Star Trek Into Darkness (spoiler review)

Well, since the other thread is getting a little long, I'll make a new one.

First off: I watched in all of its fake 3D 'glory' and that gave me a mighty headache. Never had a problem with 3D before, but I still think it's a useless gimmick and adds nothing. This one was physically uncomfortable.

The 3D isn't the only thing that produces a headache. STID follows the modern rule of remakes/reboots and concentrates on total sensory overload instead of an actual story. Yes, the special effects are glorious, as is the production design. It's the best looking Trek movie yet, hands down, no contest.

Which brings us to the first big problem. The whole cinematography seems like a test run to Abramswars. Run and gun and 'splosions and pretty sights all around at an incredible speed with not a second of breathing room. The quest for even more excitement leads to a certain wonkiness that's also know from the 'other' franchise: really, why are there bottomless pits on the Enterprise? So stuff can fall down in 3D CGI, sure. Just makes no real sense. Which it should since Trek is SciFi and not Fantasy. The nuEnterprise will never spawn real fake nerd stuff like construction plan books since it just doesn't make sense with it's brewery-like engine room (but at least we get a fine looking warp core this time), the boulevard-like corridors and general weirdness in layout. But then, spaceships always bend to the needs of the script.

As for not making sense, I don't have to mention things like 'transwarp transporters' reaching all the way to the Klingon homeworld. Why use spaceships at all, then? One simple line of dialogue ('...beamed to a ship, *whoosh*, beamed down'...) would give this cringeworthy scene some dignity.

Anyway. Back on topic.

Whenever the movie tries to be Star Trek more than Star Wars it falls flat on its face. The conversations between Pike and Kirk are flat beyond belief. Gets better when Spock is involved since Quinto delivers his quips with laser sharp precision. Zachary Quinto is a standout even in this excellent cast. There is not one weak link. Well, maybe except for nuCarol Marcus who seems extremely young to be such a genius. At least Alice Eve adds some grace to her so she's not a mere damsel in distress. John Cho has his minute of fame, too - and he delivers like a boss. Chekov is reduced to clown and at some point seems to develop Superman-like powers, but they are hidden behind a cut that looks like it's left from the rough cut. I scratched my head for a second there, but mostly because the headache peaked by then.

Harrison/Khan is a wasted opportunity. I'll also go out on a limb and say that anyone who doesn't know 'Space Seed' and/or 'The Wrath of Khan' has no idea why he should be important. While Cumberbatch plays him with a devilish, reptile-like cleverness, his power as seen by the audience lies more in his more-than-human fighting skills. While it's quite welcome to finally see Khan in action, the writers keep suspiciously mum on why he's so dangerous or where he even comes from. The big reveal is interesting for old time Trekkies but it's only a shrug for new audiences. So, guy used a false name too. It's not without precedence when it comes to people on this Enterprise A few vague lines like 'from a time when... blah...' don't make him seem dangerous. So it's all physical. It's impressing to watch him mow down three Klingon patrols (with the nuKlingons being more pretty boys than menacing - should really have gone with the DS9 make-up and demeanor if you ask me), we have seen the same in a gazillion superhero movies in the past few years. However, most of those do convey why the bad guys are bad guys. In STID it's 'they froze us for no reason/now we're back and ready for genocide but we don't exactly know why'.

Yet this opens another can of worms: STID is incredibly violent. I mean, come on... this is Star Trek. People don't get their heads squashed or legs broken on purpose with an audible crack, and while the spaceship crash scene is technically brilliant, it's also very unnecessary. I couldn't help but think about the thousands of lives that were wasted in the last minutes before the movie's big & very Warsian final fist fight. Doesn't add anything.

I also wondered why Starfleet would issue fascist dress uniforms. This shit is somewhere between STARSHIP TROOPERS, Star Wars' Empire and Chief O'Brien's people on STARGATE: ATLANTIS.

While STID makes a little more sense in terms of logic than the first nuTrek it still has a whole slew of problems, most of which could have been resolved by a single line of dialogue. Already mentioned the transporter thing, which is almost on par with the magic red blob from 2009's ST. Two more weeks to polish the script, maybe with the help of an old school Star Trek nerd. That's all what's needed, but they don't ever take the time.

To the good points.

