*** Official STAR TREK (2009) Discussion Thread (2 Viewers)

[SilverWook]

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.

 

[Greg_S_H]

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.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Greg_S_H

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?

 

[Greg_S_H]

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.

 

[Nelson Au]

Technically, they literally did stretch her eyes.

 

[dpippel]

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!

 

[Greg_S_H]

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.

 

[dpippel]

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.

 

[SilverWook]

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.

 

[dpippel]

Originally Posted by SilverWook

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..

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.

 

[John Doran]

Originally Posted by dpippel

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.

 

[dpippel]

Originally Posted by john doran

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.

You may not care about the individuals but you know what they represent. Hitler's Third Reich and the atrocities they committed are all known quantities. Their evil deeds are well documented and tangible. You walk into Schindler's List very aware of what's going on and what's at stake, and you know what the Nazis are capable of. Nero's character is a complete fabrication and doesn't have the luxury of that historical gravitas. If I don't care about him in some way or buy into his motivations he becomes just another one dimensional character running around blowing stuff up because he's pissed off and is throwing a tantrum. I don't find that the least bit interesting. I'm just saying that in my opinion the filmmakers presented a weak, "been there done that" kind of generic villian. I think that Star Trek would have been a much better film if Nero hadn't been so monochromatic.

 

[Nelson Au]

On the whole, I would have to agree with your assessment of Nero as a one dimensional character. There was more back story that was either cut out or not filmed. He was essentially an element used to get the plot going and the main focus of the film was to introduce the new Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew.

I've been thinking for some time though what a mass audience would have thought of Khan in Wrath of Khan. I think that as a long time fan, I already know of the gravitas that Khan has, I know he's a genetically enhanced superman. Thinking back on Star Trek 2, I think they did a good job of establishing him as being really pissed at Kirk for the death of his wife, so a mass audience not familiar with Space Seed could get into his head for marooning him on Ceti Alpha. But the only issue I have is that at the end of Space Seed, I had the sense Khan was actually okay with the challenge of Ceti Alpha. But I guess after Marla died, he blamed Kirk. So in a sense Orci and Kurtzman and Abrams didn't work very hard to create an original character we could sympathize with. Nero was again, a cheap copy of Khan.

The comicbook that came out right before the film establishes who Nero is much better.

 

[Carlo_M]

I loved this film but I agree the execution of Nero was flawed.

You can go one of two ways with a villain: you can make him complex/interesting (like Khan or Hannibal Lecter) or you can make him an absolute (i.e. absolute evil/malice like The Joker in The Dark Knight).

With Nero, Abrams and company clearly wanted to make him complex and interesting, and attempted to give him a compelling back story. But as others have stated, just brief mentions of his family and world dying were not sufficient to get most audiences to care about him. No one in my party who went to see the film (and we all loved it) particularly cared for Nero or thought he was a compelling bad guy.

Clearly there was more filmed (there are references in the commentary about it) but their decision to excise that from the film weakened the Nero character. Although who knows, without seeing that footage, perhaps it was better left on the cutting room floor if the director didn't feel like it merited being seen onscreen.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Originally Posted by Nelson Au

The comicbook that came out right before the film establishes who Nero is much better.

I own an iPhone, and the "Star Trek - Countdown" Graphic Novel is available for that device in four separate chapters, optimized to take advantage of the iPhone screen. I can tell you that not only does the Graphic Novel completely flesh-out Nero's backstory, but it also provides some decent closure for fans of ST: TNG. The story takes place post-"Nemesis" and does a great job of tying up multiple plot threads that were left dangling from the end of that poorly-constructed movie ...

 

[Edwin-S]

Originally Posted by Nelson Au

The comicbook that came out right before the film establishes who Nero is much better.

This is another reason why I think this film is a bit of a failure. I shouldn't have to read a comic book or a novelization to get a proper backstory for the villain in the film. I should be able to get that from watching the film. Abram's failure to establish Nero's backstory properly within the context of the film is a major weak spot.

 

[Carlo_M]

Agreed. Kind of puts in my mind the crazy guy's rant who did the 70 minute Phantom Menace review and his view on SW novels, games, etc. and their role as a substitute to actually showing it onscreen! [/url]


This is another reason why I think this film is a bit of a failure. I shouldn't have to read a comic book or a novelization to get a proper backstory for the villain in the film. I should be able to get that from watching the film. Abram's failure to establish Nero's backstory properly within the context of the film is a major weak spot.

