We have all heard the reviews and we now know that JJ Abrams Star Trek has become an instant classic and a superb reboot, but beyond the acting, the story and a the characters lies Props, VFX, Styles and set pieces. These are other things that Sci Fi fans love! yes I am talking about the eye candy, or what some call.... Sci Fi Porn!
01: New Warp Effect:
Over the previous films and tv shows, Federation starship always zipped into warp using a variety of Visual effects, most notably the 'warp stretch' effect. In this film, the guys and gals at ILM and the sound guys done an amazing job of simplifying the new warp effect by simply 'snapping' the ships into warp like a shotgun, awesome! Like one commenter said on a forum 'I like the new effect, its quick and clean, It actually feels like the enterprise just did 0 to >299,792,458m/s in 0.002 seconds' Captain Rosh-Mwrowl USS Gorkon NCC-40512-C The image is actually of the ship once in Warp, but its the closest I could find :-P
02: Sound Effects:
Those 1960's sound effects are back! As soon as we see the USS Kelvin, we get to hear a plethora of cool little effects which sound just like the 1960's Star Trek sonar beeps, Communicators and of course the classic transporter beam sound effect!!
03: Miniskirts:
Ok, well I guess this may not be Sci Fi Porn, but I am including it anyway. We all know that the 1960's were....well the 1960's and miniskirts were all in fashion. Minus a small amount of miniskirts on female crew members at the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late 1980's we have not seen them since, miniskirts are back!
04: We Can See The Saucer Section!
Finally, after many many years, outside of the bridge of the USS Kelvin and the USS Enterprise we get to see the saucer section from the bridge viewscreen! ....Oh, there it is!
05: Old School Shuttlecraft
No doubt about it I reckon, those shuttle craft from the USS Kelvin and even the USS Enterprise were deliberately made to look old school. The ones from the USS Kelvin in particular looked decidedly 'retro'.
06: Weapons
What about those phasers on the USS Kelvin! I reckon this was inspired by later Star Trek shows such as TNG and Voyager where they had the red directed unbroken beam effect. The other weapons on cannon mounts which fire smaller blasts of broken energy are a first for Star Trek since normally as we all know, Starfleet ships have 2 types of weapons, Torpedo's and Phasers. I'm not sure what those other ones are, but they still look amazing! The New USS Enterprise had the classic broken phaser effect from the original show and Movies, magic!
07: Wreckage
This is something that was remedied part way through TNG but in Star Trek all to often we would see a ship explode and there would be no wreckage. Finally, WRECKAGE! and an absolute shitload of it too in orbit of Vulcan as the Enterprise must navigate its way through it... brilliant!
08: Transporter Effect
Although the Cardassian transporter effect in Deep Space Nine was much more 3D than previous versions, this new Starfleet effect has to be the most 3 Dimensional visual to date and comes across really well and the delay when Spock's party are being beamed up from a crumbling Vulcan is painful!
09: Hand Phasers
The new Stun / Kill setting on the hand phasers ( which are also very retro ) is great! We see the emitter cylinder end rotate to the front for Stun (Blue) and the deadly (Red) snap round for kill.
10: Music
Michael Giacchino Score for this film is nothing short of perfect. 'Enterprising Young Men' is the name of a track which is played at various points in the film but most notably when the Nerada is crippled after being rammed by the USS Kelvin and we see an amazing vista of sun, crippled ship, wreckage and the silhouettes of a mini armada of shuttles flying to safety.
When this track plays during the end of this opening sequence, I feel shivers down my spine!
What do you think? any more to add?
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Federation Starship ( 2233 ) USS Kelvin NCC-0514
