Star Trek Into Darkness discussion

I just came from the midnight showing, and I'm curious what the rest of you think. This is obviously going to be spoiler heavy so, of you haven't seen it yet, you've been warned!


Wowsers! I loved it, but I get why some Trek fans won't. Easily the best film I've seen this year. There are a few things i wish they would have done differently though. For one, not use Khan. There were after all 72 other supermen they could have used instead. Also, I wish they would have had some other way to save Kirk instead of the Deus Ex Blood.

Now that I have the negative out of the way, onto what I loved, which does outnumber the bad.

I think they did a much better job this time around with giving the rest of the original 6 crew a job that wasn't just their stereotypes from the original series, but fit their characters perfectly.

I really liked the opening, it felt like the climax of an original series episode condensed down.

I really loved the reversal of Kirk and Spock in the engine start up scene, although I could have done without the Khan yell, but it was well placed and made sense in the story.

9/10

Visuals 5/5
Performances 5/5
Story 4/5

I really wish there could have been more originality in the story. Its a shame there are so few compelling villains in the Star Trek universe to develop good stories around.

Don't get me wrong I did enjoy it and will see it again with my non-geeky wife (who really wants to see it). I just wish it was a stronger story.

Saw this I'm Friday as well. Loved it, and really enjoyed some of the themes I saw.

Visually/artistically, JJ keeps his style, including the lens flare. Annoyingly, the tilted camera angle was overused in my opinion. Good performances from everyone. Loved Peter Weller as Adm. Marcus. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a great job as the villain John Harrison (yeah, like that's his real name). However, there was a few times when I was disappointed with some of his facial expressions.

Thematically, this movie can really open some discussion points on a few topics; namely friendships and the rationale (logic/illogic) behind them, responsibility and sacrifice for the greater good (I'd love to hear everyone's thought on the premise of "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." vs. "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many."). You can also possible start a discussion on morality and the idea of racial superiority.

My ratings
Quality; 9.95
Relevancy 9.0

Podcast will go up sometime later today, but here's my final scoring:


Quality: 9.5/10

Relevance: 7.0/10

I absolutely love this movie! Great action, great story and one of the best movie villains since the Joker in The Dark Knight! I've pretty much only seen the 2009 Star Trek before this, so any similarities I did notice only added to the experience for me.

5 out of 5

Saw it tonight.
WOW! I LOVED it.

I won't repeat all great remarks above, so I'll just focus on some of the details:

I really liked the easter eggs. Here's three, although I'm sure there's many more:
Section 31 - I sat up right in my chair when they mentioned that, oh, that was SO cool!
a tribble! .... a TRIBBLE! And did they actually imply that Bones was the cause of the notorious reproduction capacity of the Tribbles that we know so well from TOS, TNG and DS9? Because that would be yet another easter egg....
Khan (ok, maybe too obvious to be considered an easter egg but since I went to see it with my not-so-Trekkie friend and Khan didn't ring any bells for her, I'd have to say: yeah, easter egg.

I also like how they show Spock's rather intense emotions, far more than in TOS. I seem to remember that the Vulcans in TOS reproached (older) Spock for being too emotional. This was of course also mentioned in the first (new) ST movie but STID explores this theme far more.

Plus, I really liked Chris Pine in this one. And not just for being fan service for the female audience (which he totally is ) but he truly nailed the Kirk I know of TOS and the older movies. He really got in touch with his "inner Shatner", it seems. Loved that!

I think I would have to score this 9,5/10 (half a point reduction for that silly relationship between Uhura and Spock) and 8,5/10 for relevance, for hitting me right in the "feels" with character development, messianic symbolism (Kirk sacrificing himself to save the rest) and themes of friendship (what a great bromance!). And of course for its portrayal of Fatherhood, with admiral Pike reminding me of God the Father: right and just, upholding the law, but... letting grace and love trump them all. (sigh)

ComiKate wrote:And did they actually imply that Bones was the cause of the notorious reproduction capacity of the Tribbles that we know so well from TOS, TNG and DS9? Because that would be yet another easter egg....

Um...how? How would resurrecting one Tribble imply that McCoy made them into the "born pregnant" type that they already were in the original continuity...you know, when McCoy hadn't pumped extract of Deus ex Machina into it (interestingly, we've now seen that McCoy thoroughly supports animal testing for laboratory experimentation!) in "The Trouble With Tribbles"?

Dunadwarf wrote:Um...how? How would resurrecting one Tribble imply that McCoy made them into the "born pregnant" type that they already were in the original continuity...you know, when McCoy hadn't pumped extract of Deus ex Machina into it (interestingly, we've now seen that McCoy thoroughly supports animal testing for laboratory experimentation!) in "The Trouble With Tribbles"?

I don't know how, it's just that the thought came to me when I watched that scene, that's all.
Maybe there's different causes for the critters' extreme reproductive capacity in different continuities.

That is why I'm not stating as fact that's what the movie suggested. I'm asking, could it be that the movie suggested this.