J.J. Abrams Turned Down Directing New Star Wars Movies

[J Tyran]

Star Trek reboot nitpicks

In a series of films where flying around the sun can send you forwards or backwards in time, where a torpedo can suddenly turn bare rock into a whole ecosystem and all the other countless nonsensical plot lines the 2009 Star Trek fits right in. Thats not even starting with the TV series.

Ugh... now I feel like I have to nitpick your comment to show that j-e-f-f-e-r-s comment was not a nitpick.

The problem isn't "we do stuff with weird results". The problem is that "we do stuff with results that conflict with A)results seen in the previous TV shows / movies or B)results seen in the very same movie". Hell, according to this movie, Vulcan wasn't destroyed, it just went back 200 years further + created a separate dimension. Spock will find his mother's body preserved somewhere in "Into Darkness". 'Cause if a ship can survive the trip through a black hole, a planet should too, right?

P.S. The whole "flying around the sun to go back in time" was established in the TV series first, thereby making it an appropriate vehicle in "Voyage Home". I think that fewer fans would have had a problem with this series if they had just avoided the time travel aspects altogether and done a complete reboot.

My point is that whatever happens on screen in Star Trek (TV & Film) is little more than a plot device. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, it usually doesn't. In the reboots case the black holes and red matter and everything else only provided the circumstances that would test Spock and Kirk and establish their relationship.

The 2009 ST was a lot like the original series in that way too, the special effects where crap and the story was often bizarre but it did its job and the show was about how Kirk and the crew dealt with the problems they faced. Star Trek lost its way, it became more about how accurate and feasible the technobabble was. The Original themes of character stories and morality was lost behind the canonization of pseudo science. The ship flew through the black hole because it needed too and the planet fell apart because it had too, thats all that matters in a Star Trek story.

Except that's a crock. TOS did what it had to do in order to get on the airwaves, it cloaked its high-concept stuff in a spaghetti western because studio executives are mewling idiots who can't grasp what sci-fi is beyond "alienz and lazor beeeeeeeemz!", and that's fine, but it's not a virtue of the programme, it's a necessary evil. TNG was perhaps the worst offender of all the Treks for technobabble, yet it's still the show that gave us the very best of exactly what you claim Trek is about; ethics and characters. "The Drumhead", "Measure of a Man", "Hide and Q", "The Offspring" etc etc etc.

Having an internally consistent set of fictional rules is not a flaw, no matter how much post-modernist crapademics try to cast it that way, indeed for many of us it's not merely an asset but a necessity in order to aid in suspension of disbelief - no, Star Trek physics are not realistic, as a physicist I know that better than most, but as a construct they are plausible and consistent, and that means I spend far less time being jarred out of the important parts of the story, the characters and the ethical quandries, than with other more recent attempts at sci-fi(*cough* Battlestar *cough* Continuum *cough*).

But even if we accept your premise, which I do not, it relies on the assumption that the reboot Trek movie had set aside "technobabble" or indeed any semblance of rationality whatsoever, in order to more easily present its complex tale of characters and morality - and what would that be again? The story of the 2009 Trek is an amateurish pastiche, cobbled together from a caricature of TOS and the abused corpse of Star Wars, set in a flying Apple Store, with an implausibly young cast, and about as much emotional weight as a wet fart.

Even Voyager managed to rise to the challenge and be engaging and thought provoking sometimes, this film can't even manage that - it's a popcorn flick, all lensflare, no substance.

We will just have to agree that we disagree, you do not like the reboot. Fair enough but I do like it, the series was reclaimed from the trekkies [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaacEyOXVE8] and taken back to its roots. All of this "plausible" and "consistent" pseudo science was a construct of the trekkies never the show. A plot device or piece of technobabble and other Deus ex machina would be simply be there to advance the plot, it rarely made sense and it would often only appear that one time in that episode. It was often completely contradicted in another series or circumstance.

Somehow for some fans the pseudo science became more important, now if you want to discuss about how the characters where unengaging or how annoying the lens flare was it is a fair argument but its a different point to the one I was making. I simply wanted to point the nitpicks posted about the technobabble "not making sense" posted earlier in the thread.

 

[J Tyran]

then belittle a group of people you disagree with.

Please quote exactly where I belittled any group, I just made a reference thats all. Why would I judge or put somebody down for the way they celebrate a franchise? I am a fan of stuff myself. Any negative thoughts where in your own head.

 

[J Tyran]

Can you give me even a single instance of a similar ethical dilemma in the Star Trek reboot?

Kirk deciding Spock was compromised and seizing command from him, also deciding to go straight to Earth instead of regrouping with the fleet. Both decisions could have gone wrong and killed the entire crew.

It still doesn't. The fact that earlier series had different explanations for time travel doesn't change the fact that, in this film, the main villain gets sucked back in time, then refuses to do anything to prevent the destruction of the planet which caused him to get all mopey in the first place.

Expecting rationality from a crazy guy is pretty irrational, Nero was so far gone he probably didn't even think about doing that. He just wanted to hurt Spock as much as possible, his home world probably didn't enter his mind. Besides the destruction of Romulus was over a century away, he could burn Spock in revenge for his failure and still warn the Romulan high command. Plenty of chance for him to sort that out after his entertainments.