Welcome to Film Strip.

These podcasts are spoiler filled as we discuss the plots, characters and themes of the films in review.

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Welcome to the Star Trek retrospective from Filmstrip.

I'm Jay.

I'm Nate.

And we're here to talk about Star Trek Lens Flare starring Chris Pond, Zachary Quinto, Bruce Greenwood, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Anton Yelkin, Eric Banya and Leonard Nimoy.

Raised by Robert or C and Alex Kirschner with some work by Damon Lindelof, as if you couldn't tell.

And directed by JJ Abrams, released in 2009.

Nate, we are.

We are in the reboot, reimagining new timeline territory here.

And it's been a long time coming.

We took a good break here.

We both had busy summers and stuff like that.

But we're back now to do the JJ Abrams trilogy of Star Trek and lots to get into.

But back to 2009, where was Star Trek and where were you with the franchise?

Oh, Star Trek was dead at this point.

You know, it's it didn't Learn the lessons of things like NASCAR and Marvel where sometimes more is not better.

And you know, they had here we are the 2000 enterprise has been off the been off the air for several years and the ratings are ploning it is off the air.

UPN was a about to close up shop and the last Next Gen.

movie, which did not give us any closure was in 2002.

So here we are.

We're approaching, you know, almost 50 years of the franchise and it's there's nothing.

So JJ Abrams takes it over and, you know, that's, you know, and such begins not just the reboots, but the constant prequels and the constant like, let's go back and we are still in that.

We'll talk about that later.

But it's in comes Alex Kurtzman.

You know, it was JJ Abrams.

It was Kurtzman and Northside as well.

But I mean, Kurtzman is, in my opinion, as a Trekkie, he's been a plague on the universe.

There was a reason why he couldn't make the Dark universe work for the for Universal Pictures.

And it was, it was kicked out, kicked to the curb after one film.

And he, I gave him credit, this one, this team, JJ Abrams team.

I had low expectations.

I was not happy to think about this.

Yeah, Star Trek is my everything perk is my hero, the original series crew.

And now they're saying, oh, we're going to reboot it.

And I was like, you cannot.

That'd be like if they rebooted.

I don't know what what rebooted something that is like tried and true, just like rebooted The Godfather.

You know, it just or they well know they're getting ready to reboot Harry Potter.

And I think that's an abomination.

But it's you just can't mess with something that's good.

And that's where I had my expectations were very, very low going in.

Yeah, I, I had completely fallen out of the Star Trek world.

You know, I saw Nemesis, we talked about it on that last show, and I was like, this is bad.

I watched Enterprise, but it lost me at some point too.

And how much it's kind of like, I'm done, you know, I don't know what they'll do with this.

And this blew me away because I'm like, you're talking about a, a science fiction universe and you have nowhere left to go like that.

This is when you've really screwed up, you know, in a lot of ways.

And, and unlike other science fiction or science fantasy universes who kind of purposely paint themselves in the same circle, Star Trek had never done that.

You know, I felt like, and, and now I, you know, I, I remember seeing the trailer to this and going, what, what is this?

You know, because I had heard they were doing a new Star Trek movie.

I, I knew who JJ Abrams was.

I don't really watch Felicity, not really my kind of show, but I knew some of his other stuff, you know, and I thought, OK, you know, they could put him in charge of it.

Cool, sure, but I didn't really care.

And then I saw the trailer travels in another movie and I thought who who watched like the Transformers movies and decided to take notes from that for Star Trek.

And that will be the last time I say that tonight.

But I thought, OK, that's a a take.

I mean, it's different.

And you got to understand like I have just come out of what I felt like was is my favorite franchise is like strangest detour.

I'm just now getting out of Rob Zombies, two Swings through Halloween, which are very different films than anything else, and one of them out.

The funny thing is, the first one I used to like and the second one I hated when I first saw it.

Years have passed and I don't really love the first one at all.

I like the second one, even though it's really weird.

But neither one of them were what I, you know, kind of wanted or needed in the franchise.

So I'm already in that kind of space with franchises that they've killed everything that I like.

Friday the 13th still hasn't made a new one.

You know, after 2009.

It was a year before they wrecked Nightmare on the street forever, you know.

So I mean, like all the stuff that I was in too, I'm like, well, they're not going to do this.

And then Star Wars hadn't hadn't quite rebooted itself yet.

This right, A demo reel for it.

But, you know, that was, I figured at some point that would have to come too.

And so I, you know, I saw the trailer to this and I thought, well, OK, if you're going to redo this thing, then maybe Fast and Furious is the way to go.

I don't know.

Yeah, we'll try it.

But in my head, I'm going like now every your Trekkie, I know it's going to hate this like there's no doubt.

So I went and saw it in theaters and I remember thinking to myself, I mean, I'm not sure this is a Star Trek movie.

It's just with all the same characters and to arrive where they go in this is it's definitely a a place that I did not expect them to go.

But I remember watching it and just going like, OK, and then we'll get into, you know, where the rest of the series goes as we get to these last two movies.

But this one, I, I wasn't really thinking anything about it.

And then I saw it and I thought, I mean, that was a choice.

Yeah, no, it, it was it, it definitely.

I can't wait to get, I can't wait for us to get into this.

There's so much to unpack here in my and how it kind of like from the opening scene all of a sudden, like I like I said, I had low expectations and I was like, well, let's see what that that that opening scene was like.

Oh, OK all.

Right.

Well, I yeah, we, we got to get into this thing, but I, I don't know.

What did you think about the idea of reboot and how it was going to try to honor things what had come before while going in this new direction?

Just that, you know, creative choice, you know, because they put enough press out there about it.

Yeah, I I wanted to get your.

Didn't like it, didn't stand it.

Not at all.

Like, because it's like, look, you know, Kirk is Kirk, Shatner is Kirk, Leonard Nimoy is Spock, period.

Full stop.

Like, that's it.

That's not mess with that.

Like we don't need a new Kirk.

We don't need a new Spock or new Bones.

We don't need a new Enterprise.

It's just let's not do that.

Like why would you do that?

Like keep I was used to Star Trek continually going forward.

Yes, Enterprise went back, but it went back before Kirk.

Let's continue the story.

Let's continue Enterprise, let's continue, you know, the story after Voyager.

That's continuous story after Deep space 9.

That was something that I'm still waiting to get some closure on is the state of the Alpha Quadrant after the Dominion War.

And Picard, you know, touches on it slightly, but they were more into the whole, you know, the board thing.

But it's which is fine, but I wanted continuous out, like let's keep it going.

Let's keep there's so many things you can do.

Like, it's what's and I always hated the excuse of when people would want to do Star Trek is like, well, we want to do our own thing.

This is going to tie into this here in a second to this movie is like, well, we we don't want to be constrained too much by Canon.

We know there's a lot of Canon before.

So that's why we don't want to keep it going.

It's like, yeah, but by doing a prequel, are you I feel like you're tied even more to Canon because you have to say these things that are often mentioned in this show that you can't like, not have Klingons or you can't not have, you know, the Enterprise.

Like it, it's, I don't understand that whole reasoning of like prequels give us more flexibility.

Well, no, it doesn't.

It really does.

No, when you're the ending point, yeah, unless there was nothing established and you could go back to my to go back to my Rob Zombie thing.

We didn't know anything about with the kid Michael Myers, other than what he did on Halloween night.

