ST AOS thoughts
So as some of you know, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elperian is watching ST TOS for the first time, and her reactions are making me giddy with love for my characters. So I started reading some fic (always up for recommendations!) and then read one of those crossovers between TOS and AOS and the writer was good, so I started reading all their AOS fic and then their bookmarks and before you know it I'm having an AOS moment?
So I decided to rewatch the three films and here are my thoughts in Tumblr-style no-capitals writing:
for reasons i won't get into, i just rewatched star trek (2009) and it's still very fun even if it doesn't feel exactly star trek-y to me. i mean, that is simply not jim kirk, for one thing, though the movie provides a useful mechanism to explain this via "this is what jim kirk would have been like if his dad had died at his birth and he'd been raised with an abusive step-father" and so i can make peace with it because chris pine is very charismatic.
and obviously i have Many Feelings about how no one but mr. nimoy z"l will ever be spock, but that isn't zachary quinto's fault, so i don't hold it against him as he did the best he can, and the character he's playing is very bitchy, which is very fun. +1000 points for the way he delivered "live long and prosper" as "fuck you" in his scene where he was accepted into the vulcan academy.
but honestly none of these characters are who they should be and none of the rest of them have the script-provided explanation that jim has. so there's chekhov who instead of being a feral trash panda is an angelical whiz kid. but again, the character is fun, and also i think that anton yelchin z"l could do no wrong, so no complaints there.
in the same manner, karl urban is a lovely man but he is not even remotely convincing as a southerner and he has completely different energy than deforest kelley and don't get me started on uhura and sulu and scotty.
and yet! i like all these characters! it mildly bothers me that none of them are the characters i love from the the original show, no, not one single one of them, but the characters they are are very endearing and i am fond of them. it's a well-put-together action movie, all the characters get their moments to shine, the pacing's great, the music's great, etc.
what i'm saying is: i can enjoy this movie and its characters even though they are so different from the tos characters because i just think of them as completely different characters.
however, there is one thing i cannot forgive and that is the fact that spock and sarek seem to get along just great.
i'm sorry, but spock being at odds with his dad is very important to me. like, this is the guy who when explaining his part-human heritage said, "one of my ancestors married a human woman," like HOW COLD IS THAT? i do not know why, but a sarek who calmly explains to spock how he's different from other vulcans and that's okay just makes me insane.
is it highly illogical that i can separate all the other characters from their tos counterparts, but i am furious about sarek? indeed it is, but i am only a human.
tags: #i LIKE ben cross! #i think he was a great actor! #visually he's perfect--i remember hearing he'd been cast and thinking it was genius casting #but they wrote him wrong! #mark lenard didn't play multiple characters on tos just for sarek to become soft and fluffy in this movie! #I AM NOT INTO IT #also winona was waaaaaay too young to play spock's mother i am still BAFFLED by this casting choice but at least she's jewish #anyway #it's been almost 20 years since this movie came out & i still have many feelings about how it's not actually star trek but i like it anyway
otoh, into darkness is just not good.
i mean, it has its moments, like:
+ the major ot3 vibes of the scene where uhura and jim confront spock about his ~not caring about dying~ and it’s very emotionally intimate and then you realize that CUPCAKE AND THE OTHER REDSHIRT ARE SITTING THERE AWKWARDLY.
+ sulu in the captain’s chair
+ kirk being willing to sacrifice himself to save his crew. and also how he refers to the enterprise as “our ship” whenever he talks to spock.
+ my poor baby chekhov having to do scotty’s job when he’s barely trained for it. they’re like, “the kid’s a genius, he’ll figure it out.” but pasha never asked for this responsibility! watching him fret and stress out brings me great joy!
+ scotty’s whole thing! lots of good scotty stuff here.
but the things i dislike about it really outweigh all that.
+ this movie takes itself WAY too seriously, which is always a bad thing in an action movie (unless it's based on a real-life war--i'm fine with, like, saving private ryan taking itself too seriously) but is especially egregious in anything that has the temerity to call itself star trek.
+ opening with the pastiche of earth colonialism just grosses me out. even in the 1960s, rodenberry was TRYING to do better than that. he didn’t always succeed, but he tried.
