Should you go where every other Trekkie has gone this weekend? Find out, after learning my geeky opinion!
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Should you go where every other Trekkie has gone this weekend? Find out, after learning my geeky opinion!
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Yeah….I forgot about that…The Undiscovered Country is a pretty damn good Trek Movie. It also has one of the hammiest scenes in Trek History (Kirk vs. Kirk, you know what I’m talking about) but as far as a movie goes…not only is it a good movie based upon the parallels of the end of the Cold War….it was a movie that was important to Trek history as well. I dunno man, when you consider that “The Final Frontier” exists…there’s no way that The Undiscovered Country could suck that bad. Besides it reunites the winning combination of Nicholas Meyer and Star Trek….always a proven winning formula for atleast the TOS cast movies.
let me nitpick 2 things
no mater how much wish full thinking you have the kid still says “james syberius kirk”
the enterprise interiors are poorly lighted and un reconizable, plus they are mostly made of concrete!!!!
yeh seems to have been filmed in an abandoned factory…. no blu screen available hey ????
“jim the water turbine warp core is overloading, where is it how do we get there”
“not now spock i’m trying to figure out where the hell we are”
the movie was a void … not bad … not good… not any thing
the alternate time line but this is why i really don’t like and will never like it
because it steals and put in the deep hollow of oblivion Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek
and create the first instalment of JJ Abrams Star Trek, (a prequel my ass)
and JJ’s might, if we don’t do anything, be the only star trek future generations will aknowlege, do you whant to let that happen
so yeh all in all not a bad action movie , but i could of called ot the “5th element 2″, or “3001 the space opera”
and any way how do we pass from a paranoid race with light green skin, to a white guy who is a maori warior wanabee, who ate a realy bad sushi?
Oh, God, I’m so horrified that I know all of this… But here goes. If someone has already explained it, I apologize.
Okay… The star that went supernova was not Romulus’ sun, but a star called Hobus, a few light years away from Romulus, inside Romulan Space. The star’s unique properties made it so that when it blew, any matter it consumed along the way accelerated its energy potential exponentially. It destroys a planet, the planet is absorbed into the shockwave, the shockwave gets bigger and faster, even going at warp eventually. This thing will eventually consume the entire galactic region around Romulus (including Vulcan and Earth, natch). Spock, by this point (2387), the Federation ambassador to the Romulan Star Empire (thanks to “Unification” in 2368 and “Star Trek: Nemesis” in 2379), sees it for what it is, and tries to warn the Romulan Senate. They refuse to believe him, suggesting that his demand they evacuate Romulus and Remus is part of some plot by the Federation to weaken the Empire. He goes to the Vulcan High Command for help, they also rebuff hi, since Vulcan is not in danger, they believe. He allies with Nero, a charismatic young Romulan miner who can help him find the mineral he needs to make red matter.
To make a long story short, FINALLY, the Vulcans see the problem, and comission the Jellyfish (the little ship Spock flies), designed by Geordi LaForge. Meanwhile, the Narada is equipped with salvaged Borg technology to allow it to extract the necessary mineral faster (which also makes the ship able to regenerate and generate weapons out of almost nothing). But it’s too late. Hobus explodes, and Romulus is destroyed soon after, along with Nero’s wife. He sees it in person, and promptly goes completely batshit insane. He blames the Vulcans and the Federation for not responding in time, and Spock becomes his White Wale. The flashback in the movie explains the rest. Nero ends up in 2233, Spock in 2258.
OH MY GOD, I am a freaking NERD….
Anyway…. Long time lurker, Spoony. I love love love your site.
He probably meant The Final Frontier when he said The Undiscovered Country, people mix them up all the time, and Final Frontier was clearly the bad one.
- I think he was going to collapse a ‘nearby’ star, which would ’somehow’ stop the Romulus star from exploding. SCIENCE!
- They had 125′ish years to wait. Maybe he planned on warning them after he got Spok back
- Kirk is just that good
- Romulans are all adrenaline junkies
- And they’re green emos
- SABOTAGE!
