Star Trek (2009) - Opens May 8th

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The new Star Trek film presents a drastically altered universe, featuring a younger, troubled Kirk. Initial reactions to the trailers are mixed, with some viewers questioning the inclusion of an old Corvette as a gimmick. Despite concerns about CGI and potential plot weaknesses, many fans express excitement, hoping for a balance between homage to the original series and engaging storytelling. Positive reviews highlight the cast's ability to embody the essence of the characters without direct imitation. Overall, anticipation remains high, with discussions about attending the film and dressing up as characters from the franchise.
  • #31
OmCheeto said:
Ahem... It's still yesterday over here...

Canada doesn't count.
 
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  • #32
Pengwuino said:
My friends a star trek nerd and might dressed up for it.

Thus I'm currently looking for someone else to go see it with.

I've come up with a solution: Go dressed as a tribble. That way no one will know that it's you.
 
  • #33
A great review from the Salt Lake Tribune

Kicking the rust off the good ship Enterprise and a 42-year-old franchise, the 2009 model "Star Trek" is fast, sleek and tightly constructed -- a well-made vessel that, for all its upgrades, remains true to the space-faring characters we know and love.

"Star Trek," which captures the epic adventures of the heroic James T. Kirk, cerebral Mr. Spock and the rest, is often called a "classic" of science fiction. But to be a classic, in the Shakespearean sense, the work has to have life beyond the work's original actors. Thankfully, this cast meets that challenge...
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_12308676
 
  • #34
Cyrus said:
Anyone see the movie? It came out today.
I saw it Thursday evening. I thought it was enjoyable to watch, though notably faster-paced and action-packed compared to other Star Trek films.

I am disappointed that I did not see anyone dress up (I did not dress up either).
 
  • #35
Cyrus said:
Anyone see the movie? It came out today.

I loved it! A little 'convenient' in a few places, and Spock gets a little overly emotional here and there, but overall, a fast-paced, exciting ride with little touching moments (for fans of The Original Series) interspersed everywhere. The key thing to remember is that everything's changed in the Trekiverse, literally right from the first moments of the movie (a reboot without a reboot).

My take on the cast:

Aside from the above-mentioned moments, Zachary Quinto was nearly dead-on as Spock. The resemblance was there, but so was nearly everything else.

Karl Urban as McCoy was also great, and closest to the Real McCoy. (Yes, I went there--can't have gems all the time!)

Chris Pine as Kirk was decent, not quite the same, but then again, like one of the trailers said, that was a whole other life. Zoe Saldana as Uhura reminded me of the Uhura of the other movies--brilliant, and yet sassy. Unfortunately, she disappears around the middle. John Cho as Sulu was a little over-acted, but not bad.

Anton Yelchin as Chekhov was way over the top. Apparently, he's also a Scotty / Spock level intellect (according to the website, he graduated first in his astrophysics class). Actually, according to the website, everybody graduated first at Starfleet academy / med school in their respective fields and somehow ended up together. Simon Pegg as Scotty brought no subtlety, and a sort of inappropriate-moment comic relief. But that might be what you get when you cast Simon Pegg (great for slapstick... Star Trek? Dunno)

Eric Bana was a decent villain, if a little odd. Sure, he's an anguished, tortured, angry little man but why does he look like a space pirate (and spoiler: he's not) He struck me as way too human (and atypical Romulan) in a few scenes. Maybe there'll be more backstory in the Alan Dean Foster novelization.

In any case, I rather enjoyed it, and will probably see it again before it goes to DVD. I'd give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

DISCLAIMER: Not an actual movie critic, and probably would've been delighted to pay full price even if it had been crap. Thankfully, it wasn't! :-D

EDIT:
How could I forget Leonard Nimoy?! He's Spock; full of all the subtlety, with all those little nuances. And maybe it's the old age, or the fact that he's already lived his life once and gets to see it unfold one again, but he seemed on the verge of breaking out in a smile every now and then. He also doesn't seem to have the sense of urgency that you might expect in someone who's violated the temporal prime directive to save the Federation--but at the same time, it's like one of those 4th wall moments: Leonard Nimoy as a bystander, watching, and having blazed the path, is now passing on the torch. He did this once before for Picard and the Star Trek franchise, but this time, it's for himself, for the character that he brought to life, sort of ran away from, and ultimately embraced.

Or maybe that's just MATLABdude apologetics.
 
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  • #36
I saw it with my wife Thursday night also and we both enjoyed it. As an original series fan, I thought it did a nice job of re-booting the franchise while still paying due respect to the orginal. (did anyone else notice in the credits that Majel did the voice for the computer, just as she has from the original series onward? They also dedicated the movie to both Majel and Gene)
Even Spock being a little over emotional at points didn't really step out of bounds in terms of the original series. In the bits we see of the original pilot in "The Menagerie", we see Spock showing a little more emotion while serving with Pike, so we can assume that when he was younger he had more trouble reigning it in.

