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Star Trek 13 News/Countdown Thread

I could see his point of view if the character had been shown as straight before, but Sulu's sexuality was never really touched on. We know the mirror universe version liked Uhura, but then all the mirror universe women in DS9 seemed to be lesbians, so maybe everyone has opposite orientations there. And we know he had a daughter, but that doesn't tell us anything about his sexuality.
 
Everything I came to say, you have already said, no contradictions, Sulu could easily have been gay before, don't know why Takei is getting so bent out of shape.

Even when Sulu and Chekov are following the busty klingon around at the end of star trek 5, Sulu could just have been Chekov's wingman.

Was Sulu already even a dad by that point?

Anyway when it comes to gay characters in major sci fi I guess the ball is in star wars' court now.
 
It's funny how all the discussion's about the gayness of Sulu and not the actual quality of the movie (I'm sure some people must have seen screenings by now.) In fact it's pretty weird that a gay character is getting more discussion than the tragic death of the youngest cast member, but I guess there isn't much more to say on that.
 
There's actual quality to JJTrek to be discussed? Wouldn't that be like discussing the "artistic merits" of a Michael Bay 'splosion-fest? I mean... wouldn't it be exactly like that? o_O
 
It's directed by a guy who directed several Fast and Furious movies, is there any question about what the "quality" of the film is going to be, i mean really?
 
Hey I saw this film!

It was okay???? I GUESS?????

My biggest problem (and there were many) with Into Darkness was that it took the nice clean slate that the end of Star Trek provided, and just used that to go over well worn Star Trek ground, and do it badly.

So I liked that this didn't feel like a rehash of Star Trek ideas, it felt like the first of a new Star Trek film series, it's own thing not bogged down by its own continuity.

Unfortunately it's also the most generic thing ever now.

If you were to feed a computer the action films made in the last five years (with a heavy emphasis on the Marvel), and tell it "Hello computer, make me another one of these", then you get the script to Star Trek Beyond.

The first real warning sign was at the start of the film, when The Enterprise docks into a giant Starbase. It's a massive structure, with a really interesting design, with it being a mix of cities (plural) and space station. But when the Enterprise enters it, in what should be an impressive sequence, it just kind of feels... off? Like, it's just a series of shots that say "Look at these shots!" and you're like "Okay?". I don't want to make a lot of comparisons to the old films because they're so very different, but the Spacedock scene in Star Trek III is better than this in basically every way except the quality of the effects.

The Enterprise gets destroyed pretty early on, and it's easily the best part of the film. It manages to be an entertaining sequence that feels totally it's own thing, and not just a rehash of the moment in Search for Spock (UNLIKE EVERYTHING IN INTO DARKNESS), and it also has a saucer crash sequence that, yeah, is better than the one in Generations.

But once everyone's on the planet, it's just so.... ehhhhhhhhh... Because the crew is separated everything gets split into subplots and so no one really gets a time to shine. Spock has this subplot about him wanting to help rebuild the Vulcan race now Ambassador Spock has died (yeah Nimoy Spock is now Canonically Dead), but that gets told in about three scenes, each about 45 minutes apart, and is never mentioned apart from that. So you really don't care. The same with the Spock/Uhura subplot which is exactly as useless as it always fucking has been why do they keep making this a thing??

Kirk even gets his own plot, about him being tired of being a Captain (he says he's tried of the five-year mission feeling 'episodic' which is a joke about how Star Trek was a TV show), and it also suffers from having about 10 minutes actually devoted to it, but it also suffers because the last time we saw this character he was learning what it is to be a Captain and now suddenly (it's three years later) he's tired of it all. But we never saw all the stuff in between, so it doesn't really resonate.

So there's that white lady who's in all of the marketing, and she's just this boring generic character. I literally can't remember her name. I honestly can't be bothered to look it up. She's supposed to be this survivor character that's lived on the planet on her own for ages. She's basically like Rey?? But where Rey got by in the incredible charm of Daisy Ridley, everything about this character falls flat. She even gets a boring generic tragic backstory (ONE OF THE BAD GUYS KILLED HER DAD) that no one cares about, and gets resolved with a single throwaway line later on.

IDRIS ELBA IS IN THIS FILM. Remember in Thor: The Dark World then they took a really good actor and covered him in make up and just made him a really boring and generic bad guy? WELL GUESS WHAT. Okay, so, this film does do one interesting thing that Thor never did, (and it's a big spoiler so...),
it turns out that his character is actually the human captain of the USS Franklin, the old NX-style ship that crashed on the planet years earlier. And now he's mad at the Federation because he came from a war torn Earth (he was a MACO! Remember them! From Enterprise!) (HE MENTIONED THE FUCKING XINDI. THE. FUCKING. XINDI????) and now everyone is all about being nice and being friends and he thinks that's bad??? Also he survived for over a hundred years because of some alien technology that doesn't get explained.

The idea of having a pre-utopia character looking at a utopia and going "What a bunch of pussies" is something that's potentially interesting, and it does give Elba like one scene where he can actually do some acting (which is more than Eccleston ever got)... but it all comes too late for it to really matter.

Seriously, in a series where Benedict Cumberbatch and Idris Elba played villains, it fucking baffles me that the best of the new Star Trek villains is Eric Fucking Bana as Nero.

So like most action films these days, the entire third act is a series of separate but never ending action scenes. And while they're not bad they're just... not very interesting? Like, by the start of the third action scene (of four) I was just getting bored. It was initially refreshing to have a plot that wasn't "bad guy has superweapon and wants to destroy the Earth!", but then Elba gets a superweapon and wants to destroy... the big starbase! Which might as well be Earth! IT'S THE SAME THING! And then the subplots get resolved, but I just don't care, and there's a big old-series reference* and it just made me think "I wish I was watching Star Trek VI".

