• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Star Trek Beyond (Justin Lin, 2016) - Spoiler Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
Saw it last night and while the trek fan in me had problems with somethings (Yorktown in particular seeming to be way ahead of any federation technology seen before) it wasn't actually that bad and certainly better than the other two. Kirk was more like Kirk, spock is still far to emotional though and McCoy is still just like McCoy should be. There was also some excellent shout outs to Enterprise (mentioning the Xindi for example and the MACOS which Elbas character was a member of, even mentioning polarised hull plating at one point). Clearly Pegg had actually watched enterprise. They even made the Franklin actually look like a combination of the nx enterprise and the warp 3 ships shown in enterprise.
So yeah it's wasn't that bad.
 
I loved it. By far the best of the reboot movies. And seeing NCC-1701-A made my heart flutter a little bit.
 
The "This ain't Star Trek" people need to gtfo. They're about 20 years late to the party on that; Star Trek movies have been just dumb sci-fi action movies with Star Trek dressing since Generations. Beyond has more "real" Star Trek in it than any movie of the franchise since The Undiscovered Country.

I think this argument itself is nearly that old. But Beyond is clearly Star Trek, much more so than 09 or STID. Nobody wants new movies like Generations or Nemesis - when we ask for Trek, we want good Trek.
 
I think this argument itself is nearly that old. But Beyond is clearly Star Trek, much more so than 09 or STID. Nobody wants new movies like Generations or Nemesis - when we ask for Trek, we want good Trek.

I just feel like I see a lot of that sentiment specifically around this movie by people that I just want to slap.
 
Patrick Steward ruined and poisoned Star Trek films so badly I fear we will never recover from it as fans. Even when the series moves back in the right direction with Beyond te fanbase remains divided because of bitterness and confusion over what Star Trek even means anymore. Truly sad. The post mortem book on Star Trek Insurrection is fucking heartbreaking.
 
The fact that the genesis of the whole project as we see it on screen happened in just 2.5 months makes it absolutely mind blowing that the story has any cohesion at all. Yet it also explores some worthwhile themes in a way that the previous two films can't hold a candle to despite having so much more time to gestate their scripts.

Jung and Pegg NEED to be allowed to show what they can do with more breathing room. I mean, maybe the immense constraints were what made them able to make this gem of a Trek episode, but i'm inclined to think they also just know their shit at a level Kurzman and Orci are incapable.
 
I saw this yesterday.

Totally agree that this feels like the most Trek film of the reboots so far.

I think overall, I enjoyed 2009 the most (maybe because I was so surprised that it worked), with this one a close 2nd. Into Darkness was fine, too.
 
Patrick Steward ruined and poisoned Star Trek films so badly I fear we will never recover from it as fans. Even when the series moves back in the right direction with Beyond te fanbase remains divided because of bitterness and confusion over what Star Trek even means anymore. Truly sad. The post mortem book on Star Trek Insurrection is fucking heartbreaking.

What is the book called? I would be interested to read it.
 
Patrick Steward ruined and poisoned Star Trek films so badly I fear we will never recover from it as fans. Even when the series moves back in the right direction with Beyond te fanbase remains divided because of bitterness and confusion over what Star Trek even means anymore. Truly sad. The post mortem book on Star Trek Insurrection is fucking heartbreaking.

What? I had no idea. What'd he do?
 
What is the book called? I would be interested to read it.

What? I had no idea. What'd he do?

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11681639-fade-in

The book is called Fade In. You can easily find the pdf for it online by googling it. It's not piracy because the book was never formally published due to rights issues. Michael Piller passed away without getting it to print, but because of the digital nature of the internet, the message he wanted to share lives on. He talks about the process of getting the film made, the challenges he faced writing it, and what he thought worked and what didn't. He doesn't really make any excuses for his own failure in the final product, but it's fascinating to see how divided even the production side is on what Star Trek is.

As for what Picard did to the series... well, he had a lot of swing given his popularity with the fanbase, and he exercised that power actively in pushing for the movies to be bigger, louder, sexier, and grander, because he felt that anything approaching similarity to the TV series which made his career would be boring to fans and when you go to a cinema you want to see BIG things. He always wanted Picard to be front and center as a heroic badass because well... it's the movies... yeah.
 
What? I had no idea. What'd he do?
What is the book called? I would be interested to read it.
It's called "Fade In". It's a book he wrote but was never officially published.
http://nightly.net/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=5159

Like the Ron Moore rant about why Voyager sucked, it's extremely revealing and very insidery, which is probably why it was never released.

