So I went to go see it tonight with my fiancee, a buddy of mine, and his fiancee.

The friend has never seen any Star Trek or Star Wars movies or anything...

A few minutes into the movie:
"Is that Luke Skywalk?"



[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 12:09 AM. Reason : ]

5/13/2009 12:08:46 AM

Quote :

"The friend has never seen any Star Trek or Star Wars movies or anything..."

That's where you went wrong

5/13/2009 12:16:08 AM

your "friend" was trying to troll you

5/13/2009 1:12:04 AM

give it a 7/10

[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 3:27 AM. Reason : holds its own]

[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 3:27 AM. Reason : .]

5/13/2009 3:27:10 AM

I know...he was making fun of himself. Still enjoyed the movie though.

5/13/2009 7:54:30 AM

Star Trek Viral puzzle solved?

Have any of you been participating in or at least following the Viral campaign for this movie? I know Cloverfield had some weird viral game that was going on the internet. Star Trek does too but I haven't seen where anyone has figured anything out.

In case you don't know about it, here is a link to a website with a pretty good summary.

http://trekmovie.com/2009/04/10/new-star-trek-viral-campaign/

5/13/2009 11:03:11 AM

Capt. Kirk, American icon? New Frontier renewed

By TED ANTHONY – 9 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — There's a moment in one particularly silly episode of the original "Star Trek" that is, despite its camp, quite stirring. Captain James T. Kirk, on a distant planet that somehow developed into a twisted parallel America, rises to recite the preamble of the U.S. Constitution in a way that only William Shatner could.

It is pure schmaltz, patriotic manipulation puffed up by the swelling chords of "The Star-Spangled Banner." But it cuts straight to the heart of Captain Kirk, one of popular fiction's most enduring characters of the past half-century.

You can put him in a multiculti setting, dispatch him to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, entangle him with aliens and have him deliver speeches about the virtues of a United Federation of Planets. But there's no getting around it: Jim Kirk is unabashedly, enthusiastically American. "I'm from Iowa," he once said. "I only work in outer space."

Since his birth 43 years ago on mid-1960s network TV, the commander of the USS Enterprise has been a distillation of American ideals — one who finds himself suddenly reinvigorated for the 21st century now that the Kirk torch has been passed to a new generation.

"We stand at the edge of a New Frontier — the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams, a frontier of unknown opportunities and beliefs in peril," John F. Kennedy said in 1960. "Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus."

That stalwart but softer version of Manifest Destiny — a sense that American exceptionalism could be exported to the stars, despite the Cold War — was, in effect, the manifesto that created Captain Kirk and the "Star Trek" universe around him.

Kirk was supposed to be the leader of what "Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry dubbed a "Wagon Train to the Stars" — a convoy of travelers who bond while facing threats and exploring uncharted terrain. But from that framework, one of the most enduring characters of modern American fiction emerged.

Much is made of the duality of Mr. Spock, Kirk's half-Vulcan, half-human first officer who struggles to figure out where he fits in. Pundits have even compared Barack Obama to Spock, saying the combination of coolheadedness and humanity fits the times.

Kirk, though, embodies a different, distinctly American duality: the tension between exuberance and impetuousness on one hand and seriousness and intellect on the other. All at once, Kirk manages to be both Democrat and Republican, hawk and dove, humble and arrogant, futurist and traditionalist — and, in the most American duality of all, childlike and completely adult.

He's JFK — a deep thinker and voracious seeker of knowledge who disdains intellectualism when it is untethered from common sense. He's Andrew Jackson — populist and anti-elitist, as at home in jeans and an untucked shirt as he is in his full dress uniform. He's Vince Lombardi, rejecting the no-win scenario and pushing on to victory.

He's Humphrey Bogart, the darkly driven loner intimate with fisticuffs. He's Edison, always thinking outside the box. He's Elvis — robust wooer of women, intergalactic California blondes in particular. And, as we learn in an episode that re-enacts the shootout at the O.K. Corral, he's Gary Cooper — not only a gangster of love but a space cowboy descended from frontiersmen.

"He's the George Bush that George Bush pretended to be — the compassionate conservative, the `uniter not the divider,'" says Richard Slotkin, author of "Gunfighter Nation" and a historian of the frontier.

"His style of action is George Bush's style of action — `I go with my gut and I have an indomitable will to win,'" Slotkin says. "It's essentially a right-wing style, but it's controlled in Kirk's case" — by an ingrained sense of progressivism, among other traits.

But while Shatner's Kirk was a reflection of mid-20th-century America as defined by Kennedy — eyes optimistically toward the future but girded for any fast-approaching upheaval — Chris Pine's take on the character is just as distinctly a product of the 21st century.

The Kirk of J.J. Abrams' retooled "Trek" was raised by a widowed mother and questionable stepfather after losing his father in battle. Pine's Kirk is Shatner's on Red Bull and vodka — rebellious and sarcastic, vaguely felonious, tragically hip, soaked in irony and maybe a bit ADD. He leaps, then — maybe — looks.