And then we flash forward and he escapes and that's the whole movie.

So Rob Zombie's idea of like nobody wants to see a remake of that movie.

We should tell like how somebody becomes this and he did it through his very Texas Chainsaw Massacre limbs.

But you can tell watching that 2007 movie that the 1st 55 minutes of it, that's what he was interested in doing.

And then the studio said where's Halloween?

And he got remated in about 45 minutes.

That he's clearly actually not interested in it.

Nobody involved in it was either.

The one thing out of that that worked was he got Daniel Harris back in it, who's an amazing person, an actor and he got Scout Taylor Compton, who's awesome.

But but you know the rest of it, you can tell he wasn't interested in it.

And so when I heard the same thing too, I'm like, so we're just going to have the same characters, but we're going to tell all the stuff that we didn't know is.

And in my head, because, again, I didn't really know where they were going to go with this before I saw it, I thought, well, OK, you know what?

It might be neat to watch how this crew ultimately comes together.

Now that to me, feels more like a television show.

But OK, you're going to give me a couple movies where they're not all in, you know, where they are.

All right.

I, I, I mean, we know it, but I'm with you like this has to end in a certain place.

We know where it's going to go, but there can be interest in it if you do it right.

You brought up Godfather earlier.

Godfather 2 tells you the back story of Vito cry while you're watching his son rise to power 2 But it's done so masterfully, you know that you you see, you know, history does repeat itself with people and you just see it.

But that's so much more interesting because a lot of it is in the way it's done.

And that Godfather Two matches the energy of the Godfather in every way.

That's why they're kind of spliced together now.

It's part of what's missing in Godfather 3 is that it's just it doesn't have the same vibe to it.

And that's probably because 20 years too late, you know, that that's how it goes.

This movie, though, is as well it it's Star Trek, but it's a different five and a different sensibility, but with some of the same stuff.

And I think we got to get into it here.

So I'm going to do a real high level Plot Summary on this and then we can just start going through because I imagine we got a lot of beats to get through here as we kind of try to stick to our formula.

But it's a little hard when they they have thrown in the blender on high speeds.

Yeah.

Star Trek 2009 starts with a shocking prologue detailing the birth of James T Kirk, literally born in flames.

During a brutal Romulan attack, the Starship Kelvin, commanded by Kirk's father George Kirk, or helmed by, is destroyed by a mysterious Romulan vessel commanded by a man named Nero.

George sacrifices himself so that his crew and his wife, when no one can't escape, leaving a rebellious young James C Kirk to grow up.

And I was still without a father, but with the ability to listen to the Beastie Boys.

Meanwhile, a young Spock on Vulcan faces prejudice from his half human heritage, but excels academically because now in this universe, the Klingons are like rednecks from Georgia.

Years later, a rebellious Kirk is convinced by Captain Pike to join Starfleet, setting him on a path to eventually meeting Spock, Leonard, Bones, McCoy, and Uhura.

The movie's main plot kicks off when this urgent distress call from Vulcan brings the untested Enterprise crew together, and Kirk having cheated on the Kobayashi Maru, as we know, is grounded.

But it's smuggled on the Enterprise with the help of Bones and some bad security, and during the journey, the Enterprise is ambushed by Nero, who reveals his true mission.

He's going to have revenge on the Federation and Spock, whom he blamed for the destruction of his home planet in a future timeline.

So Neroy, using this futuristic drilling device and red matter destroys the planet Vulcan, killing Spocks mother.

And then this devastating act pushes A grief stricken new Spock to his emotional limits and sets the stage for this desperate battle.

And ultimately we get through a lot of different stuff.

But in the climax and exile Kirk with a guidance from an older Spock known as Spock Prime.

I hate that.

I hate that on every level is is caught in this dumb travelling scheme.

They take command of the Enterprise and they along with the rest of the crew, including Sulu, Chekhov, Scotty devise a plan to stop Nero.

They get a tense battle and Kirk and Spock confront Nero aboard the ship the the Narada.

They destroy the ship save Earth in Nero's reinterra and Kirk is noted the captain and the crew now close knit family forced in fire and lens flare set out on a five year mission to explore the unknown together.

And I just, I just tried to keep it high and to, to get through it because we got so much to talk about Nate and there's just so much utter nonsense that we got to unpacking this.

But we got to start with the opening here.

And this, the way that this starts is such a shock to my senses, having watched all these Star Trek movies again with you and gone through these things that we just start in this dark, action-packed tone.

It's it's such a different, different place.

Really is.

And so one of the things I will say that right before the movie came out, that gave me some, maybe some, OK, maybe it opened up my curiosity, I would say is that it opened up my curiosity by them saying, you know, we're not going to be on a prime timeline.

This is gonna be a totally separate timeline.

Yeah.

And so I was like, OK, all right.

So that gives them, I mean, creative.

That's respect to Star Trek saying that there are, you know, Canon, you're not going to mess things up that are just not part of Canon.

So by doing that, that gives them flexibility and freedom to create a whole new universe, create a whole new timeline.

And so they're not held by Canon.

But you still, you still have, it's still curt, it's still spot.

You still have to have this personalized.

You can't just make them completely new people.

And that opening scene, Oh my God.

I was just like, after the, you know, after Perk's dad crashes the ship into the Narada and the shuttle crafts are all getting away, and then you see the big Star Trek come up on the screen.

I was like.

OK, this might be pretty good.

I mean.

Yeah, that's not what I expected.

Yeah, they come in and you got this intense battle going and what's the thing that we've talked about with the battle with the ships and stuff, It's very naval and like very World War 2 naval.

And it's like every shot counts, you know, for something.

And it's almost like now you can just shoot all the damn time.

It's all these lasers firing and there's all this stuff flying around and I'm, I'm sitting there going, I mean, I'm like, this is like last starfighter, man.

Like the, I can't follow this.

It's very Star Wars, you know, like this is, this is heavy.

And I, I wasn't prepared for that.

And, and I'll, I'll say it again and I meant it as a joke, but I also meant it for real.

I think JJ Abrams watched a couple of those Transformers movies and said we just got to do that because this feels very much in that same world.

Well, one of the other things I did like, and I was surprised that I like this is one of the first things you see are the Romulans on the Narada.

And here's the thing.

We have an image of what the of the Romulans look like on Romulan aircraft, Romulan spaceships.

Like they have the they look like the old Roman Praetorian guards.

I mean, they're they're rulers called Praetor.

They all dress the same.

They all have the same haircuts, but you got to think on an entire civilization, are they all going to look alike?

Like, what about the, I mean, there's always got to be the, you know, the, the Romulans, the the people in a race that are like the seriously hardcore blue collar workers.

And they're probably not going to be wearing those, you know, shoulder pad uniforms and trim haircuts and the Romulan necklaces.

I mean, these guys are hardcore.

They didn't have the Romulan hair.

They had tattoos.

They're minors.

They're minors.

And so I was like, wow, this is OK.

I I never really thought about like you all Romans don't have to look the same and right off the bat.

And then I mean, just completely erasing how it would have happened in the original timeline, pop up on the screen, there's this Romulan.

They at this time, they don't know what Romulans look like.

They're 20 years, 30 years from knowing what the Romulans look like.

And yeah, and they're like right off the bat, it's like, hello, you.

Know we're thrown right into this mess as it were, right.

And you see all these things, you know, the, the ship's getting shot to pieces.

