First-pass thoughts on the new Star Trek movie (2,500 words)
Saw Star Trek: All the Characters Cry Into Darkness last night with a group of local fangirls plus a bonus group ditto who'd picked the same showing. That was a nice follow-up experience to the 2009 Reboot, which I first saw in Boston with my grad school class + significant others + our program administrator. In an attempt to buoy my low expectations, last night I wore my ThinkGeek TOS dress and boots, which ended up garnering a few comments from theater staff and passersby and conveniently indicated that we were the line for the movie. It felt a little silly, especially since there were only two other people in the theater with Trekwear (one of them being ellen_fremedon), but there are only so many times a year that you can go out in public in costume and I'm glad I did it. The only other time I've dressed up for a movie was Prisoner of Azkaban when the NYC Potter fans bought out an IMAX theater.
Anyway, the movie. It was okay. I am having a complicated reaction to it. I didn't hate it as much as giandujakiss did nor love it like pun did. I don't understand the media outlets that call it an excellent movie and I think it had a little more to offer than those who're spilling vitriol all over it allow. I enjoyed it more than Reboot, which I disliked intensely. (I know that puts me in the minority; so many Trek fans cheered the new look and the refreshed cast and storyline in 2009, and so many mainstream viewers appreciated that it worked as an accessible action movie. I thought it failed all over the place on pretty much every level and I generally don't like prequels that de-age characters nor adaptations that replace intellectual dialogue [even if cheesy] with explosions. Grump.) So. Measured against that low bar, I thought Into Darkness delivered a few good things.
Spoilers ahead.
Quick +s
+ Surprise Peter Weller
+ Birth of Section 31
+ Uhura taking on the Klingons
+ Remix of the engine room scene (more on that later)
+ Setup of a moral quandary with the torpedoes and Scotty's resignation, even if the follow-through was less of a climax than a quick decision by Kirk en route
+ Sulu kicking ass from the captain's chair; redeemed him from leaving the conn multiple times in the shuttlecraft while claiming extremely difficult flight conditions over the volcano
+ Some of the visuals and FX: volcano was pretty, hull breach was good and raw
+ I'll give this to the filmmakers: they know how to convey the beauty and grandeur of our own solar system-Jupiter this time, Saturn in Reboot
+ Pike's wounded grunts during the Daystrom attack. Scary.
Quick -s
- Opening scene racism that overshadowed the striking visuals; as a result I've seen at least two professional reviewers already refer to the Nibiru people as "creatures," ick
- Uhura largely serves as a relationship illuminator. Don't like that she suddenly has trouble understanding Spock when she seemed to get him in Reboot. Woman=wants emotion, bleh.
- Electric blue eyes everywhere. It's like Lord of the Rings all over again.
- Three pointless undies shots, incl. the five-second scene that seemed to exist only to show two feline girls in bed with Kirk
- Can't have a single proper conversation without action interrupts
- Dropped plots; for example, never went back to repercussions of Nibiru Enterprise sighting that seemed to be a portent
- Totally gratuitous mass destruction scene that was used to heighten action instead of set up a trauma that needed to be survived or avenged; shallow terrorism "message"
- Pike's sideburns
- Volcanoes don't work that way*
- "Cold fusion" doesn't work that way*
- Gravity doesn't work that way; they should have been in freefall, not in Star Trek: Inception*
- Predictability. So many moves were telegraphed (it's Khan! Pike's dead! Kirk's sacrificing himself to save the ship! Carol's not who she says she is! Kirk's not dead! gasp! oh wait, no) that it sucked most of what little drama there was right out again
- Typical of Hollywood movies these days, everything went way too fast
*Whatever, after "red matter" and the inexplicably unanticipated supernova I don't expect anything approaching plausible science, even technobabble, out of J.J. Abrams & co.
ETA: Ha, rhaegal spells it out here
LOLs that the filmmakers probably intended
- "You're fighting? What's that even like?"
- "I am expressing multiple attitudes simultaneously."
- "I'm running!"
- Spock's fakeout face where he opened his mouth as if deeply moved
- McCoy's-ugh, I can't even call him McCoy, let's say Karl Urban's-aside about bitey Gorn babies
LOLs that the filmmakers probably did not intend (and if they did, then I am mad at them for using blockbuster money to poke fun at a beloved universe)
- Glitter warp
- Self-ratcheting seat belts*
- Klingon uniforms with bumpy forehead helmets and mini codpieces
- Swelling Dramatic Music
- "John Harrison"'s epic Byronic posing
- Admiral Marcus's OH SO SUBTLE line of space shuttle/starship evolution models
- All the ridiculous little Starfleet insignias everywhere (hats, uniform patterns, sickbay gown cutouts...)
