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Just watched Wrath Of Khan for the first time

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T

teruterubozu

Member
Dax01 said:
Okay? That's besides my point. Doesn't mean it has to be disrespectful. And Star Trek films may not have always had great females characters – TWoK did, like Valeris and Carol Marcus – but they were treated with respect.
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I was making a point, regardless of yours.
 
R

radios shipping overview

Member
teruterubozu said:
Well, Star Trek is one of the last places I'd look for "strong females".
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Maybe not so many in the original series, but Trek has had plenty.

Really, it's hard to figure out what to do with Uhura. Her whole job is handling low-level communications, which is a task they gave to the security officer in TNG. It's just the kind of menial job that's bound to be made redundant eventually. They tried to give Hoshi a more active Uhura-like role in Enterprise, but even her role was diminished as the series went on.

I mean, just look at what they had her do in STV. smh

The one thing Uhura did in STID that didn't involve her relationship with a man was something that would've been handled by the universal translator in that situation in any other Trek. (The situation in STVI was a little different.) I feel like it's worse that defined her by her relationship with one of the leads rather than by her role as part of a starship crew.
 
B

BigDug13

Member
You also have to have seen the original series episode with Khan. You have to see Kirk's interactions with him which helps. You have to see the trial and his exile while also taking the female crew member that he seduced with him. You have to see his meticulous study of the entire ship's blue prints while he was recovering in sick bay which allowed him to know "exactly where to hit us".

There was history between these two characters and since it was a movie made for TOS fans, they didn't waste time in the movie with a real enemy introduction because you're already supposed to know about Khan, his motivations, and his capabilities.
 
I

industrian

will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
Nekofrog said:
Into Darkness is about Kirk coming to terms with the fact that he is not infallible, that he can't get out of every situation completely unscathed. It was about being humbled, humiliated, and humanized.
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From TVTropes' article on The Wrath of Khan (I'd link there but I know you folks have shit to do.)

Deconstruction: The subtitle of this movie could just have easily been The Deconstruction Of Kirk. Most of the core traits associated with Kirk and what their consequences in Real Life would probably be are examined and pulled apart. The adventurer who faces a problem on a weekly basis, solves it and promptly forgets it ever happened is suddenly brought face to face with one of those problems from a decade and a half before, and discovers the consequences of his thoughtlessness can be measured by the body count. The suave lady-killer with a girl in every port discovers that one of his conquests (and it's implied that it's the only one he ever truly loved) has resulted in a son he's never known and who hates him. His tendency to play fast and loose with the rules leads to his ship being crippled and a score of dead cadets, all of which could and should have been avoided by simply raising the shields, and his trait of finding novel solutions to intractable problems ends the life of his best friend and trusted right hand. It also shows what happens when you take the dashing, devil-may-care heroic adventurer, let him get old and put him in a desk job: a full-blown mid-life crisis.
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The Wrath of Khan worked so much better than Into Darkness ever would in regards to destroying Kirk's armour.

I will give Into Darkness credit though, it acted as a perfect mirror compliment to Wrath of Khan, basically showing that Kirk could have learnt those lessons a lot earlier in life (that is, if there were any lasting effects of
the consequences of his actions. The only "sticking " consequence of his action was him taking the lead in a demilitarisation of the Federation and returning to exploration, which wasn't really a "lesson".
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Dax01 said:
There's nothing wrong with treating Uhura like your average movie's love interest?
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You keep saying this and it's not really accurate. Uhura does more in "Into Darkness" than she ever did in both the Original Series AND the previous movies. Again, the most agency she ever had in the movies was the time she talked some dude into a closet in Star Trek III. The next closest bit is her pulling a knife on Mirror Universe Sulu to get him off of her.

In Star Trek 09, she has a relationship with Spock, but it is secondary to making sure she's doing her job correctly. It AFFECTS HER, yes, but in these movies the triumvirate is not Kirk/Spock/McCoy. It's Kirk/Spock/Uhura - and NOT because she's a love interest.

And Into Darkness gives her way more agency, putting her and her actions and her abilities dead center of two very tense, very important sequences. And they're again - NOT DRIVEN by her status as Spock's partner. The relationship INFORMS her character, but it does not drive it.