There's all this stuff going on.

We got to get, you know, the pregnant your mom off the ship.

It it's a lot of things happening.

This is something that JJ Abrams is a lot of and and Damon Lindelof writes a lot of this kind of frenetic energy.

You know, there were you've got six or seven things happening at once because I think we've all been in in maybe not in this kind of situation a lot, but you've been in busy times when you got a lot happening, right?

And so everything's just whizzing by you at 100 miles an hour.

And so they do a good job of setting us into what would that look and feel like, you know, to have this going on.

And you got Hemsworth up there, you know, cheesing it up on the screen and being being George Kirk.

And he's having this whole like cell phone conversation with his wife when he's getting shot at and trying to negotiate peace.

There's nothing going on it, there's so much happening that it, I, I dare say it's hard to really keep up with what's going on except for the fact that it all exists for one purpose.

And you, we're going to talk about the way we meet all of our, our cast here and heroes and except one, they are all exactly the same people that we have met before.

Now they're acted differently because the actors, some of them decided I'm just going to do that a lot.

And some of them said, I'm not going to do that to me.

And, and then but they, they still, they're all kind of going to be what they always are, you know, and which is wild.

And you know, this grand explosion at the beginning and and this, you know, this huge supernova after everything.

And we just go immediate forward to meeting our young Kurt.

You know, and the fact that Kurt was a kid who would have stole his step dad's Corvette, you know, a la Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off and and did a James Bond dive or fast and furious dive off a Cliff with it all listen to the Beastie Boys.

I find all of that to be exactly who I thought Kurt was.

I don't know that I ever needed to see it, but it it pretty well is what we knew of James T Kurt.

Yeah, no, it really is.

And I mean just, and I do like that because you don't really see a young like a kid James C Curtin with that whole this is what he would have been like.

Like very likely.

I mean, you've got the Beastie Boys playing Sabotage.

I'm like, OK, here's a little bit of that Fast and Furious stuff.

And that's, that would be the equivalent of somebody getting in the car today and playing, I don't know, some like Giovanni Palestrina chamber music from the monasteries just blaring it out.

It's, you know, when I'm trying to get pumped up, I just thrown some Paganini, you know, I'm, I mean, yeah.

Yeah, and it's just like, oh, OK, yeah, all right.

And that's but I did like that rebel attitude and the deleted scenes, you really see it even more.

I mean, I would say the movies that we can talk about this later if you want, but the deleted scenes are really cool because they really kind of this one of the cool ones is this scene is extended out so you really see what happened and why he stole the car.

That was really that was really he was he was truly getting back in his step that.

Yeah.

And very, very correct.

And then and then we see Spock as a kid and absolutely lives up to how he became the half human, half Vulcan Spock.

And you would think like Vulcans would have bullies, would they?

But they're like, of course they would.

Yes, yeah.

But it's like the first time they decided to do it was right before the big test at school or something.

Like these guys are asshole.

Yeah.

So I mean, the Vulcan thing is.

Like.

Yeah.

Oh, I love that.

But like there's like maybe verbal responses and so, you know, we're not getting it from verbal stimuli.

Perhaps of more physical stimuli is needed to get a response and then start like pushing him.

I was like, this is so cool.

Like Vulcan bullies.

I guess that's how bullying would have been done.

Not not so much for emotion, but more so for making those that are less that that they feel are less than them to put them in their place.

Well, it's starting down a thing that we've always heard spot talk about, right, And and that he's always sort of grappled with in the other movies that we know so well and stuff is that he is half human.

You know, he he constantly sort of fights against that part of himself.

But he is that.

And that's what made him and Kurt so interesting together, as they are the yen and each other's Yang, you know, because Spock infused a little bit of logical, critical thinking into Kurt, and Kurt brought out sparks, you know, creativity and humanity and take your guess and, you know, all that kind of stuff, all that stuff, you know, But that was established over 20 something years of, you know, television and movies and things.

Here we're having to do it on Fast forward and, and I know we're having to do it on Fast forward because, quote, everybody knows who these people are.

You know, we, we don't waste a lot of time on this stuff.

But to me, that's what what I'm missing here 'cause they're jamming a lot of things into it.

What's a 2 hour movie, you know, and it's a they're trying to go a long way in a 2 hour movie here.

And I think even we watching it this time, I realized like they never had any intention of really telling us a prequel.

Like they just want to get us to the point where they're all in the jobs that we know that they have on the enterprise and how fast can we get everybody there, you know, and in the process of that, I don't know, I feel like we, we're losing something through that, you know, and, and part of it is how we get to that.

We know we jump from them as these sort of teenage, you know, preteen boys.

They've got to be what, 1213 at this point and this to their young adulthood.

And we see them and we, you know what I, I do like this, I'll say this.

I like Zachary Quinto and Chris and as actors because I'd seen them in other things and have seen them in other things.

And I think they are incredible performance.

Chris Pine in particular is a really, really good actor.

They got, I mean, and no, no offense to the chat, but they got like an actor to play Kirk this time, which is a choice.

And then they got another one who I'm going to do Spock, but I'm going to play like the really emo, pissed off version of Spock.

And that is something we have never really seen.

The one time we saw him get really mad was part 6, right?

And when he had the whole really violent mind meld.

And that was kind of intense.

You know, we talked about that on you.

And but I liked it.

And I like the idea of like, oh, we're going to get to see what that what that old man had buried for a long time in this.

And I like the way that Quinto Spock plays off the, you know what?

Screw your Vulcan Academy.

I'm going to Starfleet because you guys, you know, all suck.

And I, I did dig that.

I liked the parts of him on Vulcan.

And this was back before Stranger Things brought Winona back to us.

So seeing Winona Ryder.

Winona Ryder, you know, Yeah, Yeah.

I, I was a, you know, as a Gen.

Xer, I was like, oh, Winona Ryder.

I really see, I really like I I know that you wanted a little more character development as a building up of who they were, but they're really trying to get to the enterprise.

I actually really like the way they did it because the main the main guys are crooked spot and to understand how they eventually become the best of friends.

That's where they focus that childhood stuff on and then you know, it's and then yes, they Fast forward their results.

Now I love, I love how they really show cause spot has always been close to his mom because, but he's always just conflicted because he, he wants to impress his father.

He's always wanted to impress his father, but he loves his mother very dearly and he's kind of a mama's boy.

And so you see this inner battle like, and then whenever he says, I mean, I love, I mean, just the refs is like, I'm thinking of when he's an adult spot before he's decides to not go to Starfleet up to the Falcon Science Academy.

And he says to his mom, you know, I, I really want to go through with Colin R to purge, to purge all emotion.

And, you know, with this, he said he and he was genuinely worried.

He's like, I'm very worried that you would look at this as a reflection on you.

And it is not.

And she's like, no, she's like, I no matter what you decide to do, I will always be a very, very proud mother.

And then when he has that moment where he's in front of the application to the Vulcan Science Academy and they're they're interviewing him and they said this, this is very impressive work despite your disability.

Oh yeah, That that was like, what?

Right there, it's like just slap in his face.

It's like that's literally insulting his mom.

He's like, fuck you, I'm going to start.

I'm going to.

Start with the Academy.

Exactly.

Yeah, and but it's the other things too is, and I'm with you, our main 2 characters are Kirk and Spock.

Now we got to get everybody else in the band because you can't not have Ringo, you know, you can't not have George.