- Stargatey warp tube
- So many Single Crystalline Tears
*But at least someone finally put seat belts on the bridge? And yet the solution really should have been to acknowledge that if inertial dampeners fail, you go splat into goo before you know what happened, you don't just fall over.
Can we talk about Khan for a sec
Khan != white guy. Not that having a Latino or East Asian villain would have been an appropriate path necessarily, but calling Benedict Cumberbatch "Khan" felt ridiculous. Why not change the name? Why not, oh, make a whole new villain instead of hijacking one of the best original Trek characters?
Because this movie was a waste of Khan and that felt insulting. He served as a means to an end re: setting the stage for the engine room scene. The movie also glossed over in a few minutes what could have been an interesting build in which a seeming villain became a whistleblower, crew expectations turned upside-down, flip felt deeply by characters and audience. But what really would have made the hijack worth it is if they'd spent some time exploring the potential that in this timeline, awakened and blackmailed by a bloodthirsty admiral, Khan could have different motivations and allegiances than in TOS. More of the "Oh, crap, where'd Khan go, did he double-cross us? But he just saved Kirk. Can we trust him? What's he after?" stuff and less of the menacing ship-to-ship attacks and slamming of the SuperPrise into San Francisco. What if Reboot Khan didn't end up as a black-and-white villain but sided with the Enterprise crew? What if Spock Prime warned Quinto Spock about the incredible danger Khan posed, but Quinto Spock took his own timeline's context into account and gave Khan a chance? What if Khan proved worthy of being given the benefit of the doubt? What if the conclusion was that he and his crew were able to integrate into society or at least form their own brainy-brawny colony somewhere instead of having to be marooned there or kept on ice? I would have enjoyed that movie.
(I would maybe also have enjoyed the movie where Spock switched minds with Khan when they mind-melded on the flying freighter, beamed back aboard in that body and gave Karl Urban all the blood he wanted. A good guy in a superbody, and a supervillain stuck in a mortal one.)
(I would definitely have enjoyed the movie cesperanza asked about where the whole thing was a Kobayashi Maru metaphor, as Wrath of Khan was. It even sounded like we might have been heading in that direction when someone-Pike?-was talking to Kirk about how sometimes you can't get out of a situation without loss, followed later by Spock Prime telling Quinto Spock that Khan could only be defeated "at great cost." But the structure and emotional follow-through for me weren't solid enough, and the pace was too fast, for the metaphor to truly cohere. It felt more like a series of weak, uncoordinated echoes of Wrath of Khan. Maybe on second viewing it will come through stronger.)
(Maybe on second viewing I'll just enjoy picking out more Wrath of Khan references, knowing it's coming this time, like Kirk and Khan being shot out of a torpedo tube instead of Spock's coffin, or McCoy and Marcus working on the torpedo planetside instead of-was it McCoy and Spock?-arming their special torpedo on its way to the Reliant. [Or was that Undiscovered Country? Whoops.] And seeing if there's any improvement in Carol Marcus' characterization, because I liked her more in 1982 when she was a no-nonsense, non-airbrushed, next-gen terraformer; but then again, originally we saw an older, more jaded Carol Marcus, and everyone in Rebootverse is 15 years old. Plus I might enjoy examining the possibility that the movie had a consistent symbolism involving glass dividers, a la
thingswithwings's The Glass. Star Trek: Into Queerness, glitter and slash and all.)
(But if most of what there is to enjoy about Into Darkness is Wrath of Khan references, then it fails, because Wrath of Khan works on numerous levels where this one does not, and this one doesn't offer enough of a coherent new take to stand on its own. IMO. As likeadeuce said in ellen_fremedon's DW: "WoK for me is so tied up with the characters having an enormous amount of history, and with Kirk facing aging and the vulnerability that comes with that -- so it seems so disconnected from the rebootverse." ETA: See also lettered's review.)
