movies

Red Alert: This is a long post, and contains spoilers a little ways down.

I haven’t been so excited for a summer movie this year as I’ve been for Star Trek Into Darkness. Despite 2009’s Star Trek major plot holes and logistical issues, I’ve generally been a fan of J.J. Abram’s reboot. Roddenberry’s characters are iconic enough to withstand (and even flourish from) new interpretations and perspectives. Like Batman, Spider-Man, James Bond, or even the works of Shakespeare, there’s room to explore the essentials of Star Trek from many angles.

So in that regard, I enjoyed what Star Trek into Darkness had to offer: the friendship between Kirk and Spock, the rousing adventures aboard the most famous starship ever, the stirring score, and the top-notch jaw-dropping vfx. The overall plot was a nice twist on some Star Trek stories that have come before.

If you’re looking for some big-budget, gorgeous tentpole summer entertainment, Star Trek into Darkness is the movie for you, even if you’re not usually a fan of Trek. I really liked it.

If you are a Trek fan, then there might be some things that bug you. Like in the 2009 film, all that slam-bang hi-octane action that general audiences love comes at a steep price. A lot of what made the original incarnations of Star Trek great was the thoughtful exploration of the diversity of the new worlds and alien life they encounter. The (admittedly techno-babbly) approaches to explaining the workings of the universe and the mysteries of space. It’s about the evolution of the Human Adventure and our ability to rise above the sins of our past to become bold, wise, and tolerant of infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

I think, like Chris Pine’s Kirk, the J.J. Abrams’ Trek is still trying to get there.

Serious spoilers ahead, so stop reading now if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Kirk is Still a Punk.

For most the film, Pine’s Kirk is full of arrogant swagger and an almost thoughtless slave to impulse. We’re supposed to buy that Kirk’s “gut feelings” are superior to Spock’s logic (or Starfleet’s directives), but mostly he just seems to be a really lucky guy. Now even Shatner’s Kirk had plenty of all of the above, but Pine’s Kirk is mean, spiteful, and more than a little vengeful.

I applauded when Kirk cooled down from his anger over Pike’s death enough to order the capture of the fugitive John Harrison — but winced big time at the moment of JH’s surrender when Kirk started using him as a punching bag. Maybe Shatner’s Kirk might have thrown a suckerpunch, but I just can’t see him repeatedly wailing on a guy like that. Yeah, I know that this Kirk is younger and hasn’t quite matured to the one we know and love. And they went a little way towards that by the finale. But still.

 Where’s the Science in my Fiction?

 Look, I’m all for some action packed space opera, but Star Trek is supposed to be full of pseudo-science and galactic sensawunda. The vfx provide some serious eye candy, to be sure, but the movie barely allows the audience to register the majestic shots of the Enterprise or the Vengeance or really anything else, let alone allowing the crew of the Enterprise itself to register the awesomeness of the universe. Aside from a few passing techno-babble moments that seem designed more as plot conveniences, it’s like the filmmakers decided that slowing down for any sort of science, for any sort of self-reflection would be boring. I don’t know, maybe that would bore general audiences, but I sure missed it. Again, we’re supposed to understand that Starfleet is finally getting down to the business of exploration, boldly going by the end of the film, but I don’t feel like the story fully supported that conclusion.

 As for the science-y stuff, this is a movie that makes the explorers and scientists of Prometheus look positively cerebral in comparison, so, yeah.

 Have you Seen the Bones, man?!

 There was not nearly enough Karl Urban in this film. Traditionally, Dr. McCoy has helped to anchor the relationship between Kirk and Spock (the “Triumvirate”), and Urban is so good at channeling the ghost of DeForest Kelley, it’s a real shame McCoy doesn’t feature more prominently in the film. I would have preferred to see more of him, and less of characters like Dr. Marcus. (Well, I guess we see a LOT of her, but that seems to be the main reason she’s in the film, to strip down to her underwear. sigh.)

 Khaaaaan!

 The worst kept secret in recent movie history. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a fine performance, and the new backstory of this Khan is intriguing in many ways. (The internet tells me that Benecio del Toro was originally approached to play the part. I think I would have preferred him, to be honest. He’s good at playing characters with a crazy streak, and Khan always balanced on the razor’s edge of his high-IQ and his human megalomania. Hey, just like Kirk did.)

 BC’s Khan is not nearly as sympathetic as Montalban’s Khan, and not nearly so passionate or compelling. Without the events of “Space Seed,” or the tragic marooning on Ceti Alpha Five, we just can’t invest in him as a villain in the same way. We never meet any of the other supermen, and so his relationship to his “family” will have to wait for another movie. Or not. While they clearly left it open for Khan’s return, I’m hoping they leave that plot alone…. “buried alive….”

 Odds and Ends

 Too much stuff in my eye- and ear-balls. I make a living doing visual effects. I love ‘em. There was some damn fine work in this film, too, kudos to ILM and all the other shops who worked on it. The planetary vistas were especially lovely in IMAX. But everything was so frenetic, there was barely time to appreciate any of it. The sound mix in the IMAX theatre was a little heavy on the screeching, thudding, thumping parts of the soundtrack and some of the dialogue suffered as a result. My eardrums, too.

 J.J., please stop using brewery interiors or real nuclear reactors as sets. Even with the Trek set dressing, they look too real-world and damage the illusion we’re in the 23rd century. They don’t mesh with the rest of the sets well at all. Star Wars’ grounded, lived-in look could never be mistaken for a real place, even if it was filmed in actual houses in Tunisia or in the Redwoods of California.

 The Enterprise underwater? Aside from featuring the few truly majestic shots of the ship in the film, there’s no reason for them to have parked down there when orbit would have been fine.

 The USS Vengeance. It suffers from the same problems as the Narada in the last film. Too big, too dark, too evil-looking to be taken seriously. And all too easy. There was something about the commandeering of the USS Reliant in the earlier Trek that made Khan even more of a threat. It was a slightly inferior ship to the Enterprise, and it was mainly Khan’s tactics and element of surprise that bested Kirk and his crew.

 Also, I still have trouble wrapping my brain around how big the ships are in the Trek reboot.

 Another space-jumping/body surfing action scene? Did we run out of ideas? Granted, it was well done, with some spectacular effects, but why not launch a shuttle full of Redshirts to go with Kirk and Khan to take the Venegance? I’m sure they had plenty to spare, and Marcus’ ship seemed deserted. Khan might still have been able to overcome them all in his turnabout play, but it would have been a more reliable kind of boarding party.

 Where’s the rest of Starfleet? It’s easier to swallow the Enterprise being “the only one within range” to stop a threat when they’re out there in space. But the climax of the film is in Earth-Moon orbit. Where are the evacuation ships and the mass transporters to rescue the hapless crew of the Enterprise? Hell, where’s the rest of the Federation?

 The Starfleet Fashion Show. I don’t know why this bugged me, but it did. Normally I’m a costume freak (I love the redesign of the classic uniforms and I appreciated the nod to TMP uniforms and even some suggestion of different branches of Starfleet), but I didn’t like all the militaristic gray and black.

 All my points above are pretty nitpicky, but I really did enjoy the film despite these flaws. I particularly liked the echoing of Wrath of Khan in the finale, even if they did verge into the cartoonish with Spock’s own “Khaaaaan!” moment. I’m looking forward to seeing the next installment of the franchise, with hopes that it gets back to the other things that made Trek so great in the first place.