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Yes, I know. I am horrifyingly behind the times. But I absolutely loathe going to the movie theater. M. used to say that there are movies that you really need to see on the big screen, to which my response has always been that just means the screen we have at home isn't big enough, and that this is a solvable problem. (One which, with the new house, I believe we have solved.)
Anyway, because I didn't want to go to the theater, and because she didn't want to see J.J.Abrams' reboot of _Star Trek_ on the big screen badly enough to force me to go, we waited for Netflix to get it, and due to a concatenation of circumstances, still didn't get around to watching it until after we'd moved, so we ended up getting the "big-screen" experience after all. (Turned out it was our inaugural movie for both the new home theater system and the new reclining couch. Wins all around.)
Star Trek has always been, to my mind, pure fantasy wrapped up in the trappings of sci-fi. As a result, I have usually been OK with them playing fast-and-loose with, you know, physics. All I ask is that their "technobabble" stay babble, because as long as their explanations don't actually mean anything, my brain doesn't have to get involved.
_Star Trek_ broke this rule for me twice--the first time, with Romulus being destroyed by a supernova. Interstellar distances are such that the only star capable of going supernova in such a way that Romulus would be in any danger whatsoever is Romulus' own sun. Additionally, yes, supernovae are "sudden" on stellar lifespan terms, but the conditions that lead to them are both well-understood and take considerable millennia (as in, hundreds or thousands of them) at minimum to develop.* As a result, the idea that Romulus' star could pop off without giving the Romulans plenty of time to get every single life-form out of harm's way with centuries to spare is ridiculous on the face of it. And the idea that converting that star to a black hole would be an acceptable solution to the problem as presented goes beyond ridiculous into the realm of "actively offensive".
The second jolt-me-out-of-the-movie problem was, not surprisingly, with the secondary effects of the "red matter" itself. I have since been informed that there was a comic book series prequel to the movie, and that "red matter" and its effects were explained in more detail, which detail placed it more comfortably into the "technobabble" sphere, but I didn't read those comic books, I'm probably not going to, and the background information they provide is not part of the movie-watching experience, so when I review the movie, I must perforce ignore them. (Also, I don't get too many opportunities to use the word "perforce".)
For the record, I'm willing to put up with "red matter collapses ordinary matter it encounters into a black hole", because hey, fantasy, remember? You want to convert Vulcan's core into a black hole? Fine, you do that. But for that black hole at Vulcan's core to then suck in the whole planet, you have to at the same time introduce tens or hundreds of solar masses to the equation at the same time. Probably hundreds, to account for the speed at which the planet got sucked up. Your Schwarzchild radius is determined by the mass of your object, and by absolutely nothing else, and the Schwarzchild radius of a planet-sized object is on the order of one centimeter.**
And even if, okay, the red matter is some sort of magic stuff with a huge extra-dimensional mass that collapses into our three dimensions when it encounters ordinary matter (they did store the red matter in what was probably a vacuum bottle, held away from the edges with a likely-magnetic-ish field), then what the hell do you need to drill into the core for? No damn reason, that's what for. Just drop that little sucker into the atmosphere and watch it all fall apart, baby. "We're miners, we're really good at digging holes" is all you got? Yeah, sure, buddy.
Oh, oh! And while we're on the subject, if "a little dab'll do ya" with this stuff, why in God's name was Spock carrying around what looked like enough red matter to destroy the whole damn Galaxy? Who would think that was a good idea? "No-one but a yoghurt." (Two points if you identify that quote.)
I was also bothered by the several occurrences of the huge breach of military protocol involved with promoting cadets to command rank, just because they're a) there and b) slightly better-suited to handle this particular problem than the ranking person for the position with years of experience with the whole range of other problems encountered by a starship. Morale much?
All that aside, as a character-driven flick, I think they nailed it pretty well. I absolutely loved the new Bones. Kirk and Spock: Yes. Scotty: Could use maybe a little less of "the Scottish guy is the comic relief", but otherwise, OK. The new Sulu is not George Takei and never will be, but that is not his fault. The late, great Toshiro Mifune could not fill George Takei's shoes (but it would be awesome to watch his take on the character).
I liked where they added things to characters, too. Chekov in TOS was always just kind of there, you know? "We need somebody to sit in this chair. Maybe it should be the same guy every week?" I was a little bothered when he ran down to the transporter room to lock onto the falling Kirk and Sulu, because hey, we've got a transporter genius, he just hasn't showed up yet, but later on when he shot down every single missile incoming on Spock, I was all, "oooh, yeah, he's a ballistics genius!"
