Startrek 2009
May. 25th, 2009 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOverall impressions
It reminded me a lot of movies adapting comic books. It was extremely enjoyable, funny, awesome and exciting. The characters and some of the scenes were extremely memorable. However, as a whole it was not really memorable. The classic Startrek films, even the bad ones, you know what they were about, but here despite [spoiler], it felt very vapoury, and I never cared what was going to happen, so it might as well have been a clip show of cool moments.
Now when I watch individual episodes of Startrek I don't find them very interesting, but on the other hand, the premises and characters I find almost infinitely memorable. There seems to be an incredibly strong framework, built up out of many throw-away comments in many episodes, that makes even the minor characters tower like legends. It may not make sense, but I really care that Sulu became a captain.
A film showing younger versions of the characters, and being made 40 years later, is inevitably a reimagining of them, however I thought they did this just about perfectly (again, like a comic book movie, where they take the basic premise and adapt it, rather than writing a strict adaption or sequel to the comics). They abstract all the most cool features of the characters, and give them more depth, bringing them to life even more so, in a way that wouldn't work if they hadn't been so legendary to start with.
They weren't afraid to change things (eg. what we know about these characters at the academy, history of vulcans and romulans) some of which was justified in-story and some wasn't. However, it all felt true to the spirit of the show, so I accepted it, whether or not a pedant (or someone with common sense) would think it was wrong.
Rebooting the continuity
I thought it was a bold and correct choice to reboot the continuity. They did it well: it was an important part of the film, but neither tacked on, nor painfully drawn out.
It allowed them more freedom to reinterpret things without completely chucking out the original history, and to have things happen without us knowing how it had to end. And to have a sequel.
Unfortunately, I'm so used to time-travel plots having a reset button at the end, I was shocked when they didn't restore the original timeline, which means I hadn't really believed all the things they'd been doing mattered.
The history of Kirk's father was taken from a Diane Carey tie-in novel. I hadn't realised, I assumed Carey had taken the names (at least) from some episode I hadn't seen. But that did mean I was incredibly energised to see Kirk Sr on screen, and realise who he was, and realise that was the moment it went into alternative history.
But they promoted final-year academy students directly to the command of the flagship? I don't care how well they handled this crisis, surely that's ridiculous.
Plot
The plot made no sense. It was possible to follow, and many of the objections can be answered if you think about it, but basically one cool twist after another happens without necessarily making any internal or external sense.
Eg. Why is Old Spock waiting for Kirk in that cave? One justification is that they were both abandoned on the nearest planet to vulcan, and their escape pods both landed in the vicinity of the only base. But that's a bit of a jump
Eg. Why does Sulu use a sword rather than a phaser? Presumably phaser fire would have been detected and alerted the Romulans they were infiltrating the platform. But it's not really clear, it's just "Woo, swords for the sake of it".
Using a future mining ship is a good idea. That explains why the ship is in some ways so powerful compared to contemporary military vessels, yet still have weak points, etc.
Characters
Almost every character had several moments of awesome, which is really cool to watch. I loved Sulu fencing, and Spock beaming down to Vulcan to save him family, and McCoy being a surly but mature drunk, and basically loved the portrayal of all the characters. There were lots of fan-service moments, which were all fun.
I liked the Romulan miners, although they were a bit forgettable.
I was so pleased to see Nimoy as Old Spock. I love that spock went on to become this great ambassador. Although I didn't really enjoy the scenes with him as much as I'd hoped.
Scotty was too over-the-top comedy for the sake of comedy. Not so much I couldn't watch it, but I think less ridiculous comedy would have been nicer.
Young Spock was really lovely, although I wish I could have seen this film before Heroes, so my vision of Spock wasn't distorted by Sylar! The Vulcan children bullying him, though cliche, was a really good portrayal of how Vulcans can not be directly emotional, yet still act on "human" drives and desires.
It must really, really suck to be Captain Pike! When he was being tortured I said i>jokingly that he was going to be crippled and put back into a wheelchair, but I didn't know he actually would be! Some characters just have awful karma, and end up in a wheelchair in whatever continuity they're put! At least he could talk, and had a nice airy wheelchair rather than the "yes/no" buttons and the iron lung!
quibbles
- They beamed an interstellar distances onto the enterprise? WTF? I know they changed things, but beaming from planet to planet has never been even remotely possible!