+ i will die angry about the khan casting. HOW VERY DARE THEY. to go from ricardo “rich corinthian leather” montalban to cumberbatch in any situation ever is just a flat out HUGE downgrade but to cast the whitest guy ever as as a character named KHAN NOONIEN SINGH!!!! is just!!!!!!! no, i will never calm down about this.
+ leaving aside the whitewashing of the character THIS KHAN IS SO BORING. HE’S BORING. montalban is a helluva charismatic guy; his khan is anything but boring. but this khan brings dishonor to the name of khan. i feel like he’s supposed to be evil sexy, but he is simply not. he’s on the verge of melting down the whole time instead of having khan’s easy charm that flips to rage. and it is not compelling! i hate him! i hate him for taking over this movie!!!!
+ the whole premise of admiral marcus using khan’s crew. it’s a bad plotline. if the bad guy of the film is an admiral who has become a war hawk, that can be interesting, but marcus as bad guy is undermined by having khan around. and then khan ends up being fairly easily defeated, we never get to know him. by having two bad guys, neither one gets the space to be fleshed out, we waste so much time on things that are not interesting and don't matter. the whole reason wrath of khan works is because khan is making choices and we understand where he’s coming from. nero in the 2009 film was basically a plot device, but he had an incredibly straightforward motivation and everything around him was interesting, so it worked. i just don’t think it works here.
+ in general, i find the action scenes boring. i’m not a person who likes to watch an action scene unless it’s somehow telling me something about the characters (it’s honestly like how i feel about sex scenes–boring unless character-revealing, plot-furthering, or relationship-developing) and these don’t. they just take time away from the fun we could have having with the characters. in the 2009 film, i don’t get bored in any of the action scenes because they’re all opportunities for the characters to show who they are. that’s not the case in this film. it is astounding to me that orci and kurtzman wrote both films when one is, imo, a fantastic screenplay that shows how to make every moment count and the other is…this.
+ i like a lady scientist but carol marucs is not interesting and also it’s weird that she has a british accent and her dad doesn’t. no offense to the actress, they should have cast somebody with some personality.
+ visually i just find it way more boring and dark and generic sci-fi than the first film.
+ there’s this VERY weird moment where we jump from chekhov barely holding jim and scotty by one arm to keep them falling into oblivion, and then we cut to them all running around, somehow saved but we never saw how??? i do not believe that chekhov is strong enough to pull two grown men up by himself. why even have them dangling if you’re not going to show how they got out of it?
+ maybe i’m wrong, but wouldn’t the ship have been pulled into orbit around earth instead of crashing onto it?
+ THE BIGGEST EMOTIONAL CHEAT I HAVE EVER SEEN ON FILM. to steal the climactic scene from wrath of khan is an offense against me personally. by the time wrath of khan was released, we the audience have known kirk and spock and their relationship for almost 20 years. we had three seasons of television and another movie in which we watched their bond and saw how much they care about each other. when spock goes into that engine room and sacrifices himself and then jim and everybody else react, it is so earned.
with into darkness, they steal that big climactic scene and it is so so so cheap. this kirk and spock barely know each other! they have not earned this moment!!!!!!!! all the emotional resonance comes not from these two characters who we have seen in two movies, but from the echoes of tos!spirk who were the ones who earned that scene.
pine and quinto sell it acting-wise, but i hate this decision so much!!!!!!!
+ also the emotional resonance is immediately undercut by having kirk come back to life. and using khan’s blood to save kirk but only kirk has huge moral implications and it's weird that they gloss over that.
+ oh, and the scene where alcatraz is destroyed pisses me off. there are not prisons in the 23rd century, so why is it still surrounded by barbed wire? why is it even there? they made a very pointed decision to include it and i do not like this decision.
+ why did we need to destroy half of san fransisco? we already killed pike and the rest of the starfleet leadership and blew up a bunch of people in london. it just feels like overkill and star trek is not about overkill.
+ then we have a chase + fight scene with spock and khan and it’s stupidly over the top and, like, why is this necessary? again, we’re stealing time that could have been focused on character work!
