeah, what a terrible sin.

But as others have said, the TOS crew were all getting a little long in the tooth for their respective roles. There was one scene in IV or V that was a close-up of Spock's hand, and all the makeup in the world couldn't disguise its age, or how it was shaking. Gave me a sad.

My wife and I both enjoyed First Contact. If the aliens at the end weren't Vulcans, I'm afraid she would've blown a gasket. (She loves Vulcans.) But they were, so yay.

I saw the next movie at the theater, and had the same reaction as some others here, that it was no better than mediocre episode of the TV show, and had no business being a movie. I was so disappointed, I didn't even see the next one in the theater (and I'm still not sure I've seen it from beginning to end). Time for that series to end.

I really loved the reboot, especially -- as others have said -- that it immediately deviated from 'canon" so we could forget about all the "gotchas" and just watch the movie. Simon Pegg was good as an entirely different kind of Scotty. But his obsession with food may explain why Jimmy Doohan got so fat! Also, purists have argued for years that Checkov's Russian accent was as phony as they come -- so they addressed that here by making it a speech impediment. Nicely done. A lot of nice bits, including the Spock-Uhura romance, which didn't blow my mind as much as it probably should have. You get older, you become more accepting.

As for Into Darkness -- have we got there yet? -- I was pretty disappointed that it was just a remix of Khan with a less interesting Khan (sorry, I am just not afraid of Cumberbatch) and role reversal for Kirk and Spock. I mean, I loved that movie, but it's like remaking Casablanca, you know?

[Ron M.]

Don't give them any ideas about remaking classics. I'm still trying to forget the last Stagecoach remake.

[The Baron]

Captain Comics said:

Catching up on this thread, I have to go back to Generations! Let me add to the chorus that it was OK, but Kirk's death was kinda meh. And what was Malcolm McDonald doing? Trying to get happy, wasn't it? Yeah, what a terrible sin.

 

 

Soran's crime wasn't so much that he wanted to recapture his lost happiness, as that he was willing to kill any number of people to do it.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Captain Comics said:

As for Into Darkness -- have we got there yet? -- I was pretty disappointed that it was just a remix of Khan with a less interesting Khan (sorry, I am just not afraid of Cumberbatch) and role reversal for Kirk and Spock. I mean, I loved that movie, but it's like remaking Casablanca, you know?

Ron M. said:

Don't give them any ideas about remaking classics. I'm still trying to forget the last Stagecoach remake.

They already remade Casablanca. But they called it Barb Wire.

[The Baron]

Star Trek - Into Darkness (2013)

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Written by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof

1. Music by Michael Giacchino again.
2. The whole business of the Prime Directive is one of those things that never worked for me, if  only because Kirk keeps breaking it all the time, anyway.
3. Does it got any Doctor Who actors in it?  There's Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith opposite the Ninth and Tenth Doctors) as the guy who sells out Starfleet to save his daughter.
4. I liked the look of future London.
5. I'm sure Cumberbatch is a fine actor, but he just doesn't work as Khan for me.  Setitng aside the issue of hiring an Englishman to play a Sikh (Who knows, by the future, maybe there's lots of Anglo Sikhs!), he just doesn't have the presence in the part that Montalban did.
6. Alice Eve is lovely as Carol, but no way does she grow up to become Bibi Besch.
7. "Go put on a red shirt."
8. Interesting new look for the Klingons.
9. "If it isn't Captain James Tiberius Perfect Hair."
10. "Just give me two seconds, alright, ya mad bastard?"
11. "Mister Spock." "Mister Spock."    Spock of two worlds!
12. Khan kills Marcus pretty brutally.
13. The reversal of the death scene from Wrath of Khan was a nice try, but it really didn't have the impact of the original.

 

Overall: A fairly good picture - I liked it better than I did the 2009 film - but I think they might have been better served by trying something new rather than re-doing the Khan story.

 

[Ron M.]

Except for Monster I found Barb Wire the least interesting of Dark Horse's Comics Greatest World.

[Mark S. Ogilvie]

I liked the prime directive, it was one of the best hallmarks of the old show that no matter how much better things were in the future man was still not as wise as he might have thought himself.

[Captain Comics]

ClarkKent_DC said:

They already remade Casablanca. But they called it Barb Wire.

You know, the instant I posted that, I remembered Barb Wire and momentarily thought about changing my post. But then I thought, "Naw, nobody will bring that up."

[Ron M.]

Some things you just can't remake, and shouldn't even try unless you can afford to treat it with the proper respect. Pamela Anderson was a horrible choice to play Humphrey Bogart. The movie made less than half what it cost. Dark Horse has pretty much ignored Comics Greatest World since then, haven't they? Did they ever resolve the alien storyline that started the whole thing?