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Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

There was so much stuff I liked about Into Darkness.

I liked how it started with basically a mini-TOS episode.

I liked how Kirk unexpectedly faced actual consequences for flouting the law mainly because his superior officer was his personal mentor who took Kirk abusing his authority kind of personally.

I liked the idea of Kirk being busted back to First Officer and having to actual learn under Pike only for the hard-swerve into Pike's death.

I liked that Admiral Marcus put Kirk back in the chair ostensibly to give him the chance for revenge but in reality because he was counting on his status as a fuckup and a hothead who never has time for rules to advance his plans.

I liked the notion of the ultra-long range photon torpedoes and the Starfleet Warship designed to operate with a crew as small as one, how they were products of Khan's "savage," 20th Century vision of warfare. The obvious metaphor for Drone Combat and the ethical questions behind push-button remote warfare doesn't really get any serious exploration, but it had a lot of potential.

I liked Marcus as a renegade Admiral, as much of a cliche as that is, and even moreso the notion that he basically sold his soul to Section 31 and let them into Starfleet's bloodstream to advance his cause since it seems like he's operating this scheme entirely under the radar with only those he personally trusts and the totally amoral renegade superspies backing him.

I liked Carol Marcus, even though her character didn't get much room to develop. The idea that the peacenik scientist who raised her son to be so skeptical of Starfleet that he thought Kirk murdered everyone on Regula 1 was herself a Starfleet Brat, and that her opposition to militarism was so strong in her youth she was prepared to commit crimes and directly oppose her father to see a scheme to set the Federation on the warpath foiled, was a good outline that could have been made into something cool with more time.

I liked the idea of Khan as a good guy, which is where I kept hoping they were going. That Kirk showing humanity and empathy for the man who murdered his own mentor and helping to save his people would get through all of that ego and supremacism and thirst to be a warlord, spread the old Star Trek gospel that there's no such thing as a completely implacable enemy and even Star Trek's most iconic villain isn't beyond reaching through mutual understanding and respect.

I liked how every character got their own little moment to shine. The entire cast had a pretty heavy burden to prove they could continue to inhabit these characters and make them their own outside of the safety net of an origin story and I think they all succeeded.

Its just such a drat shame how the thing turned out. I've never seen a movie be so much less than the sum of its parts. Also a lot of the parts were rotten and of poor quality on top of that, but the point is there were a lot of good parts and they utterly failed to save it because when the final product was stitched together it was even worse than it should have been.

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Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

nine-gear crow posted:

I think JJ Abrams is a very good director, he should just never be allowed near a keyboard and an open word document ever again. Nor should he be allowed to direct any script that one of his roving band of cronies wrote for him.

I don't think Force Awakens is a bad story. It could have been improved, but on the whole I think its pretty excellent and only weighed down by a couple of stupid things (mainly the Starkiller Base, almost any other solution to the problem of how to have the First Order actually be a threat to the New Republic and lend some plausibility to the implication that they could be a Second Empire despite them having every possible disadvantage would have been preferable to DOUBLE MEGA DEATHSTAR.)

I think the real problem with JJ Abrams is that apparently he has an enormous loving ego, because he's really good at writing the START of a story with his MYSTERY BOX method, but apparently he literally cannot handle letting someone more talented than him do something with the seeds he planted and write a good middle and/or ending. He must finish the story he started himself with his idiotic garbage ideas that were literally made up on the fly because he himself by design avoided them while writing the first part.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Bogus Adventure posted:

It also overly militarizes Starfleet, a peacekeeping and exploration force, and shoves them into dress uniforms that look like they were taken straight out of Starship Troopers.

I didn't feel like the movie overly militarized ALL of Starfleet, in fact I felt like there was a decently strong distinction between the Militarized starfleet Marcus was cultivating and The Rest, but fair point on the Dress Uniforms.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Bogus Adventure posted:

I'm sure the third time will be the charm for that chunkhead they keep hiring to make the Dark Phoenix movies.

The problem with the Dark Phoenix saga is that the story is loving weird and its hard to make it a movie. Like, the most recent one did a more decent job than most.

What I find weird is that the Fox Xmen Saga was willing to do something as crazy as Age Of Apocalypse but not the NORMAL Phoenix Saga. I would have loved some Shiar Empire nonsense.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Bogus Adventure posted:

And whether or not you like the idea of something sinister afoot in Starfleet, it spits in the face of the original intention of the show: to demonstrate that there is a better way. Star Trek has always been about optimism, that humanity can rise above its vices and become better. So much of today's media is based on the idea of dystopias, cynicism, antiheroes, and pessimism. Star Trek is supposed to be different.