Assessing aspects of this movie with regard to Reboot
One of the major issues that bothered me about Reboot was that Kirk took the captain's role as his birthright after Spock Prime melded with him, and that Spock Prime supported it without getting to know the altered timeline versions of either Kirk or Quinto-Spock to judge whether his opinion was a valid one. That was a huge lost opportunity to present a TOS remix wherein Spock was captain and Kirk the first officer. Wouldn't that have been fascinating? So Into Darkness appealed to me in that at least we got a tiny taste of such a swap in the engine room scene. I really liked the remix feel of it. The way some lines switched mouths or got transformed (S: "The ship-out of danger?" --> K: "How's the ship?" S: "Out of danger"), the way the scene played with the iconic imagery. Spock screaming "Khan!" got laughter from our fangirl row and applause from elsewhere. Also, personally, I would have preferred if he'd teared up but not cried. Subtlety: I appreciate it.
What didn't work most for me here was a) how little impact the scene had when you knew that Kirk wasn't going to die because McCoy had Khan's magic regenerating blood, and b) how much it relied on you inserting your feelings from Wrath of Khan. However, v_greyson, who doesn't know Wrath of Khan, disagreed on that and said she felt feelings, and ellen_fremedon, who freely acknowledged that Into Darkness "outsourced all its emotion, plot, and tension to Wrath of Khan," didn't mind that it did. So take it as you will. To me, Scotty's "You'd better come down here" fell flat compared to the original, and it felt disrespectful to, for instance, toss off the "needs of the many" line while Spock was in the volcano five minutes into the movie. YOU HAVEN'T EARNED IT, ABRAMS.
ALSO, total hypocrisy that Kirk unseated Spock in Reboot because Spock was "emotionally compromised" after the destruction of his world and the death of his mother, and yet in Into Darkness Kirk was clearly emotionally compromised by the death of his surrogate father right before he retook command but no one gave him crap about it. Grr.
Were we supposed to feel bad when the unnamed Starfleet review board relieved Kirk of command? Because from where I was sitting, he should have lost the Enterprise after the Nero mission, anyway. Good for Starfleet Command for sending him back to school! …For the thirty seconds in which that almost happened. Oh, Pike, you should have known you were doomed again the second you put yourself between Kirk and the captain's chair.
Sort of a nice touch that Peter Weller called Kirk "son" and didn't realize the nerve he was touching.
The whole "militarization" debate in Into Darkness confuses me on a foundational level. Which is Starfleet supposed to be in this universe, primarily scientific exploration or primarily military? I mean, they are military; Starfleet Academy is a military academy. But I can't get a grasp on the balance between that and the curiosity seeking/intercultural communication because all we're getting are action movies. In Reboot, Pike said, "We are a humanitarian and peacekeeping armada," which made me laugh because, what? Reboot implied that the arrival of the Narada altered Starfleet evolution toward militarization/defense. Now they're talking about militarizing and I can't tell what the baseline is anymore.
Probably I'm just thinking about it too hard.
Assessing aspects of this movie with regard to original Trekverse
Speaking of remixing. Now that I've accepted/resigned myself to the Rebootverse's aesthetics, it was interesting to see its versions of things like Birds of Prey and Klingon makeup (conclusion: stuff has mostly been put on steroids or turned laser blue). Now that I've been able to divorce the Rebootverse's characterizations from those of TOS, it was interesting to see its portrayal of things like Spock's balance of human and Vulcan (conclusion: more drama, less complexity, Quinto is still the best of the cast).
Along the same lines, I'm less frustrated with the fact that the timeline is jumbled-we've got Tribbles, Klingons with ridged foreheads, Harry Mudd and Khan, and the five-year mission hasn't even started yet-and how there's better/different-looking technology than in TOS (holograms, transporters)-than I am head-scratchy in trying to reconcile the movieverse with the rest of the universe.
I thought Into Darkness did an okay job in selecting a classic Trek plot (from the DS9/late TNG era, anyway): crew uncovers a Starfleet conspiracy, works through the ensuing disbelief and disillusionment, and navigates the dangerous, frightening waters of trying to right it. It wouldn't have suited TOS, so it should suit a prequel even less, but given that this prequel is in theaters today, after the '60s and after the other series have aired, I get that it wanted to go dark instead of idealist.
Quotes I agree with from other people's reviews:
A.O. Scott @ New York Times
Maybe it is too late to lament the militarization of "Star Trek," but in his pursuit of blockbuster currency, Mr. Abrams has sacrificed a lot of its idiosyncrasy and, worse, the large-spirited humanism that sustained it.