+ turning the intro voiceover from the show into a captain’s oath? makes zero sense. your fanservice should make sense.
idk. the 2009 film is just such fun that i have a blast while watching it. this film fills me mostly with annoyance if not outright rage.
maybe i just need to rewatch tos and then i’ll calm down. but i am going to watch beyond first because i remember liking it.
beyond is such a return to form! from the opening scene, in which we get a very campy reveal re: the aliens, the message is: we are not going to take ourselves too seriously, which is such a relief, because that was a huge part of the problem with into darkness. while into darkness's opening scene also has some winky-ness to it, it's borrowing from a couple of centuries of white imperialism to make its joke, and i hate that. beyond's silliness, however, fits into the star trek universe way better.
now, i will say: i do not like that they destroy the enterprise so completely–they could very easily have had it crash-land without being obliterated. i am a sentimental sort and do not like to see my favorite ship broken all to pieces. i get that it’s an excuse for the franklin later, and i do love the franklin! but still!
also they killed too many crew members. i just...feel strongly about how star trek has a kind of a different approach to "collateral damage" than most action-y things, and the movies don't seem to understand that.
but those are really my only major complaint about the film. i have small ones, like that there isn’t enough kirk&spock and kirk&spock&uhura, not enough uhura, not enough sulu, but i’ll take what i can get when it’s in a movie that’s actually fun.
things i like a lot:
+ spock and bones buddy road trip comedy!!! god, i love them together. jim’s husbands should have way more scenes together.
+ visually, things are much brighter and more interesting.
+ the casting director, who gave us my love shohreh aghdashloo in star trek, however briefly.
+ jaylah!!! i love her, i love her way of speaking, i love her fighting, i love how smart and resourceful she is, she’s the coolest and best! i think she should be able to keep scotty as her pet.
+ SO glad sofia boutella got the role instead of jennifer lawrence.
+ the franklin! i love in scifi when our heroes find an old ship! and boy do they find an old ship! the fact that it ends up being the plot is just delicious!!!
+ excellent scotty stuff, excellent chekhov stuff. not enough hulu, as usual, but what we do get from him is him being a badass, so at least there’s that.
+ we also don’t get enough uhura, imo, BUT she’s the one who figures out krall’s identity with her amazing aural skills, so i’ll let it slide.
+ the place where jim thought to hide the artifact. genius.
+ jim on that motorcycle is so steve mcqueen in the great escape. i choose to believe that he loves that movie.
+ keenser!
+ sulu and chekhov can fly ANYTHING!
+ having sulu’s husband and daughter on the yorktown makes the stakes SO HIGH. a good choice.
+ the way that everyone contributes to all the plans–-this movie is committed to a “stronger together” message past the point of caring if it's cheesy and i love it. star trek NEEDS some cheese or it's not star trek.
+ radio waves + the beastie boys = most delightful way to defeat an enemy!
+ the picture of the tos crew at the end being what seals spock's decision to stay…my heart!
+ i’m a big sap and like the whole crew doing the voice-over at the end and moving into the tos theme.
i love you, simon pegg! thank you (and your friend) for writing a good movie! i’m glad it was the note they went out on. also glad they didn’t do any more after anton died. i would have been upset if they had.
and it is now being sad about anton yelchin hours. which, frankly, it is whenever i think about anton yelchin. what a tragedy.
So I have a love/hate relationship with TOS!Bones. I really like him as a character except that he is so freaking space racist against Spock that I genuinely cannot handle it--and yet, other times the respect between Spock and Bones is very tangible. It's emotionally confusing and is my second biggest complaint about TOS (after the sexism stuff).
I really appreciate that the reboot dialed the space racism back--they keep his "green blooded hobgoblin" lines but the rest of it is mostly gone and you get the sense that what's there is just bluster. By the time we get to Beyond and they're stranded together, you know that Bones desperately cares about saving Spock's life because he appreciates Spock, and when Spock says he thought his respect for Bones was clear, it's an okay thing to say because it was. They snip at each other because they care; it's just their dynamic.
So some things I ship:
Jim/Bones
Spock/Uhura (though I wish it was fleshed out a little more)
Jim/Spock/Uhura (probably my favorite option!!!! i am tempted to write some fic!!!)
