Now that JJ Trek is out and I’ve posted that I really liked the flick (I did! I suggest you go see it and take a friend! Maybe two! Get some dinner before hand – make a night of it!), I thought I might talk a little bit about what I didn’t like about the flick.
Spoilers abound – so if you haven’t seen the flick yet, you may want to skip today’s post and come back after you’ve seen it.
Blackholes. Um. Yeah… No. Science fact versus science fiction – I’m calling BS here. Not even ‘creative license’ can explain this one. 1) Nothing escapes a blackhole – not even light. 2) Time slows the closer to the event horizon you get, so, in theory, it would take both Nero’s and Spock’s ships forever (relatively) to get to the event horizon, let alone pass through it which brings me to 3) the center of a blackhole, called a ‘singularity’, is where matter is crushed to infinite density so I don’t really see anybody crossing through it to the other side. If there is an ‘other’ side. Stargate: SG1 did a fantastic episode dealing with this and I felt like they did it really well and accurately. JJ Trek? Not so much.
Phasers shoot bullets now? Um… what? Was it just me or did it seem like the phasers both on the star ships and the hand held versions, shot more like .9mm handguns than futuristic energy/light weapons? It was similar to the pulse rifles and disruptors used by the Federation, Cardassians and Klingons during the Next Gen era than the beam of light phasers we’re used to. It’s probably nitpicky on my part, but it felt odd to me.
“We’re in a new, alternate universe.” “Really? Huh. That’s not very interesting – let’s move on.” What? Seriously? Dude – WHERE’S THE FREAK OUT?! Every time travel story we have ever seen from the Trek universe has included Starfleet personnel going, ‘HOLY SHIT – WE HAVE TO BE CAREFUL SO WE DON’T ACCIDENTALLY KILL OUR GRANPA’S AND CAUSE A PARADOX! OH.MY.GOD DON’T TOUCH THAT FLOWER – YOU’LL DESTROY EVERYTHING WE KNOW TO BE TRUE!!!’ At the very least, old Spock should’ve had an ‘Oh shit’ moment when he realized just how frakked up everything is now. “James T. Kirk?” “Yeah?” “Oh fuck.” But instead we get people who accept it and move on as if it’s no big deal. COME ON!
Warehouse #9. Probably in Ontario. The bridge looked cool – I don’t mind the upgrades at all. But it seemed as if that’s where the ‘cool and shiny’ budget got used up because as soon as you got anywhere below decks, you were in the middle of some sort of industrial warehouse complex / factory place. It looked terrible. Sales person: “And here we are on a remote Starfleet base, you’ll notice the pipes running everywhere, the general factory-ish look to the whole place. We can add some water to the floor, maybe a little steam shooting up now and then. And all we have to do is change the lighting slightly,” he flips a switch, different yellowy/lighting comes on. “And Voila! Now we’re in the engineering section of a starship!” JJ: “Perfect! $0.25 per square foot for 6 months? We’ll take it.” Bleh.
Snow predator. Why would a predator on a snow planet be red? Evolution loses? Goes color blind? And why would it pursue Kirk when it already had a bigger meal, already knocked out cold, sitting right there? Maybe that’s why it’s red! It’s stupid! It passes up a meal in the hand for one running away from it that it may or may not be able to catch!!
That’s it for now. If I see it again, maybe other stuff will come to mind. I do want to reiterate that it’s a fun movie, well worth your money – go check it out.
~P