- All the time? … I count 2 fights, and 1 kiss
- Nero was the king Emo
LENS FLARE FTW!!!
e altar has got it right. To add, Nero chose to stay and wait for Sock for two real reasons. First, he had no good way to know when he would appear, only where. This meant to guarantee his capture he had to stay put. Also, because he blamed Spock and Spock alone, and in his mind the Romulus he called home no longer existed (this is mentioned in the dialogue with Pike, Pike asks him why not go back home and Nero responds by yelling he has no home and that he watched it die”. As to why much of the back story is cut from the movie, such as Borg tech and such, the most likely cause is time. The movie was over two hours and most likely it was decided to keep it around that mark. The last comment is that according to Memory Alpha: a Star Trek Wiki the cannon is still cannon. Essentially, both versions of Trek are true, existing side by side as parallels. So all Trek we know and love is still true, while this movie allows for a re-telling for modern cinema without harming the old versions.
I agree with you. I enjoyed TNG, but I could never really get into DS9, Voyager, or Enterprise. Regardless, I thought that this movie was awesome, even if it was flawed.
lol I liked Spoony’s idea there with just going into a drinking fit and forgetting the sequels or the prequels. Highlander 2 never happened. Jar Jar Binks was a sick joke lol
The original Star Trek series was done a shoe string budget. They have an exhibit going around the states right now which is super awesome! Original set of the bridge is there! It’s all wood and paint. The blinking nods are just like colorful bright knobs and everything is cheesy, like you say. But they didn’t have much to work with. The costumes are made out of polyester fabrics that were really new for the time period, are fraying and well used. It was different for its time period. What’s cool about the new movie is how they were able to update. Pretty amusing that Tyler Perry and Winona Rider are in it. I agree with you on Deep Space Nine, boring. I liked the bit about Archer’s dog being beamed somewhere. So great.
Your movie reviews are sick.. keep up the good work spoon
in ye old days they may not have a lot to work with but they still made it kick ass and exiting
and i’m sorry no matter how much you try to explain how the plot makes sens it is still bull shit
and anyway if you have to explain, that just means that they can’t write fo shit
It goes without saying that I am not “e altar”! User names are below the posts, not above them. Anywhoo, speaking of e altar, I’m gonna have to disagree with you there. The minute details I just described are pretty much inconsequential. 95% of the audience will accept Spock’s abbreviated version of events without question. Most normal movie viewers aren’t going to get worked up over that sort of detail (such as why a mining ship is so heavily armed), and just enjoy the film. It’s only bad if you have to explain KEY ELEMENTS of a film’s plot. The political situation in the Romulan Empire circa 2387 is only key to ubernerds like me. The actual plot of the movie is pretty damned easy to understand.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Original Series (and nearly everything that followed), but to just straight up remake a ’60s series mostly about Cold War parables in the modern movie environment without any concessions to current tastes and design thinking is a sure fire way to bore the living hell out of 99% of the movie going public.
And honestly, have you actually WATCHED some of TOS recently? “Kick ass and exciting”? Really? “Charlie X”? “The Way to Eden”? “Patterns of Force”? REALLY?
Totally agree with most of your points.
I think with the Time Travel police (I was wondering this in the theaters as well), the singularity and actual traveling of Nero’s ship to the past happened all too quickly for them to react…if that makes sense. So the very second his ship was in the past, the entirety of the original timeline’s “time police” were gone, and any of the new ones would have viewed that event as…well, part of history.
The whole concept in both the DS9 and Voyager episodes was never very clear how they operated with the “time stream”.
Still an awesome movie and great for a “reboot”. It’s really as simple as saying “different universe/timeline” if you have to be placated. Hell, that’s what everyone does with comics/the Transformers series as a whole.
stop touching your nose! use a tissue, if you have booger issues.
Well, the Star Trek Universe is a Multiverse now. Has been for a while, really. This is the 57th timeline created by incursions that I’m aware of, to say nothing of the 285,000+ alternate realities that converged in the TNG episode “Parallels.” Hell, if Marvel can actually be bothered to designate the freaking X-Men movies as their own timeline (Earth 10006, if you’re wondering), then why not Trek?
