Star Trek Beyond

[PussyGalore]

I finally got around to seeing this one. I liked a lot of the FX but the rest of it was fairly lame. The rock music and the motorcycle being pivotal plot points was ridiculous. Kirk magically finding a motorcycle on the crashed Federation ship and then magically being able to ride it over craggy, impassable terrain was incredibly stupid. And the swarm that attacked Yorktown being defeated by "classical music" (i.e. bad hip hop from Simon Pegg's iTunes catalog) is almost too stupid to mention. None of that crap is Star Trek. None.

And they never really explained Krall. Supposedly he was a Federation captain who managed to stay alive for hundreds of years (?) by using some sort of alien tech that morphed him into a creature by zapping the life out of other humans/creatures. He mentions in a video log that his crew is down to 3 left, but that doesn't explain where he got thousands of warriors to attack the Enterprise and also pilot the ships in the swarm. His origin story was poorly, poorly done.

Once again I get the impression that the writers (Simon Pegg, et al) actually wrote explanations for everything in the screenplay but failed to carry that info from page to screen. To the people producing this movie Krall's origin and motivations for going on the attack are perfectly clear because they've had all that stuff explained when they read the screenplay. Subconsciously they just assume that this info will be fully conveyed to the audience when they view the movie. But that is a mistake as proven by the confusing non-explanation of things that occur in said movie.

 

[Overmind One]

I finally got around to seeing this one. I liked a lot of the FX but the rest of it was fairly lame. The rock music and the motorcycle being pivotal plot points was ridiculous. Kirk magically finding a motorcycle on the crashed Federation ship and then magically being able to ride it over craggy, impassable terrain was incredibly stupid. And the swarm that attacked Yorktown being defeated by "classical music" (i.e. bad hip hop from Simon Pegg's iTunes catalog) is almost too stupid to mention. None of that crap is Star Trek. None.

And they never really explained Krall. Supposedly he was a Federation captain who managed to stay alive for hundreds of years (?) by using some sort of alien tech that morphed him into a creature by zapping the life out of other humans/creatures. He mentions in a video log that his crew is down to 3 left, but that doesn't explain where he got thousands of warriors to attack the Enterprise and also pilot the ships in the swarm. His origin story was poorly, poorly done.

Once again I get the impression that the writers (Simon Pegg, et al) actually wrote explanations for everything in the screenplay but failed to carry that info from page to screen.

(whispering). What if there WEREN'T any explanations understood or written or formulated rationally at all? What if the reason for things in this movie were strictly for Simon Pegg's "cool" factor? He does not strike me as particularly intellectual or deep thinking. The way he did his take on Scotty in the 2009 movie and also Into Darkness tells me he never saw Star Trek as being much more than a campy, cool '60s thing he was never really into but will pay him lots of money.

To the people producing this movie Krall's origin and motivations for going on the attack are perfectly clear because they've had all that stuff explained when they read the screenplay. Subconsciously they just assume that this info will be fully conveyed to the audience when they view the movie. But that is a mistake as proven by the confusing non-explanation of things that occur in said movie.

They hired Idris Elba, then put him in rubberface. His origin was pure taffy, and was something the writers felt the audience wouldn't care about. They would be too busy watching all the dumb gravity effects happening on the station, and things getting sucked out into space and shit exploding and stuff. So cooool!

 

[PussyGalore]

(whispering). What if there WEREN'T any explanations understood or written or formulated rationally at all? What if the reason for things in this movie were strictly for Simon Pegg's "cool" factor? He does not strike me as particularly intellectual or deep thinking. The way he did his take on Scotty in the 2009 movie and also Into Darkness tells me he never saw Star Trek as being much more than a campy, cool '60s thing he was never really into but will pay him lots of money.

I generally like Simon Pegg but I think you're right on this one. Scotty was a bit of a Mary Sue and was too cutesy cutesy for my tastes. The insta-friendship with Jaylen (or whatever her name was) was kinda hard to believe. That's not that big of a deal but the foreshadowing with the hip hop music pushed that friendship into ridiculous territory. Scotty even says that that's not his kind of music but thinks it's cool or something like that. It was a really dumb conversational exchange that pulled me out of the film. At that point it was obvious as hell the Pegg was writing his personal preferences into the movie thinking that it would be really cool.

I also found Pegg to overact the whole Scottish aspect of Scotty's character. He became an over-the-top caricature in some respects. It's impossible to believe that such a person would have such a thick and heavy Scottish accent after spending years in space surrounded by others who don't have accents or who have different accents and dialects. Sure, he would retain some of his Scottish lilt but there's no way he would speak with such a heavy brogue all the time. The way he spoke actually became annoying after awhile. Compare this to James Doohan who never became annoying or unbelievable as a Scot, at least not to me.

Also, what was the point of having Uhura follow Krall around just to listen to him explain what was going on? That's incredibly bad writing. Seems they really didn't have a role for Uhura and just came up with something for her to do to give her screen time.