It bothered me a bit that old-Spock just handed Scotty the trans-warp equation. A far better solution, in my opinion, would have been to have Kirk describe the problem, lament the nonexistence of a trans-warp transporter solution, and then when Scotty said, "I've bin workin' on that wee little problem, but I hae nae been able to test my solution, since I'm stuck here on this ice cube", Spock could look over his shoulder and assure him that he had it right. Same screen time, same plot resolution, doesn't take away Scotty's moment of awesome. (I was entirely unbothered by Scotty doing this same thing to Dr. Nichols with transparent aluminum in STIV, because who the hell is Dr. Nichols and why should I care?)
Notably absent was any on-camera awesomeness for Uhura. Yes, she caught the vital data point about the lightning storm in Klingon space, but that happened off-stage and nobody would have known about it without Kirk's womanizing. I get that when you only have 120 minutes, and you have a seven-character ensemble cast, then the average plot time for each character is ~17 minutes, and the origin story has to be, has to be the Kirk and Spock Show. If there is going to be a sequel, I think it's vitally important that she be allowed some role other than Spock's emotional support. If equality is one of the ideals of the Federation (and it is), then if your ensemble cast is 86% male, you've got to be extra careful with your remaining 14%.
Plot-wise, the time-travel, alternate-history thing works for me as a reboot. And they clearly needed to reboot; there's far too much existing canon, and they'd never be able to develop any kind of tension because we "know" that all of the Super Seven live comfortably into their sixties and seventies.
Interesting that they managed to turn Kirk into the troubled child of a single parent, easily the most pervasive character backstory in all of moviedom.
I spent the entire last half-hour of the movie waiting for Kirk to shout, "You Romulan bastard, you killed my dad!", but he never did.
So, bottom line? Worth watching, but I am very glad we watched it at home where, when things got particularly egregious, I could pause and rant without bothering anybody but M. We'll definitely watch the next one if/when it comes out, but I don't think we'll be purchasing this one. Once was enough. We might rent it again, I guess, as a prerequisite to watching any sequel.
*Supernova ref
**This is, by the way, why the Large Hadron Collider, which is nominally designed (at least in part) to create black holes in Switzerland, never had the potential to destroy the world--the black holes created by the LHC are about the same mass as two large hadrons. For reference, some of the most well-known hadrons are the proton and the neutron, which means two hadrons together weigh something less than a helium atom. Ooo, scaaary.
Anyway, because I didn't want to go to the theater, and because she didn't want to see J.J.Abrams' reboot of _Star Trek_ on the big screen badly enough to force me to go, we waited for Netflix to get it, and due to a concatenation of circumstances, still didn't get around to watching it until after we'd moved, so we ended up getting the "big-screen" experience after all. (Turned out it was our inaugural movie for both the new home theater system and the new reclining couch. Wins all around.)
Star Trek has always been, to my mind, pure fantasy wrapped up in the trappings of sci-fi. As a result, I have usually been OK with them playing fast-and-loose with, you know, physics. All I ask is that their "technobabble" stay babble, because as long as their explanations don't actually mean anything, my brain doesn't have to get involved.
_Star Trek_ broke this rule for me twice--the first time, with Romulus being destroyed by a supernova. Interstellar distances are such that the only star capable of going supernova in such a way that Romulus would be in any danger whatsoever is Romulus' own sun. Additionally, yes, supernovae are "sudden" on stellar lifespan terms, but the conditions that lead to them are both well-understood and take considerable millennia (as in, hundreds or thousands of them) at minimum to develop.* As a result, the idea that Romulus' star could pop off without giving the Romulans plenty of time to get every single life-form out of harm's way with centuries to spare is ridiculous on the face of it. And the idea that converting that star to a black hole would be an acceptable solution to the problem as presented goes beyond ridiculous into the realm of "actively offensive".
The second jolt-me-out-of-the-movie problem was, not surprisingly, with the secondary effects of the "red matter" itself. I have since been informed that there was a comic book series prequel to the movie, and that "red matter" and its effects were explained in more detail, which detail placed it more comfortably into the "technobabble" sphere, but I didn't read those comic books, I'm probably not going to, and the background information they provide is not part of the movie-watching experience, so when I review the movie, I must perforce ignore them. (Also, I don't get too many opportunities to use the word "perforce".)
