*** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread - Page 21

The cute, word play and pun filled song titles is Michael Giacchino's trademark. My favorite his the end titles track for The Incredibles... The Incredits.

 Thanks Zack, I don't own any of his other soundtracks. That's cool to be able to give his tracks fun titles! The Incredibles is one of my more favorite Pixar films and I really appreciate the James Bondian feel to that sound track. 

Don't forget the 'End Creditouilles' from Ratatouille. Or 'Roar', specially composed for the credits of Cloverfield.

I have to agree, I think Michael Giacchino is a great composer with an excellent line of work. The Star Trek score was repeated very often before I had even seen the movie. I'm glad it held up in the movie itself.

Perhaps this is not the appropriate thread to discuss this, but there is buzz that Star Trek could be in consideration for the Academy Awards when the new rules were announced that they will consider 10 films.

The controversy is that a science fiction film would never be considered, historically, for a best picture or any of the acting categories. Of course, the typical nominations are for technical awards. 

Some feel popularity and blockbuster box office numbers is not a good requisite for consideration. Last year's Dark Knight some felt did deserve a nomination because of the very good critical reviews it garnered. But at the same time felt Star Trek was not worthy at all for consideration. Perhaps they'd consider Nimoy for a lifetime achievement award.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out not just for Star Trek, but how the Academy Awards will play out. For such a popular film as Star Trek to be even discussed for Academy consideration is a good thing for the entire franchise.
Edited by Nelson Au - 12/11/09 at 9:08am

Well, speculation I read is that the reason for the expansion to 10 films in the best picture category is because the Academy wants films nominated that a wider audience has seen. Not to take anything away from nominees in recent years, but many of them were smaller films that were seen by comparatively small audiences. Star Trek would certainly fit the bill of films that were seen by large audiences, and I think it has every right to be nominated; I think most critics do too, although no one seems to think it has a chance of winning.

Interesting that you bring up The Dark Knight, as that was a movie that many people feel should have been nominated but wasn't simply because of its success. Best pictures nominees shouldn't be about commerce - no film should be nominated simply because it was a hit, but at the same time, being a hit should not disqualify a film.

Thinking back, the only genre films I can remember being nominated for best picture were Star Wars, ET, Raiders, and The Lord of the Rings films (only Return of the King won). I think it would be fitting to nominate Star Trek this year; it was one of the best movies of the year and really showed that a large scale entertainment need not be a lowest-common-denominator experience. Now, if they nominate Transformers 2, that's another story!

I think the only reason people have been bringing the idea up is because Star Trek was the only movie of its type released this summer to even warrant the possibility of nomination. But ultimately Star Trek was no Dark Knight. They'll find 10 better films easily.

Right now I'd guess that Avatar will be far more likely, we'll know for sure soon enough.

IMO, the Academy expanded the field to 10 films for one reason, and one reason only.  TV ratings.

The Academy figures that with more movies in contention for the top awards, more people will tune in to the show to see if their favorite wins.

With more movies contending, it's likely that the winning movie will have actually received a smaller percentage of votes (and almost certainly not a majority) but since the Academy themselves haven't changed, I can't see the voting preferences changing too dramatically.

I don't care much at all about awards programs, but I can't imagine this movie being worthy of one.  It was alright, but nothing outstanding.  Saw it for the first time on Christmas Eve over OnDemand (where it was cropped to fit a 16x9 display ).  It's started to quickly evaporate from my mind, but what's left is underwhelming.  The one thing I'm glad about is that this isn't "our" Spock and Kirk, so it doesn't matter what they do with them in future installments.

One thing I wish they had done was to make the opening ship look straight out of TOS or earlier.  Then, the new Enterprise could be explained away by saying that, faced with the enormous firepower of Nero's ship, Starfleet had to really beef up their designs.  I didn't know the direction the film was going to take, so I didn't commit that ship to memory, but I seem to recall it being closer to the movie's Enterprise than the show's.

As I thought would be the case from the trailers, I didn't care for Nero at all.  He was Shinzon 2.0, and the only thing I cared about in regards to his story was the fact that Romulus will probably have to be destroyed in "classic" continuity as well.  Otherwise, there'd be no reason for Spock to be pulled back in time and no reason for this timeline to exist.  That kills what I think would be a great idea for a future Trek series--the end of the cold war between the Federation and the Romulans.

Anyway, the acting was alright, but I have the same problems Edwin and some of the others in this thread have: Spock's romance, Spock putting Kirk off the ship, etc.  Though I didn't see it in theaters, I wanted to and expected to love it.  Kind of a letdown.  Not that big a surprise, though, since it's from the writers of Transformers, which I despise.  They seem to do better when writing for Abrams' TV shows.

On the subject of designing a ship like the Kelvin during George Kirk's era and making them more TOS like, I know that the designers had to maintain a particular level of detail and realism. If one were to extrapolate a design in the TOS era based on TOS, then the ship could look very similar to what they did. If you look at the Franz Josephs designs from the 1973 Starfleet Technical Manual, he has extrapolated ship designs that probably influenced Ryan Church who was a designer for Star Trek 2009. But the big difference here is that this is a big screen film and TOS ship models from 1966 just weren't detailed enough to stand up to the tolerances of today's audiences. 

So from a strictly production design point of view, I think the Kelvin really did succeed on design terms. It follows the more realistic levels of detail we saw from the Star Trek The Motion Picture era of ships, while still retaining design elements established by Matt Jeffries designs from TOS.

Okay, sorry, I happen to be a designer, so it's an occupational hazard!

I shouldn't even speak to the Kelvin segments since I can't remember how the ship looked.  I can't correct not seeing it on the big screen, but maybe I'll see it OAR via Blu-Ray.  But, I'm not champing at the bit since the movie wasn't my favorite.