I know that one reviewer lamented the fact that the score didn't make use of the original series theme until the very end, but I thought its use was pitch perfect.
Up to that point, they were doing an "origin" story. It wasn't until then that all the set pieces reached their familiar positions from the TV series. So it was appropiate to wait to use the series theme until then.

The audience we saw it with (sold-out house of a wide range of ages) was very receptive and even applauded at the end.
 
  • #37
I saw it last night and thought it was excellent! Not only did it feel like ST, I thought the reboot without a reboot was brilliant. No serious violations of original format were noted, yet the series is open to explore an entirely new range of possibilities.

Maybe the guy who paid half a $million for the Enterprise D model knew what he was doing after all. Already I am looking forward to the next movie. I just hope they don't get carried away with the notion that CGI is in itself entertainment, as do so many other movies.
 
  • #38
Ivan Seeking said:
I saw it last night and thought it was excellent! Not only did it feel like ST, I thought the reboot without a reboot was brilliant. No serious violations of original format were noted, yet the series is open to explore an entirely new range of possibilities.

Maybe the guy who paid half a $million for the Enterprise D model knew what he was doing after all. Already I am looking forward to the next movie. I just hope they don't get carried away with the notion that CGI is in itself entertainment, as do so many other movies.

I watched it last night also. I was a bit dismayed that the theater wasn't even half full. But I did get a most excellent seat. I had to sit front row for LOTR III and almost got whiplash.

But I concur with your analysis. Having lived through 3+ generations of Trek, it was like seeing a great-great grandchild. And the child was quite worthy of it's surname.
 
  • #39
Hey, I have a novel idea: They could spin-off a TV series.
 
  • #40
OmCheeto said:
I watched it last night also. I was a bit dismayed that the theater wasn't even half full. But I did get a most excellent seat. I had to sit front row for LOTR III and almost got whiplash.
And I had almost the exact opposite experience. We went to a small out-of the way neighborhood theater, which normally doesn't draw large crowds, hoping to avoid them, ended up with a sold-out house, and didn't get prime seats.
 
  • #41
The place I was at wasn't packed but Trek was showing simultaneously in two theaters. Got a real good seat and didn't walk in until a few minutes before show time.
 
  • #42
I'm impressed that they decided to give security the umph they should always have had. Before, they were just wimpy little boy scouts.
 
  • #43
I'm still looking forward to seeing it, but your reviews are not cynical enough for my taste.
 
  • #44
Saw. Liked it. Never watched 1 episode of Star Trek. Never watched a single Trek movie before this one.
 
  • #45
Oh, and did anyone else sit through the credits and notice that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry once again supplied the voice for the ship's computer?
 
  • #46
I saw it and thought that overall the movie was good but found the special effects to be annoying at times (e.g. constant lens flares and over flashes of light). I don't know how it compares to the television shows because I haven't seen them.
 
  • #47
qntty said:
I saw it and thought that overall the movie was good but found the special effects to be annoying at times (e.g. constant lens flares and over flashes of light). I don't know how it compares to the television shows because I haven't seen them.

Actually, yes, I have to agree on that one. Also, the design of Nero's ship made it difficult to tell what was seen when it was in the background. I found that to be a bit of a visual strain at times.

Also, no, that is not a Trek trademark style. That was unique to this movie.
 
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  • #48
Did anyone notice how they have gone from a world of distinctively soft hardware, if you will, in the old Trek universe, to a much more industrial look? This struck me as a fundamental change.
 
  • #49
These reviews are not helpful at all. I love TNG becuase every episode had good plots and moral dilemas. Should we violate the prime directive? Data wants to have human emotions. Learning about lost civilizations. Traveling through time sinks in the past/present. Meeting Q and being set to parts of the universe that would take years to get to (even by warp standards).

What's the plot here? It has always been the plot in TNG that made it such an amazing series. (The best, IMO). It worries me that no one has talked about the plot. What do I get walking out of this movie once it's over? What does it question about our humanity? These are the questions that made star trek, star trek. I don't care about fancy CGI space ships.
 
  • #50
The reboot without a reboot is brilliant!

Okay, I am being a bit British there, but I loved it. To say more about that would be a spoiler.

I was going to try to say more here, but I hate to spoil the story. Live dangerously, just go see it. :biggrin:
 
  • #51
What is 'reboto with a reboot'?

ebert really slammed Star Trek, for reasons I thought it might be lacking.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090506/REVIEWS/905069997

Again, what is the story behind this star trek? If it's simply how they got together, that's pretty uninteresting and not very star treky.
 