"Star Trek Into Darkness" does not quite stand by itself as a satisfying movie, but then again it doesn't need to. It is the leg of a journey that has, remarkably, lasted for nearly half a century. I hope we never tire of Kirk, Spock and the others. I also hope that they stick around long enough to find a new civilization, since the one we have now does not fully appreciate their gifts.
Andrew O'Hehir@ Salon
This alternate universe features many of the same characters and a roughly similar reality but all kinds of stuff is different and wildly inconsistent […] The Abramsverse is considered canonical by hardcore fans only because they have no choice; it's "Trek"-flavored, but largely made-up and WTF.
One of the biggest differences "Trek" buffs have noted between the Abramsverse and the "Prime Universe" is the disappearance of moral cost and consequence (as in the destruction of Vulcan in the 2009 film). Here we see an enormous terrorist attack, many times bigger than 9/11, which comes and goes as a plot element [and isn't brought up again.]
There's absolutely nothing wrong with "Star Trek Into Darkness" - once you understand it as a generic comic-book-style summer flick faintly inspired by some half-forgotten boomer culture thing.
Charlie Jane Anders @ io9
Star Trek Into Darkness tries to give fans exactly what they expect, in exactly the right quantities with the right packaging. The result is somewhat insulting to actual Star Trek fans, because nobody enjoys inept pandering. And it falls short of being a good action movie, because it actively lowers the stakes over and over, instead of raising them. […] This is a film that's simultaneously trying too hard and aiming too low. […] probably the best you can say about Star Trek Into Darkness is that it is fun, if you can turn your brain all the way off.
Angela Watercutter @ Wired (Aside from the grr-inducing headline/premise)
A classic line is a classic line, but Bones doesn't need to keep dropping "Dammit man, I'm a doctor…" just to establish his Bones-iness. In short, as io9 points out, at some point in Darkness "fanservice becomes the movie" and it begins to feel more like a tribute than an extension of a broader narrative.
daasgrrl 1
I actually came out of it giggling because I just didn't know how to feel - it felt like some massively meta-AU-prequel-sequel-reboot-crossover-only-in-fandom thing, and at times I found it completely, inappropriately hilarious, while at others I felt shamelessly emotionally manipulated...
J. Bryan Lowder @ Slate
Its preference for violence and political intrigue makes Abrams' vision more Star Wars than Star Trek-which renders his closing use of the classic, soul-stirring promise "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before" ironically bittersweet. Something tells me that Abrams' crew will be approaching those new worlds and new life forms with phasers in hand far more often than tricorders.
lettered
I'm totally willing to accept that nu!Kirk is not going to act like TOS!Kirk. Nu!Kirk had a completely different childhood and a completely different life. And I'm totally willing to accept that nu!Spock is not going to act like TOS!Spock. Nu!Spock’s whole planet is gone, not to mention that Nero's actions have apparently had an impact on how Starfleet has evolved. But oh God, if you're going to tell me over and over again that they are different people, make them different people. I'm totally not cool with this Kirk getting the same scene as TOS!Kirk, as though they are the same people.
[...] for me, Star Trek is about ethics, morality, optimism, cultural understanding and acceptance. It's an earnest wish for a better future. It's about the joy of exploring new places and learning new things and meeting new people. Star Trek is not actually about Tribbles. Star Trek is not actually about Klingons; Klingons are about how to deal with a culture that is vastly different and people who may want to kill you. Star Trek isn't about Khan; Khan is about the evils of racism and racial superiority; Khan is about the ethical treatment of criminals; Khan is about the mistakes of our past-both the distant past and the immediate past; Khan is about loyalty and friendship and revenge. Star Trek isn't a piece of glass; that piece of glass is about years of friendship and trust and overcoming difference and learning to understand each other; it’s about sacrifice and loss and love.
liviapenn for a laugh-out-loud rant
The end of this movie is Kirk & Spock & the gang FAILING to stop Khan from crashing a GIANT SPACESHIP into a populated city and destroying Starfleet academy, AND PLUS they don't even tell us whether or not they averted the war with the Klingons, BUT IT'S OKAY, because we have the medical ethics of a Stargate Atlantis episode and Kirk's going to be okay. YAYYYYYY.
Also for reference, because I am getting lazy:
daasgrrl 2
musesfool
thingswithwings
oliviacirce
Please feel free to counterargue, echo, link, whatever!