If you're going to talk about The Beatles, you got to have these guys there, right.

And, and I don't mean to, you know, diminish their their accomplishments, but you got to have Bones.

You got to have, I'll give Karl Urban some credit.

He was like, I can kind of do Deforest Kelly.

Do you want me just to do that?

And they were like, yeah, sure.

Yeah.

And then they probably saw him do it.

They're like, yeah, you need to do a lot of that.

I'll play the one that'll really feel like gets a lot of fun with it.

Simon Peggs just playing himself.

So he just is Scotty.

That's fine.

And poor John Cho had nothing to do.

Anton Yell can play, you'll rest in peace.

Great actor lost way too soon is just doing a a check off like impersonation, which was funny to me because I'm like, shouldn't you show up in the second movie because we don't supposed to know you are?

But that was an inside joke for me.

The one who really I felt like got something to do was Zoe Saldana.

I felt like she said, oh, you're going to let her be like a thing now then, And that's probably how they got her.

It was like, you're going to have an actual character here.

And I wanted to ask you what you thought of the idea of like, her and Spock were like, you know, the hook up behind the scenes.

That was a big change.

That has changed.

I mean, we're seeing this in Star Trek, strangely, worlds now where Spock is the guy.

He's getting around.

He's like, he's like the he's like the 23rd century version of area codes by Ludacris.

I mean, so I guess this is a kicking it off right here.

I easily I I I mixed feeling about it.

I didn't not like it, but I also I can see it though.

I mean, Uhura knows all these languages.

She's insanely smart.

And so she's, she's, she could be emotional, but she's also very organized and very logical.

And I, and I think that taps into a side of Spot.

I think it taps into both sides of Spot.

She can beat.

She's smart, she's logical, she's very pragmatic, but she can get emotional at times.

And I think that's Spot needs that.

And I, so I, I, I I'm both sides of the fence, yeah.

I honestly I could have done without the romance part.

I could have gone with it if Uhura and Spot were like best friends or something that they just, they were just good like platonic friends, you know?

And 'cause, you know, I knew a lot of smart guys who were friends with some of the hottest women on the planet.

And the reason the women liked them is 'cause they, the dude wasn't trying to, you know, get with them.

They actually like their intellect, you know, and the women appreciate it.

I could have gone for that.

That would have been a real modern interpretation.

It would have been fun.

And then, you know, of course, Kurt's always trying to, you know, come on to her that, you know, she catches him in bed with her green skinned roommate who's the model or whatever, which is funny.

But I I would have loved that little that sparring would have mattered more if there wasn't like a romantic triangle rivalry going on here.

I didn't need that necessarily like, and I didn't care.

I'm like, you know, take the story, do what you want to with it.

It's your thing.

But it just was another layer that I felt like, well, that's going to get short shifted at some point because they're not going to be able to play with that any because we got so much of the crap going on.

We got to get away from this because what you know, while we're spending all this time on these people, I'll tell you one thing that that really just I and I'm not the Trekkie, so I want your opinion, but I hated the Kobayashi Maru test.

I was like, that is not how I had that going down in my head.

It was, it's played for such cheese and I'm like, it's, it's not how I would have thought Kurt would have done that.

OK, so, oh, I, I enjoyed it.

I, I was hoping that the simulation would have been a little more in depth like it was at the beginning of Ratha Khan, but I did enjoy it.

I, I, I, I really did enjoy the Kobayashi, you know, he beat it like, I, I was so, so excited when they, he's talking about like, oh, I'm going back to take the Kobayashi review test.

I'm going to beat it.

He's like, you're never going to beat the test.

I'm.

Like no way they're going.

To show this this I've been wondering.

I've been dying to see this and in again, deleted scene, which I really wish they would have left in there.

How he beats it like they show.

I don't know if you've seen a deleted scenes deleted scene of how he makes that happen.

Do you remember the the Orion girl?

Yeah.

So he like sends her a message saying, hey, you know, can you do me a big favor right at I

think it's like 9:00 in the morning.

Don't open this till 9:00.

Like he sends her a message.

Don't open this till like 9:00 in the morning.

But it's very private and very special.

So you got to do it like right after class after at this like station on that Starfleet Academy.

So she's so excited.

She opens it up and it's sends a virus out and into the he has it programmed to where the simulation, he could beat the simulation and he's like all the seed where he's just sitting there eating the apple and he's like, don't worry about it.

He's like, is he not taking the test seriously?

And then he says, you know, should we?

He's like, he says, all right, get ready to open fire.

He's like, but their Shields are up.

He's like, are they?

And they're like, no, they're not, though.

He's like, I'm a fire.

What what computer we should do with it.

Then he's Oh my God, I absolutely loved.

It I, I like the idea of Kurt using his, his ability to seduce people to get what he wants out of it as a way to like get his way.

That's fine.

It's just the cheesy way they play it.

But to to back up though a little bit that that would be a.

Very original, serious thing to do too.

I.

Think it it might, it might have been, but the the to back up, though, is how he even gets there.

It's the other wild part of this and he's he's basically doing nothing, which I didn't need the enterprise built in the field in Iowa, by the way, that was a little too close that I didn't like.

I was like it could have been anything.

It didn't need to be that ship, right?

It didn't.

Have to be that that was to just build something else.

Yeah, too close, right.

You know, I do like the idea though, that that he got like basically drafted into Starfleet because he gets in a bar fine.

He beats the crap out all these Starfleet on cadets and I, I'll say this, Bruce Greenwood got handed what I felt like was nothing and really made a part out of the the Pike part.

And I know Pike's a big deal, but I think what they had on paper was not nearly what he brought to it.

And this guy can do anything with that.

I love the way this guy acts and he just brings like a quiet confidence and gravitas to things.

And so when he talks and parts that voice, when he talks, you just listen to it, you know, and you can tell it's Kirk's not the kind of guy that's ever listened to anybody, but he'll listen to him.

And I like that.

I could have done with more of Pike being that substitute father figure, all of that.

I'll just say it now, like I felt like this movie would have been so much more interesting if we don't end with all of them in command positions, but they're all under the command of Pike and his crew, and we get to see them grow into those roles rather than be thrown into them.

I I agree, Bruce agree.

I mean, yeah, he was he was great.

He was absolutely he was absolutely great as Pike.

He I've loved him since nowhere man.

Honestly, that's where I first saw him great show very underrated.

Shouldn't have ended, but it was I would have liked to see more of that because I think you I think you're exact.

I think you nailed it right on the head.

He played the perfect type of father figure that Kurt never had and he kept on the straight.

Now he's very no bullshit, but he was also very respective of Kurt.

And I think, you know, he's he saw more in Kurt than he saw it himself.

And I really, really respect that.

And talking about getting into I mean, now you know why Doctor McCoy is called Bones.

Yo, yeah, I got I got to say that it it's everything's got to be done.

Fast forward in this movie, right or whatever.

But Karl Urban does a a good like he's just a good everyman anyway, you know, and, and everything he does and they give him that great story.

Left me everything but my bones.

I love this guy, man.

Already I'm I'm down because I realize I'm like, OK, well, one thing that they're going to keep in is that he's the Comic Relief of this, you know, he's the the third part.

And to go back to my earlier metaphor, he's the Ringo.

So OK, I'm I'm game for that.

Like that.

That will work.

He was fun so.