  • #52
I'm not telling. :-p

And that was a reboot without a reboot. :-p
 
  • #53
I went out and saw it tonight. I knew it couldn't be quite as good as I was hearing, but I wasn't expecting to be let down as much as I was.

If you liked Transformers, The Dark Knight, or Iron Man then you're in luck, because this is just more of the same.

This movie is not about exploring new worlds or boldly going where no man has gone before. It follows a cookie cutter plot that is artificially epic. The goal is to save the world from evil aliens from the future.

From the opening scene, you see the enterprise holding its own in a fight against a spaceship from the future that has about the same scale ratio as the Earth to the Sun. Reminds of me Battlestar Galactica when there are bombs exploding over the entire surface of the ship and nobody seems to care.

This is really just another movie about time travel that was botched, because they don't stick to their rules of time travel; by going back in time, it creates a parallel universe that changes the future, but half of the people from the original future remember events from the parallel future! Pathetic.

Also, there's a ship stuck half way inside a black hole just chilling out for about 2 minutes...not being torn to shreds or anything. In fact they are chatting over the radio to another ship offering to help them get out of the black hole, as if it were a ditch on the side of the road. Next scene, the enterprise is falling into the black hole and going at max warp speed it can't escape. But fear not! Shooting some torpedo's behind it allows the ship to ride the shock wave out of the black hole, because shock waves in space obviously can propel a ship faster than a warp drive...not.

The acting is not great. The accents are annoying. The characters all look uncanny. This is not a revival of Star Trek...it's just more 2009 Hollywood ******** with a big ticket logo.
 
  • #54
Funny, I didn't like any of the movies that you mentioned.

Besides that, you seemed intent on being cynical. :-p
 
  • #55
Great reviews guys. When you get good reviews from trekkies, come one, you know who you are ;), you can't get a stronger endorsement than that.
 
  • #56
Ivan Seeking said:
Besides that, you seemed intent on being cynical. :-p

Heh, well I was just joking before. To be quite honest I feel like this is probably the worst Star Trek movie ever made. They took the name only, and left out everything that made the name famous.
 
  • #57
Ivan Seeking said:
Did anyone notice how they have gone from a world of distinctively soft hardware, if you will, in the old Trek universe, to a much more industrial look? This struck me as a fundamental change.

I thought the old bridge looked a lot more industrial than the new one (which looks, well, sort of Mac-ish, fused with a rougher version of the TNG display panels--there was a term in the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual, but I forget what it was called). Then again, my idea of industrial is 50s-60s instrument panels with lots of light-up buttons, so take that as you will.

I suspect that you're referring to engineering though. I really liked how engineering was much more full and packed with an entire physical plant and the workings needed to support 400ish crewmembers and their missions. If parts of engineering look like a brewery, that's probably because it was a brewery: Budweiser's (explaining the quid-pro-quo with the Budweiser Classics that Uhura orders!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(film)#Filming

While the little things have been refreshed and modernized from the original, overall, things haven't changed so drastically. You still have the stations where they're supposed to be (no Spock scope, at least, none that I recognized), the overall theme, the levers and slide switches at various stations, and the captain's chair was instantly recognizable--even if it got less clunky and more ergonomic.
 
  • #58
Cyrus said:
What is 'reboto with a reboot'?

ebert really slammed Star Trek, for reasons I thought it might be lacking.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090506/REVIEWS/905069997

Again, what is the story behind this star trek? If it's simply how they got together, that's pretty uninteresting and not very star treky.

Between Ebert's review and Junglebeast's synopsis, you pretty much know everything that happens in the movie.

As Anton Yelchin mentioned in his http://www.reelzchannel.com/trailer-clips/32374/anton-yelchin-on-star-trek-movie" with Leonard Maltin, they didn't want to alienate the old trekkies, nor bore kids with a bunch of rehashed Menagerie blah blah blah.

I felt the intertwining of the old and new worked very well.

I'm not sure someone not familiar with the original series would be comfortable in an audience full of trekkies though. Our incessant snickering at the "ah-ha!" moments would probably have them thinking to themselves; "That wasn't even remotely funny. Why are all these old people laughing about someone getting a divorce?":smile:
 
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  • #59
Why is it no one can answer my very simple question? What were the hard 'star trek' questions this movie posed? They reallyyy need another movie with captain picard and the TNG crew. That was probably the most sucessful series of star trek made. The new ones are junk, and I am too young for the original ones.

Take the guy who did batman (the first one), add the TNG crew = great movie.

Notice TNG was great and didn't need CGI. That should instantly tell you something.
 
  • #60
Cyrus said:
Why is it no one can answer my very simple question? What were the hard 'star trek' questions this movie posed?

How can we reboot the series without rebooting the series?
 

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