Spoilers herein, and I don't want to figure out how to use the spoiler tag right now. Scroll on by if you haven't watched and want to without my commentary in your head.
Ok ... so I decided to finish the movie before I got some other stuff done here.
I think for fan fiction they did a pretty good job. Like the action scenes but there's a bit of unrealism in them. Like when they're taking fire on the platforms and nobody ducks. Stuff like that. Common with green screen use -- someone (director) has to remind the actors there's crap flying at their heads.
But the biggest shortcoming is caused by the fact that they need a writer that understands characters.
They all SAY the same PC stuff! They all launch into speeches that sound like a school lecture at the drop of a hat. Ever see a room full of adults talk? Some are animated, some are boisterous, some are wallflowers, some are wise, some are just listening. No crew would have all the identical character traits in every officer. They're all calm, make weird announcements of things the others probably already know, and nobody seems to have any emotions about it. Robot perfect Starfleet officers with a bit of a plot arc and a couple of predictable inter-character disagreements.
As a writer you can get away with cliche if I *believe* the character. But I can't figure out the characters here.
There's some weird discontinuity in the writing. Best example is the Captain himself.
Toward the beginning when the "new love of the Captain's life" gets hit, he sits emotionless in his chair and barks for someone to "get her to sick bay" like she's a sack of potatoes. As if he wouldn't rush to her side and check on her before gathering his wits about his secret affair and THEN order someone to get her to sick bay? With some twisted expression on his face
Then we go to a house somewhere and the Captain toasts the lost love of his life with a story about "if we had ship's Counselors, everyone would go to her instead?" Ummm the man lost his lover and the best he can come up with in a eulogy is that she was a great layman shrink? Emotion man. Where is it?
But then someone else starts a toast, you know, the round of toasts you started to your lost love who taught you to love again...?, and you jump up and walk outside?
(We never did hear why the Captain was hanging out in a house drinking with his crew and essentially undermining Starfleet in front of them, with all his doubts, something a real captain would never do, but anyway...)
Now we are outside and it starts right. Hey we've been friends a "long time" so what's wrong man...?
No emotion. Just straight into a story of how he joined Starfleet and somehow made his way all the way to Captain just so he could go carry out a personal grudge? And his "long friend" never knew?
(The writer at this point also needs to stop having people announce the exact number of years everything happened to them in the past -- nobody does that in real conversation. It comes across as "Four Score and Seven Years Ago, I joined Starfleet".
Anyway crazy personal grudge Captain says he's over all of that and just totally gave up on it and love of his life was the chick he just toasted as a great shrink for everybody. LOL.
Let's not even go into traitor Romulan girl and her "I saw daddy torture people at Gitmo for no reason" speech as to why she turned on her entire race, mixed at the same time with some dude we assume is in this century reminding the bad guy that the reason for the war is that Romulus is toast. Traitors usually are at least a little sad they're about to fry their home planet, even if they must.
I think the thing that really goods this all up is the total trust of the Captain of everyone and everything. If you're going to repeat "we've got a job to do" like someone screwed your whole day up, we have to believe someone screwed your whole day up.
Leaving prisoners in different unguarded rooms all over the station while their ship is still above you in orbit with unknown firepower and a transporter ? No. Brig. Locked up. Drones already set to kill even if a radio beams in from nowhere, let alone a freaking rifle. Mr. Bad Guy got around the drones, but they can't?
Arghhhhh. WRITING people! It's about suspension of the disbelief. No story is perfect and all have holes but the writing has to make sense and then the actors have to cover holes with character!
It's sooooo close. I want to cheer for them but they need a director who'll say, "That crap doesn't make any sense but we can get the audience to believe by doing ... this..."
It's a really really good amateur flick. The editing and cuts are relatively believable and match typical Trek format. The action scenes are close but nobody flinches. Nobody ducks. Nobody is *scared* but determined to go on.
Some of it... Needed to be written out because it distracts from the storyline. Why have the traitor taking shooting practice if accurate shooting that only she can do isn't going to come up later? Why not just a good old fashioned physical workout for the scene where we learn the Chief doesn't trust her? Or for less direct drama, just have the two women meeting up at a meal? That kind of understated thing everyone has to do works better for tension. We're all just trying to eat here, and the Chief decides to pick a fight with the traitor. Not walk in on someone taking target practice who just jumped off into a Gitmo waterboarding speech.
They just need to find a really good writer who understands screenplays vs paperback style writing and who'll let the actors fill in the drama with acted emotions. Speeches about ideals are not something a group of officers stands around doing. They show it with their faces and expressions in screenplays.
Sooooooo damned close. I liked it. I actually did. Just needs a director to step back a few steps from scenes and see if they make any sense when edited together and convince the actors they're really in these places and what things are happening to them. Let them act and remove some of the hokey dialogue. Let the audience's imagination fill it in so the audience is involved and not able to notice the oddities of the plot.
Technically: A- Filmmaking style and shots and special effects, very good. Lighting is weird in numerous scenes.
Plot: A. Standard time travel plot. It's worked before and it works here. Always gotta have a new weapon that doesn't work quite as planned that was in development too. Ha. No problem. It still works.
Storytelling: B. Arc is there but interrupted by side stories too much. Need to cut stuff that doesn't go from point A to point B in building and then resolution of the main story. And who exactly was the main protagonist anyway? Were you ever scared they would lose? I was during the Romulan warship scenes, but the present day Bad Guy getting bitchslapped around by a shadowy figure on the radio? Didn't worry about him at all. And the big Bad Guy? He talked to his captors a lot and didn't seem to be too concerned that they'd mess up his plans. Or do much about it.
Characters: C. This is where I fell out of disbelief. Too many weird things said by characters who wouldn't say those things. Here's how you can tell... What will you remember tomorrow about these people? Are they interchangeable without anyone noticing? You can't swap Bones and Kirk. That'd mess all sorts of things up. But you can swap these people and nothing changes.
We kill off the big Bad Guy with a boring speech about not repeating history's mistakes which he doesn't have any reaction to at all, so then we just shoot him with a rifle? Should have just shot him the second you popped up on his platform. Oh yeah, you rode an elevator up there and didn't think he'd have anything shoot at you as you arrived so you didn't even duck or anything, just stand there and rode up to his level and he's got his back turned like he doesn't know you're coming?
Speaking of knowing you're coming... The Romulans know "a fleet is coming" and their best plan for it is, "You said that wouldn't happen!" Snivel snivel. No. Romulans don't spend oodles of time building something on a planet to "save Romulus" and not have a plan to jump a fleet in to defend it at a moment's notice.
Ok. I'll stop now. It really WAS good but man, it really shows how much effort goes into a Hollywood script. This thing has holes in it so big you could move a death planet through them!
Overall: B-