 Can't argue with you there Greg! I had issues with some areas of the film too. I agree, it's not "our Kirk or Spock". However, the film did have some moments. So it wasn't a total disaster. I did enjoy it and I watched the blu ray a couple of times because some sequences, I felt were pretty stirring. While some I didn't care for.

 My biggest gripe for the movie, and i knew what it was when i saw the film...a processing plant being used as the engine room. That was so 1950's low budget, and NOT a Trek way of doing things. Shoot, Trek only wished they could afford to go on location!  :)

 Who is going to save the Earth when the V'ger and Whale probe come to Earth???  With the changes in the timeline...Then Enterprise might not be there to save us!   :)

Don't get me wrong.  I enjoyed it for the most part while watching and it was no disaster, but the negatives seem to stick out more when I think back on it.  I would still rank it with the good Treks and certainly not down with the likes of Insurrection!

I finally got the blu ray and watched the film and the "behind the scenes" stuff.  While they all pat themselves on the back for the great inspirational use of a brewery to give a sense of scale to engineering, I think they really blew it there.  While I think the general idea of showing a large engineering area was good, the execution made it look like the ship ran on diesel fuel.  Steel and cement?  I think they would be using materials a few generations past carbon fiber and transparent aluminum.  These ships are power by ultra-high energy particles that if not contained by huge magnetic fields or similar would kill the crew in a nanosecond.  By force they would have to be using some very futuristic materials to handle such high energy.  I think it would have been better to not show it at all than to show something that looked so out of place.  Handle it with CGI and a blue screen if you cannot build a set and you really want to have a scene in the bowels of engineering instead of just the control room area like was shown in all previous Trek instances.

I enjoyed the movie but those scenes on the Kelvin and Enterprise just stood out as out of place and bad.

I think 99 percent of the fans agreed that the use of the brewery was a bad idea. If you have the book, Star Trek, The Art of the Film, you can see the concept designs for engineering and there are some really nice bits of work there. But as you saw, they hadn't the budget and I think JJ felt it's better to film on a real set, then green screen. 

When I first saw the movie, I noticed the cement walls too on the Kelvin when the captain was going to the shuttle!

Some of the CGI aliens were ridiculous, too.  The big-eyed alien at the beginning took me out of it.  Unnecessary.

I'd say most people enjoyed seeing some actual aliens in Trek for once. I'm not sure what you found ridiculous.

I had that one alien on the Kelvin bridge pegged as CGI, but "she" was actually on the set. Ditto for the barfly sitting between Uhura and Kirk.

She looked like a normal human except for big bug eyes.  We're supposed to be concerned about Kirk's mom being in labor and hearing her husband die, and all I could see were those big, ridiculous eyes.

But how is that really different than looking like a normal human except for penciled in eyebrows and point ears, or looking like a normal human except for claw fingernails and a bumpy forehead?

Maybe it was an artifact of the OnDemand MAR, but she looked for all the world like the product of one of those sites on the internet where you can stretch parts of a photograph.  Someone stretched her eyes.  

 Technically, they literally did stretch her eyes.

While I generally liked the new Trek (Quinto in particular), there were some things that threw me out of it. My three biggest problems with the film have been discussed here already:

1) THE LENS FLARES!!! My biggest gripe. I can see them being used strategically here and there when necessary, but the indulgent and constant employment of the technique in this film was intrusive and completely distracting. The worst part of it is that they are so annoying and noticable on subsequent viewings that it almost ruins any enjoyment of the movie for me.

2)  The choice of practical sets for the Kelvin and Enterprise engineering areas. Didn't work for me at all. Using a brewery is one thing, but dress it up a little more so your audience can't TELL that it's a brewery.

3) Nero and his character arc. I felt that he was a weak, one-dimensional villian. The whole "destruction of Romulus" motivation for his maniacal and myopic actions was never something that I was made to feel or relate to. It was far too abstract and poorly transmitted to the audience. Since there was no real connection for me there I had nothing invested in Nero as a character. He was a poorly fleshed-out antagonist used to drive the plot forward, and I've seen "bad guys" of his ilk too many times in film. There was nothing special, extraordinary, or new about him at all.

Other than those little trifles I enjoyed the movie and thought it was pretty well done, certainly not the disaster it easily could have turned out to be. If only I could get past those lens flares so I'm not focused on them them next time around!

One big problem with Nero was that he followed Shinzon, who was too damn similar.  They even looked alike when Shinzon started to deteriorate.  I knew I wouldn't be hip to Nero from the first trailer.

I've never seen Nemesis, so I didn't have Shinzon to inform my opinion of Nero when I watched the new Trek. I just thought that he wasn't a very compelling villian.

The guy loses his wife, unborn child, and his whole homeworld in one fell swoop, and blames the Vulcan he thought was going to save them. What's so abstract about that? Maybe they should have left the Klingon prison scenes in...

I don't see any similarities to Shinzon except for baldness and creepy looking ship. I understood Nero's motivations more than an inexplicable clone of Picard, who decides everybody on Earth has to die because he had a miserable childhood.

It wasn't abstract at all. It simply wasn't communicated in a compelling or even an interesting way IMO. I'm sorry, but a 30 second scene with Pike that included a few background videos of his wife wasn't enough to supply the emotional weight required to make Nero's emotional torture tangible. I couldn't have cared less about him. He was cardboard.

fair enough, i guess...i didn't care about him at all, either, but i'm not sure why caring about him matters - as far  as i can tell, we're not supposed to care about him or relate to him, but only fear his obvious power and even more obvious psychosis.

i don't care about hitler in WW2 movies, either, or fiennes' camp commandant (i forget his name) in schindler's list - they just scare me with their willingness to commit acts of such atrocity. like nero. and i've just always figured that's the entire narrative role such villains are written to play.