STID does have its merits. First of all I have always enjoyed seeing glimpses of everyday life in the 23rd century. Both London and San Francisco are quite convincing, with a good mix of the old & familiar and the hyper modern. People quite obviously put thought into the world of Trek. I also enjoyed the little nods to the other series: '...from the Mudd incident' is a great line (and completely wasted on a young, non-nerd audience. Yes, I'm ashamed of myself that I got all of them). The litte Enterprise models on the admiral's desk that show exactly where the timelines split. Peter Weller channeling his own Colonel Green on ENT to connect the characters. I like such little touches.

The overall story isn't bad, I just don't like how they fuck it up with sloppy scriptwriting. Like most modern action movies the story seems to be there to fill the hole between the booms. As I said above, a little more polish, a little more thought and it would be easily on par with the classic. Or simply don't use Khan. I was looking forward to an updated version, yet once again young scriptwriters didn't understand the original. Sad, but in the end, it could have been worse.

The quipping between Kirk, Spock and McCoy borders on genius sometimes.

In conclusion I must say: it's nice that Abrams revived Trek with a bang. STID will rake in enough money to guarantee a third one. But I'm also happy he'll move on the Star Wars now. It's more his style, lots of flash and bang and not much story. It's time Trek loses a little testosterone and returns to its roots. The perfect way would probably be a new TV series exploring the world in a deeper way and an 'event movie' such as the last two every few years to draw in the masses.

I'll give STID a solid 7.7/10 s 'because there is still Trek inside and just longs to come out. However, this is a straight forward action movie with the name and characters tacked on.'

There's one thing you said here that really goes to the heart of why (I expect) I'll end up liking but not loving this movie:

The one thing I really appreciated about the best of Classic TOS-Trek, hell even in the worst ones it's still usually there, are the quite moments when something is NOT being blown up. Think of the moment in TWOK when Kirk is explaining how he beat the KM, just before he whips out his communicator,calls Spock, and quips "I don't like to lose"...think of those memoents in "Balance of Terror" when he's lecturing the dude (Styles?) about his racism or in "The Trouble With Tribbles" when he tells Spock he has a headache, or when he's asking who started the fight.

THAT to me is what makes Star Trek more than a space opera...and that is the very thing that I don't sense that the JJ team has any sort of grasp on.

As much as I'm a cliche for saying this, writers like Joss Weadon do that sort of stuff with almost superhuman skill, while those like the crew who orbit JJ seem to have almost no feel for it.

There's a word for that: characterization. Characterization goes beyond just providing your characters with motives. You have to make them human. Relatable. As bedeviled by the mundane as they are by the incredible. Because that's where we all connect to them. Kirk getting a headache was a ridiculously simple way to do it. Kirk having an opinion about something other than things blowing up was another good one. McCoy's "I'm a doctor, not a..." was the simple gripe of every guy who's ever been called to do something that's outside his scope and comfort zone.

And you're right -- Abrams & Co. don't seem to get that.

Case in point: Urban's McCoy rattling off that bit about "Space is danger and darkness wrapped in... yada yada." You know what would have gone better right there?

"I bet my ex-wife will find a way to nag me out here, too."

Into Darkness addresses a number of those issues.

Indeed, those moments are great. I can't remember enough from TOS but DS9 certainly has them in spades. This is TV material, however. In a two hour movie which must deliver all-out action they're hardly possible. It's why I want to see a new TV series (not based on the Enterprise) so bad. Lean back, take some time, develop. There are lots of great examples how to do it right.

Star Trek really does do it's best work on the small screen. Still, I enjoyed this movie very much and consider it a solid film in it's own right.

Thanks Aurora I'm appreciating all the reviews so far by everybody, good, bad, in the middle, whatever.

Precisely. Which is why I would like to know who did this for them in the middle seasons of Fringe, because there it was excellent.

As someone else said when asked this question, because transporters don't help you keep the balance or fight off the Klingons, Romulans or whoever else, when they come for you with their fleet.
And because you need starships and their facilities to explore unknown regions of space. You can't keep beaming people blindly hoping to hit a habitable planet.

Yeah, I actually wasn't bothered by transwarp beaming, afterall, Scotty invented it. Just the same, hopefully we won't see it again.

Short version:

Loved it. I will commit the quasi-heresy of considering it the best Trek film yet.

Yes, I love TWOK and First Contact. Where this succeeds more than the others do is in giving every character a moment in the sun, in having better special effects, more action, fewer plot holes (or at least, more ignorable ones).