Into Darkness isn't a "Wrath of Khan" remake. There are elements from that movie in there, obviously (blatantly) but it's not really treading the same ground, thematically.
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Incitemaybe said:
How dare you! One must lessen the enjoyment of the other!
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Oh yeah? Watch THIS!

1) Khan
2) Star Trek
3) Undiscovered Country
4) Into Darkness

big gap

5) First Contact
6) The Motion Picture
7) The Search for Spock

smaller gap

8) The Voyage Home
9) Generations
10) Insurrection

big gap

11) The Final Frontier
12) Nemesis
 
C

chickdigger802

Banned
hows the big space ship battles in the new one?

Loved the submarine style warfare in the shows. The lack of any real spaceship duels in the 2009 one was disappointing.
 
E

Error

Jealous of the Glory that is Johnny Depp
this movie hasn't aged that well, I still like it but I can think of countless of episodes from the star trek tv shows that are better than it.

someone gif captain terrell shooting at himself.
 
B

BigJonsson

Member
Khan, Undiscovered Country and First Contact are the top 3 for me

Journey Home, Generations are decent

Motion Picture, Search for Spock, Nemesis are meh

Insurrection and Final Frontier are just horrible


The 2 Abrams ones I'd put in the top tier :p


I hope the next Star Trek has Klingons with cloaked ships
 
R

rexor0717

Member
WoK was good, but I didn't find it amazing as people had led me to believe, and I feel like one could pick it apart nearly as hard as you could with STiD..
 
D

Doctor Decimate

Member
jiji said:
Yeah, we shouldn't ever worry about lazy writing, especially if the movie moves fast enough to keep us from paying too much attention to the story or dialogue.
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i don't know about you, but i draw a distinction between "worrying about lazy writing" and "judging a film's quality almost exclusively by how many plot holes i can dig up"
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
BigJonsson said:
I'd also put Best of Both Worlds, All Good Things and the Dominion War in the top tier :p
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All Good Thing is still the single best finale for a long running TV program I think I've ever seen or heard about. Its breathtaking how brilliantly the script managed to use time travel to craft both a compelling science fiction story while also giving invested fans closure about the future of the characters. And it could have gone so wrong. The premise could have been executed horribly, but the pacing is ace, the acting is stellar, and the script is just about perfect.

Best of Both Worlds is good, but I feel like its the one time I wish they'd done a serious multi-episode story arc. I feel like getting Picard back so quickly felt too easy, like they should have taken four or five episodes, maybe filled with other regular content but with the spectre of the missing Picard hanging over everything.
 
B

Buddha Beam

Banned
Wrath of Khan is still an enjoyable movie, but you have to sort of watch it the way you would a stage play. It's admittedly aged pretty horribly, but there's a lot of juicy meat behind it. It would definitely benefit from a Star Wars style touch up.

Star Trek IV and especially VI hold up a lot better. VI is still a great movie by any standard, though.
 
S

SolsticeZero

Banned
Buddha Beam said:
Wrath of Khan is still an enjoyable movie, but you have to sort of watch it the way you would a stage play. It's admittedly aged pretty horribly, but there's a lot of juicy meat behind it. It would definitely benefit from a Star Wars style touch up.

Star Trek IV and especially VI hold up a lot better. VI is still a great movie by any standard, though.
Click to expand...

That's because VI is essentially a political espionage rather than a sci-fi movie. It just happens to take place in space.
 
U

UncleSporky

Member
I posted this in the STID thread, pretty relevant here:

Khan kinda sucked.

Going over what this "dangerous man" accomplished:

- He seduced a member of the Enterprise, enabling him to seize control of the ship, but he didn't even do a very good job of it because she quickly betrayed him and enabled Kirk to get his control back. There were a number of dumb blunders on his part during his brief period of control like sending easily-overpowered lackeys to do his dirty work.

- He fights Kirk man to man, says he's five times stronger and Kirk can't hope to win, and then Kirk knocks him out about five seconds later.

- He voluntarily goes into exile, practically on good terms, doesn't try to fight back or do anything devious.

- 15 years later he is exceedingly lucky to have two Starfleet officers fall into his lap and is also lucky that he had ended up on a planet with a creature that allows him to control minds.

- He and his crew take over a starship and kill everyone on a station, so points for that I suppose.

- Kirk stupidly fails to raise his shields which is the only reason he has any trouble with Khan in the first place. Shortly after taking heavy damage, Kirk forcibly lowers Khan's shields and easily cripples him.