 

[John Doran]

Originally Posted by dpippel


You may not care about the individuals but you know what they represent. Hitler's Third Reich and the atrocities they committed are all known quantities. Their evil deeds are well documented and tangible. You walk into Schindler's List very aware of what's going on and what's at stake, and you know what the Nazis are capable of. Nero's character is a complete fabrication and doesn't have the luxury of that historical gravitas. If I don't care about him in some way or buy into his motivations he becomes just another one dimensional character running around blowing stuff up because he's pissed off and is throwing a tantrum. I don't find that the least bit interesting. I'm just saying that in my opinion the filmmakers presented a weak, "been there done that" kind of generic villian. I think that Star Trek would have been a much better film if Nero hadn't been so monochromatic.

i think i didn't explain myself very well...

my point is precisely that hitler, stalin, fiennes' character in Schindler's list, pol pot, and whichever other genocidal maniac you care to name are monochromatic: there is absolutely nothing complicated about them or their motivations, at least not in any way that is intelligible to people that don't share them.

look: hitler wanted to kill all the jews and gypsies and homosexuals and a lot of catholics and so on; pol polt wanted to kill intellectuals; stalin saw fit to exterminate millions of ukrainians; robespierre went bananas and killed at will. what's polychromatic about that? i have absolutely no idea what it's like to have anything happen to me that would make me want to kill millions of people, and as a result, any character - either historical or fictional - who does want to and attempts to annihiliate an entire people or planet or country or whatever, is utterly and completely opaque to me from both a narrative and emotional point of view. it's simply impossible for me to relate to someone like that, to empathize with him, no matter what the backstory that is provided to ground the particular mania.

but so what? i wasn't moved by schindler's list because (or in any even small manner) the camp commandant had any "depth" or more than one dimension: he was a moral monster that killed people without compunction because they were jewish. period. there's nothing more one-dimensional than that. schindler's list worked because - given the presence of such a sociopath - of how other people chose to act.

so how is nero any different? i care for him equally as much as i care for any other genocidal sociopath in human history - fictional or actual - which is to say, not at all. what would it even mean to "care" for someone that is capable of killing 6 billion people out of hand, and who wants to kill billions more?

and, incidentally, i know no more about stalin, robespierre, pol pot, or hitler than i do about nero: they were men who killed a lot of other people for no other reason than that they belonged to some class that they deemed unworthy of life. and that is simply and straightforwardly a motivation with which it is absolutely impossible for me to engage or empathize or connect or whatever.

where the rubber hits the road, i guess i find it impossible to understand how "hating jews", or "hating intellectuals", or "hating religious people", are any more compelling motivations for mass-murder than "being pissed off and throwing a tantrum".

for that matter, i don't really understand how it's not possible to redescribe stalin, hitler, and pol pot's respective genocides as the result of their just "being pissed off and throwing a tantrum".

 

[dpippel]

[SIZE= larger]Well John, perhaps "care" wasn't the best word for me to use. Let's change that to I had nothing INVESTED in Nero's character. He was bad because Abrams showed him destroying Vulcan. All the audience saw of BILLIONS of people being killed though was the High Council rescue by Spock in which his mother died. Then the planet imploded. While I knew intellectually that Nero had just annihilated an entire race, the drama (or lack thereof) in it wasn't all that compelling to me. There was little emotion in the entire affair.[/SIZE]

[SIZE= larger] [/SIZE]

[SIZE= larger]You have a different impression and a different definition of acceptable character development. That's fine. But it seems to me that you're spending an awful lot of time trying to point out why you think I'm wrong. I'm not wrong and neither are you. Film interpretation is a very subjective business, and I just happen to have an opinion that doesn't agree with yours.[/SIZE]


P.S. For the record I hate this new forum software.

 

[John Doran]

Originally Posted by dpippel

[SIZE= larger]You have a different impression and a different definition of acceptable character development. That's fine. But it seems to me that you're spending an awful lot of time trying to point out why you think I'm wrong. I'm not wrong and neither are you. Film interpretation is a very subjective business, and I just happen to have an opinion that doesn't agree with yours.[/SIZE]

i don't think you're wrong - i just don't understand your point of view and am having a conversation trying to point out what it is i find difficult to understand about your perspective.

something about the way nero's character was (under)developed left you cold and detracted from your enjoyment of the movie - that's cool. but when you try to explain why (i.e. your reasons for your feelings), they just don't make sense to me, and i just tried to articulate precisely why they don't.

that's all.