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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Star Trek (2009 film)

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ONLY NICE THINGS

15:48 / 17.04.09

Pics or it didn't happen, really. Please offer photographic evidence of your attractiveness, your intelligence, a recognisable metric of success and, what the hell, your wife, since you appear to see her as a status object, butters. Ta.

15:56 / 17.04.09

>>They may believe in the basic good of man, although after that giant flame-out above it might be a bit of a stretch.<<

The true sign of a wimp -- you try to bait me with your posts, and when I lower myself to your level and respond in like kind, you run snivelling back to your little tower of moral superiority. You're worse than anything I could ever aspire to.

15:57 / 17.04.09

I am way sexier than any of you fuckers, and more successful, more charitable, with a hotter g/f and a bigger car, AND I saw a real live tiger- WHAT HAVE YOU ACHIEVED, EH?

15:58 / 17.04.09

The true sign of a wimp IS A SHIT POSTING STYLE THAT DOESN'T MAKE ME LAUGH

16:00 / 17.04.09

your little tower of moral superiority. You're worse than anything I could ever aspire to.

wait, unless that was an intentional a Spire/Tower pun in which case hats off, genius. If it was accidental, not so much

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:06 / 17.04.09

He threw a kettle over a pub. What have you ever achieved? Sorry- Will stop. Soon.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

18:00 / 17.04.09

but then other people's replies made me read your post after all, knowing that I shouldn't.

"I have been married for a while, therefore I CAN'T have said anything misogynistic!"
"I've been to Asia, therefore I CAN'T have said anything dodgy about Asians!"

thank you for posting your resume but, unbelievably, we are not (nor are we able to) judging your life; we are judging your posts, which are shit and hint at prejudice.

even if you spent your whole life righting for the rights of orphans, it would in no way prevent you from coming onto an internet message board and acting like an ass.

personally, I didn't think the Hanna Montana remark sounded very sexist, more like you were calling DD childish or perhaps shallow and commercial in a Disney kind of way. but your followup there is a veritable photocopy out of the Famous Barbelith Doucheposts archives, right down to trying to cutesify Haus's name; if this were a book report I'd mark you down for plagiarism.

21:25 / 17.04.09

I can't really remember the anti-Latin crap, to be honest. I might never have read a word. Really, my chronology is a little shot.

Since I warmed back up to this place, after years, I can say that I wasn't aware of the name buttergun's connection to it.

I has become really clear that he's an idiot, and I've drafted numerous responses on just that subject, before abandoning them for one reason or another.

I've never really pushed beyond second tier around here, have I? Certainly I'm a rare treat for Policy. I guess I've felt that this board has other people both more articulate, and more engaged with it, than myself, and that they would ban-hammer or otherwise deal with the poster in question, to the extent that my bringing back up these issues might be seen as needlessly destructive.

Maybe you're right, BRUCE, and I have become so disengaged from this place that I let things slide where I wouldn't in person. I'm sorry if I have; I hadn't really thought that I would.

21:44 / 17.04.09

Well, I said what I needed to say back in that old Lost thread, and decided that since Buttergun didn't repeat his behaviour that I wouldn't hold a grudge. I *do* like to think that people can change, mainly because I know that Barbelith has changed me and most of my friends (IRL) who have spent time posting here.

Not sure I'm too keen on Buttergun's comments in this thread re the characteristics of various asian groups, however...

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:36 / 17.04.09

Chin up, chaps. There's no shame in making do and mending, or indeed in giving up - Quantum is bingling about in the Policy because there's not really a reason not to any more, and he's really opened my eyes to the value in the whole enterprise.

Oddly enough, although buttergun seems to feel that he is disagreeing with me, we appear to be in agreement that he had something wrong in his head that made him for some reason spout racially aggravated misogynistic oddness. Apparently now he no longer has that thing wrong in his head. Oddly, he feels that I am worse off because I have never felt compelled to indulge in racially aggravated misogynistic abuse, and thus have not changed as he has into someone borderline able to get through the day without mumbling about bitches, but that's just taste, I suppose.