- Once again, Khan relies on others to do his dirty work, which fails when the bug voluntarily leaves Chekov's ear. Shouldn't he have known something like that could happen?

- He fails to realize that Kirk knows their communication is being monitored. The famous "KHAAN" yell was just false drama, Kirk knew they were getting out of there the entire time.

- Khan is very easily taunted into following Kirk into a location that makes them evenly matched, and easily dispatched shortly afterward because his superior intellect couldn't think in three dimensions.
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
FatboyRoberts said:
You keep saying this and it's not really accurate. Uhura does more in "Into Darkness" than she ever did in both the Original Series AND the previous movies. Again, the most agency she ever had in the movies was the time she talked some dude into a closet in Star Trek III. The next closest bit is her pulling a knife on Mirror Universe Sulu to get him off of her.

In Star Trek 09, she has a relationship with Spock, but it is secondary to making sure she's doing her job correctly. It AFFECTS HER, yes, but in these movies the triumvirate is not Kirk/Spock/McCoy. It's Kirk/Spock/Uhura - and NOT because she's a love interest.

And Into Darkness gives her way more agency, putting her and her actions and her abilities dead center of two very tense, very important sequences. And they're again - NOT DRIVEN by her status as Spock's partner. The relationship INFORMS her character, but it does not drive it.

Into Darkness isn't a "Wrath of Khan" remake. There are elements from that movie in there, obviously (blatantly) but it's not really treading the same ground, thematically.
Click to expand...
The vast majority of Uhura's dialogue in the film, and indeed, what she is concerned about, is her love interest. Hopefully they'll treat her better in Star Trek 3.

And I can't be expected to care about a death scene when the writers are too lazy to be original.
 
P

PhoncipleBone

Banned
Solstice said:
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is by far the best of the original movies. I love Wrath of Khan, but there's a bit of "Genesis" filler in there. Plus, The Undiscovered Country has this motherfucker:



General motherfucking Chang
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*internet fist bump*
Undiscovered Country is the best.
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Dax01 said:
The vast majority of Uhura's dialogue in the film, and indeed, what she is concerned about, is her love interest. She's been relegated to love interest. Hopefully they'll treat her better in Star Trek 3.
Click to expand...

No, you can't just say that and then handwave away all the other stuff she does/says in the movie. She's concerned about Spock. Hell, so is Kirk. The basis of her concern is not 100% relationship based, and her needs are not entirely relationship based, and her motivation is not entirely relationship based. A character is more than their dialog, and her motivations and actions in the film are pretty obviously NOT simply to serve as Spock's loyal girlfriend. She's not "relegated" to anything in these movies. She was "relegated" to answering the phone for 9/10ths of her existence as a character in the previous movies/episodes. She does way more in these two movies than she's ever done previously (fan dance), and will likely do more in the next as well. The question is whether you can watch it and let go of the overriding idea that she's being "relegated" to girlfriend status and nothing more even when the movies are explicitly showing you there's more to her as a character than there's ever been in any previous iteration.

edit: That's not to say there isn't room for her to grow, because there is.
 
S

StarCreator

Member
Zzoram said:
This movie had the balls to have the villain and hero never actually meet face to face.

Nowadays every hero and villain have to have a fist fight.
Click to expand...

To be fair, IIRC the reason Khan and Kirk never meet in Wrath of Khan was because the movie had been greenlit before even confirming Montalban's availability, and they wound up not being able to bring him in at the same time as Shatner. Shatner had to do all his lines involving Khan with a script girl.
 
T

teruterubozu

Member
StarCreator said:
To be fair, IIRC the reason Khan and Kirk never meet in Wrath of Khan was because the movie had been greenlit before even confirming Montalban's availability, and they wound up not being able to bring him in at the same time as Shatner. Shatner had to do all his lines involving Khan with a script girl.
Click to expand...

Shatner was also doing TJ Hooker while Montalbalm was doing Fantasy Island during the filming. They were at their height.
 
B

BravesCountry

Banned
UncleSporky said:
I posted this in the STID thread, pretty relevant here:

Khan kinda sucked.