He did his homework on Doctor McCoy.

Karl Urban.

Absolutely.

He he if if there's anybody who I'd say was the closest at matching the personality of that character, Karl Urban did it.

I mean, he I, I wasn't sure.

Like, I knew he was a good actor, but I had I was blown away.

Like all the metaphors he does and all that, you know, this country Dr.

Kentucky Derby leaves your prize horse in the stable and he's like, stop all the metaphors.

It's it's yeah, no.

He clearly.

Everything's so good.

He made a choice, and I think they made a choice too, that like we have to write that character the same way.

Nobody will accept it any other way.

You know, Scotty acts a certain way.

Sulu and check off for kind of their own thing.

Like John Cho gets to be a little bit more serious, but not really still, you know, he's still Harold, you know, in a lot of ways.

So he's yeah, he's he's kind of, he gets, he gets a freaking sword fight for reasons we'll talk about.

But, you know, he they they do some of that stuff.

But like the bone stuff, like bones are Uhura.

I feel like.

Yeah, OK, that that's a fun interpretation.

One's basically a copy and one is an A new interpretation.

I like those things.

I think it's good and I'm not going to lie I I kind of dug again Emo Spock I and I'm not, you know making fun of when I say that I I think Quinto said Nope, we're going to play this with edge.

I'm going to be edge, I'm going to be tough and I'm going to be mean and people are going to look at me different because I can't beat Leonard Nimoy, especially when you're going to put him on screen with me later.

So as as we'll talk about and again, Chris Pine said specifically when they for this, he said, I am not going to do chat.

I'm not doing chatter.

You got to give me something else to do and it's the right choice.

It really it?

Is the right choice.

Yeah, even though the same character, and I want to be clear about that, this is exactly who I think James T Kirk was as a kid and growing up.

He's.

He is he's he's not Shatner, he's Kirk, he's not Shatner.

And that's what I envision what Kurt would have been like at this time of his life.

Chris Pyne.

What he does is exactly how I think he would have been absolutely the Playboy, the most popular guy, the energetic guy, the but the also the guy who just knows how to get out of any situation.

You know, when people like that's not the right idea.

He's like, oh, trust me, we got this.

Oh, I.

I do love the idea too that what got played off as a joke to us in Wrath of Khan.

You know Kurt cheated, beat the test, then let him on through.

Oh no, you're not just going to cheat.

You got to go to the disciplinary hearings.

I just better get kicked out of school.

It's.

Not like they were.

Just yeah, like I'm like, oh, oh, there are consequences to this shit that's different.

And of course, it's going to get interrupted by, you know, the, the, the big the problem here, the distress signal from Vulcan, that's going to really set everything off, right?

So we mobilize the cadets just like Starship Troopers.

And because the fleet's always out of damn range and it's the worst deployed fleet in the history of the world or the universe, But they're going to get aboard the Enterprise to try to get there, right?

And what's what I wanted to get into is this idea of like the the whole Nero threat and what he's trying to do and his whole idea of his motivations of I want revenge against Spock and the Federation because they destroyed my home planet by trying to reignite the core with, you know, the Illuminati matter from the Dan Brown books.

You know, I mean, that's all I thought about when I saw this.

I was like, oh, somebody read that, you know, but what did you make of all that is like a motivation and a Mac Guffin and and stuff?

Because as as far as Star Trek villains go, it's not the dumbest reason I've ever seen somebody do something.

But it does seem like the most ham fisted 1.

So again, I hate to keep going going back to deleted scenes for things, but there's a lot in the deleted scenes that explain so much.

Like, for example, yes, he's angry, but think about this.

When Nero first shows up, it's when Kirk is born and now he's attacking Vulcan 28 years later.

Where has he been?

Like, why is it if he's had this revenge the whole time and he says he was just waiting for, you know, Spot Prime to show up, I don't think he would have waited 28 years for smart primers.

He like he knew, like doing the math, oh, he's going to show up 28 years later in the future.

Wait #1 he ain't going to wait that long.

He's pissed, he's angry.

He just lost everything He ain't got.

He ain't got the time to patience to wait for 28 years and #2 he's going to take his revenge now.

Like he's his crew's not going to wait 28 years.

We're just going to like rumble around the the Alpha Quadrants for 28 years, just killing time.

I mean, no.

So the deleted scenes explains that in the deleted scenes that after George Kirk crashes the ship into the Neurada, the Klingons show up and they capture the Neurada and they imprisoned the entire crew.

And he's been, he and his crew are put in like a work camp for 28 years, and then he escapes.

And that's why he, once he gets back out, that's why he goes OK, That's when he goes after Vulcan.

That needed to be left in the movie then, because that is I, I haven't seen any of these deleted scenes.

So I've seen the clips of young Kirk before because it's, you know, been online and stuff.

I've never watched the deleted scenes in this.

And that would have explained so much more because that was a huge plot hole for me.

I'm like, why is this guy just sticking around for 30 years, you know?

Yeah, like what did he do for 30 years?

Also, if you're time traveling, you do what Marty McFly did.

You go back 2 minutes before and finish.

Fix it right?

You don't.

Well, allow that to.

Happen they couldn't time travel well, they couldn't time travel like they didn't have a time travel machine.

It was just it opened up basically a ripped in space-time and it was that red batter taking out a a sun and he's not going to I mean he's back in time he's going to try to prevent all this from happening.

But here it does make a comment that, you know, he, he he like when he's interviewing, when when he's interrogating Pike, when he says, you know, I saw it happening.

You just you just rhyme.

This is destroyed.

And Pike's like, no, it's this out there.

What are you talking about?

And and he's and he's like, no, me and ROM the Romney and the empire and I stand apart.

So apparently at some point during those 28 years he tried to reach out to the Romney empire.

He's like, Hey, you know, we got to attack the federation and oh, check it out.

I got all this like wild weaponry and technology.

We can do it.

And the Rodman enterprises.

Nah, we're, we're good.

So there, there just there plot holes there that I, I agree that.

And to me, the biggest 1 was like, wait a minute, what was he doing for 28 years?

And that was being in prison would have made sense then.

Yeah, that that would have totally worked.

But never mind, it's there.

It is our our plot as it is.

And we're going to we're going to whack the plan of the Vulcan, which OK, now I'm going to go OK, movie golf clap for going in a very wildly different direction and setting one of our main characters into a spiral like the which we've never seen before.

The way that goes down is it's some incredible looking special effects work like it really is.

I I want to say this movie looks incredible.

I know I called it lens flair and that's just J JS thing, but it looks cool.

Like honestly, I don't even really notice that crap unless I'm just looking for it.

The this action scene is incredible.

It really is.

It's a little, it's a little like they try to work real hard to make sure everybody gets a scene in it, which I, I, I guess it's just the problem with the script and it's always been the problem with these, right, is how do you get everybody when you have a television show that's an ensemble cast?

They can't all have a moment in the movie, right?

Like we've talked about, right?

Yeah.

Especially when this is really about two of them.

And I'm sorry everybody, but it's just how it is.

I, I don't know, I still feel like though they, they give us some great action and that planet imploding the way it does, that's incredible looking work.

Oh, so good.

I remember I was the girl I was dating with at the time.

She was say, it's like, are they going to blow up Vulcan?

I was like, no, no, they got to blow up Vulcan.

Trust me, that's it's too important to plant.

They're not going to blow it up.