Jim/Spock/Bones
Jim/Spock/Bones/Uhura polycule
Spock/Bones tbh but mostly in a non-romantic way
and then I also have one other ship I have feelings about entirely because I read a couple of good fics but it's embarrassing so I won't mention it.
tl;dr
2009 film: delightful
Into Darkness: infuriates me and I will die mad about it
Beyond: delightful again
elperian is watching ST TOS for the first time, and her reactions are making me giddy with love for my characters. So I started reading some fic (always up for recommendations!) and then read one of those crossovers between TOS and AOS and the writer was good, so I started reading all their AOS fic and then their bookmarks and before you know it I'm having an AOS moment?So I decided to rewatch the three films and here are my thoughts in Tumblr-style no-capitals writing:
for reasons i won't get into, i just rewatched star trek (2009) and it's still very fun even if it doesn't feel exactly star trek-y to me. i mean, that is simply not jim kirk, for one thing, though the movie provides a useful mechanism to explain this via "this is what jim kirk would have been like if his dad had died at his birth and he'd been raised with an abusive step-father" and so i can make peace with it because chris pine is very charismatic.
and obviously i have Many Feelings about how no one but mr. nimoy z"l will ever be spock, but that isn't zachary quinto's fault, so i don't hold it against him as he did the best he can, and the character he's playing is very bitchy, which is very fun. +1000 points for the way he delivered "live long and prosper" as "fuck you" in his scene where he was accepted into the vulcan academy.
but honestly none of these characters are who they should be and none of the rest of them have the script-provided explanation that jim has. so there's chekhov who instead of being a feral trash panda is an angelical whiz kid. but again, the character is fun, and also i think that anton yelchin z"l could do no wrong, so no complaints there.
in the same manner, karl urban is a lovely man but he is not even remotely convincing as a southerner and he has completely different energy than deforest kelley and don't get me started on uhura and sulu and scotty.
and yet! i like all these characters! it mildly bothers me that none of them are the characters i love from the the original show, no, not one single one of them, but the characters they are are very endearing and i am fond of them. it's a well-put-together action movie, all the characters get their moments to shine, the pacing's great, the music's great, etc.
what i'm saying is: i can enjoy this movie and its characters even though they are so different from the tos characters because i just think of them as completely different characters.
however, there is one thing i cannot forgive and that is the fact that spock and sarek seem to get along just great.
i'm sorry, but spock being at odds with his dad is very important to me. like, this is the guy who when explaining his part-human heritage said, "one of my ancestors married a human woman," like HOW COLD IS THAT? i do not know why, but a sarek who calmly explains to spock how he's different from other vulcans and that's okay just makes me insane.
is it highly illogical that i can separate all the other characters from their tos counterparts, but i am furious about sarek? indeed it is, but i am only a human.
tags: #i LIKE ben cross! #i think he was a great actor! #visually he's perfect--i remember hearing he'd been cast and thinking it was genius casting #but they wrote him wrong! #mark lenard didn't play multiple characters on tos just for sarek to become soft and fluffy in this movie! #I AM NOT INTO IT #also winona was waaaaaay too young to play spock's mother i am still BAFFLED by this casting choice but at least she's jewish #anyway #it's been almost 20 years since this movie came out & i still have many feelings about how it's not actually star trek but i like it anyway
otoh, into darkness is just not good.
i mean, it has its moments, like:
+ the major ot3 vibes of the scene where uhura and jim confront spock about his ~not caring about dying~ and it’s very emotionally intimate and then you realize that CUPCAKE AND THE OTHER REDSHIRT ARE SITTING THERE AWKWARDLY.
+ sulu in the captain’s chair
+ kirk being willing to sacrifice himself to save his crew. and also how he refers to the enterprise as “our ship” whenever he talks to spock.
+ my poor baby chekhov having to do scotty’s job when he’s barely trained for it. they’re like, “the kid’s a genius, he’ll figure it out.” but pasha never asked for this responsibility! watching him fret and stress out brings me great joy!
+ scotty’s whole thing! lots of good scotty stuff here.
but the things i dislike about it really outweigh all that.
+ this movie takes itself WAY too seriously, which is always a bad thing in an action movie (unless it's based on a real-life war--i'm fine with, like, saving private ryan taking itself too seriously) but is especially egregious in anything that has the temerity to call itself star trek.
+ opening with the pastiche of earth colonialism just grosses me out. even in the 1960s, rodenberry was TRYING to do better than that. he didn’t always succeed, but he tried.
