STAR TREK Official Thread -- Reactions *Spoilers*

[John Johnson]

England is clearly no longer a place of tea parties to write reviews like that!

A friend of mine is the Projection Manager at the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, London. He's a big Trek fan. He's seen the film three times now and loves the film. He was there on the premiere night screening the film. As for the score, he loves that too.

[Eric W.]

A friend of mine is the Projection Manager at the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, London. He's a big Trek fan. He's seen the film three times now and loves the film. He was there on the premiere night screening the film. As for the score, he loves that too.

I hope that's how we all end up feeling about it.

[AndyDursin]

A friend of mine is the Projection Manager at the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, London. He's a big Trek fan. He's seen the film three times now and loves the film. He was there on the premiere night screening the film. As for the score, he loves that too.

I hope that's how we all end up feeling about it.

I'm sure the movie will be fine. I'm personally not expecting anything from the score -- and I've noticed in about the dozen reviews I've read, not one of them has said anything about it. I'm sure it's OK, and if it's more than that, great. The film is what I care about the most, and it seems to be quite well liked by all.

[Eric W.]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/re ... movie.html

Wow, this reviewer really loves this movie and yes, he mentions the "great score" as well.

[John Johnson]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/re ... movie.html

Wow, this reviewer really loves this movie and yes, he mentions the "great score" as well.

The conservative Daily Mail even likes the film.

[AndyDursin]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/re ... movie.html

Wow, this reviewer really loves this movie and yes, he mentions the "great score" as well.

First time I've seen it mentioned...looks like the movie has all the critics stoked.

[Eric W.]

First time I've seen it mentioned...looks like the movie has all the critics stoked.

It almost make me suspicious. I tend to be wary when pre-hype is this glowing.

The conservative Daily Mail even likes the film.

Yup. I really haven't seen any outlet that doesn't like it as of yet.

[Eric W.]

The raves for the movie continue to pour in:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117940 ... id=31&cs=1

^^ They like the score and actually give away a spoiler of sorts with how Nimoy is used in this film.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/fil ... 4428.story

That second link takes a shot at the score as being "derivative." So you either like the score or you don't.





A few things stand out to me in that first link:

Blasting onto the screen at warp speed and remaining there for two hours, the new and improved “Star Trek” will transport fans to sci-fi nirvana.

Faithful enough to the spirit and key particulars of Gene Roddenberry’s original conception to keep its torchbearers happy but, more crucially, exciting on its own terms in a way that makes familiarity with the franchise irrelevant...

The balance here is incredibly tricky. How do you please the core and making familliarity with the franchise "irrelevant", which is disconcerting but not surprising to me. They made no bones about what they were going to do with this movie.

A wham-bang 12-minute action prologue both clears the palette of residual series expectations and sets the table for the kind of excitement that’s amply in store.

Goes along with the above. I'm halfway guessing that the "spoiler" you all have seen me mention and I PM'd Andy about is going to happen here.

If that's the case then they literally have the rest of the movie to scrape the core Trek fans off the ground for when that event happens.


And now this:

Exile to an ice planet, Delta Vega, enables Kirk to do some inadvertent time-traveling and meet an older version of Spock (Leonard Nimoy, in much more than a brief cameo), a happenstance that complicates matters on the space-time continuum.

I have to be there opening day just for this, if nothing else.

This scene, what's said and what's done, is where the whole thing hinges, at least for me.

[AndyDursin]

They like the score and actually give away a spoiler of sorts with how Nimoy is used in this film.

They did mention there may be "too much" of the score though. Overall, whatever, it's not Goldsmith, I know that.

I'm now at the saturation point where I know all the raves it's gotten, and I'd rather not know anything else about the story before I know every detail before I go in, you know? If I keep reading one gushing review after another I'm going to be more skeptical than I should be about it

[Eric W.]