Anyway, the movie. It was okay. I am having a complicated reaction to it. I didn't hate it as much as giandujakiss did nor love it like pun did. I don't understand the media outlets that call it an excellent movie and I think it had a little more to offer than those who're spilling vitriol all over it allow. I enjoyed it more than Reboot, which I disliked intensely. (I know that puts me in the minority; so many Trek fans cheered the new look and the refreshed cast and storyline in 2009, and so many mainstream viewers appreciated that it worked as an accessible action movie. I thought it failed all over the place on pretty much every level and I generally don't like prequels that de-age characters nor adaptations that replace intellectual dialogue [even if cheesy] with explosions. Grump.) So. Measured against that low bar, I thought Into Darkness delivered a few good things.
Spoilers ahead.
Quick +s
+ Surprise Peter Weller
+ Birth of Section 31
+ Uhura taking on the Klingons
+ Remix of the engine room scene (more on that later)
+ Setup of a moral quandary with the torpedoes and Scotty's resignation, even if the follow-through was less of a climax than a quick decision by Kirk en route
+ Sulu kicking ass from the captain's chair; redeemed him from leaving the conn multiple times in the shuttlecraft while claiming extremely difficult flight conditions over the volcano
+ Some of the visuals and FX: volcano was pretty, hull breach was good and raw
+ I'll give this to the filmmakers: they know how to convey the beauty and grandeur of our own solar system-Jupiter this time, Saturn in Reboot
+ Pike's wounded grunts during the Daystrom attack. Scary.
Quick -s
- Opening scene racism that overshadowed the striking visuals; as a result I've seen at least two professional reviewers already refer to the Nibiru people as "creatures," ick
- Uhura largely serves as a relationship illuminator. Don't like that she suddenly has trouble understanding Spock when she seemed to get him in Reboot. Woman=wants emotion, bleh.
- Electric blue eyes everywhere. It's like Lord of the Rings all over again.
- Three pointless undies shots, incl. the five-second scene that seemed to exist only to show two feline girls in bed with Kirk
- Can't have a single proper conversation without action interrupts
- Dropped plots; for example, never went back to repercussions of Nibiru Enterprise sighting that seemed to be a portent
- Totally gratuitous mass destruction scene that was used to heighten action instead of set up a trauma that needed to be survived or avenged; shallow terrorism "message"
- Pike's sideburns
- Volcanoes don't work that way*
- "Cold fusion" doesn't work that way*
- Gravity doesn't work that way; they should have been in freefall, not in Star Trek: Inception*
- Predictability. So many moves were telegraphed (it's Khan! Pike's dead! Kirk's sacrificing himself to save the ship! Carol's not who she says she is! Kirk's not dead! gasp! oh wait, no) that it sucked most of what little drama there was right out again
- Typical of Hollywood movies these days, everything went way too fast
*Whatever, after "red matter" and the inexplicably unanticipated supernova I don't expect anything approaching plausible science, even technobabble, out of J.J. Abrams & co.
ETA: Ha, rhaegal spells it out here
LOLs that the filmmakers probably intended
- "You're fighting? What's that even like?"
- "I am expressing multiple attitudes simultaneously."
- "I'm running!"
- Spock's fakeout face where he opened his mouth as if deeply moved
- McCoy's-ugh, I can't even call him McCoy, let's say Karl Urban's-aside about bitey Gorn babies
LOLs that the filmmakers probably did not intend (and if they did, then I am mad at them for using blockbuster money to poke fun at a beloved universe)
- Glitter warp
- Self-ratcheting seat belts*
- Klingon uniforms with bumpy forehead helmets and mini codpieces
- Swelling Dramatic Music
- "John Harrison"'s epic Byronic posing
- Admiral Marcus's OH SO SUBTLE line of space shuttle/starship evolution models
- All the ridiculous little Starfleet insignias everywhere (hats, uniform patterns, sickbay gown cutouts...)
- Stargatey warp tube
- So many Single Crystalline Tears
*But at least someone finally put seat belts on the bridge? And yet the solution really should have been to acknowledge that if inertial dampeners fail, you go splat into goo before you know what happened, you don't just fall over.
Can we talk about Khan for a sec
Khan != white guy. Not that having a Latino or East Asian villain would have been an appropriate path necessarily, but calling Benedict Cumberbatch "Khan" felt ridiculous. Why not change the name? Why not, oh, make a whole new villain instead of hijacking one of the best original Trek characters?