*
New Spock looks through Nimoy Spock's possessions and finds a publicity still of the old crew from (I THINK???) Star Trek V)

So while it's not aggressively bad, like Into Darkness, it's just so bland. It's a by-the-numbers generic sci-fi action film hastily painted in Star Trek colours.

But the worst thing, the most unforgivable crime this film does,
they get a brand new Enterprise-A at the end of the film... AND IT'S THE EXACT SAME DESIGN AS THE PREVIOUS ONE. It's still the bad underbite not-as-good-as-the-fucking-one-in-The-Fucking-Motion-Picture giant nacelles design. This was your chance! Your chance to fix things! I guess a new CGI model was too expensive??? A SHAME.
 
So pretty much generic shit with the Star Trek logo slapped on its back like a "Kick Me!" sign to get asses planted in theater seats.
 
I liked it.

The A isn't the same, the nacelles are further apart and the neck is thinner.

There are loads of good nods to the original show, and I swear for a moment I thought there was a Nana Visitor cameo.

I guess you could sit down and list what's wrong with the film, but I would rather reflect back on what was right with it.

And the McCoy/Spock relationship has not been this well defined since 1968.
 
I saw it today and absolutely loved it. It did have its problems, but it's probably my favourite of the three new ones.

Very faithful to the 'prime' universe. All of the design work and info about the Franklin was spot on. They even mentioned the Romulan war - a war we haven't seen in 500+ episodes. Someone was doing their homework.

The division of the crew once they were on the planet didn't bother me as I thought they were good pairings (Spock/McCoy are an obviously winning combination), but during the destruction of the Enterprise my mind was spinning trying to keep track of who was where. Too much to follow all at once on a ship we're still not very familiar with, which is in the process of falling apart.

I really liked Jayla. She had attitude without being obnoxious, I guess she was sexy (?), but they didn't seem to be playing up on that at all and she had a very interesting accent. It felt like they were going to have her hook up with Scotty. I'm glad they didn't.

The villain's story is explained waaaaaay too late - to the point where I was wondering if I'd missed an important line somewhere along. He turns out to have an interesting backstory that we never really get to explore. Frustrating.

The whole city destruction thing that has to happen at the end of every Trek movie now was a lot less disturbing than last time around.

Star Trek now has a gay main character and the portal to hell hasn't erupted at our feet, so that's nice.

The new Enterprise is quite an improvement over its predecessor and its introduction was very nicely done. I do hope there'll be a fourth movie, but this one doesn't seem to be doing especially well. It had good reviews, but it's already been knocked off the top spot in the UK by Bourne, which has crap reviews.
 
I saw it yesterday and thought it was decent. Whomever was doing the trailers made it look like it was not a good film (interesting marketing strategy lol).
 
It was pretty good. I mean, it reminded me a bit of Insurrection but better. Pretty throwaway but enjoyable enough to watch.

I didn't really like the Galaxy Quest opening (they even stole the line about his shirt always getting ripped.) I was a bit worried it was going to be bad after that but it got better as it went on. The cast are good and interacted well. I'm glad Karl Urban decided to come back (he nearly turned it down after Into Darkness) because he got all the best lines (apparently he submitted many of them himself) and his stuff with Spock was the best part.

Kirk's arc was pretty light. He's bored of the routine of being a starship captain but by the end he decides to stay. That's fine but really straightforward. I'm not sure what the point of having applying to be a Read Admiral was. It was only mentioned in the two scenes with the lady from The Expanse and seemed like it had been inserted to add more drama to "will Kirk quit a for a desk job!?" No, of course he won't. Spock deciding to stay worked better because having the photo of the original cast together convince him was a nice moment.

Teaming up Kirk and Chekov was a good idea because it let Kirk look more Captainly (if that's a word.)

Uhura got absolutely nothing to do besides breaking up with Spock and getting back together with him. Again. How about just showing them in a happy relationship for once?

I thought they could have used Sulu's family more for some drama when Yorktown was under attack. I think there was one shot of Sulu looking a bit worried but that was it.

Scotty's accent seemed much worse than the previous two movies. He said "lassie" about twelve times and it never felt natural.

I liked J-Law. She was a bit generic but I liked the idea of her living in an old starship and she was a likable presence.

The villain could have been a good idea if they'd gone in to his philosophy a bit more. But he ended up just as another vengeance crazed angry guy. Hell even Admrial Marcus from Into Darkness was a better villain because at least he had a reason for wanting to start a war. Actually, was Krall trying to start a war? What was his actual goal? Blow up the Yorktown to show that the Federation is a bad idea and then what? He thought they'd just expand the Federation and start having wars again? And why did he even need the generic superweapon when he already had an imporbably large army of drone ships that could have surely destroyed Yorktown?

I liked the design of Yorktown but they didn't really get across how insanely massive it was. As Tomtrek said, compare it to Starbase in Star Trek 3 which looked huge. I didn't notice any difference between the new ship and the old one but I don't always notice details like that.

So yeah it was a decent way to spend two hours.

(Also funny how they commpletely ignored that Into Darkness ever happened. Obviously they'd ingore stuff like magic blood that can cure death and a magic transporter that makes starships obsolete becauase those were really stupid ideas, but they didn't even have a brief metnion of that happened to Carol Marcus despite her joining the crew and saying something like "I have a new family!" at the end of that movie.)
 
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