They've always been the problem. He's great at his end of the job. But the scripts always have issues.

Personally, I think that Andrew Stanton would have been a better choice for Episode VII.

I realize that John Carter of Mars wasn't received well, but that's partially because there was too much source material for one single film. That and the fact that they tried to stay true to ERB's vision of Mars, which is different than it would be if it were imagined today.

IMO, he did an excellent job with the actors, especially the interaction of Carter and Tars Tarkas, played by Willem Dafoe. Because of his work in animation at Pixar, he was able to get the humans to emote with their voices only in such films as Finding Nemo and Wall-E, which led to very convincing scenes between humans and CGI aliens.

I'm very wary of Abrams ability to get his actors to be convincing when filming in front of a green screen, let alone to CGI characters such as R2D2, etc.

Interesting. According to boxofficemojo.com, Star Trek will have a four day holiday weekend gross of 47 million, putting it just behind Hangover 3 for the weekend. Fast and Furious dominates with 120 million. Through 12 days of release, Into Darkness has now grossed almost the exact same amount as its predecessor, 155 million and change. In terms of drop off, that is about 33% compared to its four day opening of 71 million. That has to be a pleasing number to Paramount, dropping on 33% in a second weekend is an excellent number.

A lot of that is word of mouth. I haven't run into anyone who has said anything negative about the movie. Most recommend seeing it. I rather enjoyed it.

Saw it today. I wholeheartedly understand why the truists are upset at Abrams for this movie. For me, I look at it like this - Abrams and Co. have taken the literal universe of TOS Star Trek and re-shaped it for this line of telling, and I don't fault them for being lazy for telling this story like the way they have. These characters in these new movies are NOT the same characters from TOS. The happenings in their lives have molded them differently than their original timeline selves, obviously, and I for one enjoy seeing the differences in a brash Kirk and emotional Spock. It's the point of these movies - EVERYTHING IS NEW, nothing is as it was.



This movie succeeds at being a fun, entertaining summer blockbuster movie. Also the theater I saw it in was absolutely jam packed. I'm curious what the gross number for the movie is after this weekend.

It's been out for two weeks now. I think we can dispense with the spoiler tags at this point.

Probably a good idea. Almost did it, but didn't want anyone to start bitching and moaning.

Saw it yesterday, made it a family event. I enjoy the reboot. Makes for more interesting twists, and I approach it from a "What the hell are they going to do next?" perspective. I hope and think Gene would've approved.

How pissed would gochiefs have gotten if they ripped off the score from TWOK? :D

They did worse, because Michael Giachino did an excellent job just ripping off his own score from the first film.

It's funny, becasue the that was one of the things I noticed immediately that (somewhat) annoyed me. The other? The sounds of the starships firing the weapons. Nothing looked or sounded like a phaser blast or torpedo strike. Of all the shit you listed that was wrong with the movie in your opinion, and those two things are the ones that annoyed me most.

I seriously doubt that it's "pleasing" considering Paramount spent an additional $40 million on Into Darkness.

I should have said pleasantly surprised I suppose. I basically meant that Paramount should be happy that it sucked less week 2, and appears to be on pace now to come close to matching the original's gross. While not what Paramount wanted, they are at least not going to lose their shirt over it.

But they're not going to make any money, either, which is the whole point of the exercise.

It's a cluster**** over there. Not that I care...

Nothing is actually new. Its all just rehash, cheap reversals, and fan service. IMO.