Eh, I didn’t mind that so much. They’ve done that in pretty much every Trek series, at least from TNG on, as well as The Undiscovered Country. As far as that goes, they should have given the viewers a chance to value the Federation for the good it does before showing the dark deeds done to sustain it, rather than just counting on assumed empathy to make us know who the good guys are. There’s pretty much no world-building in any of the three Kelvinverse movies to show who the Federation is and why it matters. And, given that it’s the introduction to Trek for a whole new generation, that’s a glaring omission.
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Ever listened to the director’s commentary for the first Abrams film? It’s the only time a commentary has turned me off an entire franchise (at least the Kelvinverse part of it) and a director. Abrams was quite up-front about wanting to achieve a Star Wars setup. The only positive things he has to say about the story are when it hits a major Joseph Campbell Hero with a Thousand Faces plot point.
He compliments Eric Bana on throwing himself into the villain role, then snarks about how he’s a bad guy in a space film. He talks about how Star Trek is based on old submarine adventure dramas (not wrong, but talk about missing the forest for the trees).
Basically, he has no respect for his audience, certainly no respect for what Star Trek has accomplished culturally, and shockingly little respect for filmmaking.
Whoever let him near Star Trek needs to be given a hard shake.
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I don’t really listen to commentaries unless I already feel a strong connection, and want to share that with the director, if that makes any sense.
So, stuff like Firefly, or Gargoyles, or Reboot. I might someday include The Princess Bride in that list, just to see if Goldman keeps up his tradition from the book of making behind-the-scenes stories up out of whole cloth.
Otherwise, I prefer to just watch the story.
But none of that surprises me. Among the many things that are keeping me away from the new Star Wars trilogy is the fact that Abrams is directing two of them.
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Exactly.
I mean, I didn’t like Star Trek at first either. In my defence, I remember the first time I saw it vividly, so something must have stuck. I was seven. It was a rerun of City on the Edge of Forever, and I tuned in just as Kirk was telling that ridiculous lie about how Spock’s ears were pointy because he was caught in a rice picker as a child.
I really hated it when adults lied and/or got in trouble in TV shows when I was a kid; I still squirm a bit now.
But then eventually I saw TNG and converted.
If someone never got as far as the conversion point, for a franchise which has a huge base of rabid fans, and an even huger base of people who don’t do the fan thing but love Star Trek, then what the hell are they doing directing a Star Trek movie?
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Do you mean “Why did he choose to do it?” or “Why was he chosen to do it?”
If the former, “$$$” seems to be the most likely answer.
If the latter… Probably the same answer, but going into a different bank account.
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I really dislike the current era of Celebrity Sci-Fi Directors who have no clue.
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I’d go even further. $$$ plus a chance to kill the franchise and make even more room for Star Wars. There are a lot of Star Wars references in that director’s commentary, even including an anecdote about consulting George Lucas.
And yes, it’s possible to like both – loads of people do. I guess why I keep going on about it is you don’t often hear a director say plainly they took an established property and deliberately watered it down until it was at the same level as the adventure series from whence it evolved.
I got the DVD because I liked the character depictions, if not the plot. Now I know why the plot didn’t appeal so much
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“Ah… ah… za’SNYDER!”
“Gesundheit.”
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Excellent example.
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I have seen nothing that this guy has had anything to do with. Sounds like I haven’t missed anything.
That is, if you’re referring to one Zack Snyder. Never heard of him before this.
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Watchmen wasn’t bad.
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I finally did. Admittedly it wasn’t until the movie was being made and everyone (for certain values of “everyone”) was coming down on one side or the other of “It’ll be epic” or “It’ll be shit”
It was one of those graphic novels I’d seen in the bookstores forever but had never even skimmed.
I liked it.
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Agreed – but it’s nearly shot for shot the comic version of the main plot.
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So, seeing jerwin’s post here, I was reminded I’d never gotten around to seeing the film, so I mumble mumble and watched it on my computer. It was like a Chinese promo screener or something, and the audio wasn’t very good, but I think I got the idea —
It was absolutely terrible, in the same ways and for the same reasons as Revenge of the Sith was terrible.
Q: What could be worse than a prequel that doesn’t care very much about continuity?
A: ANOTHER prequel that attempts to stitch the earlier prequel(s) together with the original work, and doesn’t care very much about character or story or plot 
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Did you like Prometheus? Prometheus is the “Phantom Menace” of the Aliens franchise.
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I liked Prometheus. I thought it was an awesome metaphor for anti-corporatism, and for unethical science.
But I despised Phantom Menace.
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do you think the engineers deserved to die?
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Does anyone here watch Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? I really have some respect for the crap Coulson and his agents go through for the MCU, which probably places me even more solidly on the side of TeamCap.
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