I'm now at the saturation point where I know all the raves it's gotten, and I'd rather not know anything else about the story before I know every detail before I go in, you know? If I keep reading one gushing review after another I'm going to be more skeptical than I should be about it

I don't think someone can be much more skeptical than I already am and I've taken great care to avoid all spoilers except for that last thing I posted, but that's not really a surprise and thankfully not loaded with detail.

I suspect it's going to be very simple: People (namely core Trek fans) will either love it or hate it and probably very little in between.

People that don't care about Trek? I don't care about them but I realize that's who the priority is here to reboot the franchise and rake in new fans of that new product. Feeding the old core Trek fans simply isn't enough anymore, from a strictly pragmatic point of view.

The only Trek movie that really did that wonderfully and raked in a bunch of new fans was Star Trek IV.

This is where we can get into discussions about "maybe they should have called it something besides Star Trek and done their own thing", which is far and away my instinct looking at this thing going into it, but we'll reserve that kind of talk for after we've all seen the film.



http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10225 ... eStories.0


Here's one review written by a person that never watched or cared about Trek and went into this thing as new to Trek as you could. She loved it.

So there's some sign that this "reboot the franchise to get new fans in" strategy is probably going to be a success and if I had to place any bets? Probably a glowing success.

This thing's going to kick the summer off with a blast at the box office. This may be the biggest movie of the summer outright.

[AndyDursin]

I listened to the FSM podcast -- definitely worth checking out! I still have not heard a theme from Giacchino in any of these samples and I'm absolutely convinced his score is going for a hyper-active, themeless "wall of sound" approach, which Variety noted and even Jeff Bond hinted at (he also said there was some great stuff in it, but whenever I read that one theme is expanded over the END CREDITS that doesn't really get my blood pumping). Of course, it may be OK in the film, but I'm still disappointed...I was hoping we were going to get Giacchino really kicking it into gear and not just reaching into his same JJ Abrams "bag of tricks".

Anyway, enough about the music...Goldsmith is gone and he's not walking through that door again

So there's some sign that this "reboot the franchise to get new fans in" strategy is probably going to be a success and if I had to place any bets? Probably a glowing success.

I can't see how it won't be. It's a no brainer. Anything short of a record opening weekend is going to be a bit of a disappointment -- audiences are HUNGERING for product, look at how much money FAST AND FURIOUS took in.

The approach is right, they've managed to get Trekkies involved because of Nimoy, while aiming it at newcomers or casual fans with a younger cast and Abrams' brand name, which carries some cache these days. So long as they aren't completely sacreligious (which I'm not expecting them to be), if Trekkies don't like it -- honestly, nobody is really going to care. That ship sailed with the failures of the Rick Berman era and the endless spin-offs that diluted the TREK "brand" as it were.

I feel it's the right movie at the right time, and it's going to be a big-time smash. I'll be surprised if it's anything but.

[Eric W.]

I can't see how it won't be. It's a no brainer. Anything short of a record opening weekend is going to be a bit of a disappointment -- audiences are HUNGERING for product, look at how much money FAST AND FURIOUS took in.

I think it's going to do great, at least in that respect.

The approach is right, they've managed to get Trekkies involved because of Nimoy, while aiming it at newcomers or casual fans with a younger cast and Abrams' brand name, which carries some cache these days.

So long as they aren't completely sacreligious (which I'm not expecting them to be),

Um...that spoiler you and I talked about is, IMO.

That thing is probably going to happen in that opening 15 minutes of the film and I think it sends a clear and unmistakeable message.

... if Trekkies don't like it -- honestly, nobody is really going to care. That ship sailed with the failures of the Rick Berman era and the endless spin-offs that diluted the TREK "brand" as it were.

The core Trek fans will be divided. It'll be either hate or love. The hates will fall out, the loves will move forward with it.

That's the blunt truth of it.

The WSJ's weekend section had a summer movie preview write up and got into some of this. Abrams made no bones about it: He was going to do what he wanted and continuity be damned.