I think the powers that be listened to some of the criticism of ST 2009 and tried to address it head-on. There's more character moments, less just goofy stuff like Kirk with big hands, etc. There's an actual theme underlying it with real-world parallels about how we should respond to terrorism, justice/vengeance and following the letter of the law versus its spirit, as classic Trek specializes in.

To respond to some of the OP:

I'll have to disagree: there is a very engaging actual story.

In addition to the need to deploy weapons and such that was previously alluded to, there are a number of fanwanks one could adopt:
1. Transwarp has health effects that ship travel doesn't
2. Transwarp is less cost-effective than ships, particularly for moving much more than a person, or really can't be used for moving more than a couple people.
3. Transwarp requires a certain level of genius to do that only a Scotty or a Khan might be reasonably expected to master.

I disagree. I thought that the actors did have a good mentor/mentee chemistry.

If people did not see either of those movies, they would likely appreciate Original Spock calling him the most dangerous person that his Enterprise encountered. So dangerous that he breaks his vow to not tell nuSpock information that could impact nuSpock's future.

If not, they could appreciate how he managed to work his various plans, how it was his intellect that built this massive Dreadnought ship, how he was manipulating Kirk. He clearly has brains in addition to brawn in the movie.

I think Khan explained his motives. He got unfrozen by Starfleet intelligence and was forced to build weapons and concoct strategies for them at the threat of his crew being murdered. He would do anything for his crew, so he went along. At some point, he hid his crew in the missles he built. He came to believe Marcus had gotten wise to this and killed his crew. Since they were the only people he cared about, he wanted vengeance against Marcus and Starfleet.

But you can beam big bombs onto their ships when they are still light years away, moving at warp speeds and blow them up.

As I said, in all it's enjoyable. You just better not think about it too much. Like, you know, dozens of torpedoes blowing up in a ship and it's still in one piece. Falling out of warp speed just 300.000 kilometers from Earth - a distance covered in a fraction of a second or so yet nobody had given the stop command. The whole distance thing - how long does it take from Earth to Kronos anyway, and how far is it from the Neutral Zone? Given the latter, don't the Klingons have simple radar? The Enterprise sat there for hours, almost in orbit.

All little things nibbling off the enjoyment bit by bit. As I said, a little more spit and polish and this could have been great instead of just good. Because you see - a lot of points such as the above I realized right away, while watching the breathless action with those stupid glasses on and a Texas-sized headache. I'm sure watching it on Blu-ray will be even merrier

Maybe I'm just oversensitive but from the level of detail in classic Trek I would expect they have somebody who tells them stuff like that.

I guess the question presented is how powerful those torpedos actually were. My fanwanked answer: Not superpowerful, as they appeared to me to be about 10 feet long, about 6 feet of which was for the cryotube.

We don't know if anyone had given the stop command; someone might have and just been ignored.

We also don't know if there was anyone to have given the stop command, as Admiral Marcus seemed to be the ranking Starfleet admiral. Who is going to order him to break off his attack.

Further, it seemed to me that he broadcast about how Kirk allegedly went rogue and was in cahoots with John Harrison to the Federation, not just to the Enterprise. In light of that, why would anyone issue a stop command?

In "Enterprise," the NX-01 considered it a 4 day journey at the max speed of Warp 5, IIRC. Even if it's 4 weeks or months at Warp 5, it's certainly close enough at Warp 9 that the actual distance between Earth and Kronos is not super important to establish for the purpose of the movie. Nor is the actual position/distance of the Klingon/Federation Neutral Zone, for my money.

The film didn't (as far as I know) say it, but let's just say they were hiding in a nebula or kept the big E out of sensor range while sending the (obviously detected) Mudd ship in to pick Harrison up.

I think if you watch anything in classic Trek with this same level of skepticism, it just is not going to hold up, because pretty much nothing in fiction can.

I just got back from it, and though I'll also be sacrilegious and call it the best Trek movie, ever, there was a lot I didn't like about it, mostly for the inconsistencies pointed out above.

They take Spock to a really dark place in this movie, and in some ways, this movie was very very Deep Space Nine-ish. Quinto nailed Spock in the first movie, but though I wasn't sold on Pine's Kirk in 2009, he nails the Shatner-isms very well in this movie.

I still don't like shaky-cam, and the guy who invented it really should be strung up by the ballz. There are several shots that could've benefited greatly from pulling the camera back, though I often wonder, maybe this is a way to save money on not having to generate too many realistic looking effects?