+ i will die angry about the khan casting. HOW VERY DARE THEY. to go from ricardo “rich corinthian leather” montalban to cumberbatch in any situation ever is just a flat out HUGE downgrade but to cast the whitest guy ever as as a character named KHAN NOONIEN SINGH!!!! is just!!!!!!! no, i will never calm down about this.
+ leaving aside the whitewashing of the character THIS KHAN IS SO BORING. HE’S BORING. montalban is a helluva charismatic guy; his khan is anything but boring. but this khan brings dishonor to the name of khan. i feel like he’s supposed to be evil sexy, but he is simply not. he’s on the verge of melting down the whole time instead of having khan’s easy charm that flips to rage. and it is not compelling! i hate him! i hate him for taking over this movie!!!!
+ the whole premise of admiral marcus using khan’s crew. it’s a bad plotline. if the bad guy of the film is an admiral who has become a war hawk, that can be interesting, but marcus as bad guy is undermined by having khan around. and then khan ends up being fairly easily defeated, we never get to know him. by having two bad guys, neither one gets the space to be fleshed out, we waste so much time on things that are not interesting and don't matter. the whole reason wrath of khan works is because khan is making choices and we understand where he’s coming from. nero in the 2009 film was basically a plot device, but he had an incredibly straightforward motivation and everything around him was interesting, so it worked. i just don’t think it works here.
+ in general, i find the action scenes boring. i’m not a person who likes to watch an action scene unless it’s somehow telling me something about the characters (it’s honestly like how i feel about sex scenes–boring unless character-revealing, plot-furthering, or relationship-developing) and these don’t. they just take time away from the fun we could have having with the characters. in the 2009 film, i don’t get bored in any of the action scenes because they’re all opportunities for the characters to show who they are. that’s not the case in this film. it is astounding to me that orci and kurtzman wrote both films when one is, imo, a fantastic screenplay that shows how to make every moment count and the other is…this.
+ i like a lady scientist but carol marucs is not interesting and also it’s weird that she has a british accent and her dad doesn’t. no offense to the actress, they should have cast somebody with some personality.
+ visually i just find it way more boring and dark and generic sci-fi than the first film.
+ there’s this VERY weird moment where we jump from chekhov barely holding jim and scotty by one arm to keep them falling into oblivion, and then we cut to them all running around, somehow saved but we never saw how??? i do not believe that chekhov is strong enough to pull two grown men up by himself. why even have them dangling if you’re not going to show how they got out of it?
+ maybe i’m wrong, but wouldn’t the ship have been pulled into orbit around earth instead of crashing onto it?
+ THE BIGGEST EMOTIONAL CHEAT I HAVE EVER SEEN ON FILM. to steal the climactic scene from wrath of khan is an offense against me personally. by the time wrath of khan was released, we the audience have known kirk and spock and their relationship for almost 20 years. we had three seasons of television and another movie in which we watched their bond and saw how much they care about each other. when spock goes into that engine room and sacrifices himself and then jim and everybody else react, it is so earned.
with into darkness, they steal that big climactic scene and it is so so so cheap. this kirk and spock barely know each other! they have not earned this moment!!!!!!!! all the emotional resonance comes not from these two characters who we have seen in two movies, but from the echoes of tos!spirk who were the ones who earned that scene.
pine and quinto sell it acting-wise, but i hate this decision so much!!!!!!!
+ also the emotional resonance is immediately undercut by having kirk come back to life. and using khan’s blood to save kirk but only kirk has huge moral implications and it's weird that they gloss over that.
+ oh, and the scene where alcatraz is destroyed pisses me off. there are not prisons in the 23rd century, so why is it still surrounded by barbed wire? why is it even there? they made a very pointed decision to include it and i do not like this decision.
+ why did we need to destroy half of san fransisco? we already killed pike and the rest of the starfleet leadership and blew up a bunch of people in london. it just feels like overkill and star trek is not about overkill.
+ then we have a chase + fight scene with spock and khan and it’s stupidly over the top and, like, why is this necessary? again, we’re stealing time that could have been focused on character work!
