Star Trek Recovery
Aug. 8th, 2016 11:08 amWe saw the latest movie in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Beyond, on Sunday. General review: Not bad, to my surprise.
I hated the first movie. Beyond what I thought was a calculated snub to Gene Roddenberry and his vision, it simply had so many internal contradictions from bad script writing that watching it makes me cringe even as the endless lens flares make me nauseated. I'm willing to accept some contrivances for the purposes of science fiction (eg. warp drive, artificial gravity, etc.) but I can't ignore stunningly obvious problems (eg. Spock watching the destruction of Vulcan as though he were sitting on a nearby asteroid rather than in another star system several light-years away).
Star Trek Into Darkness was a bit better but tried far too hard to shoe in elements from The Wrath of Khan. It had a couple of nice twists but again it fell down where the physical universe just wouldn't cooperate with film-making: if the Enterprise was crippled some 230,000km from Earth and so close to the moon (visible in the background), it was more likely to fall to the moon than Earth. Even if it did fall towards Earth, it would take days to drift into the atmosphere rather than less than five minutes. I could go on for several pages more, but you get the drift.
Star Trek Beyond had better timing and some good plot twists. We also had some relatively good character development so a few characters finally seemed to be fully-fleshed people instead of two dimentional cardboard replacements of actors from the original TV series.
( Spoilers below! )
And finally, the biggest mystery of all: Why does anyone keep giving James Kirk ships? Has he ever returned one intact? Seriously, I would not lend the man a pen, let alone a car.
Still, it was overall engaging and I can close my eyes for the most egregious issues. And it seemed much truer to Gene's vision than the prior two installments. I think this one could even earn his endorsement if he was still alive. Well done.
I hated the first movie. Beyond what I thought was a calculated snub to Gene Roddenberry and his vision, it simply had so many internal contradictions from bad script writing that watching it makes me cringe even as the endless lens flares make me nauseated. I'm willing to accept some contrivances for the purposes of science fiction (eg. warp drive, artificial gravity, etc.) but I can't ignore stunningly obvious problems (eg. Spock watching the destruction of Vulcan as though he were sitting on a nearby asteroid rather than in another star system several light-years away).
Star Trek Into Darkness was a bit better but tried far too hard to shoe in elements from The Wrath of Khan. It had a couple of nice twists but again it fell down where the physical universe just wouldn't cooperate with film-making: if the Enterprise was crippled some 230,000km from Earth and so close to the moon (visible in the background), it was more likely to fall to the moon than Earth. Even if it did fall towards Earth, it would take days to drift into the atmosphere rather than less than five minutes. I could go on for several pages more, but you get the drift.
Star Trek Beyond had better timing and some good plot twists. We also had some relatively good character development so a few characters finally seemed to be fully-fleshed people instead of two dimentional cardboard replacements of actors from the original TV series.
( Spoilers below! )
And finally, the biggest mystery of all: Why does anyone keep giving James Kirk ships? Has he ever returned one intact? Seriously, I would not lend the man a pen, let alone a car.
Still, it was overall engaging and I can close my eyes for the most egregious issues. And it seemed much truer to Gene's vision than the prior two installments. I think this one could even earn his endorsement if he was still alive. Well done.