And yet the new Kirk, however brat-packy, remains the vessel of American exceptionalism — the regular kid from the Midwest who manages to be, in the eyes of his mentor, Capt. Christopher Pike, "meant for something better, something special."

The Kirk character is "the embodiment of the everyday guy becoming a hero," says James Cawley, who plays the captain in an elaborate fan-made production that picks up where 1960s "Trek" left off. "He's definitely a leader, someone we look up to, but if you could get inside his head, he wouldn't see himself that way."

With a few key exceptions (Atticus Finch, Vito Corleone, some comic-book superheroes), Americans have spent much of the past 50 years bringing our fictional protagonists down to eye level. Where once we had Captain Ahab and Paul Bunyan and John Henry, now we have Rabbit Angstrom and Jack Bauer and Tony Soprano, characters consumed by their faults or quirks or doubts.

That makes for great tragedy and great realism but, perhaps, not great myth. And "Star Trek," as a history of the future we desire, is unrepentantly mythic.

Through the "Star Trek" movies of the 1980s, the sense of nostalgia that had settled over the nation found its expression in Captain Kirk. He was looking back more, examining regrets, wondering about roads not taken. The Rabbit-style introspection fit him well, but somehow it reflected a gradual abandonment of the New Frontier's optimistic tomorrow.

That's why Kirk 2.0, rebooted to the beginning of his interstellar career, feels so fresh, so necessary for the times.

The world is more confusing, more ambiguous than ever. Change is everywhere. The contours of American life keep getting blurrier. "The new frontier," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Congress in March, "is that there is no frontier."

A scary prospect for Frontier Nation. But if you accept that the Kirk character embodies American ideals projected into the future, here's a guy who — after 9/11, after waterboarding, after Katrina and economic meltdown — restores the balance of American duality.

Strong but caring. Deeply American but casually multicultural. Understanding of history but with eyes squarely focused on the things to come. And possessed with a just-do-it sense that while safety is important, risk, as Shatner's Kirk once said, is our business. America, after all, needs leaping and looking both.

Captain Kirk has endured for a reason: He shows us what we want to be. And whatever the answer, having a slice of American popular culture that is unashamed to help us figure it out is a refreshing thing indeed. A generation after the Enterprise first flew, we have met the future once again, and once again it looks like James T. Kirk.

5/13/2009 4:37:36 PM

You guys realize that they can now completely do Battle mode Starfleet in every new movie?

We're in alt-universe territory now, and everything is going to be dark and wicked beast.

5/13/2009 4:49:37 PM

So the engineering section of the Enterprise was actually a Budweiser plant in cali.

5/13/2009 5:18:10 PM

in Van Nuys, California to be specific.

5/13/2009 5:19:13 PM

I thought that it was Willy Wonka's factory.

5/13/2009 5:20:47 PM

haha the scene with scotty in the tube certainly did remind me of the wonka factory!

5/13/2009 5:23:39 PM

Quote :

"So, didn't Spock die in the KAHN!!! movie? What's up with him being alive here?"

Quote :

"^^^obvious troll"

No, seriously. I just know the basics of Star Trek and what I've seen parodied from various shows, but I know/think Spock died and they shipped him off in a space coffin. But, now in this movie, he apparently survived because he's all old and shit and went back in time.

5/13/2009 6:19:52 PM

spock is resurrected by the effects of the genesis project (i think...) in the movie that comes right after the Khan movie.

[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 6:36 PM. Reason : ]

5/13/2009 6:36:35 PM

^. yep.

5/13/2009 6:54:21 PM

ah. thanks!

5/13/2009 7:03:11 PM

well not only that but he gave McCoy his Katra ("soul") to hold onto.

[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 8:42 PM. Reason : ]

5/13/2009 8:39:36 PM

William Shatner came into the restaurant i work at for lunch today, it inspired me to see the movie tonight, it was entertaining

5/14/2009 12:42:31 AM

i'm curious as to why there weren't more old school cameos like Spock, if not in character. I know Shatner was eventually hated or w/e by everyone, right?

5/14/2009 12:53:33 AM

They actually debated writing in more old cast members and even had a draft that resurrected Shatner, but they said it felt like fanboy thing to do that did absolutely nothing for the story.

5/14/2009 1:27:56 AM

I thought they used old Spock a little too much...I'm very glad we didn't see the entire old cast in this movie

5/14/2009 1:07:02 PM

Entire cast would be hard. Bones and Scotty are dead.

5/14/2009 2:10:40 PM

thanks

you knew what i meant

but thanks again

5/14/2009 2:41:56 PM

The new cast should've all been sporting beards...

But maybe that would have given away the plot a little too quickly

5/14/2009 7:23:32 PM

Its not the same alternate universe. Its diverged much more recently.

5/14/2009 8:03:17 PM

I got excited when I saw Pike in a wheelchair at the end. Alas, the new wheelchair did not beep.

5/14/2009 9:20:40 PM

I got excited when I saw Pike in a wheelchair at the end. Alas, the new wheelchair did not beep.