And then when the dark matter drops and explodes in the core, like, well, they're going to stop it.

Like I have to stop it.

Like there ain't no way they're going to destroy Vulcan of.

All places, you kidding me?

And then, then it implodes.

I was, I was, I sat there just speechless.

And then the sad music and the Vulcan survivors and sparks, you know?

Well, you watch Amanda literally drop under, I don't know, out of range of the transporter and it's and by the way, I love the new transporter like animation.

I I do love that.

I thought that looked cool because it's, it's all the swirling planets around you and the white glow and all that stuff.

I mean it's.

And the old, but at the same time the old school sound effect.

Yes, yeah.

Which I love that, though, because again, I'm giving you something new with the sound that you know, which is almost the way this whole movie works, right?

It just, it looks shiny.

But when they drop her out of the scene, I was like, oh, I didn't.

I did not see that coming.

OK, So now we've not only got like, home planet is gone, but your mother is gone in front of you.

He killed my mother, you know, so, and to watch his reaction to that is as some of the best stuff that Quinto does in the movie, it really is.

Yeah, no, it it really that emotion, like he's just, as we will talk about later, being emotionally compromised.

Oh, he's definitely that.

And you see where he starts to fall apart.

And he and Kurt, while they one day become the best of friends, it doesn't start off on the right foot.

It really does not start off on the right foot at all.

And so eventually, you see the two of them have the big fallout and he just kicks Kirk out.

Like, you're gone.

Like, we're going to don't be on this planet and we're out of here.

And lo and behold, he drops this ice planet.

And then lo and behold.

So here's the here's where I start to go.

OK, now that's where I start doing this.

Like fold my arms, be angry at the movie thing here, because up until this point, I've given it all of this stuff to get us here, right?

We let Sue Lo have a freaking sword fight.

OK, cool.

We we, yeah, we're, we're jumping around.

We got Chekhov like beaming people left and right.

We got all this crap happening, right?

And and it's mostly been kind of fun, right?

When they dropping on the ice planet of the Hoth, they just also happens to have old Spock on it.

I'm like all right movie and please tell me there to leave these things to explain how that piece of convenience works out because I get the idea.

I want you to watch your planet get destroyed from this nearby moon.

But the chances, the galactic math chances that new Spock knows we're dumping Kirk on this thing over here where his old self is, are astronomical leaps of logic that I have to make.

Unless you want to play the game of this is Fate just working things out like it's always supposed to, which that's not what Star Trek is, but OK.

No, and there's no deleted scene to explain like on this entire, but we got to think they're not far.

What?

Here's something to keep in mind.

Kelvin, Spock was not going to just don't perk in the middle of this in the middle of Hoth for Oh my God, that's a great way to put it to die like he was he was, he was still near a Federation base, but he wanted them far enough away that he wasn't going to just immediately go to the Federation base.

And I think that Nero did the same thing.

He's like, I, I don't want to kill you, Spock.

I want you.

So I think Nero did the same thing, put him close to the base, but he says you're going to watch first and then you can you want to save yourself, save yourself and you go to the Federation base there.

But I he did not.

Nero did not want to kill Spock.

He wanted him to stay.

He wanted to.

Suffer forever like he had.

Suffered 100% but.

He wasn't just going to abandon him on this in the middle of this entire planet and then like freeze to death.

He's just like I am taking comfort in the fact that you're near the Starfleet base.

You're going to be fine, but I also know that you are going to be wrecked for the rest of your life.

But I I get, I get that.

I'm just saying, getting those two pieces together, it's hard.

To see what.

You're saying, yeah, like I understand the motivation of both characters to do what they do to old Spock and Kurt, respectively.

Makes total sense.

Again, it's you have to make this gravity leap and in logic to go, well, I guess it's just how things have to work.

I mean, it's it's really because the plot says so, but like, if you're trying to figure out how, what are the odds of that?

You can't, There's no, there's no way that that would have just worked out that way.

You know, it's right, right.

But it is you got you got to give the movie that.

Yeah, I I get that.

But but we're an hour into this thing now and I, you can't ask me to give you more mulligans.

I've already given you all of them.

So we're we're on the back nine.

Like that's no more like what's going on, but it's really there so that Leonard Nimoy can explain to us what in the hell is going on.

Because at this point we don't know.

Like we really don't know what's happening.

We've gotten bits and pieces of it.

And as only he can, he does shore up the first half of the movie and go.

Let me explain to you why we're all here children.

And it it's it's really well done.

I'll have to say.

It's a lot of convenience and it's a lot of.

Oh, OK.

And I feel like, again, there's some good deleted scenes probably to go along with this.

But I I do like the way he wraps it up and talks about how he and Nero are are, you know, from far in the future.

But they both got sent back 20 something years apart.

But after this, you know, Supernova went off because he made a mistake.

Yeah.

And that's the wild part of it is that you realize no matter how smart Spock is, and he's one of the smartest creatures to ever live in in our movie world here, right?

He had a plan and it failed.

And that's just the weird part is to hear Spock talk about something not working because this is the last time Spock had a play that didn't work.

And it's like, and I think it and I've never, I didn't watch any of the, you know, extra stuff.

So I don't know you ought to tell me, but I feel like JJ Abrams really wanted us to tap into Spock's humanity in a way that maybe they just never had before.

And one way to do that is to give him like, a, a point of failure about every 15.

Oh, yeah.

You.

Know and they did and and they really did I, I think that was I, I thought that was brilliant.

They really tapped into the human side to do this, while it really showed that inner struggle that he had at the beginning of the film.

Like this was always an inner struggle with Spock that Spock often alluded to.

Whether it was the series or the movies, he often alluded to how much of A struggle it could be.

And a great example of that Star Trek 5.

Same with Cybok in the Enterprise where Spock is born and his dad Cerec says so human.

And it just that right there was probably the closest we got of showing how much Spock struggles with that.

And this movie really put it to the forefront.

And I I applaud it for that.

I really, really do.

But down on this planet they and we get the the last person on the Enterprise, Scotty, of course, Scotty working in there and his small Comic Relief.

I will say the of the characters that I was least impressed with it.

Would I I I love Simon Pegg.

I do.

I was least impressed with his Scotty.

He's not giving anything to do.

I mean, he, he really doesn't.

He's there to work the transporter and to kind of show up and make you laugh because that's all.

That's what he's good at, you know?

And what's the whole like, sidekick Comic Relief?

Non speaking.

That's that's JJB and Steven Spielberg with aliens and kids.

Yeah smacking me or something.

That's what that is.

Oh smacking.

I mean, that's what that's what it looked like.

That's.

What?

I thought you're right.

Yeah.

No, it was just like.

OK, here's my alien sidekick Foo Fog, you know, or whatever.

Yeah, so.

But.

At least we get him on there and.

Well, the the whole idea is, is the older Spock has told Kirk, like, you know, there's a way for you to get back into this is oh, yeah, you got to piss off.

So we we're going to say, you know, Pike is at the moment is being tortured like hell on this mining show, which sucks because I like Bruce Greenwood and he deserves better.

So Spock's currently in charge, and then Kurt gets on there and he, sure enough, pushes the buttons.

You know that spot?

Yes, he.

Does.

Poor Chris Pine, he felt like he spent half this movie in like, bruised makeup and with his jaw hurting from somebody just hitting him in the face.