- The water in engineering is just stupid, even if it is coolant.
- Wait, spock had no way of knowing that putting Kirk as captain was the right thing to do, he was just guessing? What if earth had been destroyed?
Bechdel-Wallace test
The Bechdel-Wallace test says "Does this movie have (a) two female characters (b) who talk to each other (c) about something other than a man". Even today, the vast majority of mainstream movies and books completely fail. That's not an indictment of the individual movies: there are perfectly good reasons. However, something's plainly wrong when those reasons seem to apply all the time.
Startrek very nearly crashes and burns. They were starting with a big handicap wrt to passing the letter of the law, as they had to squeeze in all the existing main characters, who were almost all male, and so had essentially no room for any female characters other than Uhura[1]. But I felt they squandered what little opportunity they had to pass, even in spirit.
I thought they did a good job with Uhura (some disagree) and with having mixed-gender minor characters. However, that's more a bare standard of acceptability rather than a win.
If they'd tried, the original captain of the enterprise, or some of the romulans, could have been female, but weren't. Instead:
* The first female-to-female conversation in the film is five seconds of Kirk's mother talking to a female doctor about being in the process of giving birth to Kirk!
* The last is Uhura talking to her room mate while naked about Kirk hiding under her bed. Again, I mostly liked what the scene did for the characters, but it's definitely pyrrhic progress B-W wise.
* The only other female character is Spock's mother, who dies about five seconds after appearing. OK, that fits the film,
* Don't mention mini-skirts *shrug*. I was surprised they kept them, but like the look enough I don't object.
* Janice Rand wasn't introduced.
So, there are much worse films, but given that in the 60s Uhura and Checkov were actually large strides forward, it's disappointing the film didn't have more success. For a more comprehensive indictment, see http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/228445.html via toft-froggy.
I did wonder, what characters might have made a good statement of inclusivity today. A conservative muslim character?
[1] One option is to be bold and say "In this universe, Sulu is a woman" whether you can justify it in-story or not. That would have been actually pretty cool, though sufficiently reactionary it's not an obvious choice.
It reminded me a lot of movies adapting comic books. It was extremely enjoyable, funny, awesome and exciting. The characters and some of the scenes were extremely memorable. However, as a whole it was not really memorable. The classic Startrek films, even the bad ones, you know what they were about, but here despite [spoiler], it felt very vapoury, and I never cared what was going to happen, so it might as well have been a clip show of cool moments.
Now when I watch individual episodes of Startrek I don't find them very interesting, but on the other hand, the premises and characters I find almost infinitely memorable. There seems to be an incredibly strong framework, built up out of many throw-away comments in many episodes, that makes even the minor characters tower like legends. It may not make sense, but I really care that Sulu became a captain.
A film showing younger versions of the characters, and being made 40 years later, is inevitably a reimagining of them, however I thought they did this just about perfectly (again, like a comic book movie, where they take the basic premise and adapt it, rather than writing a strict adaption or sequel to the comics). They abstract all the most cool features of the characters, and give them more depth, bringing them to life even more so, in a way that wouldn't work if they hadn't been so legendary to start with.
They weren't afraid to change things (eg. what we know about these characters at the academy, history of vulcans and romulans) some of which was justified in-story and some wasn't. However, it all felt true to the spirit of the show, so I accepted it, whether or not a pedant (or someone with common sense) would think it was wrong.
Rebooting the continuity
I thought it was a bold and correct choice to reboot the continuity. They did it well: it was an important part of the film, but neither tacked on, nor painfully drawn out.
It allowed them more freedom to reinterpret things without completely chucking out the original history, and to have things happen without us knowing how it had to end. And to have a sequel.
Unfortunately, I'm so used to time-travel plots having a reset button at the end, I was shocked when they didn't restore the original timeline, which means I hadn't really believed all the things they'd been doing mattered.
The history of Kirk's father was taken from a Diane Carey tie-in novel. I hadn't realised, I assumed Carey had taken the names (at least) from some episode I hadn't seen. But that did mean I was incredibly energised to see Kirk Sr on screen, and realise who he was, and realise that was the moment it went into alternative history.