All in all, an extremely enjoyable action movie, though after seeing this, I'm convinced more than ever that 'real' Trek can only happen on the small screen. These movies are for the casual fan who like a lot of action, and so they can tell people they are 'Trekkies' (wrong font ) because, you know, it is sooo cool to be a nerd now! I did like that they put in a moral dilemma but I doubt we will ever see a movie that makes us think the way "All Good Things" does, or shocks us like "In The Pale Moonlight".

Final Score: A-

I keep hearing people refer to the "Kirk/Spock bromance"

Am I the only one who is damned tired of hearing the term "bromance"?

One thing I've never understood about Trek films - and at times this includes the old school ones - how hard/expensive would it be for the producers to do things just as they have done in the past but also include one step wherein each script/revision is reviewed by someone like, say, the Stevenses...or David Gerrold or whoever.

Someone who could just skim through and say "No, actually it's stupid to have Delta Vega near Vulcan"... "no, you can't drop out of warp in a gravity well"..."why not have Pike say "come back to Starfleet" to make it easier to accept Kirk's promotion"... and/or whatever.

It's a tiny thing, and it would smooth out the enjoyment for the faithful immensely.

Short answer?
Ego.


Longer answer..
Big whigs want to feel smart, and if they hire some damned nerd to paw over their script, they feel dumb, and in their heads, that diminishes their power.

People are fucking pathetic.
At every financial level.
This is all obsolete leftover monkey shit, and no one bothers to fight against it with their mind.
Gut react, gut react, gut react.

You're right, but that's only if they are unsuspecting and have their shields down.

True.

Very true.

Anyone remember Brannon Braga when writing First Contact thinking that Zephram Cochrane was a woman (by his own admission) before being corrected (by Ron Moore probably).

It is also related to money. If the script writer has his script looked at by someone like David Gerrold and they recommend some changes (which are then made) doesn't that open them up to whomever read the script and made changes having to be give partial screenwriters credit?

I don't think that you need to have people on the level of the Stevenses or David Gerrold. If you got pretty much any one from a forum like this or a gazillion others, just a representative Trekkie, they could point out most of the various potential flaws from the more serious to the "wrong font" variety and then the producers could eliminate them if they chose, fix them, etc.

Have 'em sign a non-disclosure agreement. And people would probably line up to do it for free. I know I would.

That's exactly what I mean. Give the job to some nerd, buy him a new TV, mention him in the credits ('Consulting Producer' is good ) and he'll work his ass off to correct mistakes. Could even make it a PR event by holding a competition or something. NDA, bam, done.

Don't you think that Paramount would be VERY LEERY about doing that given their experience with Richard Arnold?

Until 10 seconds ago I had no idea who that is

On the one hand is what we're talking about here, recruiting a fan to be an advisor and suggesting changes that would make the fans happy.

On the other is what apparently happened with Arnold based on my quick Googling --someone using his connection to Roddenberry and exerting so much influence on the scripts and the ST universe that he could veto everything -- thus earning the nickname "Melakon" (after the character from "Patterns of Force" who really ran everything behind the scenes using John Gill as a figurehead.)

Knowing our luck, they'd hire Dayton.

In short, I'm afraid I will forget this film in a few months.

Threads like this, these, from elsewhere:

TBBS
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=209857&page=176

TK
http://www.trollkingdom.net/forum/showthread.php?t=137404&page=12

SB
http://forums.spacebattles.com/thre...-here-be-spoilers.258218/page-7#post-10790293

CQ
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?139997-Star-Trek-Into-Darkness-May-17-2013-Spoilers/page7

Watched it again tonight. I won't summarize the whole film because it's redundant and I'm lazy. But to comment on a few things:

-

Most of the time it wasn't a big deal, but when you've got close-up shots of the actors that are almost all but whitened out by light (in particular, the shot where baby Marcus confronts her dad)....jeebus. That's so lazy not to fix that in post-production. There's nothing added with the lens flares all over the place anyway.

-As noted in other reviews, the slapstick and other gratuitous stuff is cut way down. There's exactly one scene of Kirk getting some tail (literally! ) and another where he briefly hits on another group of women before Shit Get Real (tm)...but most of the focus is between his relationship with Pike and the one with Spock...as it should be.

-The writers make up for the lack of Bones and Scott in this one. I still dunno what the deal is with Scotty's friend...or maybe "friend"?

