#Spock: ah yes im a totally straight man

[all-star-brad-hand]

so i finally pretty much saw star trek beyond and i feel like talking about it just a lil tiny bit

first of all i like...i dont know. i had no interest in it and i wasnt expecting it to be good, so i guess im biased. but then at the same time, i was underwhelmed somehow? like i mean the way people kept talking about how much closer to and inspired by tos it was...i didnt get that feeling at all.

the script was just so......so underwhelming. the villain did not interest me, the black and green glowy dudes who looked like super soldiers from stargate did not interest me. the giant space insect cloud thing was a decent idea but it was ruined by the music stuff. i did not give a flyin pop tart that the enterprise crashed, but i never cared for that current design anyway so i am not qualified to talk about it lol. whatsherface with the black lines on her face had the interesting language quirks, which i thought was cool, we dont get enough of that tbh. the references to tos reminded me overmuch of the stuff they did with enterprise season 4, which in my view was just “here’s 500% more tos references” (and i will really really never understand why so so SO many people say that stuff is some of the best star trek ever filmed but that is a discussion for another day).

didnt find the comedy funny, altho i admit that i am extremely extremely picky about what i find funny so 99% of things wont make me crack a smile (for example when i saw tfa in theaters i was straight faced at literally everything the rest of the audience laughed at). but i mean that thing where spock is explaining something and nobody understands it and then uhura or whoever chimes in “we can do the thing and kick ass” like oh my goodness that sounds like something from a cbs crime show what on EARTH. the stuff at the beginning with the angry aliens was particularly frustrating because of how much potential it had, like jeez when kirk was like “ah yes this weapon fragment is...uh...a treasured symbol of. .. . peace” that was great!!!!!! and then it just devolves into the aliens screaming and kirk making faces!!!!!!!!!!!!

i think the issue here is that these reboot movies have no leg to stand on except the characters, and they dont really have any leg to stand on themselves. and i mean, if you like the characters and enjoy them then i am happy for you. ive done it myself man, i took freakin vlad the space knight who got two lines and died from aldnoah zero and turned him into a favorite character of mine, same with cutler beckett from pirates of the caribbean, so i know that ppl can single out characters who might not be really well developed and enjoy them anyway. theres nothing wrong with that and i aint sayin there is. its just that i cant do that with these characters, not at all. they didnt get three seasons of a show with gene coon writing their interactions, they didnt get movies like wrath of khan that emphasized their bonds. they got named after and vaguely based on the tos characters, thrown into two movies that i personally think are both kind of lousy (i know ‘09 is considered one of the Good Star Trek Films but i am not quite in that camp myself), and then now we have this movie where kirk and spock and mccoy are like kinda getting development now and mccoy says “MY GOD MAN” and “MY GOD SPOCK” and they were out there for three years but we didnt see any of it and stuff. like the guys who wrote this were trying, and i will give them that, but it doesnt work for me because it just...should really never have been done in the first place.

well i guess THAT last opinion is very arguable, im sure even paramount would disagree strongly with me since theyve made some decent cash off these films lol. but its just...after seeing beyond, i think it was too late to try to recreate the bond of tos in these films. not after into darkness in particular. and i mean they are trying SO HARD with the original cast photo and the thing with everyone reading space the final frontier at the end but it just doesnt work for me.

i think its worth adding that im also of the opinion (which i guess is another divisive one) that the best of tos and the best of the tos movies had a certain tone to the dialogue and interactions which is not reflected here (a certain tone that im very very biased about because it involves lots of witty ass dialogue and i absolutely love it). that may be due to how the characters and world differ from tos, but if thats the case, it sort of renders two things moot: a) the attempt to match the tos tone and b) the usage of the tos characters in the first place (tho thats a problem i oughta take up with jj abrams i suppose). it could also stem from the writers’ personal styles, in which case it would just be a matter of my personal opinion preferring other styles to theirs. but either way thats one of the things that is most strongly dissimilar to tos about this movie, whether or not there were any attempts made to match it. the only line i caught that made me get the tos vibe was the thing i mentioned earlier with kirk talking to the angry aliens, and like i said that vibe was lost very quickly.

its a personal thing of course, but after into darkness i just gave up on any sense of obligation i felt for these movies being Part Of Star Trek. and i mean, even WITH that, with the lack of caring and lack of expectation and lack of just plain LIKING that i felt, i found myself underwhelmed. that honestly surprised me because i was expecting to either begrudgingly like it or totally hate it and i was just left saying “oh...thats it? okay”. it wasnt a violent reaction of dislike...more like when i watched tangled for the first time and sat there like “jeez this is what everyone says is one of the best disney movies??? it wasnt BAD but jeez”. so i guess ultimately im kind of praising the movie because it sure didnt hit me like into darkness did!