But they promoted final-year academy students directly to the command of the flagship? I don't care how well they handled this crisis, surely that's ridiculous.
Plot
The plot made no sense. It was possible to follow, and many of the objections can be answered if you think about it, but basically one cool twist after another happens without necessarily making any internal or external sense.
Eg. Why is Old Spock waiting for Kirk in that cave? One justification is that they were both abandoned on the nearest planet to vulcan, and their escape pods both landed in the vicinity of the only base. But that's a bit of a jump
Eg. Why does Sulu use a sword rather than a phaser? Presumably phaser fire would have been detected and alerted the Romulans they were infiltrating the platform. But it's not really clear, it's just "Woo, swords for the sake of it".
Using a future mining ship is a good idea. That explains why the ship is in some ways so powerful compared to contemporary military vessels, yet still have weak points, etc.
Characters
Almost every character had several moments of awesome, which is really cool to watch. I loved Sulu fencing, and Spock beaming down to Vulcan to save him family, and McCoy being a surly but mature drunk, and basically loved the portrayal of all the characters. There were lots of fan-service moments, which were all fun.
I liked the Romulan miners, although they were a bit forgettable.
I was so pleased to see Nimoy as Old Spock. I love that spock went on to become this great ambassador. Although I didn't really enjoy the scenes with him as much as I'd hoped.
Scotty was too over-the-top comedy for the sake of comedy. Not so much I couldn't watch it, but I think less ridiculous comedy would have been nicer.
Young Spock was really lovely, although I wish I could have seen this film before Heroes, so my vision of Spock wasn't distorted by Sylar! The Vulcan children bullying him, though cliche, was a really good portrayal of how Vulcans can not be directly emotional, yet still act on "human" drives and desires.
It must really, really suck to be Captain Pike! When he was being tortured I said i>jokingly that he was going to be crippled and put back into a wheelchair, but I didn't know he actually would be! Some characters just have awful karma, and end up in a wheelchair in whatever continuity they're put! At least he could talk, and had a nice airy wheelchair rather than the "yes/no" buttons and the iron lung!
quibbles
- They beamed an interstellar distances onto the enterprise? WTF? I know they changed things, but beaming from planet to planet has never been even remotely possible!
- The water in engineering is just stupid, even if it is coolant.
- Wait, spock had no way of knowing that putting Kirk as captain was the right thing to do, he was just guessing? What if earth had been destroyed?
Bechdel-Wallace test
The Bechdel-Wallace test says "Does this movie have (a) two female characters (b) who talk to each other (c) about something other than a man". Even today, the vast majority of mainstream movies and books completely fail. That's not an indictment of the individual movies: there are perfectly good reasons. However, something's plainly wrong when those reasons seem to apply all the time.
Startrek very nearly crashes and burns. They were starting with a big handicap wrt to passing the letter of the law, as they had to squeeze in all the existing main characters, who were almost all male, and so had essentially no room for any female characters other than Uhura[1]. But I felt they squandered what little opportunity they had to pass, even in spirit.
I thought they did a good job with Uhura (some disagree) and with having mixed-gender minor characters. However, that's more a bare standard of acceptability rather than a win.
If they'd tried, the original captain of the enterprise, or some of the romulans, could have been female, but weren't. Instead:
* The first female-to-female conversation in the film is five seconds of Kirk's mother talking to a female doctor about being in the process of giving birth to Kirk!
* The last is Uhura talking to her room mate while naked about Kirk hiding under her bed. Again, I mostly liked what the scene did for the characters, but it's definitely pyrrhic progress B-W wise.
* The only other female character is Spock's mother, who dies about five seconds after appearing. OK, that fits the film,
* Don't mention mini-skirts *shrug*. I was surprised they kept them, but like the look enough I don't object.
* Janice Rand wasn't introduced.
So, there are much worse films, but given that in the 60s Uhura and Checkov were actually large strides forward, it's disappointing the film didn't have more success. For a more comprehensive indictment, see http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/228445.html via toft-froggy.
I did wonder, what characters might have made a good statement of inclusivity today. A conservative muslim character?
[1] One option is to be bold and say "In this universe, Sulu is a woman" whether you can justify it in-story or not. That would have been actually pretty cool, though sufficiently reactionary it's not an obvious choice.