[film] Star Trek

[tamaranth]

I have seen it, and it was great fun!
Good things include
1. cinematography (faint silhouette of spaceport over Iowa fields: arrival near Saturn)
2. music instead of in-scene sound at moments of disaster
3. grubbiness, used-ness (typical JJ Abrams)
4. Simon Pegg
5. Spock as object of desire
6. quotes from and references (some tongue-in-cheek) to original series
7. that line about the amazing friendship they'll have
8. swordfight!
9. Karl Urban (who has come a long way since Eomer)
10. POLAR BEAR big white predatory polar animal

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed the film, but there are three sets of comments that sit with me now

1) all the Star Wars bits! Farm boy, following in father's footsteps to battle person who killed his father, cantina bar with aliens+fight, ice planet with Taun-Taun, grubbier space craft, sword fight on narrow ledge around a big drop with big beam of power down the deep hole etc.

2) There were some changes to canon before Nero shows up (where's Kirk's older brother? Why have Kirk's eyes changed colour? What happened to Robert April, the first captain of the Enterprise? (that one can be explained away admittedly) ... and given that the place Kirk is marooned is a known place in the Federation universe, how did it get moved from the edge of the galaxy to being effectively a moon of Vulcan? ... all tiny nitpicks though :-)

3) more importantly, what happened to women? It's the 23rd century, but all the women wander around the background in mini-dresses, and the only women with major parts are either *just* mothers (women whose only role appears to be "mother") or Uhuru, who does all the things that Galaxy Quest pointed out were stupid, *and* gets her kit off. It's all young white men doing the important bits, the PoC are minor roles and the women don't get anything better (the only main plot point Uhuru gets is stumbling across something that Kirk then remembers and uses, so again it's Kirk pushing the action forward)

Some say that Scotty is more comedic than the series, but I think it fits in well with how the character developed into the movies and I love Simon Pegg.

Karl Urban was fantastic, though quite a one-note character.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I've given it a pass on number 3 for this outing. After all, to go back to the original series and immediately balance the population is going to look weird. But they'd better start introducing some more women who are people soon!

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I hadn't consciously spotted all the Star Wars refs: you are so right!

Not well-informed on the original series, so can't comment on changes to canon. I did, though, view it as an attempt (successful in my head, at least!) to recreate the original-series setup: so while your third point is a good one, I don't think they could have reworked it to that extent and fulfilled the goal of replicating the original setup.

Or, yes, what pennski said. In fewer and better words :)

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

who has come a long way since Eomer

*That's* who he is! I was itching for IMDB in the theatre.