Letterboxd — Your life in film

You should have let me sleep.
-John Harrison

J.J. Abrams brings us the sequel to his successful 2009 prequel/reboot/re-imaging of Star Trek that is flashier, louder and more energetic then it's predecessor with the promise of also being smarter but simply falters in the third act of the film. I saw the film last night and walked out of the theater annoyed by it's final act while I couldn't decide if it was the Star Trek fan in me that…

I like this ship! You know, it's exciting!
-Scotty

I enjoy this film a great deal. It breathes new life into my favorite characters within the franchise and I honestly think how they went about setting up this prequel/reboot/re-imaging was a bit ingenious in it's simplicity. With that said however, J.J. Abrams has crafted a film that is more concerned with making Star Trek cool then actually making a great film.

The emotional impact of the film's opening is incredibly…

What is all this about?
-Picard

After Insurrection no one was clamoring for another Star Trek film, especially with The Next Generation crew and even the cast believed it to be the last one as they weren't even contracted for any more films. While various writers were still throwing around the idea of doing an origin film involving the Kirk and Spock characters, Paramount Pictures decided to give TNG another go at it.

Now even though I'm a diehard fan…

I'm going to miss these flesh-stretching sessions, my dear.
-Ad'har Ru'afo

Star Trek: The Next Generation had a hard time shedding it's television roots in their first feature film, Generations, but seemed to get the right footing in it's followup First Contact. Unfortunately they couldn't keep that momentum going as Insurrection feels like a TNG tv episode that just won't end and really highlights the weaknesses of this cast of characters for feature films.

The story is flat, the production…

They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here!
-Picard

This is much more like it. After directing several episodes of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, Jonathan Frakes makes his feature film directing debut for a franchise that he'd been working on for almost a decade. He knew the characters, he knew how to work with a budget constraint and hopefully he…

I take it the odds are against us, and the situation is grim.
-Kirk

Star Trek: Generations would have made a decent series finale for The Next Generation had it aired on television at the end of it's 7th season, but instead Paramount Pictures tried to pass off it's story as a feature film. The entire premise of the film is built around the notion that the characters of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) needed to…

There is an old Vulcan proverb: only Nixon could go to China.
-Spock

The film that helped solidify the myth that the odd numbered Star Trek films were cursed, while the even numbered films were the only good ones. There's a much more simpler explanation for this occurrence however and it's the simple fact that all the even numbered films, including this one, had major involvement from writer/director Nicholas Meyer while the others didn't.

The 25th Anniversary of Star Trek…

Oh, yaddayadda-yadda.
-Elissa

Another horror film built around some great ideas but stumbles getting to them. The story concept by Jonathan Mostow could have been very memorable but in the end the script written by David Loucka has no idea how to properly use those concepts that have more then one reveal that should have made for a great genre film.

The cast is actually great, which just highlights the wasted potential the film had even more. Jennifer Lawrence was…

Please Captain, not in front of the Klingons.
-Spock

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was a big risk that ended up being the most successful project to come out of Star Trek in it's then 20 year history. I think the only explanation for what happened next is that Paramount Pictures got cocky. For The Voyage Home they greenlit the franchise's most absurd plot in it's history, so they probably thought giving the go ahead on a story that…

Just had to frak her, didn't ya?
-Lt. Coker Fasjovik

The development of Blood & Chrome started out as a proposed pilot for another prequel series to Battlestar Galactica (2003) that would have aired on the SyFy Network. Even though they passed on the series, stating that it would have simply been too expensive to produce, they still aired the pilot as a stand alone movie after it had originally aired as a 12 part web series.

The overall production, acting…

Vincent Van Gogh. Everyone said to him, "You can't be a great painter, you only have one ear." And you know what he said? "I can't hear you."
-Barry

Jay Roach, the man behind the camera for the Austin Powers films and the two first Meet the Parents, tries life without Meyers or Stiller. While it seems the film falls into either love it or hate it territory for most people on Letterboxd, I still enjoy the film a great…