For the record, I'm willing to put up with "red matter collapses ordinary matter it encounters into a black hole", because hey, fantasy, remember? You want to convert Vulcan's core into a black hole? Fine, you do that. But for that black hole at Vulcan's core to then suck in the whole planet, you have to at the same time introduce tens or hundreds of solar masses to the equation at the same time. Probably hundreds, to account for the speed at which the planet got sucked up. Your Schwarzchild radius is determined by the mass of your object, and by absolutely nothing else, and the Schwarzchild radius of a planet-sized object is on the order of one centimeter.**
And even if, okay, the red matter is some sort of magic stuff with a huge extra-dimensional mass that collapses into our three dimensions when it encounters ordinary matter (they did store the red matter in what was probably a vacuum bottle, held away from the edges with a likely-magnetic-ish field), then what the hell do you need to drill into the core for? No damn reason, that's what for. Just drop that little sucker into the atmosphere and watch it all fall apart, baby. "We're miners, we're really good at digging holes" is all you got? Yeah, sure, buddy.
Oh, oh! And while we're on the subject, if "a little dab'll do ya" with this stuff, why in God's name was Spock carrying around what looked like enough red matter to destroy the whole damn Galaxy? Who would think that was a good idea? "No-one but a yoghurt." (Two points if you identify that quote.)
I was also bothered by the several occurrences of the huge breach of military protocol involved with promoting cadets to command rank, just because they're a) there and b) slightly better-suited to handle this particular problem than the ranking person for the position with years of experience with the whole range of other problems encountered by a starship. Morale much?
All that aside, as a character-driven flick, I think they nailed it pretty well. I absolutely loved the new Bones. Kirk and Spock: Yes. Scotty: Could use maybe a little less of "the Scottish guy is the comic relief", but otherwise, OK. The new Sulu is not George Takei and never will be, but that is not his fault. The late, great Toshiro Mifune could not fill George Takei's shoes (but it would be awesome to watch his take on the character).
I liked where they added things to characters, too. Chekov in TOS was always just kind of there, you know? "We need somebody to sit in this chair. Maybe it should be the same guy every week?" I was a little bothered when he ran down to the transporter room to lock onto the falling Kirk and Sulu, because hey, we've got a transporter genius, he just hasn't showed up yet, but later on when he shot down every single missile incoming on Spock, I was all, "oooh, yeah, he's a ballistics genius!"
It bothered me a bit that old-Spock just handed Scotty the trans-warp equation. A far better solution, in my opinion, would have been to have Kirk describe the problem, lament the nonexistence of a trans-warp transporter solution, and then when Scotty said, "I've bin workin' on that wee little problem, but I hae nae been able to test my solution, since I'm stuck here on this ice cube", Spock could look over his shoulder and assure him that he had it right. Same screen time, same plot resolution, doesn't take away Scotty's moment of awesome. (I was entirely unbothered by Scotty doing this same thing to Dr. Nichols with transparent aluminum in STIV, because who the hell is Dr. Nichols and why should I care?)
Notably absent was any on-camera awesomeness for Uhura. Yes, she caught the vital data point about the lightning storm in Klingon space, but that happened off-stage and nobody would have known about it without Kirk's womanizing. I get that when you only have 120 minutes, and you have a seven-character ensemble cast, then the average plot time for each character is ~17 minutes, and the origin story has to be, has to be the Kirk and Spock Show. If there is going to be a sequel, I think it's vitally important that she be allowed some role other than Spock's emotional support. If equality is one of the ideals of the Federation (and it is), then if your ensemble cast is 86% male, you've got to be extra careful with your remaining 14%.
Plot-wise, the time-travel, alternate-history thing works for me as a reboot. And they clearly needed to reboot; there's far too much existing canon, and they'd never be able to develop any kind of tension because we "know" that all of the Super Seven live comfortably into their sixties and seventies.
Interesting that they managed to turn Kirk into the troubled child of a single parent, easily the most pervasive character backstory in all of moviedom.
I spent the entire last half-hour of the movie waiting for Kirk to shout, "You Romulan bastard, you killed my dad!", but he never did.
So, bottom line? Worth watching, but I am very glad we watched it at home where, when things got particularly egregious, I could pause and rant without bothering anybody but M. We'll definitely watch the next one if/when it comes out, but I don't think we'll be purchasing this one. Once was enough. We might rent it again, I guess, as a prerequisite to watching any sequel.
*Supernova ref
**This is, by the way, why the Large Hadron Collider, which is nominally designed (at least in part) to create black holes in Switzerland, never had the potential to destroy the world--the black holes created by the LHC are about the same mass as two large hadrons. For reference, some of the most well-known hadrons are the proton and the neutron, which means two hadrons together weigh something less than a helium atom. Ooo, scaaary.