-Chekov's accent still grates. A lot. I work with a guy that immigrated from the Ukraine that still speaks with a heavy accent and cartoon Russian-esque speech patterns that they try to imitate here and fail at. But I got a chuckle out of the scene where Kirk sends him to Engineering and tells him to put on a red shirt...and Chekov's all a good acting choice there.

-Well, the Engine room isn't what we're used to seeing...but the more I think about it, it less it makes sense for the warp core to be in such an easily accessible spot anyway. And at least the engine room looks far, far less like a beer brewery.

-Upon the second viewing, I gotta agree that the reveal of Khan probably won't mean much to a non-Trek fan as written. One strength of the last film was that most of the references were to easily recognizable things in Trek lore that casual viewers and die-hards alike would get most of them, and the less well-known one weren't enough to distract the casual viewer.

But to say that this is what the movie is based around....yeeeeeeaaaah. Okay, Khan is supposed to be a savage by his admission...but what context is there for this? Maybe this will be addressed in the next film (since after all, Enterprise is the only timeline not affected by Nero, which is truely ironic, all things considered )...like the issue of Kirk being given command of Enterprise.

-Speaking of that, it was dumb as shit to hide a starship underwater near a culture that's barely discovered fire. For that matter, it's dumb to hide a starship underwater, period. Go sit in the dunce corner, James.

-Maybe it was just me, but there's the one scene about twenty or so minutes in where Kirk tells Spock he'll miss working with him (showing how far they've come and all)...and it definitely looks like some K/S fanservice right there. It's just a split second thing. I'd ship it.

Um...

-But with that image that has probably burned into some of your eyes aside ( ) it does further their friendship and they are still both learning from each other. This movies feels like it's just as much Spock's journey as Kirk's, and Zachary Quinto runs with the role of Spock, and is easily one of the best recast characters in any franchise I've come across, ever.

That's about it for now.

Pretty good popcorn flick.

Allllrighty then!

Just got back and feel the need to pontificate.

First, let's run over the bits I didn't like:

1. White Khan - as with the first movie, there's a bit here where ONE line of dialogue referencing a deliberate altering of appearance would have reconciled how a white-bread guy could be someone named "Khan". It's not necessary, really, that he look like Montalban, but he ought to have at least had some ethnic appearance consistent with the name. Nevermind that "Khan" is actually a title and not a name, I can accept that Mr. Singh was so egotistical that he adopted his title as a defacto name.

2. The hats - I completely hate the hats, no one wore hats in Star Trek except Q and Guinan.

3. the ability with which unauthorized people could get where they were not supposed to be. Dr. Marcus' deception was one thing, which we can fanwank to the idea that she's just that smart. but in the same day Scotty manages to slip into what is presumably as highly secure an installation as Starfleet owns?

And....um....that's pretty much it....

No, wait, lens flares. No one likes those.

Otherwise...

Frankly, I'm about three millimeters from assuming the anti-Dayton position here: if you don't like this movie you are just wrong.

I will say this, if you think it's a BAD movie (as opposed to just not your cup of tea) you are wrong, in as much as such a deceleration can be made about any subjective judgement (which, after all, all movie reviews are).

Not only did I find this entirely entertaining on every level, I also found that the story was as internally consistent as pretty much any movie plot is, the acting virtually flawless, the characterizations almost spot-on, and for bonus measure - this film rectified a great many of the flaws inherent in the first film.

Let me start from the beginning.

Let's be clear, this is not the same TYPE of movie as The Wrath of Khan (which is the rod by which all Trek films are ultimately measured. TWOK was, at heart and in execution, a character piece. It has far more in common with non-genre non-action character studies than with, say, The Avengers.

STID is NOT that kind of movie. It IS the kind of movie that The Avengers is and AS that kind of movie, it is of comparable quality.

Having read many reviews and freely indulged in spoilers, I sat down prepared to note and catalog all the moments that "took me out" of the movie. With the exception of the above noted "White Khan" matter, that moment never came.

The rest is spoiler heavy and if you haven't seen the film there are things here which will rob you of a few moments of joy that I felt when the moment caught me by surprise. You probably know the overall plot but this is detail stuff. Proceed at your own risk:

Last word for this post: beginning with Kirk's speech at the re-dedication, right through to the score over the major credits, the epilogue of the movie might be the most happy any trek event has made me since the lights went down on TMP in 1979. The emotional tone of those few moments is one I look forward to re-living many times in the future.

The only tiny reservation I have is this - how in the hell can they make NuTrek3 good enough to live up to the promise of those few moments of joy?


I haz spoken