Going over what this "dangerous man" accomplished:

- He seduced a member of the Enterprise, enabling him to seize control of the ship, but he didn't even do a very good job of it because she quickly betrayed him and enabled Kirk to get his control back. There were a number of dumb blunders on his part during his brief period of control like sending easily-overpowered lackeys to do his dirty work.

- He fights Kirk man to man, says he's five times stronger and Kirk can't hope to win, and then Kirk knocks him out about five seconds later.

- He voluntarily goes into exile, practically on good terms, doesn't try to fight back or do anything devious.

- 15 years later he is exceedingly lucky to have two Starfleet officers fall into his lap and is also lucky that he had ended up on a planet with a creature that allows him to control minds.

- He and his crew take over a starship and kill everyone on a station, so points for that I suppose.

- Kirk stupidly fails to raise his shields which is the only reason he has any trouble with Khan in the first place. Shortly after taking heavy damage, Kirk forcibly lowers Khan's shields and easily cripples him.

- Once again, Khan relies on others to do his dirty work, which fails when the bug voluntarily leaves Chekov's ear. Shouldn't he have known something like that could happen?

- He fails to realize that Kirk knows their communication is being monitored. The famous "KHAAN" yell was just false drama, Kirk knew they were getting out of there the entire time.

- Khan is very easily taunted into following Kirk into a location that makes them evenly matched, and easily dispatched shortly afterward because his superior intellect couldn't think in three dimensions.
Click to expand...

This. I watched WoK the other day for the first time and I was thoroughly unimpressed with Khan as a villain, especially after hearing how great of a villain he was. The scene that really got me was when Kirk tricked him into buying enough time to lower the Reliant's shields. Kirk was standing there stalling and very indiscreetly giving orders to his crew while Khan stood there like an idiot asking him what was taking so long. They praise Khan's superior intellect in the movie but it did not show itself even once.
 
J

JB1981

Member
BravesCountry said:
This. I watched WoK the other day for the first time and I was thoroughly unimpressed with Khan as a villain, especially after hearing how great of a villain he was. The scene that really got me was when Kirk tricked him into buying enough time to lower the Reliant's shields. Kirk was standing there stalling and very indiscreetly giving orders to his crew while Khan stood there like an idiot asking him what was taking to so long. They praise Khan's superior intellect in the movie but it did not show itself even once.
Click to expand...

I agree that that was a very stupid scene.
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
FatboyRoberts said:
No, you can't just say that and then handwave away all the other stuff she does/says in the movie. She's concerned about Spock. So is Kirk. The basis of her concern is not 100% relationship based, and her needs are not entirely relationship based, and her motivation is not entirely relationship based. A character is more than their dialog, and her motivations and actions in the film are pretty obviously NOT simply to serve as Spock's loyal girlfriend. She's not "relegated" to anything in these movies. She was "relegated" to answering the phone for 9/10ths of her existence as a character in the previous movies/episodes. She does way more in these two movies than she's ever done previously (fan dance), and will likely do more in the next as well. The question is whether you can watch it and let go of the overriding idea that she's being "relegated" to girlfriend status and nothing more even when the movies are explicitly showing you there's more to her as a character than there's ever been in any previous iteration.
Click to expand...

She acts as a translator when a universal translator would've done, and she beams on to a windy, high-moving vehicle in a dress to calm Spock down. Rest of the time she's complaining about her relationship problems. It's great that they made her more of a linguistics expert, which should come in handy on the five-year mission, but both come off as a little reaching to give her stuff to do.
 
J

JB1981

Member
Dax01 said:
She acts as a translator when a universal translator would've done, and she beams on to a windy, high-moving vehicle in a dress to calm Spock down. Rest of the time she's complaining about her relationship problems. It's great that they made her more of a linguistics expert, which should come in handy on the five-year mission, but both come off as a little reaching to give her stuff to do.
Click to expand...

She's hot and looks great in a dress. What would you prefer that she wears?
 
U

UncleSporky

Member
Dax01 said:
She acts as a translator when a universal translator would've done, and she beams on to a windy, high-moving vehicle in a dress to calm Spock down. Rest of the time she's complaining about her relationship problems. It's great that they made her more of a linguistics expert, which should come in handy on the five-year mission, but both come off as a little reaching to give her stuff to do.
Click to expand...

Yes, of course. They put her there to calm Spock down with a gun, and she missed repeatedly, hitting his adversary instead.
 
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