+ turning the intro voiceover from the show into a captain’s oath? makes zero sense. your fanservice should make sense.
idk. the 2009 film is just such fun that i have a blast while watching it. this film fills me mostly with annoyance if not outright rage.
maybe i just need to rewatch tos and then i’ll calm down. but i am going to watch beyond first because i remember liking it.
beyond is such a return to form! from the opening scene, in which we get a very campy reveal re: the aliens, the message is: we are not going to take ourselves too seriously, which is such a relief, because that was a huge part of the problem with into darkness. while into darkness's opening scene also has some winky-ness to it, it's borrowing from a couple of centuries of white imperialism to make its joke, and i hate that. beyond's silliness, however, fits into the star trek universe way better.
now, i will say: i do not like that they destroy the enterprise so completely–they could very easily have had it crash-land without being obliterated. i am a sentimental sort and do not like to see my favorite ship broken all to pieces. i get that it’s an excuse for the franklin later, and i do love the franklin! but still!
also they killed too many crew members. i just...feel strongly about how star trek has a kind of a different approach to "collateral damage" than most action-y things, and the movies don't seem to understand that.
but those are really my only major complaint about the film. i have small ones, like that there isn’t enough kirk&spock and kirk&spock&uhura, not enough uhura, not enough sulu, but i’ll take what i can get when it’s in a movie that’s actually fun.
things i like a lot:
+ spock and bones buddy road trip comedy!!! god, i love them together. jim’s husbands should have way more scenes together.
+ visually, things are much brighter and more interesting.
+ the casting director, who gave us my love shohreh aghdashloo in star trek, however briefly.
+ jaylah!!! i love her, i love her way of speaking, i love her fighting, i love how smart and resourceful she is, she’s the coolest and best! i think she should be able to keep scotty as her pet.
+ SO glad sofia boutella got the role instead of jennifer lawrence.
+ the franklin! i love in scifi when our heroes find an old ship! and boy do they find an old ship! the fact that it ends up being the plot is just delicious!!!
+ excellent scotty stuff, excellent chekhov stuff. not enough hulu, as usual, but what we do get from him is him being a badass, so at least there’s that.
+ we also don’t get enough uhura, imo, BUT she’s the one who figures out krall’s identity with her amazing aural skills, so i’ll let it slide.
+ the place where jim thought to hide the artifact. genius.
+ jim on that motorcycle is so steve mcqueen in the great escape. i choose to believe that he loves that movie.
+ keenser!
+ sulu and chekhov can fly ANYTHING!
+ having sulu’s husband and daughter on the yorktown makes the stakes SO HIGH. a good choice.
+ the way that everyone contributes to all the plans–-this movie is committed to a “stronger together” message past the point of caring if it's cheesy and i love it. star trek NEEDS some cheese or it's not star trek.
+ radio waves + the beastie boys = most delightful way to defeat an enemy!
+ the picture of the tos crew at the end being what seals spock's decision to stay…my heart!
+ i’m a big sap and like the whole crew doing the voice-over at the end and moving into the tos theme.
i love you, simon pegg! thank you (and your friend) for writing a good movie! i’m glad it was the note they went out on. also glad they didn’t do any more after anton died. i would have been upset if they had.
and it is now being sad about anton yelchin hours. which, frankly, it is whenever i think about anton yelchin. what a tragedy.
So I have a love/hate relationship with TOS!Bones. I really like him as a character except that he is so freaking space racist against Spock that I genuinely cannot handle it--and yet, other times the respect between Spock and Bones is very tangible. It's emotionally confusing and is my second biggest complaint about TOS (after the sexism stuff).
I really appreciate that the reboot dialed the space racism back--they keep his "green blooded hobgoblin" lines but the rest of it is mostly gone and you get the sense that what's there is just bluster. By the time we get to Beyond and they're stranded together, you know that Bones desperately cares about saving Spock's life because he appreciates Spock, and when Spock says he thought his respect for Bones was clear, it's an okay thing to say because it was. They snip at each other because they care; it's just their dynamic.
So some things I ship:
Jim/Bones
Spock/Uhura (though I wish it was fleshed out a little more)
Jim/Spock/Uhura (probably my favorite option!!!! i am tempted to write some fic!!!)
Jim/Spock/Bones
Jim/Spock/Bones/Uhura polycule
Spock/Bones tbh but mostly in a non-romantic way
and then I also have one other ship I have feelings about entirely because I read a couple of good fics but it's embarrassing so I won't mention it.
tl;dr
2009 film: delightful
Into Darkness: infuriates me and I will die mad about it
Beyond: delightful again