Lost in space: 'Star Trek' movie review (1 1/2 stars)

NY Post ^

[Perdogg]

Why would a Starfleet admiral ask a 300-year-old frozen man for help?’’ asks Captain Kirk in his latest adventure — and, after sitting through two-plus hours of the mind-numbing “Star Trek Into Darkness,’’ damned if I could tell you why.

[Bender2]

Re: What the ‘Trek’! The limp plot of this silly new sequel has its phasers set to dumb

Gadzooks! What.. can I say?

Plenty... it seems:

For a insight into the very small, twisted world of reviewer Lou Lumenick, let us let another movie critic have his say from http://www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-awards/an-incident-at-toronto

If it were up to me, you would never have heard about the incident at the Toronto Film Festival on the morning of Sept. 6 when a fellow critic whacked me with a rolled-up program or a festival binder or something. It has been blown out of proportion. It is of little interest.

The incident remained private until today (Sept. 11), when a basically accurate account appeared in the New York Daily News. I suppose since it happened at a press screening with 500 journalists in the room, this was inevitable. Now it’s become a big deal, raced around the web, and been somewhat exaggerated.

There are always two sides to everything. Here is mine. The movie “Slumdog Millionaire” had subtitles on the bottom right side of the screen. I was seated in an outboard aisle seat on the right. The person in front of me was leaning over into the aisle, making the subtitles impossible to read. He is not short. Because of neck and shoulder surgery I could not look around him.

In my medical condition I cannot speak, I tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and gestured him to move over a little. He said, “Don’t touch me!” and remained in position. I tapped him lightly again. “I said—don’t touch me!” He leaned further into the aisle, as if making a point of it. I tapped him a third time, and he jumped up and whacked me on the knee with whatever it was. He sat down, and I defiantly tapped him again, not as lightly, but not too heavily, just to show I wasn’t intimidated.

There was a commotion, some people stood up and asked him what he was doing, and a person from the studio who was seated behind us across the aisle intervened. I gather there was a conversation with security, which I did not witness. He reentered the theater and took the studio person’s seat. His seat was taken by someone who had been standing in the rear of the theater. No more problems.

Rumors spread swiftly. I began getting e-mails asking if someone had “beat me up.” I was eventually contacted by the Daily News, and told them I had no comment, apart from verifing that their account was truthful. This whole matter was embarrassing, because it drew attention to me and invited pity, which makes me cringe. My wife, Chaz, did not witness this. Her reaction when she heard: “I’ll get a no-neck guy from the West Side to break his knees.” Just rhetorical, I trust.

I think the guy was wrong. A film critic of all people should be respectful of the sight-lines of fellow audience members. But in one way I feel sorry for him. He had no idea who was behind him when he smacked me. Now it looked like he was picking on poor me. I have had my problems, but I promise you I am plenty hearty enough to withstand a smack, and quite happy, after the smack, to tap him again. I had to see those subtitles. There was no pain. The incident is over. Peace.

It seems life would imitate art way better if Roger... had mastery of the Vulcan Nerve Pinch--

Well, in my day we would have had Roger kick Lou... right in his steel balls.

[BenLurkin]

alternate theory that the movie is bad when any of the main characters sing

That has to be a given. Has to be.

[mowowie]

I thought the last one completely Sucked.
The ridiculous so-called “plot”, The lousy special effects, The HORRIBLE sets, The lens flare EVERYWHERE, The new Scotty, Sulu, Spock, The lens-flared Apple store bridge, The Budweiser Brewery engineering (I swear i saw a cinder block wall..)
Almost everything about it except maybe the casting of Bones.

“J.J.” is a HACK

I’ll probably wait for this one on Blu-ray come this August.

[fieldmarshaldj]

No, no. San Francisco is a beautiful city... it’s the creepy Stalinist moonbats that make it ugly.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Faux Trek.

And the guy that played McCoy looks too much like the actor that played Gary Mitchell.

[baddog 219]

[Sybeck1]

Worse than “Final Frontier” and “Nemesis” it seems.

[mowowie]

Wow you’re right.
THAT would have been a good cast job.

I read in an old Star Trek novel that Mitchell was actually Q.
Q had been banished by the continuum and his essence or whatever floated around space for a millenium until Mitchell happened to pass by and then got posessed by him.

This new bad guy have something to do with Mitchell?

[Little Ray]

Abrams’ Star Trek is dreadful, not just because it screws up (”reboots”) Star Trek, but because the movie was horrible in its own right. I watched it a second time as its own story and SF series. Wouldn’t matter what context you filmed this in, the story stank on ice.

I can’t imagine Abrams doing any better with this one.

Problem is, my wife likes the Star Trek reboot.

[fieldmarshaldj]

‘The Final Frontier’ at least had Cynthia Gouw in it. Hottest Romulan babe ever (before they decided to give Romulans a weird Klingonesque bone in their forehead, ick).

[Durus]

It is almost unimaginable how anyone could have watched the last Star Trek movie and thought it was bad in comparison to any original Star Trek anything. Star Trek the original series and most of the movies were low budget, over/poorly acted, poorly scripted, poorly directed, paeans to socialism. While the last Star Trek movie was hardly a paragon of movie making it was better than anything that the franchise had ever made previously. This is like listening to someone go on about how Tim Burtons Bat Man was preferable to Nolans Batman because it captured the feel of the (horrible, execrable, ambiguously gay) TV series better.

I get that people want to be nostalgic about their childhood TV series but please be rational.

[mowowie]

I was really nice of the reviewer to inform me that Admiral Pike Dies.

ugh

[Syntyr]

Your turn to feed the alien!

[Ted Grant]

Pretty sure the bad guy will be revealed to be Khan.

Always count on Hollywood to have very little imagination.

[Bratch]

It was really nice of you to post it here without a spoiler warning.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I don't recall that novel, but that doesn't quite make sense, since more than a few individuals (besides Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner) started acting like Zeroesque narcissistic gods (the SS Valiant crew).

From what I understand, the new villain in the movie has nothing to do with Mitchell (despite the new actress in the film being made over to look like Dehner, Mitchell's cohort) and this English actor is in fact, reprising a role made famous by the fella who hawked cars that had rich Corinthian leather.

[Perdogg]

Did you know she was a lawyer?

[who knows what evil?]

Seems that most critics at ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ disagree with Mr. Lumenick...

[fieldmarshaldj]

Er, Star Trek: TOS was one of the most expensive shows on television at the time with state of the art special effects. It was an ode to Westerns and pretty fiercly pro-American (albeit JFK’s New Frontier, which was pretty Conservative by today’s standards). If the show was as subpar as you described, it certainly would not have had such popularity, spun off movies, new series, et al, and still be going strong almost 50 years later.

The problem with why many of us fans didn’t like the remake is because Abrams pretty much went out of his way to trash the history/canon, etc. of the franchise. I thought it was offensive and sophomoric, with poorly-chosen actors well out of their depth for the characters they’re portraying. Rather than remake it, they should’ve continued on past beyond Picard’s Enterprise and set it in the 25th century with a new ship and new characters.

[mowowie]

Like Plinkett says, the Last Star trek film was and had to be in this day and age designed to appeal to a mass audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCJWr40raQ

as a past ST fan get why people liked it and all but i have 108 of my own reasons why i did not really like this movie.

I was kinda surprised plinkett overall liked it....