Like for, you know, our swashbuckling hero.

Kurt gets his ass kicked a lot in this movie.

He really does he.

Not only his ass kicked, he's always choked.

Yes, he's always being choked.

Like nobody's just like punching him.

They're just like choking him.

And it's it's like, God, wow, why?

Why is that the preferred method of the fight of Kurt getting his ass beat is being like choked out all the time.

And then like you see that like, you know, but like you said, going back to a prime Spock and he says you're no way that you, your version of me is going to let me take command of that ship.

And perhaps like you, you're the one to do it.

You're the I know you.

I know who you are.

If there's any way that can figure this out, it's you.

But you've got to take command of ship.

It is not gonna be me.

And he's like, whatever your dead body.

Preferably not, but he says I assure.

You.

I lost my entire home world.

I am emotionally compromised.

And when he gets back on the ship and that confrontation between Spock and Kirk, wow, I mean, you just.

It's intense.

I mean, it really is.

And but Spock does the the thing he's supposed to do.

The logic takes over.

I've, I've, I've got to be relieved to command.

I'm, I'm out.

And he goes and talks to his father, you know, and what I love is that CEREC, who, you know, Spock is always trying to please this unpleasable, logical being, right?

And listen to his head.

That's what he thinks.

And Cerec tells him to do the most human thing possible.

Go be with this man because he needs your strength to do this.

Even he sees that they're Better Together than apart, which is that's always what we've known about Spock and Kirk.

Like we, we needed to get them there.

But, and I'm sitting here talking about it going like, yeah, that sounds really cool.

The problem with it, Nate, is that it looks like shit on screen.

Like it doesn't really work.

Like I'm having to help the movie a lot with this cause I feel like there's a lot more of this that could have happened and maybe we didn't need some of that early back story to get us here.

I, I don't know, I, I feel like there's either a great three hour version of this or there's just a better two hours that they left, some of which on the.

Floor, I think there's a lot they left on the floor.

I feel like I said, this is a movie where the deleted scenes really would have enhanced the movie and I feel like there are things that were cut out just on the cutting room floor, not in deleted scenes or anything.

I mean, just on the cutting room floor that it could have brought some things full circle.

I, I think if this was a three hour film, it would have been even better.

So.

But now we've got Kirk in command, and off they run to save the day.

Yeah, I mean that you know, Kirk of course is going to get into a fight with Nero cuz we have to have Eric Bonnie and Chris Pine fight each other Troy style, which is fine.

And I know Chris Pine wasn't in that, but he could have been and so that's fine.

You know I had was given nothing to do and made all they could out of it is poor Eric Bonnie.

He's just trying to milk anything out of this that he possibly.

Gets, but we're.

Going to We're going to rescue Pike while Spock is using the older Spock's ship, which I do kind of like, mostly because it reminds me of the one that Obi Wan Kenobi gets to fly and attack of the clones.

It looks very similar, but it's kind of a cool ship.

It really does.

It's kind of scary, but it it looks cool and you know, they blow the drill up and he's going to set the the ship because of course Spock is going to sacrifice himself.

That's his ultimate thing is like I've got to I've got to go down right.

I've got I've got the red matter.

I'm going to fly it in there and I'm going like, they ain't no way in hell this is going going to happen.

And this is what I hate about it is that is what I expected them to do.

And it's like such standard movie convention.

Like, of course he's going to 2nd press himself.

And of course they're going to beam him out of it at the last second when what would have been way more interesting is for him to go, I'm going to fly this thing toward this other ship.

But Scotty, I need you to beam me out of it the last second because I know you know how to do that Like that.

That would have been even more unconventional.

Like, oh, well, you're just going to call out the thing.

Well, cool, that works, you know, and it's like calling your shot in baseball and then going jacking at 500 feet the air show.

Hey, you know, I mean, OK, sure, I'm I'm down for that.

It's some good, it's some good splosions.

I mean, again, we got lots of good action and you know the the inside of the Neurada.

By the way, I was having flashbacks to a recent appearance I had on 2 Girls 1 Crip where we went through the entire Hellraiser franchise and I was like, Oh my God.

They just like, I think JJ is a secret Hellraiser fan because there's lots of Hellraiser in that ship.

Like it's.

Oh, very much so.

Right, like, well, you see it you.

Know also that ship uses and this is something that was in the that was in the canonical comics is that that ship takes board technology.

So some of the computers and stuff, they see it and even their weapons, you see the green in the.

Web.

That's what I was going to say.

Incorporated some board technology and that's why they have what they have and that's why it looks the way it looks.

I mean, I think the board used to scoop up entire cities off of planets.

And So what better for a mining vessel than board technology to scoop stuff out of a planet?

So.

That makes sense, So.

That's that's why you see a lot of that.

But I agree it was.

I love the inside of the neuronic.

It's, I mean, it looks cool.

It is a cool design.

It's like this squid coming at you, more or less this big metal squid.

I'm like, OK, that looks fierce.

I'm OK with that.

Because I mean, again, they they do a great job with the quote redesign of the enterprise.

It's just like the enterprise that you know and love really shiny.

You know, I mean it, it does look like the like, I don't know the, the, the deck, the the main deck is very clean.

And maybe it looks like, I don't know, the Geek Squad deck and a brand new Best Buy or something, like it's really fancy or, you know, but it's, I don't know it, but there's enough of the old stuff there that you're still with it, you know?

But yeah, but I do like, I mean, the outside looks basically the same.

You know, I like how they're doing this here.

At the end, of course, we beam everybody back and the black hole consumes the Neurada.

But of course the Enterprise escapes because that's what the Enterprise does, right?

It always escapes of.

Course, that's exactly what it does.

Yeah, when JJ Abrams is doing this, he this, a lot of times, I always get nervous when I hear stuff like this.

It's like, oh, we want to make it.

We want to make it for a new audience.

I always cringe when I do that because that's what card Season 2 tried to do.

That's what Discovery tried to do is what Enterprise tried to do the first season.

And it was.

And none of those worked.

I mean, Enterprise found its groove in seasons 3 and 4 when it stopped trying to be, when it, when it said, you know what, let's just, we have an audience, let's not piss them off anymore.

And it got really well.

Then by that time there was fatigue set in.

And but JJ Abrams knows like, OK, we're doing a reboot.

It's going to we can do all new things is a different timeline.

We want to make sure that the Trek, the the core Trek audience respects us.

Like we'll have the little things in there, like the character development of crooked spot, the personalities.

We're going to match them as close as we can.

We're going to make them the people you think they would be if when they were younger.

But we also need to attract some new audiences because at the end of the day, we got to make money.

And that's all these big action scenes and things like that.

The whole like spot getting beamed out at the last second.

Of course, that's makes it exciting for people.

That's people like to see that, you know, look at the Fast and Furious movies.

They get out of the car at the last second before it tumbles off a Cliff.

You know, it's that's just how it happens.

And I like that.

I think this is one of the rare, rare times where they make trek for people.

For new audiences, but also for the old audiences.

And it works.

I mean, I think it definitely works.

I mean, the whole idea is they wanted Fast forward you through all the things you didn't know, but it's all the things you didn't know told in a different timeline now.

But so that way we protect everything you know and love that exists in a different place.

Cool.

OK, fair.

But the wild thing is, is we wind up right back where it all started anyway, you know, and and it's just how they got there That and I don't again, I get the idea of ultimately you want to bring in a new audience.

