Star Trek 2009

[Curlew]

See Rule #2

[Die Hard]

See Rule #5

[thrila]

I enjoyed the movie, however i really didn't like simon pegg- i thought his character was quite annoying, as was his accent.

Spoiler alert

Ok one thing i thought was strange was that the romulan vessel went back in time, but instead of trying to save their planet they went on a killing spree.  They knew which star was going to go supernova, why didn't they contact the romulans and let them know what was going to happen in 100 years time? (or however far in the future it was).  I'm pretty confident the romulans could have figured something out in that timeframe, or in the very least have evacuated their planet.  When nero obtained the red matter he could have simply fired it at the star and prevented the death of his planet in the future?  WTF?!  Am i missing something?  Are the romulans really that crazed and stupid?  Surely spock would have considered and mentioned it at some point!

[Curlew]

See Rule #2

[moot]

Thrila - From another forum:

They released a comic ahead of the movie that gave the backstory.  It explains why he's a sympathetic character, but realistically, the movie should have been stand-alone and contained that.

Basically this: Nero is a miner.  He's a small businessman with a rusty old ship and works for a living.  Every day Romulan schmoe.  He doesn't really buy into 'empire' as presented by the home government, he just wants to do his job and get paid.  He encounters a developing situation:  There's a star near Romulus that's acting strange.  It appears to be in the middle of some sort of transformation that will cause it to explode in a way that endangers the galaxy.  He asks the Romulan government for help, but they don't have any idea what to do, so he decides the Federation is his only chance.  He feels like he's the only one taking this threat seriously, so he goes for the one person who can both engage the feds and recognize the scope of the problem: Ambassador Spock. 

Spock looks at the data and craps his vulcan pants.  He asks Nero to give him a ride to Vulcan where the scientists best able to deal with the emergency are.  They warp out there...  and Spock is promptly given the cold shoulder.  "You've been hanging out with the Romulans, we think you're an ass", is the basic message.  They don't trust him, they don't care about what data he's bringing, they're all butt-hurt because he won't stick to the 'We have nothing to do with the Romutards' company line.

Spock keeps working the issue, but Nero becomes impatient.  His family is on Romulus, and he feels he has to do SOMETHING.  He warps out of there. 

Star goes boom.

Shockwave destroys Romulus right as Nero gets there.  He is pissed.

He intercepts a consulate ship that has the Praetor and the senate, one of the last to evacuate, and kills them and takes the romulan justice stick (or whatever, the thing he stabs Captain McTightShirt with) and gets info about a secret rendezvous for the government.  He spaces the politicians and heads to the secret location.

MEANWHILE: back on Vulcan, Spock is starting to get people to believe him.  They've seen the explosion, they're starting to realize that this will endanger the Federation too.  Admiral Picard shows up, as does Captain Data of the Enterprise (there's a throwaway line to the effect of 'We managed to download my bits to that retarded droid from the last excreble movie') and so on, and they say "We need a fast ship.  Hey guys!  I know a guy with one of those!"  More on that later...

Back to Nero, he's gone to the coordinates, and it's empty space.  He transmits the code, and after an uncomfortable silence and an awkward conversation, a huge space station uncloaks that has the remnants of the Romulan government and happens to be their Area 51.  They've been reverse engineering Borg technology and have something that should convert any ship into a big, bad-ass fighting machine.  It will grow around the ship, extending it and making it all pointy and dangerous looking.  Nero volunteers his ship, and since the Romulans like his 'I WANT VENGEANCE' attitude and don't really care whether his ship is destroyed or not, decides to give his humble little workship an EXTREME BORG MAKEOVER.  It turns into the one shown in the ship and starts raising holy hell.

It turns out, Geordi LaForge retired from starfleet (presumably so he could devote more time to pornography now that he has eyes instead of one of those hair things over his face) and has, as a hobby, been building this 'Jellyfish' ship to be a competitive super speedster.  Vulcan finally gives up their info, they've developed this 'red matter' stuff that should reverse the supernova.  La Forge gives Spock his ship and reluctantly lets Spock take it on what will essentially be a suicide mission. 

Nero is out blowing up fleets.  He's slashing through Federation ships, alliance, and Klingon.  What the hell, let's even throw in a couple of Star Destroyers.  Basically he is PISSED.  General Worf leads a fleet against him...  and it is clobbered.  Nero basically kills Worf, but they get a little wishywashy about that, so who knows how that turns out.  but he's impaled, old testament style.

Spock races out to the shockwave, does his voodoo that he do so well, and then (See movie for rest).

Hope this helps!

[Saxman]

Thrila - From another forum:

*Barfs*

[moot]

Yeah it's pretty sophisticated.

[Saxman]

That's the sort of genius storytelling that made me give up reading the Star Wars novels. Starting with New Jedi Order it just got even MORE ridiculous (most of them up to that point could be done without as well. Just save Stackpole, Zahn and Allston).

[moot]

I never bought any of those spin off novels for any series - Star Trek, Star Wars, etc - because they looked and walked like lame parasites of the franchise bandwagon, on top of all the clues of very cheap production (on par with those awful romance pulp novels).  Like Transmorphers vs Transformers.  Just pornographic cheapness.

[thrila]

More potential spoilers

Cheers moot, at least that explains why a mining vessel was pimped to the max with weapons.  It still makes little sense that nero didn't even attempt to prevent the star from going supernova while he was in the past- he had enough of that "red matter" to destroy the galaxy 10 times over, let alone a single star.  Wtf was spock thinking?  hauling all that WMD with him, when he only needed a single drop. Ok, Nero is super-pissed, but he can save his planet and then wipe out earth and vulcan at his own leisure.

[Saxman]

I never bought any of those spin off novels for any series - Star Trek, Star Wars, etc - because they looked and walked like lame parasites of the franchise bandwagon, on top of all the clues of very cheap production (on par with those awful romance pulp novels).  Like Transmorphers vs Transformers.  Just pornographic cheapness.

Timothy Zhan was VERY good. I won't say he was quite on par with the Original Trilogy, but his Thrawn Trilogy and the Hand of Thrawn Duology were WAY better than the Prequels (I'd venture as compared to the changes made in the Special Editions, as well). I know Michael Stackpole gets slammed by fans of some other properties (IIRC there was some derogatory remarks about him concerning Battletech) but the X-wing novels ROCKED (even if they did borrow too heavily from the WEG RPG stats. At least he snuck in the right size of the Super Star Destroyer....).

[caldera]

Much better than I'd thought it would be. The time travel thing is hokey and was a better fit in the campy Star Trek IV. Why not just write a new story if you're going to change things? A good movie though. Fast paced and good characters, except for Chekov. Scotty was a little over the top but OK.
Kirk was much better than I expected. It was funny watching him chase all the skirts.
Never saw DS9 or B5 but hated TNG (except Picard). Voyager was limp and Enterprise was bad (except for that vulcan chick). Though not the same as the original (like 007, how can it be?), I really liked it. They should have had a Shatner cameo though. He is Star Trek.

[Die Hard]

What was wrong with Chekov?

[caldera]

Chekov is there for comic relief due to his accent (the old "nuclear wessels" schtick). He just plain annoyed me. Come to think of it, Sulu needed a little more personality. He was pretty much a non-factor. Uhura was actually better than the original. And hot. Spock was good as was McCoy. I don't know why exactly Chekov annoyed me, he just did.

edit: I hope they get a new Chekov for the next movie. Just like they did with the drummer kid on the Partridge Family.

[Saxman]

Why not just write a new story if you're going to change things?

Because then they couldn't try scamming the fans by saying "It's not REALLY a remake!"