There has literally never been a time in all of Star Trek's history where there has not been something sinister afoot in Starfleet, up to and including episodes that Gene himself wrote. Preserving utopia from threats within as well as without is part-and-parcel of Star Trek's message, pretending otherwise is disingenuous. Humanity can rise above its vices and become better, but it can also backslide and part of our job is making sure that doesn't happen.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Up Circle posted:

Do any JJ films actually show the optimistic aspect? I only saw the first two and they were just generic action blockbusters, theyd be totally forgettable if they weren't stealing the names of a bunch of characters people are familiar with.

I think Beyond did, but since you haven't watched it I can't really explain why without spoilers.

Also I think '09 and Into Darkness didn't totally abandon the notion of an optimistic future. '09 only kind of pays lip-service to it because its more of a character driven story that's about who Spock and Kirk are as people and how the crew came together, but Into Darkness is literally about the Enterprise Crew uncovering a plot to militarize Starfleet and start a war and then foiling it. The main focus gets lost because of all the Khan poo poo and the general low quality of the movie, but that's the actual core of the story.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Bogus Adventure posted:

Beyond is very much NOT JJTrek because it was written by Simon Pegg and directed by Justin Lin. There's a reason why there is a massive tonal shift in the movie.

True, if by JJ Trek you only mean the movies actually helmed by Abrams then Beyond doesn't count. I assumed he meant just the entire trilogy because its not like the third movie totally discards everything JJ built his version of the universe to be.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Bogus Adventure posted:

Yeah, but Kurtzman took it and ran with it. I'm not going to watch Discovery because I don't want to watch stories about how the Mirror Universe infiltrated the Prime Universe and took over Starfleet, that Section 31 is an integral part of an organization that is supposed to be about peacekeeping, diplomacy, and democracy, or Picard and it's dumb-as-hell take on the already dumb-as-hell Mass Effect story.

Sorry, I'll shut up. I just miss goofy stories about away teams visiting planets full of hippies and projectile plants, babbys in space ships, and kids with psychic powers.

For what its worth, while I can't comment on Picard or Discovery Season 2 or 3, I liked a lot about Discovery S1, and one of the things I most liked about it was that it seemed to want to convey a message of the importance of holding on to Federation Idealism even in the darkest times. Throughout the season are seeds planted about this fundamental conflict between military expediency and fundamental morality, with Burnam The Traitor ironically representing Starfleet's better angels, trying to keep the rest of the crew on the righteous path even as Lorca continues to push down a path of damnation that he felt the war made necessary. I disliked the Mirror Universe plot not because the idea of the Terran Empire taking over Starfleet is distasteful (it is, and you're entirely justified in not liking that) but because it was a cop-out on the question of Lorca's character arc, and if the ideals he was in service to could save him or not.

Season 1 has a lot of warts, I won't pretend otherwise, but I think its core is still that belief in an optimistic future and better human nature. The writers wanted to put that belief to a very stiff test in line with the trends of current prestige television, too stiff a test in a lot of ways to the point where some of it was misery to sit through, and in the end some of what they wrote undermined what they were trying to accomplish. That's worthy of criticism, even condemnation. But on the whole I thought it was a worthwhile effort, really a better effort than most first swings Star Trek takes when it launches a new series, and I do want to see Season 2 and 3 eventually.

If CBS All Access wasn't one of the worst streaming services in the entire history of streaming services I'd probably have already done that.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Lawman 0 posted:

I was under the impression that the federation paid starfleet officers in credits? Then they only really use that for trade.

They dont pay them, the ships quartermaster keeps some on supply. Though starfleet officers tend to be portrayed as having some personal credits, latinum, etc to use for their own interests, and sometimes they'll throw it around if the mission calls for it

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~


Is there something complicated about "Starfleet doesnt pay people, but the ship has money and sometimes the people have their own independent money?"

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Lawman 0 posted:

No but I just never heard of that before.

I might have pulled it from a novel or something, its a tidbit I've had in my head for a lot of years. It makes sense though.

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Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

VinylonUnderground posted:

At least we have the Orville but you'd think actual Trek would be able to make it work.

Orville makes it work by being a microwave reheat of TNG with modestly updated story fringe. I'll take experiments in evolution that don't quite work over comfort food any day of the week.

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