Where we differ is that buttergun hasn't really got past himself to note that filling the internets with racially aggravated misogyny is not just about him - it has an effect on other people. It makes the world generally a less pleasant place for those who are not buttergun. Still, he appears to be very happy with the way his life is going, given how successful, smart and attractive he is (and how he has a wife). A wife, I tell you), so there's not much incentive there to be aware of other people, I suppose. Although he might want to stop talking about reading the Aeneid in translation if he wants to assert his cleverness bona fides.

Personally, the cost of associating with that sort of douchery is greater than the benefit of talking about Lost, especially with people who have either enthusiastically joined in with racially weird misogyny or who have plaintively objected when it was challenged, but then I know that's an easy sacrifice for me to make, because I don't feel a particular need to talk about Lost. So, that's not much of a privation.

Perhaps, buttergun, it would be good for you if you said sorry? Or undertook not to do it again? That could really have helped back in the day, rather than that arrant nonsense about fictional characters (as I say, although I doubt you would have had the courage of your convictions, I can't imagine you would have got such an easy ride if you'd started racially abusing Mr. Eko, fictional character though he be).

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:53 / 17.04.09

But anyway. How do we tie all that back into Star Trek?

08:20 / 18.04.09

We could travel back in time and prevent these posts from ever being writen. They do that on Star Trek every other week, after all...

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:38 / 18.04.09

I don't know - I think it's still a useful growth experience for people. Although often people do not want the kind of self-knowledge that might encourage growth. It's a bit of a lottery.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:44 / 18.04.09

Or, to put it another way, I would love to go back in time on this one, but I don't think I KHAAAAAAAAANNNNN!

17:58 / 18.04.09

(ouch) Can we tie misogyny and racism into Trek? Yes we Khan! Just as attitudes toward women and minority groups have changed so the neotrek has a different take on the crew, so despite the devotion to the original series ethos the implicit assumptions that underpin (sorry _pin) the clasic Shat trek are absent from the remake, and have to be re-framed as irony or knowing comment on the past.

Uhura is still the comms officer/receptionist in the movie right? The popular conception of the future has changed since having non-caucasians on the bridge was progressive, but the Abrams future might have equally serious flaws despite the good intentions, right?

Sorry, I ran with that rather. I should probably watch the movie? Maybe I should go back to the Policy and post some pics.

18:02 / 18.04.09

Haha I just realised how funny Shat Trek is as a phrase.

07:45 / 19.04.09

Back to Trek itself.

Uhura is still the comms officer/receptionist in the movie right? The popular conception of the future has changed since having non-caucasians on the bridge was progressive, but the Abrams future might have equally serious flaws despite the good intentions, right?

Despite what I wrote earlier about the film's honouring of the letter and spirit of Trek, I'm not sure the film really expends very much energy extending this to any "good intentions" with respect to championing difference. Not that putting non-white characters on the bridge should be seen as the way "forward" for grappling with the politics of culture and race in mainstream film, either.

The film's flaws in this regard are related more to the positive dodginess of the original series than to that series' "failed good intentions". While I mentioned "taking Shatner-Kirk seriously, and without irony" as a platform for the film, "seriously" and "irony" are ambiguous terms. It's not a serious film, but it attempts to earnestly celebrate TOS-era brashness, while also using humour and enthusiasm to lubricate over all the dodginess that such a celebration necessarily dredges up.

This doesn't always work. In particular, there's a scene that troubled me at the time, but which has since gnawed at me a little too much. That scene humorously invokes the "racial castration" of Asian masculinity in the Sulu character, but without any conceptual scaffolding that would enable some critical distance around it, whether through irony, reflection or any kind of contextualisation. Basically, it felt like a cheap shot. If it had been all about racial castration and its associated anxieties, things might have be different, but as a passing joke it felt wrong. Someone told me that the narrative makes up for this by later having Sulu heroically wave an unambiguous phallus-symbol around as a kind of redemption, but for me the idea of phallocentric redemption kind of makes the offhand castration worse, not better.

07:51 / 19.04.09

Sorry Quan(tom), I didn't really read your post properly, so in hindsight I'm wasn't actually replying to any of its content.

12:50 / 20.04.09

S'ok, I haven't seen the movie yet.