The "This ain't Star Trek" people need to gtfo. They're about 20 years late to the party on that;
Star Trek movies have been just dumb sci-fi action movies with Star Trek dressing since Generations. Beyond has more "real" Star Trek in it than any movie of the franchise since The Undiscovered Country.
Insurrection was kind of Trek in that it tried to be about something. It's just too bad they did that plot at least twice before (relocating local inhabitants of a planet) and Stewart had stupid demands to turn it into a dumb action movie.

The reality is that Star Trek doesn't make for good films, because it's almost impossible to make a big budget high concept science fiction movie in 2016. Interstellar is basically the closest thing you'd get, but you have to have a stupid hook about how the entire world is ending and have time travelling daughters and shit in order to try to make it "exciting".

Like, Ex Machina or Moon could be perfect Star Trek-esque stories, if they redressed them with Star Trek trappings, but could you imagine Paramount spending 100+ million on a film about a female robot seducing Chris Pine in order to escape from eternal servitude from a crazy self-declared genius? It'd be a fine TV episode story, but you just can't sell that as a Star Trek movie.
 
Explained in:
1. showing a drained crew member during the initial attack (Bones tries to investigate, but has to move) (Bones)
2. Scotty being threatened by other aliens banding together who must have come from other ships (Scotty)
3. the actual life energy drain where we see him kill two crew members, with Uhura watching in horror (Uhura)
4. Jaylah explaining why escaping the camp was hard and going back not an option: "he has some kind of energy transfer, it changes him physically"
5. Jaylah saying that she doesn't want to end like 'all the others', once again reinforcing this has been ongoing for a longer time with many aliens (Jaylah)
6. the logs of the USS Franklin, where Krall tells us there is some kind of abandoned advanced alien tech on the planet, allowing for 'some type of energy transfer to extend life' (Kirk and Chekov)
7. The USS Franklin having disappeared 300 years ago, as mentioned by Scotty when he first finds out what jaylah's house is. The logs then complete the total image to: crazed soldier using alien life energy transfer tech to extend his life that also transfers physical qualities to the user from the victims.


I don't know how so many of you have missed all that since it's very much presented right in centre frame, but oh well.

oh, and:
8. When the surviving crew fly the USS Franklin to intercept Krall, Krall looks at the ship and says: "Hello old friend".
(which I'm pretty sure was also a Nimoy line in one the previous movies - TOS that is)


The one actual inconsistency with this plot is why Krall didn't send regular patrols to check his old ship, since holo-cloaking is all fun and all, but he and the two others would / should remember it's there. Maybe they were changed so much that their memories also became scrambled, but that's really the only big fridge logic point, as far as I can tell.

Also, the alien miners who left the technology on the planet were likely all killed by the unleashed bio-weapon and managed to split it and shoot it into space at the last minute but too late for them to survive.
I assumed that they figured the Franklin was unsalvageable after however many years they tried to get it working and then he ended up abandoning it. I don't get the sense Jaylah was hiding it from Krall, she was hiding it from the other randoms who hadn't gotten captured on the planet.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11681639-fade-in

The book is called Fade In. You can easily find the pdf for it online by googling it. It's not piracy because the book was never formally published due to rights issues. Michael Piller passed away without getting it to print, but because of the digital nature of the internet, the message he wanted to share lives on. He talks about the process of getting the film made, the challenges he faced writing it, and what he thought worked and what didn't. He doesn't really make any excuses for his own failure in the final product, but it's fascinating to see how divided even the production side is on what Star Trek is.

As for what Picard did to the series... well, he had a lot of swing given his popularity with the fanbase, and he exercised that power actively in pushing for the movies to be bigger, louder, sexier, and grander, because he felt that anything approaching similarity to the TV series which made his career would be boring to fans and when you go to a cinema you want to see BIG things. He always wanted Picard to be front and center as a heroic badass because well... it's the movies... yeah.

Pillar's central conceit of Insurrection and the moral quandary is what ruins that movie, even before you get to the ham-fisted comedy and romance.

As to what would make a Star Trek film more "Star Trek"-like, it would help if not every single story was just about a guy out for revenge, with the same threats, the same super weapon, and the same arc. Into Darkness looked like it was trending in that direction (with Starfleet being the bad guys, the questions of what happens if the military called the shots, using agents to foment war) but then it took the Khan dive into stupidity.

