my thoughts on the undiscovered country And the 2009 star trek movie
i don’t feel like making two separate posts. also for once i’m typing these first and not on letterboxd.
the undiscovered country:
knowing what little i know about the next generation i guess i understand why this had to be the plot of the last movie. like if klingons coexist with everyone else then the war can’t still be going on. so i get that. it just sort of seems like a weird choice to be the ending of the original series’ story. for all of final frontier’s faults, it felt more final and definitive than this movie did. it also seemed like a weird choice to include a mystery/conspiracy plot to this movie. i didn’t dislike it but it just feels like it should have happened earlier. also are we not supposed to see the twist coming? because i saw it coming. this is only semi-related but, god. society if saavik was given her justice.
anyway this movie mostly...bored me? like it was fine but a lot of it i either wasn’t paying attention to or actively disliked. kirk’s characterization in the latter three movies just gets worse and worse. i’m barely rooting for him at all in this one. spock got some fun moments at least but, idk. this movie just didn’t do it for me.
star trek (2009)
okay so this is the start of the kelvin timeline with chris pine. i didn’t know a whole lot going into this and i’m still not really sure what to think. i think for this one i’m gonna do a straight-up pros and cons list.
pros:
1. fun references to the past films
2. the entire sequence of bones just constantly injecting kirk with random shit
3. characterization of kirk that i mostly, not completely, liked
4. in general new spins on the characters, i.e. chekov being only 17
5. this version of bones (i just remembered he’s fucking divorced)
cons:
1. weird sexualization of uhura
2. straight spock
3. spock prime made me sad :(
4. kirk became a bit too unlikable at some parts
5. didn’t use bones enough, i liked this new bones a lot
6. time travel storyline (make head hurt)
so i guess with one more con to a pro i technically dislike this movie, but that’s not true. i had fun. the first half was more enjoyable than the second but that might have been because i was excited by all of the new introductions of the characters. i cannot even begin to describe how much spock and uhura’s dynamic bothered me but whatever this is an alternate universe.......sigh...
i’m curious as to how i’ll like the other two. hopefully they will stay on paramount plus so i don’t have to fucking rent them off youtube