My answer to that would have been, and is: Why not just do something new and on your own and fresh, or if you want to take the Trek license, move forward with it instead of going back to well established, canonical characters, using the old alternative timeline trick, and basically throwing it all out the window? I think there are ways that they could have had their cake and eat it, too, but obviously now it's too late for that.

After we see the movie we can discuss whether what we saw really should have the name "Star Trek" on it or not.

Maybe it's just a cool, fun science fiction film that should have been something else entirely. That's kind of my musings going into it.

I feel it's the right movie at the right time, and it's going to be a big-time smash. I'll be surprised if it's anything but.

It'll be a smash regardless of anything else.

[AndyDursin]

My answer to that would have been, and is: Why not just do something new and on your own and fresh, or if you want to take the Trek license, move forward with it instead of going back to well established, canonical characters, using the old alternative timeline trick, and basically throwing it all out the window? I think there are ways that they could have had their cake and eat it, too, but obviously now it's too late for that.

I understand that. On the other hand, once a movie or a show is out, it becomes part of the public's property. Nothing this movie is going to do is going to change my view of the Original Series. It's not going to "ruin it" for me. I realize ALIEN 3 and ALIEN RESURRECTION came after ALIENS but in my mind they're not one long series but a group of "alternate universes" -- as in, where ALIENS ended, the story ends...at least for me. Anything that happens after, blah, no matter if it's "canon" or not.

But that's kind of the way I look at all sequels and remakes, they're not all interconnected really because most of them have different directors, casts, writers or what not. Each film is a snapshot of that moment in time and the creative talent involved...so for me I'm looking at Abrams' movie as Abrams' movie, and not something that's going to ruin a franchise of films and TV series that are always going to be able to stand on their own, regardless of what this movie does.

[Eric W.]

My answer to that would have been, and is: Why not just do something new and on your own and fresh, or if you want to take the Trek license, move forward with it instead of going back to well established, canonical characters, using the old alternative timeline trick, and basically throwing it all out the window? I think there are ways that they could have had their cake and eat it, too, but obviously now it's too late for that.

I understand that. On the other hand, once a movie or a show is out, it becomes part of the public's property. Nothing this movie is going to do is going to change my view of the Original Series. It's not going to "ruin it" for me. I realize ALIEN 3 and ALIEN RESURRECTION came after ALIENS but in my mind they're not one long series but a group of "alternate universes" -- as in, where ALIENS ended, the story ends...at least for me. Anything that happens after, blah, no matter if it's "canon" or not.

But that's kind of the way I look at all sequels and remakes, they're not all interconnected really because most of them have different directors, casts, writers or what not. Each film is a snapshot of that moment in time and the creative talent involved...so for me I'm looking at Abrams' movie as Abrams' movie, and not something that's going to ruin a franchise of films and TV series that are always going to be able to stand on their own, regardless of what this movie does.

All fair points and basically the kinds of things I use to argue the other side of the same coin here with myself.

[romanD]

I got the cd already and well, Im pretty disappointed. It certainly has some Star Trek sound, but that's pretty much it. I wouldnt say the score is bad, it is just, that I dont like the theme much and it is virtually in every cue... so, what can you do if you dont like a theme but it pops up all the time? It is like 13th Warrior by Goldsmith for example... I dont like the theme, though I cant say why, and so Im not very fond of that score either...

Im sure however the score works well in the film, has a lot of energy and is surprisingly dark and the 45min album just doesnt do the score justice. They score is 90min in total, so we can only hear 36min so far, as 9min take up the end titles, which are nice and actually quite memorable...

still, I expected more, but as with all Giacchino's big screen efforts, it left me cold. But there are many who love his works, so maybe you will like it.

But dont expect anything like Goldsmith ST scores, which is not a bad thing Id say... the show has a new direction now, so please, dont expect more music in that old vein (especially given his lousy last scores for the franchise)...

Im not convinced of the score so far, but it certainly ranks higher than Star Trek 3, 4, 9 and 10... if Id like the theme I would certainly rate it higher!