As for the “timecops,” there was an agency that kept track of time travel in the 24th Century, but no actual time police until at least the 27th Century. Then there was Daniels’ faction from the 31st Century. People have been bitching, “oh, they always freak out about changing things back! Why not this time, with 6,000,000,000 dead Vulcans?” Except that they don’t. In “Carpenter Street” (ENT), Daniels clearly tells Archer that the Xindi Crisis was NOT part of the original timeline, but makes no effort to correct that, despite the 1,000,000 dead Humans in Florida, Cuba and Venezuela. What’s more, the whole Battle of Procyon that Daniels shows Archer in 2550 seems to occur in a future that Archer erases by destroying the Sphere network in 2154. Why bother explaining it? The rules of time travel in Trek change depending on the needs of the story, really. Obviously, there’s things at work here that involve divergent timelines and sawtooth snaps and other oblique temporal causality concepts. That’s when I stop caring. I just accept that it is different in this timeline, and that the other timeline is still there, somwhere in the Multiverse.
Bottom line? Fun spaceship go zoom. Yay.
the old movies always played with questions of science, ideals or philosophy (search for god; revange on the klingons after killing kirks son; rescuing endangered species etc)
this new one is just loud with thousends of special effects and not much more to it (okay there actors are suprisingly good)
the plot was just terrible… so many things wrong wass he drinking while reading the script and not noticing them?
yeah lets make some random cadet captain instead of one of the other senior officers? and many many more it just didnt make sense whatsoever
anyway horrible movie rescued only by a very good cast and tons of money used on special effects
I just recently saw the Star Trek movie, and I enjoyed it, even though I’m not really a Star Trek fan at all.
However Spoony, when you brought up Spock’s out of character moments with him having rage moments “all the time,” I only counted two times where he raged out.
The thing about Vulcan is that it never really featured in the main Star Trek world. At least not in any of the shows. That was one of the reasons they had that hole thing in Enterprise, was so they could go and have some interesting stuff happen on Vulcan. I mean, it’s talked about and you see Volcans around but you hardly ever see it. I’m not sure but I think it’s becouse Trek seem to focus on exploration and venturing into the unknown. While Vulcan and Earth seem to be in the stable center of the Star Trek world.
That said though, I was kind of bumed.
About Nero, maybe he just wasn’t that imaginative?
Hmmm…. wasn’t Kirk and all the rest almost finished there training at the academy. Also, weren’t they trained in tactics and what not?
Maybe the Romulans take there design ques from the Galactic Empire. XD
I have to say that I liked this movie. Though I’m in a strange middle ground where I have watched and enjoyed all the movies and TV shows, even though I didn’t really like DS9 that much, but I can still admit that the shows were cheesy and that the reason the Klingons looked the way they do in the original show is becouse it was the 60’s and they didn’t have the budget to do anything else. I loved them all and I hope that this movie spawns a new show.
I must say that I really like the reimagining of Star Trek and I’m looking forward to sequels.
But the thing I hated most, although it’s kind of ridiculous, was that I couldn’t come over this stupid idea of a black hole that does both:
Compacting things AND acting as some kind of portal.
Get it straight. Either you go with SCIENCE or you don’t, which is both OK with me, but don’t do both together. It makes everything even more stupid.
Also the lens-flares really got out of hand, but that’s really all there is to complain. Nitpicking on the other hand is ALWAYS possible, but I won’t do that, because I was entertained and that’s what counts, right?
Of the time thing…
-Here’s how I saw it…. I’m not sure that they just SAT there. I feel like they were doing other things and coming back to the black hole… but I may be mistaken. Because when he came through, weren’t they on their way back? The kelvin was on it’s way to see what had been created… the black hole had a strange anomaly. (which I think is a worm hole)
-Pike made Kirk first officer because he had faith in his father and faith in him, non? The whole bit about looking before he leaps. And he was in academy for three years so he was as trained as most cadets.
-I’m sure there was time to cross… and I’m sure there were ways to cross… THERE WAS NO TIME MAN!!! NO TIME!!
-The space ship? IDK… maybe Romulans like green light? :D
-I didn’t get the water…
-I liked that they used Sabotage… :D Classic music.
-I liked that their relationship was secondary… He was enraged because he was in conflict with himself. He does have control but sometimes.. I guess… he goes angry. Besides, can you blame him for hitting that piece of tail??! lol
All in all I loved the movie. I thought the acting was indeed well cast. Nero was strange.. but he did enough.
I walked out very happy… saw it twice in fact. I feel like they did a smart thing in making a separate time line. It doesn’t make the original time line any less important. In fact it still is important. The fact that the original Spock is there makes that so. I mean there’s still possibility for them to cross over into the original time line.
It was all good… I was happy. It had problems, sure, like you said, all movies do… but I thought this was a worthwhile effort on J.J’s part!
…..also I loved Voyager! :D I love the Borg… oh well. At any rate, I agree with most everything you said. Though I did LOVE the lens flair. HAHAHA Very art house. :P
I actually haven’t seen the movie because I can’t be bothered. I liked the original series…I liked Kirk fcuking that green chick…It’s retro-scifi…I like Doctor Who…I like Blake’s Seven…
This movie is an attempt to re-sell Trek….to boldly go tabula rasa for a franchise. And I can’t be bothered.
All I know is that Simon Pegg kicks ass…
Well,I don’t know if this has been said before, and frankly I don’t feel like looking through 17 pages of comments, but some of the stuff in the movie is explained. The Narada was originally a mining vessel, but it gets converted with Borg tech into some crazy super ship (don’t remember the details, it’s all explained in the countdown comics.) And they don’t just wait 25 years, apparently in a deleted scene it shows that the klingons show up after papa kirk slams the ship into the narada. Since the Narada is weakened and the crew isn’t quite all there after getting a space ship rammed down their throats, the klingons take over the crew and take them to some klingon prison or somethiing. That’s supposedly what happens, but the movie still had plot holes up the cloaca. I likd it regardless tho.
They used “Sabotage” as an inside joke because Shatner always mispronounced the word; the way he said it rhymed with jazz more.
I skimmed through the prequel comic when I was at borders. apparerntly the sun which goes nova was very far away from romulus, but this nova was going to be one of those supermeganovas which would actually destroy the ENTIRE GALAXY. so making one black hole was an upside
Deep Space Nine did suck
Well lets see…
1. The star that was going supernova wasn’t Romulus’s home systems star it was a neighboring star.
2. After they meet the Kevin they were captured by Klingons and were put on the prison planet… (12 min scene cut from the movie)
3. Kirk was actually a lutenit(sp)… He was close to his last year in the academy and Pike trusted him.
4. The Narada…. was modified with borg tech. (kinda explains the large open spaces)
5. Spock was Half human….
(second time posting this cause not sure if it got through the first time….)
IMO DS9 after season 1 turned into my all time fav Star Trek.
I must take issue with what you said about The Undiscovered Country. I don’t hate you, but I must defend Star Trek 6. If the issue is about prejudice within Starfleet and the Federation, the director Nicholas Meyer said that he didn’t think that the T.V. series effectively demonstrated that Starfleet and the Federation were free from it. It’s either in the special features or on the audio commentary track on the Star Trek 6 DVD. I have to agree with his statement. Even The Next Generation has depictions of prejudice within Starfleet and the Federation. Well, if that’s not the problem, maybe you could elaborate on what you mean. The 6th Trek movie is my personal favorite, so you can understand why I would want to debate about it and defend it.
I do look forward to debating this, as well as your review of Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight, which in Japan wasn’t even a Street Fighter game, nor did it star Ken, and it wasn’t even a Final Fight game, either! I once owned that piece of crap of a game! lol! :)
My beef with the movie is that it didn’t seem like there was any reason to call it Star Trek. It didn’t really embrace any of the Star Trek values, didn’t stay true to most of the original characters, and broke from a lot of the cinematic traditions.
It really stood out to me in the end when Kirk and Spock seemed to take glee in blasting the “Romulan” ship as it went through the black hole. Star Trek heroes are supposed to fairly noble – I can’t recall another moment where they uncontroversially took pleasure in killing helpless enemies.
I put Romulan in quotes because, like with everything else, there was no reason for these guys to be Romulans. They didn’t look like Romulans, or have any particularly Romulan characteristics or backgrounds. They could have just as easily been Randomoids avenging the destruction of Planet Random.
If you’re going to completely rewrite Star Trek, just write your own story in your own universe, or at least write an original story in the Star Trek universe without Kirk et al. I know this movie only got the budget it did because of the Star Trek brand, but I wish they had spent the money to instead create a new franchise. All the time spent on the “backstories” was boring, and especially irrelevant since it doesn’t even apply to the “real” continuity.
One of the annoying things about a prequel, even one set in an “alternate” timeline, is that you know how everything turns out. There is no real drama when Kirk and Sulu are hurtling to the ground, no surprise when Scotty goes from random-dude-on-the-Ice-Planet-Hoth to transporter engineer, no excitement when Kirk joins the Academy after a stern talking-to. In fact, it just makes all the backstories – about how this bunch of kids “happened” to meet up and become the Enterprise crew – seem even more contrived. That’s one of the main reasons this movie would have been better if it wasn’t a Star Trek TOS prequel. Even with the “alternate timeline” angle, they pretty much made sure not to do anything to disrupt the basic continuity. Kirk’s dad and the planet Vulcan were not exactly central to the storyline.
The cast had too many distractions. Simon Pegg and John Cho are too well known to replace major, established characters. Tyler Perry is too well known to have a significant role in anything but his own films without being a distraction. Winona Ryder was distracting and completely unnecessary. I don’t watch Heroes, but at least the Spock actor had enough make-up and costume to make his presence less obvious. Nimoy’s appearance was great, but it only drew more attention to the ineffectiveness of the rest of the cast. The only actor I unequivocally liked was the guy who played McCoy. He seemed almost perfect for the part. The actress who played Uhura was great, but the character of Uhura in the movie was just bizarre. In all, the cast comes up as a big minus.
All that said, I enjoyed the movie. It seemed like it had the potential to be great, but was held back by the need to be ostensibly “Star Trek”. It all goes back to the failure of “Enterprise”. They took a niche product and tried to sex it up and make it “hip” to have broad appeal to a younger audience. It was too “Trek” for most people, and not “Trek” enough for fans. This movie is not really “Trek” at all, but it’s enjoyable for young moviegoers. I think that a lot of the Trekkie rage comes from the feeling of being baited and switched, and fear that this “Testosterone Trek” will erase any hope of a continuation of “Traditional Trek”.
I loved it and I’m a TOS fan.
Reboot was Reboot and it was good. *nods*
thanks for wasting my time with a sanctimonious rant against nerds instead of….you know, reviewing the fucking movie.
No wonder you cant keep a job, you never get to the point.
And penultimate means second to last, it is not a synonym for ultimate.
I agree with most of what you said, though I’m having trouble not being a bit enraged over this movie. For one, they just couldn’t find anything else better for Nero to do than use those “truth bugs”. As I recall, they also did that in wrath of khan, so it’s not exactly original. Anyway, as I see it Romulans aren’t exactly “Evil”, in the star trek episodes. They’re a different culture, with different political views, and different ethics. None of that says: “You must build really awe-inspiring mining vessels and fit them with huge fucking torpedoes!”. It’s a mining vessel!
Anyway, I didn’t like the movie that much. Not because it was “ruining every other startrek episode I’d ever watched”, it’s just because I found it horrible. It was far too hyped up, and it was mainly focused around flashy effects.
JJ Abrams probably wanted to prove himself after Lost, and I understand that. I would’ve changed my ID and moved to Thailand if I was him, though. Not make the rest of the world pay him money to see his “Really cool special effects”. It’s Star Trek. It’s tradition to have it look a little shitty.
And yeah, another thing. IF I remember correctly, the black hole which threw Nero and Spock through time, also threw them away from Romulus, because the USS Kelvin would obviously not be passing into Romulan space.. At least it kinda seemed that way when I saw it.
Good rant, though. Keep it up.
huh where are people getting that it was Romulus’s star that was going Nova??? It wasn’t…..
As I pointed out in my previous comment on the last page it was a neighboring system’s star that was going hyper nova…
Yeah, I was going to say that too. A star going nova can easily present a threat for other nearby star systems.
And IIRC, they did bring up the question of Nero not warning Romulus in the film itself. And Nero give an answer, but I’ve forgotten it.
And just in case anyone is still confused…
http://www.startrekonline.com/startrek_xi
Why, yes, I don’t have anything better to do. …Actually, I just can’t sleep.
Fuery87 – “…they did bring up the question of Nero not warning Romulus in the film itself. And Nero give an answer, but I’ve forgotten it.”
Yup. Nero says he’s gonna save Romulus, in addition to wiping out the Federation. The line is something like, “I intend not only to prevent the destruction of the home I love, but to free it from the Federation. Only then will Romulus truly be saved.” They just dwelt on the whole “revenge against the Federation” aspect rather than the “saving Romulus” deal, ’cause Nero’s meant to be bitter and twisted, so seeing him nobly protect his world from future disaster would’ve been jarring and boring.
There’re quite a few commonly-cited ‘plot holes’ for this movie, but most of them are actually covered in the script, or by some fairly straightforward conjecture.
Oh please, what kind of spoilers can you drop on us? We all know that James Kurk becomes the Captain of the Enterprise.
*Spoony tells spoilers*
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
As for the “selective amnesia,” I find that it works very well. I go as far as to use this tactic to remember only the scenes of the Star Wars prequel trilogy that I liked. …Namely the action scenes and any scene that gave some insight on the Star Wars universe. ;)
What you need to stop time paradoxis is Doctor Who, he’d sort that shit out, send back Nero and Spock, seal the rift and even bring back Rumulus for good measure!
Yes I admit Doctor Who sucks and I’m Brittish, but hell it’s enjoyable.
I have no problem with the whole “new timeline” thing. I agree with Spoony that the acting was pretty good for the most part and it was enjoyable as a big, stupid action movie.
However, I just think this movie’s plot and script weren’t very good on their own merit. Mainly, I’m with Spoony in that Kirk’s promotion from cadet to Captain was ridiculous and most of the other problems he mentions.
I also agree with Spoony that Voyager was crap. I know there’s Janeway fanatics out there, so I won’t go into detail for risk of incurring their wrath. DS9 did get much better after Worf came aboard. You could probably just start watching from season four and it’d be all good. Enterprise, uh, well the pilot was decent, but season one and two felt like Voyager part 2 to me. The third season was a bit better, I think the arc gave it a little bit of focus. Season four was a HUGE step up. If only it was like that from the beginning, it might have gone the full seven seasons.
TOS and Doctor Who (I assume Spoony is talking about TOS of Dr. Who and not the new series, which is pretty good, but divides some fans almost as much as the new Trek) were “bad” in the sense that their special effects and acting both could be extremely cheesy, but you’ve got to take into account the era in which they were made. Also, the writing was pretty good most of the time, which is what sold it. It wasn’t a CGI fest with a plot tacked on as an excuse to make it.
I can agree the original Doctor Who Series Was A Bit Shit But I Still Watch It. As For The The New Series Thats Not That Bad Not The Christopher Ecclston That Was Shit But The David Tennant Series 1-4 And The 4 Specials Are Great. I Think The Next Doctor Matt Smith Is Going To Suck The Big One And Put The Series To Shame
And I Totaly Agree With RobberBaron
What people need to remember is the “Back to the Future” style of time travel.
The original series hasn’t been erased from history forever, it’s just become an alternate dimension.
Did you mean to say Star Trek V, the Final Frontier? Star Trek VI was pretty ok! Plus, Red Foreman playing the prez of the federation!! now that’s aw3some!!!
Oh, and when the hell did Romulans start being bald Mike-Tyson-face-tattoo-having miners? The villain in this new movie was a freakin’ joke! I also thought all the spontaeous love interests were horribly contrived… Although I gotta admit, seeing GIGANTIC green cleavage on the silver screen was ALMOST worth the ticket price… (ellipses ellipses [ hehe])
I actually counted around 600 shots that had lens flare, with about 80 before the title screen.
I’ll just start my little comment here by saying that I love your site. Fun stuff. Just started watching and reading through alot of things, and just now came across this. Now, I don’t know if this has been addressed yet, I’m not one for reading all the comments. But, the reason we can’t let this movie go is because…THEY WON’T FUCKING LET US!!!
…(deep breath)…
Sorry for that. Anyway, this will now be the canon for which all future Star Trek. The studios are just going to give the big “fuck off” to anyone who doesn’t like it.
This future is a dark one my Lord Spoony. I can see no light beyond it. My nightmares are now filled with a dreaded image. The great Jean-luc Picard, if this future not averted, shall be portrayed by (chokes back vomit) Matt Damon! Fear this horrid future! Fear and hide from it!
I think the black girl had a great ass.
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