The Natural Way

13:08 / 07.05.09

that was enjoyable enough. definitely shared that hyperactive sense of never-let-the-audience-get-bored with 80s' 'berg. ludicrously implausible bollocks all over the place (when are sf films going to stop having people coincidentally bumping into each other on bloody planets? i mean, come on! i don't even give a shit about that stuff, but it's so hard to swallow. oh yeah, and even children know you can't just fly into a black hole), a slightly depressing lack of giving a shit, but whoah! vertigo! (that's the new thing now, isn't it, heights?), outerspace! (forgot about that one - been a while) and such a sense of fun.

The Natural Way

13:23 / 07.05.09

actually, thinking about it Star Trek could've done with a 15 to 20 mins added onto it. i think the emotional investment component relies too heavily on people already caring about the characters in their other incarnation. there's just this latent assumption that the name 'bones' can be uttered and we'll all instantly emote. hmmm. there's nothing really wrong with the cast, but we needed a bit more time with them at the academy or something.

interesting choice to have the studly lead NOT get the girl.

20:18 / 07.05.09

I haven't seen the movie yet, but it just hit me that [spoiler] if the timeline was really altered for good, then no Star Trek series remain canon now (not even the original one), except "Enterprise"...

Not really sure it's a good move.

The Natural Way

20:24 / 07.05.09

well it certainly makes no difference to me.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

17:34 / 08.05.09

I don't think I could possibly care less about canon, continuity, etc...

This movie did what it was supposed to do: Make Star Trek interesting again, remind us of why the characters were fun, and not just blow shit up, but make us care about the shit blowing up.

I loved it. Came out of the theater wanting another movie, books and a series, which is what the movie was supposed to do. I haven't much cared about Star Trek since DS9 ended, but now I care again.

Aha! I am Klarion

19:57 / 08.05.09

Spoilers

I thought that the movie was really great, while at the same time refreshingly light tonally (with the exception of what happens to Vulcan) and optimistic.

What surprised me was how the film self-consciously engages in a dialogue between cynical conservatism and economics and emotional (even sentimental) progressive and optimistic attitudes in its metaphors and symbolic structure.

It actually plays out like a (more good*) version of final crisis (for those of you who care about that association) in that it is about, on one level, a similar dialogue between the shepherds of mega-franchises and cultural myths.

At this level, Nero represents the deeply conservative elements of the Star Trek creative team and fandom and simultaneously the greed executives digging around for more dollars (Nero's ship is a mining vessal).

Nero is a conservative fascist whose wish to user in a golden age of "his" dying empire (continuity) keeps he from have any sort of productive life beyond a sick ascetic one spent in a dank cave/basement. He is the weird star trek nerd and gnomic bean-counter (I would almost go as far to say that he subconsciously represents a sick semitic character that borders on racist in one reading I took; a miser). He isn't evil as much as sad and obscene.

Meanwhile the Entreprise crew represents the optimistic artists and open (read: mass) fandom of the Trek Franchise, to whom the emotional content, wisdom, and humor of the characters and themes matter more than the labyrinths of the continuity. They are the neophilia and humanity at the core of star trek.

The only remaining trace of the "old" continuity is Nemoy, who is arguably the only truly glorious element (at least in terms of acting).

The rest of the dead weight, ugly personalities, and real (deaths of or the disillusionment of the real actors) and fictional tragedies are flushed with the warp drives to propel the franchise forward. Shatner is metaphorically "shat" out.

It is a real magical, but almost post-fascist (literally after the fascist experience) moment. A holocaust, a burnt offering.

It was still a damn good movie, if a little creepy from one perspective.

*More good in the sense that has more sweet-spot, holy-f**k moments more harmoniously placed.

Aha! I am Klarion

20:07 / 08.05.09

I just want to point out that Zizek would point to the huge "Sound of Music" thing going on here, though it is mitigated somewhat by the multi-culturalism.

The reversal:

Star-fleet: the humantarian, peace keeping armada are the real fascists.

Nero and crew: the romulan "fascists," with their rabbinical clothes represent the corrupt "jew." (Or the new boogeyman, the business-class).

