"these are the voyages..."
Thursday, 21 May 2009 13:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
Hey everyone, guess what I saw on Tuesday? If you guessed Star Trek XI you are very right.
- It was very very shiny; I left the cinema with a silly grin on my face and was humming the theme tune to myself all the way home.
- The design was great, they did an excellent job of fusing the 60s aesthetic with modern effects and elements. That bit in the shipyard where we pull back and suddenly realise that they're building the Enterprise? Brilliant.
- Oh, the opening. I had tears running down my cheeks at Kirk's self-sacrifice and the whole sequence was just really well done. I also loved Pike's line later: "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes and he saved 800 people."
- One thing I didn't like: Simon Pegg as Scotty, I'm afraid. The character was well written and he didn't do a bad job, but he was definitely Simon Pegg rather than Scotty and it was a bit jarring. (Oh, and speaking of jarring: product placement! In a Star Trek film! Does not compute!)
- The McCoy/Kirk friendship was brilliant. "I wish I didn't know you!" Karl Urban was fantastic as McCoy.
- SPOCK. SPOCK SPOCK SPOCK. Just the right mix of Vulcan gravitas and youthful uncertainty. ♥
- Uhura was fab. It was a shame she had so little to do in the second half, but she was so great in the first half that I think it balanced out ok. I wasn't that keen on the gratuitous underwear scene, but I did love how matter of fact she was about it: no "oh no, I am in my knickers, the horror" stuff, so I can happily handwave that semi-nudity just isn't that big a deal in the future. I loved the way her relationship with Spock was handled - it wasn't something to make a fuss about, and there was never any suggestion that he and Kirk were fighting over her. She made her choice, and that was that.
- Random swordfighting! All films are better with random swordfighting.
- Alas poor random English redshirt, you never stood a chance.
- Aww, baby Chekov was adorable.
- No reset button! Vulcan stays gone, Spock Prime stays in this universe. I wonder where they're going to go with this? I suppose they could just go, "never mind, the gang's all here, let's have some Random Adventures", but I'd prefer to see some of the ramifications for Trek history as we know it of Vulcan being effectively out of play.
- The ending was just perfect, Our Heroes zooming off to have shinyawesome lives. More of this team please! Also I may have got something in my eye at Spock Prime doing the "these are the voyages" bit.
So all in all I am very glad I volunteered for the awesome![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
trek_news (my first edition is tonight, whee!), otherwise I might not have got round to seeing this in the cinema, and it would have been less shiny on my titchy TV. Am also contemplating going to see it again at the weekend, v. rare for me, I usually don't manage to see things at the cinema at all, let alone more than once.
- It was very very shiny; I left the cinema with a silly grin on my face and was humming the theme tune to myself all the way home.
- The design was great, they did an excellent job of fusing the 60s aesthetic with modern effects and elements. That bit in the shipyard where we pull back and suddenly realise that they're building the Enterprise? Brilliant.
- Oh, the opening. I had tears running down my cheeks at Kirk's self-sacrifice and the whole sequence was just really well done. I also loved Pike's line later: "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes and he saved 800 people."
- One thing I didn't like: Simon Pegg as Scotty, I'm afraid. The character was well written and he didn't do a bad job, but he was definitely Simon Pegg rather than Scotty and it was a bit jarring. (Oh, and speaking of jarring: product placement! In a Star Trek film! Does not compute!)
- The McCoy/Kirk friendship was brilliant. "I wish I didn't know you!" Karl Urban was fantastic as McCoy.
- SPOCK. SPOCK SPOCK SPOCK. Just the right mix of Vulcan gravitas and youthful uncertainty. ♥
- Uhura was fab. It was a shame she had so little to do in the second half, but she was so great in the first half that I think it balanced out ok. I wasn't that keen on the gratuitous underwear scene, but I did love how matter of fact she was about it: no "oh no, I am in my knickers, the horror" stuff, so I can happily handwave that semi-nudity just isn't that big a deal in the future. I loved the way her relationship with Spock was handled - it wasn't something to make a fuss about, and there was never any suggestion that he and Kirk were fighting over her. She made her choice, and that was that.
- Random swordfighting! All films are better with random swordfighting.
- Alas poor random English redshirt, you never stood a chance.
- Aww, baby Chekov was adorable.
- No reset button! Vulcan stays gone, Spock Prime stays in this universe. I wonder where they're going to go with this? I suppose they could just go, "never mind, the gang's all here, let's have some Random Adventures", but I'd prefer to see some of the ramifications for Trek history as we know it of Vulcan being effectively out of play.
- The ending was just perfect, Our Heroes zooming off to have shinyawesome lives. More of this team please! Also I may have got something in my eye at Spock Prime doing the "these are the voyages" bit.
So all in all I am very glad I volunteered for the awesome
trek_news (my first edition is tonight, whee!), otherwise I might not have got round to seeing this in the cinema, and it would have been less shiny on my titchy TV. Am also contemplating going to see it again at the weekend, v. rare for me, I usually don't manage to see things at the cinema at all, let alone more than once.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 22 May 2009 00:26 (UTC)Exactly what I said after the movie! Billy thought so too, but the friends we were with didn't know Simon Pegg and didn't have that complaint at all. I'm glad to see someone else agree with me, though. :)
no subject
Date: 22 May 2009 13:53 (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 May 2009 05:00 (UTC)I rather liked Pegg as Scotty, and the others were good too. Except for baby Chekhov. Couldn't they have found someone who looked even slightly like him? Or does Chekhov have a bad perm as a teenager?
I loved the film as a whole, but was a bit disappointed that Uhura was pretty much the only women in it. This is an AU which doesn't have to be as sexist as the 60s original, so yeah, they could have given her the same uniform as the male cadets.
I'm impressed that the optimistic feel of Star Trek was there and they didn't go all dark and gritty. I'm really looking forward to more in an AU in which anything can happen. :-)
no subject
Date: 22 May 2009 14:04 (UTC)It didn't occur to me while I was watching the film (probably because I haven't seen much TOS and I was too busy going "aw!"), but you're right, they don't even look a little bit alike!
I loved the film as a whole, but was a bit disappointed that Uhura was pretty much the only women in it.
That was a shame. When I first heard that it was going to be a reboot I was hoping that they'd change the gender of some of the main cast. And trousers for Uhura would have been good...
I'm impressed that the optimistic feel of Star Trek was there and they didn't go all dark and gritty.
Me too! I thought they did a good job of keeping the Star Trek spirit intact and modernising it at the same time. I want to see more!