We got the Wrath of Khan, and it was great. Trying to repeat that same formula incessantly has not led to good results.

(The fakeout "maybe I'll be redeemed!" bit with Krall at the end was hands-down my least favorite part of the entire film. Heaven forbid they actually let a speech chance someone's mind.)
 
Pillar's central conceit of Insurrection and the moral quandary is what ruins that movie, even before you get to the ham-fisted comedy and romance.
His original idea was basically Heart of Darkness in space. Which I think could have been a somewhat interesting idea and a change of pace from shit blowing up for 2 hours in First Contact.
 
Yo I just got back from seeing this and it was just a total blast.

I feel like the movie series was finally able to strike the balance between being nostalgic and having a good time being what it wanted to be.
 
Yo I just got back from seeing this and it was just a total blast.

I feel like the movie series was finally able to strike the balance between being nostalgic and having a good time being what it wanted to be.

And Captain Foley of Trekyards likes it, which is good enough for me.
 
Great film. I really loved all the "Chekhov's Gun" writing going on.

Everything that was brought up and established earlier in the film - the pendant, the bike, the ship, the villain, the minor characters - had a purpose and came back in the second half of the film. Really tightly written and satisfying to watch all the pieces come together.

The Yorktown set piece was absolutely nuts.
 
Just came out of the cinema. I thought the other two movies of the reboot series were better but it is still a really good movie. It felt like an episode of the show, which I enjoyed. The sabotage scene killed me. Awesome scene. I think Justin Lin is a fine director but J.J has a really good understanding of how to direct comedy and dialogue in his movies. I think Justin Lin just needs a bit more practice.
 
Really enjoyed this one when I saw it yesterday. Solid movie all around. Not as terrible as the second one and just as good as the first. I'd buy it on blu-ray when it comes out.

I think it speaks well of the movie that I can't wait to see what the adventures of NCC-1701-A are going to be.

this is true. immediately after the movie was done I wanted to watch more.
 
I think it speaks well of the movie that I can't wait to see what the adventures of NCC-1701-A are going to be.
 
I liked it a lot. Took a little bit to engage, but then had a lot of fun with the second half.

Felt like an extended episode save for the threat to the galaxy bit. Kirk felt more stoic in this films than the previous ones, probably to indicate more maturity. Bones continues to be the best thing about the rebooted franchise.
 
Just saw it, I definitely agree with the general sentiment that this is the best of the reboot movies.

Anyone else get Mass Effect Citadel vibes from Yorktown? They really went the distance with that station, it looked fantastic.

My one complaint, and this is common among the reboots, is how easily destroyed pretty much any federation ships or tech. Anything Federation besides the Enterprise (and now including the Enterprise in this movie) almost feel incompetent at their jobs, and need to be saved by Kirk's magical "science" solutions.

It would be nice if I could see one fight in a Star Trek movie where it's not obviously one-sided.
 
Just saw it, I definitely agree with the general sentiment that this is the best of the reboot movies.

Anyone else get Mass Effect Citadel vibes from Yorktown? They really went the distance with that station, it looked fantastic.

My one complaint, and this is common among the reboots, is how easily destroyed pretty much any federation ships or tech. Anything Federation besides the Enterprise (and now including the Enterprise in this movie) almost feel incompetent at their jobs, and need to be saved by Kirk's magical "science" solutions.

It would be nice if I could see one fight in a Star Trek movie where it's not obviously one-sided.

The excuses for why they were getting owned were better in the first two movies. And technically the strongest ship in ID was a Federation ship.
 
I assumed that they figured the Franklin was unsalvageable after however many years they tried to get it working and then he ended up abandoning it. I don't get the sense Jaylah was hiding it from Krall, she was hiding it from the other randoms who hadn't gotten captured on the planet.

Yeah, okay, that works. But it's still kind of weird that they don't keep track of who is already on the planet, especially since Jaylah escaped from the actual camp. Her storyline and character were great though.

for those who didn't know: she's the same actress as the 'blade girl' in Kingsman, and I would love to see her back in a sequel. The reboot crew was severely lacking a competent warrior type (like Klingons), which made the first movie more about running around than anything meaningful, and the second one even more dreadful when Klingons show up. They just fucking stand there.
But okay, I'm not going to discuss how terrible Into Darkness is. SHOUTING INTO CAMERA EQUALS DRAMA! - said no experienced writer ever, but somehow this complete incompetence at writing is what Orci and Kurzmann did. I hate that they even get to "write" anything. They can't write anything! Sigh. It just makes me so mad....

