Star Trek Movie Bloopers

Don’t read this if you haven’t seen the new Star Trek movie.

I spotted a few bloopers in this film. Not canon violations, but actual bloopers, errors in filmmaking. You probably saw the big one: In one scene aboard the Narada, Ayel’s pistol is lying on the deck before he gets there. That was clumsy, especially considering that errors like that can be digitally erased in as much time as it takes to eat a sandwich. Another one I noticed after several trips to the cinema: Capt. Robau isn’t always wearing his Starfleet insignia. Sloppy.

But there’s one odd error I noted. Background: I saw the movie Sunday afternoon, after some delays getting there. And I noticed, in one scene, that Spock’s lip was bleeding red. Red blood? Spock? Wrong. This was noted at IMDB, too, in the Goofs section:

• Continuity: After young Spock’s fight with Vulcan bullies, he is shown with a bloody lip. The blood is red. In the original series, McCoy regularly remarks about Spock’s copper-based green blood.

I spotted this on Sunday. I saw the movie again Tuesday night, and guess what? The blood on Spock’s lip was green. It was jarring. I spit-taked and thought I must have gotten it wrong Sunday. But I didn’t. Whoever posted that Goof saw the same thing I did. So I suppose that the change was made to the print, if such a thing is even possible. Can a studio make a colour correction to an existing print and rush it to cinemas? Or is it all just a digital file that can be adjusted on the fly?

That makes sense, when you think about it. In the digital age, filmmakers should be able to zip back and make changes on the fly, like we bloggers do when we notice a typo. “Wait, they noticed that mistake? Fix it!”

I don’t know what’s really going on here. But it has me wondering.

• UPDATE: Admiral Marius from the Starbase 66 podcast tells me he saw the film on a digital screen in Florida, and the wayward Romulan pistol had been digitally erased. So it can be done. Fascinating.

Burger King Makes My Day

I’ve just come back from Burger King. I decided to check out the new line of Star Trek toys they’re giving away with kids’ meals. So I went through the drive-thru, and ordered two kids’ meals, one with chicken tenders and one with a cheeseburger.

At the pickup window, the woman who took my payment asked if I wanted two of the same toys or two different. “Different,” I told her. She handed me Little Kirk and Little Uhura.

“Here’s the boy and the girl,” she said. “I don’t know their names because I don’t watch the show.” She said this with a vicious little sneer. I suddenly felt a little ashamed. Here I was, ordering junk food just to get my hands on cheapie toys, and she was looking down on me.

A moment later, a man appeared at the window and handed me the two bags of food. I drove home, sat down at the patio and opened the bags … and found, inside, a Little Scotty and a tricorder. I’d been double-freebied. It made the whole journey worthwhile.

So I have now, sitting in front of my monitor, Kirk, Scotty and Uhura. They’re mini-figurines, sort of like bobbleheads but without the bobbling. They are remarkable likenesses, far more so than the Playmates action figures. Scotty, in particular, looks just like Simon Pegg. And they talk. Scotty is the funniest; Kirk, for some reason, speaks in Shatner’s voice. The tricorder speaks in Chris Pine’s. I don’t get that.

The tricorder is a dumbed-down version, cute, but silly. And from the images I’ve seen of the ships, I can only say what? What are those? Full points for the figures, though.

I know I’ll go back for more. And I haven’t even started on the glasses yet. The kids’ meals? I ate ‘em. You don’t think I’d let my kids eat that stuff, do you?