Sure.

So you do that with all the effects and the change of action and stuff.

But if we're going to wind up with the same characters in the same places, you know, ultimately I just again, I felt like I, I wanted to see them all be OK.

We're now all under Captain Pike's, you know, command.

And then in the next movie they get the ship.

You know what I mean?

Like that's, that's what I as the non Trekkie, that's kind of what I wanted was I want them all to get to a point where they work and then they get it handed off to them.

They they get it handed off to them really quick.

Yeah, that is I, I'll agree with that.

That was something I was like, whoa, these are still cadets and now you're like promoting the captains and, you know, commanders and letting them run the show, I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah, I I agree that that happened a little too quickly.

That was something I didn't really particularly like.

I.

Mean, you know, you wanted you.

Yeah, I mean, I understand the idea as we've got to get to this point, but I don't know if you want to build a new franchise.

And that was the whole purpose of this, right?

Was let's reboot this franchise.

Then what?

Leave me somewhere else to go, because now you just stuck me right where we were, you know?

So now what?

Yeah.

Exactly.

I think it would have been better had they like taken the ship after.

Like they all came and demanded the ship after.

Yeah, and I mean, I'll give you a good example of a franchise that left you in a place that if you're going to go somewhere with it, it'll be different.

The very end of Batman Begins, when they flip over that Joker card and he's like, I'll check it out.

I'm like, oh, that.

They could have shoved that into that movie, but they decided Nope, Nope, we're going to hold that.

And you know, Nolan being a genius is like, no, we're going to hold it for the best thing you'll ever see.

And it's and which is an incredible remake of Heat with Batman in it.

But yeah, but I'm really.

But I'm like, I would have loved to have had that moment in this movie where like Pike sits down these people and it's like, OK, so communications officer, she's hired.

Engine boy, you're hired, but you're no longer in charge.

Learn how to fix something, you know?

And like you, you demote everybody back down to the right place.

And then he looks at Kirk and Spock is and you 2, you're on my left and my right until I say otherwise.

You know, and I would have liked that because he is such a strong figure, particularly for Kirk, but really for both of them.

I would be like, OK, that's cool because now we've got a character that we know of, right?

But we're going to make that a real character.

And then somewhere in the second movie, you can hand it off.

You know, he dies, whatever.

And, and that's how we, we get there.

But obviously it's not where they wanted to go.

They, they wanted to end with Kirk's the captain, Spock's the first officer and who, you know, and that that's where we land with it and where they go.

Oh, we'll talk about that in a future episode cause yes, I have many thoughts and I imagine you do too, but.

Oh, yeah, there's you.

You want to talk about some things that were stretches?

We'll talk about that in a second.

I'm like, OK, there are some things here that I, I mean, I enjoyed it, but there are some.

Oh boy, I had to.

We're we're going to have to disbelief.

Yeah, we're going to have to we're going to get to that when we get to Into Darkness.

But for right now, we're at the end of Star Trek.

So just final thoughts.

And you know, this is a completely different timeline, so we'll rate them like we would anything else on film strip with popcorn ratings and stuff.

I want to hear what yours are for the 2009 Star Trek.

I put this, this is my fourth favorite Star Trek film of all of the Star Trek films.

I very much like this and I think it was the like how they portrayed the characters like they were.

It's a new take, great acting, fun story.

It brought in people that weren't Trekkies, but it it didn't give like Discovery, for example, when they try to do lip service for the the core audience, it's basically just randomly mentioning, Oh, they mentioned Spock.

Oh, we're supposed to mention like they randomly mention, you know, the Enterprise, like something from a previous episode.

They just randomly mentioned it.

We're supposed to like, you know, shit ourselves with excitement.

This didn't do that.

This you looked at those little small things of Kirk beating the Kobayashi Maru Kirk and his affinity for the ladies, Spock's struggle with his human side.

I mean, they really did a fascinating job of highlighting the, the things that we've come to know about them, but do it in a way that really makes it believable.

I, I, I really truly loved I, I loved everything about this.

I mean, granted, there are some things that if they would have been to the deleted scenes in there made this this movie 3 hours longer.

This might have been my third favorite Trek film of all time, but I loved it.

I thought it was a fresh new take.

I love the fact that Jay Abrams came right out and said this is a different timeline.

Don't worry, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel in the original time I rewrite cannon.

This is a totally different timeline.

So it's giving us a whole and it gives us a whole new Star Trek universe.

So I, I was very excited after that.

I was like, all right, you know, there's still hope that the original prime universe, they can still do something of that.

But until then, we've got this whole new Star Trek universe in a totally different timeline.

We can do a whole bunch of cool stuff with.

And I was, I was very excited.

I loved it.

I, I was a I'm a big fan, screen glare and all.

I am a big fan.

I I'm glad you loved it.

I, I'm a little surprised to hear you hadn't ranked that high, but that's cool.

That's fine.

In the grand pantheon.

This one's like 8th for me.

And I'll tell you because I again, as as this the Star Trek movies fan or whatever, I feel like I'm watching the best versions of other things I've seen.

But on Fast forward, you know, and just this movie just never takes any frigging time to breathe on anything.

And and I know that is part of the aesthetic.

That's what they were going for.

But man, that's that's the thing that always made Star Trek different in my book.

That other stuff.

It wasn't trying to be Indiana Jones.

It wasn't trying to be Star Wars.

It would breathe a little bit.

And the times when it got out of that and tried to be those other things, Insurrection and Nemesis and Final Frontier, some of this real bad stuff that we've gone through happens.

And when it's allowed to breathe and just be itself, it can be kind of fun and goofy, you know, like Voyage Home or it can be really, really good, like motion picture or something like first Contact, you know?

And I think when I, when I watch this now and I especially this when I'm like, I see what you guys you're going for here.

But gosh, I just wish the movie knew how to breathe a little bit and will give me a little more.

And the one thing that it gave us was it gave us A twist on Spock that we hadn't seen before.

And so I credit that a lot to Zachary Quinto and and to Chris Pine for playing off of him the way he did.

I feel like together they have a real chemistry with each other.

And I'm like, I I was intrigued enough to go, all right, I I want to see this next one.

You know, I want to see what you do next.

And I said to myself at the at the time, just please don't like try to bring con or something back because that would just be lame.

I, I remember that.

So I mean, for me, I, it's, it's solid medium popcorn territory.

Be like fun, you know, again, this can be fun.

You can put it on and just kind of go.

And again, it looks great.

It's a, it's a cool ass looking transformer Star Trek movie.

It's kind of what it looks like to be.

But I do feel like I'm missing something in it.

And I think part of that part of this, I'm not going to lie, is, is a little bit shady because I know what's coming, you know too.

And at least in the next chapter, and we'll talk about that next time here on this one, because like I said, I've got a lot of thoughts about Into Darkness and I'm sure you do too.

But been a lot of fun catching back up with this series with you here as we're you're getting near the end of the year.

So we'll once we squeeze one more in before the end of the year here, folks.

But either way, we'll be back to get those last two chapters and I don't know, who knows, maybe by the time we finish this that'll have a new movie in production or something.

They've been teasing one for 12 years it seems like, but they've got 40.

Shows there right now, yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot.

There's lots of places to go, but we'll talk about where they go with this next time on the show.

But of course, folks, you can follow this podcast wherever you get your podcast.

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