22:46 / 08.05.09

Ok, just gost back from the theather.

Solitary Rose, I don't care much about canon either, I was just pointing out the irony that the only series that remain canon is the arguably least succesful one. As it is, canon can kiss my warping ass.

I thought the movie was profoundly emotional, which is great. I actually cried (tear rolling, sobbing style) in the first scene as Kirk's daddy dies. Nice start!

I was annoyed about the bad science at times. One supernova threating the universe? that, when destroyed, its shockwave is terminated apperantly rectroactively? Nice little thing, this red matter. And how can a drill drill a hole to the center of a planet if the magma is liquid? And, speaking of which, if you can make a balck hole out of thin space, why bother drilling a hole to the center of a planet? Why not right above the atmosphere? Well, I guess I can rule this last one as "Nero's thirst for revenge made him creative". But still, the supernova could have been better explained.

All characters were great. They all seemed like upgraded, better developed versions of the same characters form the original series. I particularu liked the new Uhura and the new Scotty.

Here's an idea for the now seemingly inevitable sequel: let's do Khan all over again, but with a twist. Imagine them finding Botany Bay just like in the original timeline, but this time, thanks to an insight from Spock Prime (who still sometimes gives clues to the "boys", in order to try and steer this new timeline as close as possible to the original, or maybe even better), this time they manage to convince him of the advantages of fitting in this new society instead of going rogue and, after the inevitable attempt to take control of the Enterprise, they join force against a new, more pressing threat (For some reason, I'm thinking the Tholian web) and he ends upd as a member of the crew...

07:50 / 10.05.09

Lovely. Fun. Had loads of heart. Perfect.

04:15 / 11.05.09

I was annoyed about the bad science at times.

Bad science is something you have to forgive as a Trek fan though, I would think. Though I did find myself thinking "Why aren't they building the ships in space? Wouldn't that be more efficient? Wouldn't a ship that large and heavy be really difficult to build on-planet anyway? How are they supposed to get it into space?" combined with the ever-present question that goes along with big-ship sci-fi: Where the hell do they get the material for one of these ships, let alone a whole fleet?

Sulu heroically wave an unambiguous phallus-symbol around as a kind of redemption, but for me the idea of phallocentric redemption kind of makes the offhand castration worse, not better.

In all honesty, jebni, I can't say I picked up on Sulu's emasculation; it may be just me. Threw me off a bit that the Asian guy gets the samurai sword, though.

05:15 / 11.05.09

I should add that one thing I absolutely loved about this one was that they finally gave the ship a sense of grand SCALE. All throughout the old shows and movies, it seemed like every compartment of the ship was not much bigger than your average 2-bedroom apartment. But the engineering section in this one was massive. And it looked like it had actual function, as opposed to just the massive tube with the magic crystals in the center.

22:15 / 11.05.09

Wicker woman, I agree with you in every possible sense. The ship being built on Earth was actually commented by J J Abrams in an interview, in which he said he went for the bad engineering (and also "not canon") because he wanted that iconic shot of Kirk on a bike seeing the ship against the horizon. As for the material for the ships, I always thought it worked because the space must be full of stuff to canibalize (see above, "ship buiding in space"), thus making building massive starships not only feasible but maybe even economically sound. And Sulu could have actually fenced, I think, instead of doing the standard, and unnecessarily acrobatic to the point of being annoying, shaolin thing.

Jack The Bodiless

09:29 / 12.05.09

Yes. Because fencing would cut it in a 2009 sci-fi action movie.

22:50 / 14.05.09

Well if This Mr. Sulu is of Japanese decent it would've been nice for him to use KENDO or any of the very movie friendly samurai fighting styles . . .

still fun stuff all around.

01:36 / 15.05.09

Well if This Mr. Sulu is of Japanese decent it would've been nice for him to use KENDO or any of the very movie friendly samurai fighting styles . . .

I dunno, I always liked that old school Sulu was, being a far future pan-Earth-enthusiast kinda guy, not restrained to the cliches of pan-asian ethnicized identity, with his rapier and his vintage police special.

21:15 / 15.05.09

At least it wasn't a light saber.

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