Sfdebris.net

Abramstrek is something that is controversial and a fair number of people don't like it. I agree with them on some issues relating to story, tone and worldbuilding and I will say that Into Darkness is bad and Star Trek 2009 is on balance on the better side of "it's fine". Even so there is one point that which I find to be just plain bad, namely most of the complaints about the aesthetics of it.

We'll start with a major point: Aesthetic preferences are subjective. Some like Baroque, others Bauhaus. I am not here to mandate your visual preferences. What I am interested in is less "does this thing look nice?" (though for most of the Starfleet Stuff I say Yes) and more "do these designs fit into Star Trek?" to which my response is "Hell Yes".

The most obvious point is the Uniforms, the clothes that our heroes wear when they are boldly going, the thing that makes a photograph of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy or Simon Pegg be a picture of Kirk, Spock or Scotty. Here we have the TOS Uniform...

...While the TOS Uniform was made on the cheap, there is a design philosophy behind it. Simple in form (Shirt, Pants, Boots) made with synthetic fabrics, easy and comfortable to wear, color coded for departments, nice and orderly without being overtly militaristic. Ideas that were common enough of sci-fi of that era.

Now compare that to Abrams Trek uniforms.

They're the same basic idea but with better execution. Better tailoring, better textiles and the rough edges dealt with. It's distinctively and iconically Trek.

Same basic principle applies to the Enteprise.


Then there is the the Mac Store vibe that some people felt was really bad. I never got it and frankly felt that it fit in quite well. First of all, all Trek series have been influenced aesthetically by what was conceived of as looking High Tech at the Time as a visual shorthand to tell you that this is more modern. But secondly there are some specifics which come back around. The Apple Aesthetic is based off old school modernist designs, a big part of the modernist movement was imagining a future in which technologies such as mass production had make a better world. That's the Star Trek ethos in design form and moreover there were elements of 1960s Modernism which were incorporated into TOS's designs. Sure both were shaped by the ideas of 1960s and the Obama Administration respectively, but both start from the same basic place as far as design philosophy. Please note that I got this when I first saw the trailers.

And lastly I would like to say "If Not this, then what?" There is probably out there in the lands of the hypothetical a million ways of going about this which would be just as good if not better for this specific franchise, but unless you have a book full of concept art for "My Version of a Star Trek soft Reboot trilogy of Films" lying about it's rather hard to prove that your preferred version is better. That said, recreating the look of the Original Series bolt for bolt would have been on par with making everyone wear Mayopants, pants made of mayonnaise. It worked reasonably well in the shows as a throwback but frankly you're kidding yourself if you'd think that anyone but the hardest of hardcore oldschool trekkies would have thought that recreating the TOS Bridge for Abramstrek would have been a good idea.

In summery as far as aesthetics go, Abramstrek did a damn fine job. The worst you can say is that it was a product of it's time and even then it holds up pretty well.

Zor

I think they did a good job with the aesthetics on a design level. I have a lot of problems with those films, but the visuals are mostly good. The execution of the visuals (the scale of the ship, the placement of glaring lights, lack of iconic beam-weapons, etc.) were often flawed, but the designs themselves are fairly solid overall.

I don't mind changing the uniforms. Changing the look and size of the ship was something stupid. It looked like the refit prior to the refit. Was any explanation given for why this was?

well, it's a completely separate continuity, so why wouldn't it be different?

It's a separate continuity by time travel, not a parallel dimension, so you have to explain why it has the refit look.

no, they didn't have to explain that, because it has no bearing whatsoever on the story. any explanation they might give would've just been wasted screen-time for something that doesn't go anywhere, and that the majority of the audience doesn't care about. extraneous details weaken a story.

but if you must have an explanation: the two timelines diverged 20+ years prior, meaning that the people working on the thing had 20+ years of different experiences informing their design decisions.

No, yes, they absolutely do have to give an explanation, even if it's a small throwaway line such as, "These upgrades weren't expected for another few decades, but conflicts with the Klingons and what happened with that unknown ship forced us to press it into service earlier." It doesn't take much time. Again, this is NOT a parallel dimension, this is time travel. Thus, it's an altered timeline, so you absolutely have to explain its look. It would have been far better if it was a parallel dimension. I've said that over and over. That would explain this universe's Khan being so radically different.

The biggest compliment I wanna give to the first film is the jovial energy that Abrams brought back to Trek, something I think was sorely missing in the latter years of the Berman era. Abrams actually made Trek feel fun to watch. The writing was never great, but Abrams got a lot of great performances out of his actors. Trek felt like it was a part of pop culture again.

Too bad INTO DARKNESS killed that momentum for the films. I would have liked to see this cast continue on more adventures, but at least BEYOND gave them a decent send off even if it wasn’t the intent.

Especially since they canceled Star Trek 4, and they blame Star Wars movies coming back. While that played a role, I think the damage the earlier films did as well as the direction of the franchise and fans being unhappy with that is playing a bigger part. Shit, just look at how badly one wrong decision can piss off the fans to the point it hurts the brand. I've been boycotting Star Wars since 2015, and there's a simple reason for that. I would have been willing to give the new Star Wars canon a chance, but they insisted Legends was "non-canon" and "never canon." First off, I'm always leery of reboots given the age we live in and the nostalgic cash-grabs Hollywood pumps out, which tend to be low quality. And second, that shows the level of disconnect I was initially enraged over and that was later proven with what they did on screen, namely that Legends had levels of canon, and to cite George on this? George is never consistent on one thing to the next, as Chuck proved on his look at that man's past. He says he had this grand plan for how the first three films would turn out, yet we know that's not the case. So don't claim Legends is not and was never canon. That's just disregarding how much it meant to the fans. To them, it was just supplementary material, nothing more. The films were what mattered. And of course George would feel that way because they were his babies. These new owners? Because it can make them big bucks, cha-ching! And I think that was played out on the big screen. I literally see comment after comment with Star Trek and Star Wars fans comparing STD with Last Jedi and how it's all, "Fuck your childhood, this is the new era we're shoving down your throats we're going to MAKE you love!" When a fan feels like that, and they're not a substantial minority, then you know you dun fucked up.

Who blamed Star Wars? I only recall a Forbes article, but that was just that writer's opinion.

Yuka, I think you take this shit much more personally than you should. If you're that cynical, obsessive, and miserable, maybe you should give up on these franchises for good and just hold onto the older iterations. You're so obsessed over canon that you actually demand characters be more specific about the changes in their timeline over how different technology works.

Take it from me. I'm a big Terminator fan, but each installment after 2 has been a clusterfuck. At this point, I only care about the first two films. I don't give much attention to the films and TV series that came after.