The only thing good about JJ touching Star Trek was the trailer for it, which is 10/10. The movies were all a big let down in comparison. But the trailer is amazing, in no small part due to the music from Two Steps From Hell.
Wow, longtime trekkie here since original run of TOS. To me the first Kelvin movie was like a birthday present. PERFECT casting for one thing - it felt like watching my old friends’ home movies from before I knew them. What didn’t you like?
I was introduced to Trek as a kid starting with Wrath of Khan and the rest of the films, then TNG which I couldn’t get enough of as a teen. Trek to me was always about philosophical exploration of ideas and moral quandaries, with some action added in for spice. I will admit I probably was skewed in my perception of the original characters because I was introduced to them in feature films where they were already heavily developed and where the characters were midlife and getting older.
I felt like the Kelvin movies went all in on the action and completely abandoned the philosophical core that made Trek special compared to any other space shoot-em-up.
I also felt like the dialogue and script writing was just impossibly bad. The worst example of this was when the commanding officers die and there is this scene where McCoy says something like “We’ve got no captain and no first officer.” And then Kirk just says “Yeah we do” and sits in the chair. I was screaming at my tv in that moment. It was like the writers had no clue what a chain of command was in any sort of military organization or even a civilian vessel. It’s not like the Johnny come lately just says oh man Captain’s dead I guess I’m captain now. Uhh didn’t Spock train him, and therefore probably outranked him at this point? Anyway it just seemed so poorly written and contrived that it completely broke immersion for me when I was already struggling with the plot.
Now that I’ve gotten all of that off my chest, I am glad that as an OG Trekkie you enjoyed it. I’ve noticed in clips I’ve seen from TOS that the show often had a much lighter, whimsical feel compared to the later films and I didn’t really absorb that because I didn’t watch the show, just the films. Maybe the writing and characters matched TOS better than I realized but I was coming at it with a skewed perspective because of what I had / had not watched.
I actually liked Beyond. I even bought it on blu-ray. It is, of course, the only one without Abrams as a director, and with minimal involvement by Abrams in general.
The only thing good about JJ touching Star Trek was the trailer for it, which is 10/10. The movies were all a big let down in comparison. But the trailer is amazing, in no small part due to the music from Two Steps From Hell.
The top YT comment on the trailer for the Force Awakens used to be “This is like watching the wedding video after the divorce.”
Wow, longtime trekkie here since original run of TOS. To me the first Kelvin movie was like a birthday present. PERFECT casting for one thing - it felt like watching my old friends’ home movies from before I knew them. What didn’t you like?
I was introduced to Trek as a kid starting with Wrath of Khan and the rest of the films, then TNG which I couldn’t get enough of as a teen. Trek to me was always about philosophical exploration of ideas and moral quandaries, with some action added in for spice. I will admit I probably was skewed in my perception of the original characters because I was introduced to them in feature films where they were already heavily developed and where the characters were midlife and getting older.
I felt like the Kelvin movies went all in on the action and completely abandoned the philosophical core that made Trek special compared to any other space shoot-em-up.
I also felt like the dialogue and script writing was just impossibly bad. The worst example of this was when the commanding officers die and there is this scene where McCoy says something like “We’ve got no captain and no first officer.” And then Kirk just says “Yeah we do” and sits in the chair. I was screaming at my tv in that moment. It was like the writers had no clue what a chain of command was in any sort of military organization or even a civilian vessel. It’s not like the Johnny come lately just says oh man Captain’s dead I guess I’m captain now. Uhh didn’t Spock train him, and therefore probably outranked him at this point? Anyway it just seemed so poorly written and contrived that it completely broke immersion for me when I was already struggling with the plot.
Now that I’ve gotten all of that off my chest, I am glad that as an OG Trekkie you enjoyed it. I’ve noticed in clips I’ve seen from TOS that the show often had a much lighter, whimsical feel compared to the later films and I didn’t really absorb that because I didn’t watch the show, just the films. Maybe the writing and characters matched TOS better than I realized but I was coming at it with a skewed perspective because of what I had / had not watched.
I do agree the casting was pretty good though.
I actually liked Beyond. I even bought it on blu-ray. It is, of course, the only one without Abrams as a director, and with minimal involvement by Abrams in general.