(The fakeout "maybe I'll be redeemed!" bit with Krall at the end was hands-down my least favorite part of the entire film. Heaven forbid they actually let a speech chance someone's mind.)

That would have been too TNG, and not very sensible for a 300-year revenge quest, as well as the 'pushing the frontier' theme. If everyone suddenly gets along, the violence of the act of "pushing" (which is not harmless, despite intentions) gets lost.
I was thinking "oh he's going to flip the last one isn't he" and then thankfully he didn't, because that's really a TNG cliché.
 
Saw it, really enjoyed it.

I thought some of the action was wayyy too shaky cam or incoherent during some bits. Just getting a sense of place was really difficult, especially when they're scavenging in the saucer or when the ship was going down, but the characters were enjoyable, and the plot was a less trashfire version of Into Darkness.

Also the Sabatoge sequence got a goofy grin from me. It was dumb, but enjoyably so.
 
Carol Marcus hasn't starred in either of these two new Trek films? If memory serves.

Star-Trek-Into-Darkness-Carol-Marcus.jpg


She was alive at the end of Into Darkness.

Besides, the best thing for this movie to do (and has done) is ignore the trashfire that was Into Darkness.
 
Went and saw this last night, loved it. The best of the reboots so far. Hopefully Lin and Pegg are involved the making of the next movie.

It might have gone over my head but did they explain how Edison was able to absorb other people?
 
Went and saw this last night, loved it. The best of the reboots so far. Hopefully Lin and Pegg are involved the making of the next movie.

It might have gone over my head but did they explain how Edison was able to absorb other people?

I think it was the suit he was wearing.
 
Just saw this today. Such a fun movie. The action scenes are really incredible. The Yorktown is just conceptually amazing.

Bones and Spock together was entertaining and touching. Scotty and Jaylah together were fantastic; really hope she returns in the series.

Elba does a great villain.

Gonna miss Anton's Chekhov. I wonder if they'll re-cast Chekhov or shift a new character into that role.

I'll be picking this up on blu-ray when it comes out for sure.
 
Curious, I'm sorry if this has been discussed, but did anyone notice that the new ship was being built at the Yorktown base. When the enterprise blew up in the original series and they got a new ship with the NCC-1701-A (both with the same name), that ship supposedly WAS the USS Yorktown. So in a way, Yorktown is connected to two new Enterprises.
 
I wonder how they're going to bring in Kirks Dad for the next one?

I'm guessing he'll be thrown forward by something related to the Narada's time travel, found in stasis or a transporter buffer, or will have been in something like the Nexus all that time.

Because I don't want the movie to be about Kirk's crew having to go back in time to correct past wrongs blargle blargle
 
I'm guessing he'll be thrown forward by something related to the Narada's time travel, found in stasis or a transporter buffer, or will have been in something like the Nexus all that time.

Because I don't want the movie to be about Kirk's crew having to go back in time to correct past wrongs blargle blargle

I personally hope it's mirror universe, so we can have George Kirk as large as Thor :D
 
I just got back from seeing it. I thought it was great. Best of the rebooted series for me. Only problem I had was the shaky cam shots during the fight with Jayla and Krall's sidekick.

Nice shoutouts to the old Trek cast at the end, Nimoy and Anton. Crowd applauded.
 
I'm guessing he'll be thrown forward by something related to the Narada's time travel, found in stasis or a transporter buffer, or will have been in something like the Nexus all that time.

Because I don't want the movie to be about Kirk's crew having to go back in time to correct past wrongs blargle blargle
Yeah, I'd rather it just be stasis or a buffer. The time travel forward thing seems reasonable too. What if it's just a flashback? What if Star Trek XIV is a clip show? Or a fake clip show ala Community? Six movies and a TV show!
 
I just got back from seeing it. I thought it was great. Best of the rebooted series for me. Only problem I had was the shaky cam shots during the fight with Jayla and Krall's sidekick.

Nice shoutouts to the old Trek cast at the end, Nimoy and Anton. Crowd applauded.

Every time Nimoy got brought up, I almost started to cry.
 
Just looked, how the fuck does this have a lower RT than Into Darkness? I mean I know this stuff is arbitrary or whatever, but come the fuck on....
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom