Escape to the Movies: Star Trek: Into Darkness

[jklinders]

It's kind of funny really. I'll trust Bob's opinions on Comic book adaptations as he seems to know some of his stuff there but on all other movie genres it is probably possible to go opposite of what he says to reach my tastes. In having opinions that are useless to me he is somehow magically useful. That's quite an accomplishment really.

Pretty sure he was pre-disposed to hate the movie because he hates the director. That makes his opinion worse than useless to me here.

 

[floppylobster]

*sigh* Maybe then I should go see the Wrath of Khan, then? Like Doctor Who, I've always wanted to get into this quintessential nerd franchise but I don't know a good starting point for it. Do I watch the original series, do I watch Next Generation, do I start with the movies? I just don't know...
...but, having stopped before I could get spoiled, I'll probably watch this one anyhow.

Watch Wrath of Khan, then Search for Spock. Then skip ahead to First Contact. Wrath of Khan and First Contact are good stand alone films. Search for Spock follows directly on from Wrath of Khan and is flawed but has some moments, (The Voyage Home follows directly on from that but it's not essential).

I've recently re-watched some of the older movies and although they're often a little dated in parts they at least always have something the reboot series does not have - elements of genuine humanity and intellectual stimulation. The reboot films are great action films, have some charm and are very entertaining. But they're not Science Fiction.

 

[andy5925]

I am not a huge Star Trek junkie or anything like that...but I am still very familiar with the original shows and movies. This movie was incredibly enjoyable to me...what is wrong with pandering to fans by using old story arcs with some twists and turns to keep it fresh? Nothing. It was fun, exciting, and is something fans of the franchise, both new and old, can get into. Completely disagree with this review...and it appears that most others do as well.

 

[Pat Hulse]

This movie was everything I wanted it to be.
A fun science-fiction action-romp with a likeable cast, great cinematography, a great score, good performances all-around, some throwbacks to the "original" even complete and utter dolts like me can understand...

And there goes every ounce of credibility you were trying to have. That last bit is exactly the sort of bullshit Bob was talking about. Those references do nothing except make people like you feel like this is the genuine article. It's fool's gold. Mimicking aspects of other movies or episodes or tropes does enough for the people who know OF "Star Trek" and makes them feel like they are part of "the club", but because they mimic without understanding, appreciating, or even caring about the "original", it does a complete disservice to the movie itself by weakening its own integrity while also insulting the actual fans.

SNIP FOR PROMETHEUS COMPLAINING EVEN THOUGH RIDLEY SAID THERE WERE SEVERAL STORIES BETWEEN PROMETHEUS AND ALIEN

So this movie may have been fun, but believe me, sir. This is a BAFFLINGLY stupid movie. It just tricked you into thinking it wasn't.

You know, I sort of compare reactions like this to how I felt about the movie Troy. I loved the mythology and there's some great modernized story versions out there. And I've often wondered if knowing how the story was supposed to unfold made me hate the movie (except for Brad Pitt's stupid "jump attack" of course). But I realized two things.
1: The movie missed one of the central points of the myth, that Paris was a bad person (and indeed the entire war was started) because he broke the sacred bond between host and guest. It tossed it aside and let him live because in today's world we have "anything done in the name of love is good and pure."
2: That's not what this Star Trek is.

This is not just a straight remake of Star Trek 2, unless my memory of what happens in Wrath of Khan is just completely wrong. I have no idea why any nods to the inspiration incite so much anger, except perhaps out of some sort of belief that the new will override the old (although if anyone actually remembers the acting in WoK, you won't find that to be a terrible notion). I especially don't know why the nods to stupid little crap in the Marvel movies give Bob so much joy, causing him to write several articles pointing out everything, but the nods in this one just make him angry and resentful. There is no "genuine" Star Trek. There's just Star Trek movies for better or worse.

Consequently, it never fails how ironic it strikes me that geek culture likes to pretend it's this all inclusive group for people maligned by the more popular, exclusive cliques; only to react with anger that people are trying to get into their "club" without the proper credentials.

It's not that I take issue with people who want to consider themselves Trekkies despite only seeing the Abrams films. I actually was very excited by the prospect with the previous film as well as the similar influx of fans from the Marvel movies. But the Marvel movies don't diminish the source material simply to provide a "more palatable" version of it for their presumably "more average" fans. I think the new Trekkies would have enjoyed a less pandering movie just as much as I would have, even if they did end up liking it as it is.

But the problem with STID isn't that it tries to be WoK. The problem is that it tries to be WoK without EARNING it. The titular wrath of Khan was invoked when Kirk marooned Khan and his crew (along with a woman he grew to love) on a planet which eventually turned to shit, leaving Khan alone for years with little to plan and think about but vengeance.

In this movie (SPOILERS by the way), Khan has every reason to want to kill Robocop. Robocop took away his crew (and I would assume significantly altered his genetic makeup to make him white and give him magic blood) and held them hostage, so Khan wanted revenge. And actually, for the most part, that part of the movie works rather well. I think that if Abrams and company made it clear that Khan was in this movie, everyone would have gone in assuming he was the bad guy and thus making Robocop the actual villain and making Khan a frenemy would have been a rather cool surprise and I actually thought that was where they were going with it. And then, for pretty much no reason at all, Khan decides to use the ship that he acquired with considerable difficulty to attempt to destroy the Enterprise without having checked to be sure that his crew is actually on board. Khan is not a maniac. He's a megalomaniac. There's a difference. A maniac will kill anyone without much of a reason. A megalomaniac will kill anyone so long as there's a reason. It's the difference between Lawful and Chaotic Evil. Khan (at least the Khan from "Space Seed") was very much Lawful Evil. If he wanted to rule the people of the 24th century, blowing up weakened starships just makes him seem cruel and untrustworthy, traits that would not befit a successful ruler in a civilized time.

Making Khan betray them just so they could recreate Wrath of Khan out of nowhere was half-hearted, stupid, insulting, out-of-character, and ruined what could have been a rather cool take on the mythos, especially when they contrive that whole magic blood thing to undermine Kirk's death.

And that's not even getting into the fact that casting a white guy as Khan (particularly while providing no explanation for it) is insulting to the character as well as Ricardo Montalbon who actually set up a freakin' organization specifically to help people of color get work in Hollywood. I know that Ricardo wasn't Indian, and it was pretty racially insensitive to cast him as an Indian dude, but that was 50 years ago. Since then, the Indian movie industry has exploded with talent. In this day and age, finding a talented Indian actor would have been far more trivial than it would have been in the time of the original "Star Trek". I'm not saying Cumberbatch didn't play the role well. He was very good. But the movie can't cast a white guy to play Khan Noonien Singh and then offer no explanation for why he's white and why his blood is a cure for death.

If they weren't going to do Khan right (and they actually came closer than I thought they would, but they still failed), they shouldn't have bothered at all.

 

[karamazovnew]

For me, Star Trek has always been about our role in the future. I liked Enterprise because it was for a while, a bit more believable and had some interesting problems and challenges(although most of it was fairly shit, there were things to think about).
I don't get any such sort of vibe from the new reboot. It seems like a shitload of references and action scenes, led by mostly uninteresting actors who have no class, no style and no unique aspects to them.
The original Kirk, Picard, Sisko and even Janeway and Archer all had quirks, flaws, personal style and class to them. You could actually imagine having them as a superior officer or even as a captain. For those who've served or been in shipping, you know what I mean. It takes a strong, capable and charismatic person to be a good captain and you feel that you can put your faith in them almost immediately.

Chris Pine seems to have none of those qualities.

This...
What I loved about Voyager the most was that it featured bridge watch shifts, a crew which grew and was promoted, an officer roster that made sense (plus a great female captain), a pretty detailed ship, and even the monotony and loneliness of being alone out there. TNG comes in a close second in these aspects. Even now I can't make my mind which captain I loved the most, Picard or Janeway. Don't get me wrong, I have a weakspot for William Shatner in general and for the original Kirk in particular. But while I love the original series for the amazing achievement it was in its time, and the mindless fun it is to watch today, I believe the main problem with the reboot is that it's based on it.

As sudden as Voyager's ending was, it left Star Trek in an interesting place, time travel, Borg technology, a new quadrant explored, free-willed holograms. How great it would've been to continue that. To have Janeway and Picard as old admirals, facing a new threat together, going out in a blaze of glory. Robert Duncan McNeill becoming the new Captain of the Enterprise, with Seven as the Voyager's captain. Zachary Quinto makes a great Vulcan and the series has missed a great Vulcan since Spock. And as for director? Zack Snyder or David Fincher. Let that sink in for a moment.

 

[rcs619]

You probably wouldn't like the series as a whole then, it's filled with plotholes that even children can find.
FTL communication has been in the series for a long time.
If the Klingons have their shields up or are hiding in caves and you're only scanning the surface then it can be very easy to miss them, more of a writing flaw then a plothole.
I can't defend this one, it's a massive plothole in the entire series, apparently starfleet only keeps one extra ship on alert near earth.
When their warp core finally failed they could not resist gravity any longer, why they were pulled in so fast I do not know.
I can't defend the next point either, though it did level half a city.

I actually enjoyed Star Trek Voyager, and some of The Next Generation (granted, I only ever caught occasional episodes). But then again, in Voyager there was a very real sense of scale, and distance, and time. They really were all on their own, forced to make their own choices and live with them, with no chance to confer with their commanding officers back home. It felt like a proper deep-space story.

I don't mind FTL communications, the sci-fi setting I help develop has them. Hell, even harder sci-fi settings have them sometimes. But being able to dial up someone's personal phone on Earth, from a starship orbiting an alien world in an entirely different star system? That's just insane. Either the Klingons are from Alpha Centauri or something and are just extremely close to Earth... or Star Trek's FTL communications are just ludicrously, impossibly fast. Actually, speaking of that, what do they even use for FTL communications? If they wanted to send a transmission the Klingons wouldn't be able to intercept, it'd need to be some sort of tight, focused beam. So... did they hit Scotty's phone itself with the beam (extra preposterous), or like, did they hit some sort of communication's relay orbiting Earth that relayed the message to his phone (more plausible, but then their message would hardly be a secret if they were trying to hide it from Starfleet). I suppose quantum entanglement could actually make it work. Since that could, in theory, achieve instantaneous communication from anywhere else in the universe.

But, if they had their shields up, wouldn't their shield emissions be lighting them up like christmas trees? Shields have to emit something, they aren't covering the ship in a black hole. I could maybe get behind the idea of them hiding their ships in caves... but Khan was also hiding in caves and they still sensed him. A single human, from orbit.

Yeah, it just seemed odd that the cradle and center of the human race (which seems to be the single-most important species in Star Trek, given how they seem to run everything) is so vulnerable and exposed. Then again, Starfleet isn't technically a military organization, so maybe they're just incompetent when it comes to system-defense operations. Seriously though, why does no one on Earth have a proper space navy? Or at least a dedicated, militarized force to protect the home system.

I dunno, maybe I just don't "get" Star Trek. I was just always lead to believe that it was the more serious, and realistic of the Wars/Trek debate. Suppose after reading more serious, thought-out sci-fi I just had too of high expectations. I don't mind crazy time-space shenanigans if they're an established part of your setting's internal logic. But having such ludicrous communications technology, and Earth being so inept at defending its own nearby space, and completely ignoring the actual distances and velocities involved in space travel. That's the stuff that just really bugs me if I start to think about it.

 

[O maestre]

*sigh* Maybe then I should go see the Wrath of Khan, then? Like Doctor Who, I've always wanted to get into this quintessential nerd franchise but I don't know a good starting point for it. Do I watch the original series, do I watch Next Generation, do I start with the movies? I just don't know...
...but, having stopped before I could get spoiled, I'll probably watch this one anyhow.

If you just want to understand khan and his motivations http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Augment

If you want to become a fan I'll give you a list.

Here is s a list I think will benefit a noob, or rather good jumping points. I do not think you will enjoy the original wrath of khan without at least some background.

The list will be in order of how much useful exposition to the universe you can gain

TOS = the original series TNG = the next generation MOV = full length theatrical movie SxE = season and episode
Parentheses will denote honourable mentions but not necessary inclusions.

TOS:
"Errand of mercy" 1x27
"Amok time" 2x05
"Space seed" 1x24 episode with Khan
("The cage" 1x00 or "The menagerie" 1x15,16 the pilot episode or its retcon...yes there was a retcon in the very first season
("Mirror, mirror" 2x10) The original alternative evil universe and what if source for almost all fiction, much will become clear after this... also Spock's beard is in this episode
("The trouble with tribbles" 2x13 great sample of the trek humour and including the cutest aliens in the galaxy, but it also gives insight to political situation of the galaxy
("City on the edge of forever" 1x28) not too much exposition but the best acting in the series, and to be honest most of the acting was really cheasy otherwise

TOS MOV
"Wrath of Khan" second star trek film one of the best sci fi movies, and not just star trek. avoid the first star trek movie like the plague it might make you give up on trek forever
"Undiscovered country" sixth star trek I love this movie drama,action, politics, conspiracies and large hams
("Voyage home") not very serious but very amusing.... well depends on your sense of humour and love for the characters

TNG probably all of it is optional if you just want context, it is however the series with the greatest stories by volume, it has a lot of crap too but nowhere near as much as the other series. Anyway here we go.

"The neutral zone" 1x26 ROMULANS---ish
"Q who" 2x16 BORG!!! main enemy of the series and progenitor of many cybernetic hive tropes... not the Swedes

"The measure of a man" 2x09 this is mostly to illustrate what tng was about, not so much space adventures but ethics, it is one of the reasons it has aged better than the rest of trek. Many of the ethical and moral dilemmas the crew face are some our society has yet to deal with or are in the process of dealing with

"Times squared" 2x13 good old time paradoxe, good adventure story

("Darmok" 5x02 or "I borg" 5x23 or "The enemy" 3x09 "The drumhead" 4x21) same description as "the measure of a man, TNG is littered with these humanist episodes

("Frame of mind" 6x21) some of the best acting in the series and one of the greatest stories, but not very trekish
("A fistful of Datas 6x08) this epsiode demonstrates what thee humour of TNG was like
("All good things" 7x25,26 few series have a good final episode, this is a text book example of how to do it.

TNG MOV
"First contact" eighth film a lot of lore and exposition and great action. in general all the even numbered trek movies are good or passable, the odd numbered ones are crap and best to be avoided like the plague


Hope this helps you get into the series it will certainly help you spot where some of the greatest sci fi concepts have come from. A general rule of thumb is that if didn't come from Star Trek it probably came from the Twilight Zone...

captcha: end of story :-D

 

[Korak the Mad]

I'm not joking that I was really planning on yelling "KAAAHHHNNN!!!" at the beginning of the movie, that is, if I decided to go see it. Highly unlikely, after seeing the last "Star Trek" movie

Wow. I had already figured out who the villain was even before the movie even started and I was planning on just yelling that as a joke. Talk about irony. Wait, scratch that. Obvious. Yeah, that's it, obvious. Or it could be just be anti-climactic.

Either or.

 

[Diegolomac]

You know what, Bob? You keep going with this "Who the hell Abrams thinks he is" crap ever since he was announced as the director to the next Star Wars. Well, let me tell you who he is: he is a director making a film for our entertainment. He isn't making an adaptation of a series of true events and then distorting the facts, like Michael Bay did with Pearl Harbor. He is taking a work of fiction made for entertainment and directing a sequel to it. And I don't know how the hell you can even make the mistake of blaming the writing on him when anyone who saw more than 3 seconds of a moviemaking class knows that this part is done by the script writers.

But you know what? You want to hate Star Trek Into Darkness because you don't agree with this take on it, please do. You have all right to do it. Good criticism comes from knowing how to defend your opinion well and with some passion - that is why I love Yahtzee and Doug Walker. But don't do this bullshit of saying that he has no right to touch what you like. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that makes geek culture look bad. It's the same stupid thing half the whovians keep doing when it comes to Steven Moffat, because apparently if you get handed a sci-fi series that's 50 years old and want to ignore some of the canon to take it to new places with a more contemporary look, that makes you Satan.

I remember when Yahtzee was talking about sequels once, and said that the worst thing you could do is give the control to someone "who swears he will pay proper respect and bring back all his favorite characters and running gags and give it great big cuddles and make sure no nasty men do it any harm for ever and ever", because then this is going nowhere. And that is exactly what you are doing. So seriously, give it a break. Not only for this, but for Star Wars too when it comes out, and for the next Spider-Man.

 

[MopBox]

Can't wait for star wars 7.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Good review Bob, no valid points, just obvious nerd rage. Wah it references Wrath of Khan too much but its diffffferennttttt!

Into Darkness was a great movie, much better than the steaming pile of crap that was Iron Man 3, which I still have no idea how you talked yourself into liking.

But then I guess this movie is marketed at normal people who will enjoy a sci-fi for its own merits, not people like Bob.

Zing. Really scored a few points there, champ. Quick, call him fat while he's on the ropes, impress everyone with your enormous e-penis!

Into Darkness was a good, good movie, it was well-paced, we got to enjoy the characters since the first movie already developed them, the villain was stand-out and it had plenty of well placed references to Wrath of Khan.

While I didn't think it was a bad movie - as in, I didn't want to demand my money back - it definitely required a lot more action and explosions because they were really the only things that worked. The ham-fisted attempts at characterisation and drama (Uhura and Spock's conversation in the shuttle got me shushed for - involuntarily - Pegg-quoting by muttering "skip to the end" while looking at my watch, while the cheese-fest of the big scene in the radiation chamber had me wishing they'd throw a big surprise twist and have the Enterprise be eaten by militant space unicorns or something) were genuinely difficult to watch, because the poor actors seemed to be trying so hard and failing so badly. They were let down by the script, granted, but the acting was sub-par as they tried desperately to make an audience care about cheesy, boring nonsense.

Worst, for my money, was Cumberbatch. He's a great actor. He's fantastic in Sherlock. Which is apparently why they hired him on to play some fanfic writer's wet dream about Sherlock in space with superpowers.

All things considered, decent action and crappy bits-that-weren't-action. Not worth the expense of a cinema ticket, just wait until it comes on TV and you can do something else during the boring parts.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Has everyone forgotten that the reboot doesn't affect the continuity of the original Star Trek by any means?

From my understanding, this is not a simultaneous timeline, this is time travel over-writing the original timeline. Someone travels from the original timeline into a past point on that timeline and makes changes. This doesn't split off an alternate universe, it just changes the future of the existent one and means events of TOS never happened/haven't happened yet.

I used the word timeline far too much.

(however, on the subject of time travel: didn't Spock make a big point in the first one about keeping it a secret that he was from the future/alternate future? Why is it that in this one present Spock, one of only two people who know about the time-fucking switcheroo, is quite happy to call him up and acknowledge his time-displaced self [/b]openly and in front of the entire bridge of the Enterprise?)

 

[AldUK]

You know what, Bob? You keep going with this "Who the hell Abrams thinks he is" crap ever since he was announced as the director to the next Star Wars. Well, let me tell you who he is: he is a director making a film for our entertainment. He isn't making an adaptation of a series of true events and then distorting the facts, like Michael Bay did with Pearl Harbor. He is taking a work of fiction made for entertainment and directing a sequel to it. And I don't know how the hell you can even make the mistake of blaming the writing on him when anyone who saw more than 3 seconds of a moviemaking class knows that this part is done by the script writers.

But you know what? You want to hate Star Trek Into Darkness because you don't agree with this take on it, please do. You have all right to do it. Good criticism comes from knowing how to defend your opinion well and with some passion - that is why I love Yahtzee and Doug Walker. But don't do this bullshit of saying that he has no right to touch what you like. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that makes geek culture look bad. It's the same stupid thing half the whovians keep doing when it comes to Steven Moffat, because apparently if you get handed a sci-fi series that's 50 years old and want to ignore some of the canon to take it to new places with a more contemporary look, that makes you Satan.

I remember when Yahtzee was talking about sequels once, and said that the worst thing you could do is give the control to someone "who swears he will pay proper respect and bring back all his favorite characters and running gags and give it great big cuddles and make sure no nasty men do it any harm for ever and ever", because then this is going nowhere. And that is exactly what you are doing. So seriously, give it a break. Not only for this, but for Star Wars too when it comes out, and for the next Spider-Man.

Though I perhaps would of worded it slightly less aggressively, this is basically the impression I have of Bob's review. It really feels as though he's just angry that Abrams got control of several of his favourite franchises. I don't understand why or how, since Abrams has really done nothing to justify such venom. He's a great director who is working non-stop to bring us, the fans, exciting blockbusters of those franchises we love. Hell, it could be so much worse, stop hating on the guy simply because it's not your perfect vision of Trek.

 

[Jesse Billingsley]

You know what, Bob? You keep going with this "Who the hell Abrams thinks he is" crap ever since he was announced as the director to the next Star Wars. Well, let me tell you who he is: he is a director making a film for our entertainment. He isn't making an adaptation of a series of true events and then distorting the facts, like Michael Bay did with Pearl Harbor. He is taking a work of fiction made for entertainment and directing a sequel to it. And I don't know how the hell you can even make the mistake of blaming the writing on him when anyone who saw more than 3 seconds of a movie making class knows that this part is done by the script writers.

(And everything else after)

^This....Abrams has got to be one of my favorite directors because he can take something whether it be a genre or another franchise and add his own spin to it. Yeah his films aren't "Ground breaking," but they are amazingly entertaining.

Now back on topic, while I didn't think that Into Darkness was as good as the first one, it was still entertaining and surprisingly intense at some moments, not to mention it was definitely a lot better than Iron Man 3.

 

[gorfias]

One of Bob's worst reviews, especially on the heels of Ironman 3 were he wasn't scandalized by the variation it it. Maybe he is more Star Trek Geek than Comic book geek therefore variance bothers him more with one media than another.
My 2 cents:

[spoiler ]
some of the bad
You will see the insider bad guy a million miles away. He ain't fooling anybody.
Kirk realizes that bad guy has bombed no place special. Why? To get all these powerful people in one place to be assassinated (ala Godfather 3) and that happens and he alone figures it out in time to almost completely head the attack off. Ends up the place was special so, predicting pending attack on the powerful people undue.
There are a few unintended laughs in the movie. A major emotive seen got a chuckle from me. Kahhhhhhhhhhhn!!!!!!!!!
I knew Kirk would be fine with the blood of Kahn. Guess they now have a magic formula for cheating death. No need to fear it anymore. (Though, in Voyager, they do speak and act upon the ability to re-animate the dead if given time). Not as bad as the end of Ironman or Avengers.
Worst thing: I never, ever, ever want to be reminded that this universe only exists till someone fixes a broken timeline, and the individuals in it are OK with that! From now on, I just want to pretend that this is a simple different contintuity. Yet, they pull Leonard Nimoy out of retirement to almost wreck this movie too. Argh.
the good:
I genuinely enjoyed so much of the dialogue. They found something substantial, however brief, for every major character to do. It is stunning. I will be getting this on Bluray just to glory in what it will look like on an LED TV. Lots of planets and deep space scenes with space ships. I geeked out. But my greatest nerdgasm came when Spock, about 5 times as strong as a normal human, takes on the just as strong Khan who knows much more than Spock about savage unarmed combat. The matchup I've been wanting for... gahd, about 46 years! (Space Seed 1967) happens!
That's a lot of dings against the movie, yet, I had a blast. [/spoiler]

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Ok I finally watched the movie yesterday and I can say that I disagree with you Bob, but like everyone else, is entitled to their own opinion.

I want to point out the fact that aside from the reboots I haven't seen any Star Trek related movies or tv series for that fact (heresy, yea I know), because I didn't found them either interested or I was born after this phenomenon was in it's prime. Same goes for the Star Wars franchise, even though I love the video games related to that universe.

With that out of the way let's get to the movie at hand. I found it very good and the performance of Cumberbatch was fantastic. He was very imposing and menacing every time he appeared on screen. He literally "killed it".

I really don't get why some critics are thinking that this film has so much fan service and it wasn't that good.

I must recommend to those that haven't seen it, that they should regardless.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Works like a charm. EVERY SINGLE MOVIE Bob hated, I loved. And Star Trek follows that pattern perfectly.

 

[Andros83]

This film was downright horseshit.
A mockery of what the franchise used to stand for.

I've disagreed vehemently with Moviebon on dozens of issues in the past but this is one where he hits the mark.

JJ Abrams career and work is best described as being completely disposable and Into Darkness follows that very trend.
In about two, maybe three years from now, people are going to look back on this and wonder just what the hell where they thinking by ever enjoying it.
Christ, if the Transformers films can accrue a fanbase and make billions of dollars at the box office, then what's stopping this garbage?

This blows and damn the rest of you for lowering the standards for all of us.