Star Trek Beyond

[RobbyB1982]

Well, how about Lost or Cloverfield?

Despite his name being attached to it, Abrams had almost nothing to do with LOST. He was called in to write the pilot and used his name clout to get it made with a budget (and the real airplane), and he helped push the mystery hook for the adverising, hence the Producer credit, but he had very little to do with the concept or actual production of the show.

So whatever your feelings on Lost, you can't really credit or blame him for it. (Personally I really enjoyed LOST and think if you marathon it it all works fine, but it was much rougher one week at a time for six years with multi-month gaps.)

As for Cloverfield, that was just doing a Godzilla film with a handheld camera.

I noticed no score or prizes for this one. I know Into Darkness didn't have one but since it came out on Christmas it was assumed to be zero. I assume that Easter doesn't carry that same connotation.

So if I were to speculate, the score for this one should be a 7 or 8?

He doesn't give a score for STD either. I've always wondered why.

He started reviewing Discovery while it was still airing, before the first season had even finished, so he doesn't have an overall series to compare it to. His original plan had been to rate them all at the end of the season but by the time e got there season 2 had been announced, and he ultimately ended up so frustrated with it all he just sort of summarized his thoughts again rather than scoring each episode. And when you hate the entire season do you give a terrible episode a 10 anyway because its the best of the lot? Do you give the entire series 1's and 3's? What do you do if season 3 actually turns out decent? etc. He can't rate it against itself because its still going.

I imagine Picard will end up being the same deal.

[clearspira]

OK, so here's the question to end all questions: who is the best captain? Pine!Kirk or Jonathan Archer?

[Riedquat]

Also, Pine finally figured out how to play Kirk. I have to admit, IDK if this is Pine's fault, if it was the writers, or the directors from the 1st 2 movies that cause the Kirk problems.

There were a few moments when he seemed to be doing a pretty decent Shatner impression. Anyway at least he finally looked like someone capable of having some authority rather than mopping floors.

[Philistine]

He's got a much more favorable view of the Enterprise's destruction. I can't really disagree with his specific points so maybe my opinion can do with some loosening, but I was annoyed with it. Even if it technically wasn't "destroyed" in the other two movies, it still had it's ass utterly handed to it. And the fact that this movie then tries to make us feel the loss, as though this Enterprise has ever done anything to make us feel that wrecking it is impressive, annoyed me.

Yeah, while it works in a storytelling sense, emotionally it just didn't have any impact on me, especially given that I never really had a sense of nu-Kirk's attachment to it like Prime Kirk's did. Credit for doing it at the beginning of the film and not the end, but there simply wasn't enough goodwill to make it an effective gut punch.

I cannot agree. To take an example from another franchise, the effectiveness of the destruction of Alderaan doesn't hinge on the audience having a pre-formed connection to that world - it hinges on Carrie Fisher's ability to portray the shock and pain of someone who does have that connection. Or another: the pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows the death of a character who's had only scant moments of screen time and a handful of lines - the audience's reaction to this character's later reappearance as a vampire doesn't hinge on our attachment to the character, but on empathizing with the horror and guilt the other characters show when they realize that their friend is dead and a monster is walking around wearing his body like a cheap suit.

What Beyond did ludicrously better than any of the previous on-screen demolitions of the star ship Enterprise was simply allowing at least one character to have any reaction at all to the destruction. Old Kirk showed no indication that he felt anything one way or the other about blowing up the original in ST3; ISTR Picard laughing as he picked through the rubble of the -D in Generations. By contrast, nu-Kirk actually shows a degree of sentimental attachment to the ship that had been, in addition to everything else, his home for the previous 3+ years.

ETA: This is not to overlook the many other flaws of Beyond. Just that this specific criticism doesn't land, at least not for me.

EATA: Trying to make the audience feel something the characters weren't invested in was IMO one of the big places JJ Failbrams went wrong with Into Darkness. The big reveal of "Khan!" was clearly meant to engage the audience's emotions; but since the characters had no reason to (and clearly didn't) care, it fell flat on the screen. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

[Captain Crimson]

1, Ugh! It always frustrates me when he uses whatever video service this one is - i can't fullscreen these videos! Go back to ANY of the other ones please!

I'm afraid that is the site of last resort. If you see it, I already tried everything else first.

I tried getting an invite to Floatplane. Got a form letter rejecting me, saying that as someone just starting out I need to work on building my audience. So that's going well.

Hey, Mr. Chuck, please don't work yourself to death on our account, okay? It's not worth it.

[Jonathan101]

What made JJ Abrams famous was the spy show "Alias", for what it's worth.

Based on Tom Cruise binge-watching the first two seasons of that show (and because the last two directors had dropped out over creative differences, one of whom was David Fincher), he offered Abrams the job of directing "Mission: Impossible III", which proved to be a success and was how he got his foot in the door in Hollywood, and started his trend of being drafted in to do other established franchise movies.

In fairness to Abrams, he reportedly was reluctant to do Star Wars as he found the project intimidating (he was originally offered all three movies, which in hindsight he probably should have just done so that the films at least had a consistent tone), and is humble enough to admit that he didn't do the best job on TFA as he played it too safe by just retreading the OT. He's not going "out of his way" to direct M:I, Star Trek and Star Wars, he just keeps getting offered the jobs.

[Tanan]

OK, so here's the question to end all questions: who is the best captain? Pine!Kirk or Jonathan Archer?

If it was Pine!Kirk from just the first two movies, Archer would be the best.
But if it's Pine!Kirk from Beyond, definitely him.

And speaking of Beyond, this is a ST movie I've watched at least more than twice: while it has its flaws and the initial marketing did everything to try and make me not watch it, I was very pleasantly surprised by how better the characters were and it felt like it could have been the turning point for the Kelvin timeline if chance hadn't conspired to derail things.

[Madner Kami]

Beyond is the only Kelvin-Trek movie I bought and that for the simple reasons that it's:
A) Fun to watch
B) Not just mindless action and spectacle
C) Characters are acting like competent, adult starship crew-members
D) The plot and story-fabric can't be pierced by throwing a paper-airplane at it.

It's a genuinely good movie with themes and just enough but not too much LOLs thrown into it, to keep it entertaining on that level, without devolving into the roller-coaster that ST: 2009 is. (Let's not even bother with thinking about Into Darkness, because unlike 2009, it's not even an action-adventure space-movie, as 2009 has at least that going for it.)

As for the destruction of this Enterprise, I may not have much emotion reserved for this iteration of the ship, but the destruction serves a purpose and makes sense from a plot-PoV, too. It lacks the "OMG, what have I done"-feeling that ST3 left you with, but it easily ranks next to it. I'd still argue though that, if Generations didn't utilize the Duras, but actually used a Romulan faction in their stead, it would have gone a long way in not coming across as so pointless.

[CrypticMirror]

OK, so here's the question to end all questions: who is the best captain? Pine!Kirk or Jonathan Archer?

Well, Archer ended his run with his ship still intact. Archer wins.

[Rocketboy1313]

What Beyond did ludicrously better than any of the previous on-screen demolitions of the star ship Enterprise was simply allowing at least one character to have any reaction at all to the destruction. Old Kirk showed no indication that he felt anything one way or the other about blowing up the original in ST3; ISTR Picard laughing as he picked through the rubble of the -D in Generations. By contrast, nu-Kirk actually shows a degree of sentimental attachment to the ship that had been, in addition to everything else, his home for the previous 3+ years.

They had a reaction in Star Trek 3.
https://youtu.be/CzJRx3vaApA