5/14/2009 9:20:40 PM

I loved this movie

5/15/2009 1:09:24 AM

they dont need deforest kelly when they got that new guy

5/15/2009 1:15:26 AM

it was also kinda weird to see karl urban actually acting, instead of just kind of grunting and shooting guns

5/15/2009 12:34:44 PM

Clearly you haven't seen Pathfinder.

Oh wait

5/15/2009 12:51:46 PM

Quote :

"No, seriously. I just know the basics of Star Trek and what I've seen parodied from various shows, but I know/think Spock died and they shipped him off in a space coffin. But, now in this movie, he apparently survived because he's all old and shit and went back in time. "

If only the internet had information on movies.

5/15/2009 5:51:37 PM

HE IS BOUNCING OFF REDMATTER

[Edited on May 15, 2009 at 6:07 PM. Reason : das]

5/15/2009 5:52:23 PM

5/15/2009 9:04:25 PM

saw the movie, was pretty good. but being the nerd I am, all I could think about at the end was how in voyager they basically established that the future federation had an entire branch devoted to preventing temporal anomalies and changes in the timeline (timeship relativity, etc) I know they circumvented that even at the end of voyager to get the crew home, but that's small potatoes compared to fucking destroying vulcan.

5/16/2009 12:54:28 AM

I don't remember them preventing it (from DS9) but more along the lines of investigating it after the fact.

5/16/2009 1:28:47 AM

^he's not talking about the federation in the 24th century... he's talking about all the time travel mumbo jumbo they had going on with the agent from the future.

5/16/2009 7:28:01 AM

Remember, this created an alternate reality, and didnt change the future.

You now why?

BECAUSE IT MAKES THE STORY WORK!

5/16/2009 8:45:22 AM

I was disappointed. The goofy humor and Star Wars allusions distracted and detracted. The plot lacked intellectual appeal. I enjoyed the film, but I'd rather have watched four of the better episodes from TNG or DS9.

5/16/2009 4:31:11 PM

You realize that plasma power couplings and warp fields are not real right?

How can you remotely claim intellectual appeal on a show thats 100% fiction.

Intellectual camp more like it.

5/16/2009 8:04:28 PM

^you do not comprehend what he meant by "intellectual appeal," fyi

5/16/2009 8:13:59 PM

Quote :

"You realize that plasma power couplings and warp fields are not real right?"

I do. Indeed, my love of hard science fiction had me noticing the absurdity of the movie's treatment of technology at every turn.

Quote :

"How can you remotely claim intellectual appeal on a show thats 100% fiction."

I see intellectual appeal in most of my favorite fiction. Themes that address and explore complex issues. Ideas that leave me thinking for long after the entertainment has ended. The best Star Trek episodes do this.

For example, consider "Q Who?" In answer to Picard's bravado, Q hurls the Enterprise thousands of light-years to face the Borg. It ends with the captain begging for help. I find more worth considering here than in the movie's narrative of courage and revenge. As villains, the Borg raise troubling questions about how society should be organized. Nero, by contrast, might as well be any action movie bad guy.

5/16/2009 9:17:44 PM

i cant help but to agree with you GoldenViper

5/16/2009 9:49:22 PM

enjoyed it

thanked the stars it wasn't needlessly long like dark knight or the last two pirates movies

5/16/2009 11:07:43 PM

If you don't love this movie - you are a dickhead.

5/17/2009 9:30:25 AM

Kirk's dad (in the beginning of the film) is getting tons of work now...

most importantly he will be THOR!

5/17/2009 1:51:12 PM

Nero is no standard bad guy. Because....

he says, "FIRE EVERYTHING!"

5/17/2009 1:55:10 PM

Quote :

"I was disappointed. The goofy humor and Star Wars allusions distracted and detracted. The plot lacked intellectual appeal. I enjoyed the film, but I'd rather have watched four of the better episodes from TNG or DS9."

I agree, but I see the movie as the beginning of a reboot, a chance for the franchise to start over without all of the stagnation, plotholes and retarded technobabble. This is an unalterably-different universe now, the franchise is now free to go in other directions aside from "humanity is completely perfect and has achieved utopia." I suppose my point is that it's simply the beginning of a new beginning. The mindless action and explosions are simply a hook for people to get back into the series, the philosophical and moral exploration is bound to follow later.

Overall I liked the movie. It's certainly different, but I'm not disappointed. I thought all of the shout-outs and fan service were excellent. I suppose the plot was pretty cookie-cutter, but this isn't the first time Star Trek has done that, and at least it was fun to watch. The main thing that shocked me was that I kept expecting some kind of time travel bullshit to undo the things that happened in the movie, but they instead chose not to do it. This is a good thing, because I'm so tired of the reset button being pushed. If events are going to actually have permanent consequences from now on, then perhaps there is hope for the future of Trek.

[Edited on May 17, 2009 at 10:15 PM. Reason : blah]

5/17/2009 10:09:16 PM

^ I believe you are trying to say,

"Wait till next year."

5/17/2009 10:20:05 PM

set em up

5/17/2009 11:02:50 PM