Because this movie was a waste of Khan and that felt insulting. He served as a means to an end re: setting the stage for the engine room scene. The movie also glossed over in a few minutes what could have been an interesting build in which a seeming villain became a whistleblower, crew expectations turned upside-down, flip felt deeply by characters and audience. But what really would have made the hijack worth it is if they'd spent some time exploring the potential that in this timeline, awakened and blackmailed by a bloodthirsty admiral, Khan could have different motivations and allegiances than in TOS. More of the "Oh, crap, where'd Khan go, did he double-cross us? But he just saved Kirk. Can we trust him? What's he after?" stuff and less of the menacing ship-to-ship attacks and slamming of the SuperPrise into San Francisco. What if Reboot Khan didn't end up as a black-and-white villain but sided with the Enterprise crew? What if Spock Prime warned Quinto Spock about the incredible danger Khan posed, but Quinto Spock took his own timeline's context into account and gave Khan a chance? What if Khan proved worthy of being given the benefit of the doubt? What if the conclusion was that he and his crew were able to integrate into society or at least form their own brainy-brawny colony somewhere instead of having to be marooned there or kept on ice? I would have enjoyed that movie.
(I would maybe also have enjoyed the movie where Spock switched minds with Khan when they mind-melded on the flying freighter, beamed back aboard in that body and gave Karl Urban all the blood he wanted. A good guy in a superbody, and a supervillain stuck in a mortal one.)
(I would definitely have enjoyed the movie cesperanza asked about where the whole thing was a Kobayashi Maru metaphor, as Wrath of Khan was. It even sounded like we might have been heading in that direction when someone-Pike?-was talking to Kirk about how sometimes you can't get out of a situation without loss, followed later by Spock Prime telling Quinto Spock that Khan could only be defeated "at great cost." But the structure and emotional follow-through for me weren't solid enough, and the pace was too fast, for the metaphor to truly cohere. It felt more like a series of weak, uncoordinated echoes of Wrath of Khan. Maybe on second viewing it will come through stronger.)
(Maybe on second viewing I'll just enjoy picking out more Wrath of Khan references, knowing it's coming this time, like Kirk and Khan being shot out of a torpedo tube instead of Spock's coffin, or McCoy and Marcus working on the torpedo planetside instead of-was it McCoy and Spock?-arming their special torpedo on its way to the Reliant. [Or was that Undiscovered Country? Whoops.] And seeing if there's any improvement in Carol Marcus' characterization, because I liked her more in 1982 when she was a no-nonsense, non-airbrushed, next-gen terraformer; but then again, originally we saw an older, more jaded Carol Marcus, and everyone in Rebootverse is 15 years old. Plus I might enjoy examining the possibility that the movie had a consistent symbolism involving glass dividers, a la
thingswithwings's The Glass. Star Trek: Into Queerness, glitter and slash and all.)
(But if most of what there is to enjoy about Into Darkness is Wrath of Khan references, then it fails, because Wrath of Khan works on numerous levels where this one does not, and this one doesn't offer enough of a coherent new take to stand on its own. IMO. As likeadeuce said in ellen_fremedon's DW: "WoK for me is so tied up with the characters having an enormous amount of history, and with Kirk facing aging and the vulnerability that comes with that -- so it seems so disconnected from the rebootverse." ETA: See also lettered's review.)
Assessing aspects of this movie with regard to Reboot
One of the major issues that bothered me about Reboot was that Kirk took the captain's role as his birthright after Spock Prime melded with him, and that Spock Prime supported it without getting to know the altered timeline versions of either Kirk or Quinto-Spock to judge whether his opinion was a valid one. That was a huge lost opportunity to present a TOS remix wherein Spock was captain and Kirk the first officer. Wouldn't that have been fascinating? So Into Darkness appealed to me in that at least we got a tiny taste of such a swap in the engine room scene. I really liked the remix feel of it. The way some lines switched mouths or got transformed (S: "The ship-out of danger?" --> K: "How's the ship?" S: "Out of danger"), the way the scene played with the iconic imagery. Spock screaming "Khan!" got laughter from our fangirl row and applause from elsewhere. Also, personally, I would have preferred if he'd teared up but not cried. Subtlety: I appreciate it.
What didn't work most for me here was a) how little impact the scene had when you knew that Kirk wasn't going to die because McCoy had Khan's magic regenerating blood, and b) how much it relied on you inserting your feelings from Wrath of Khan. However, v_greyson, who doesn't know Wrath of Khan, disagreed on that and said she felt feelings, and ellen_fremedon, who freely acknowledged that Into Darkness "outsourced all its emotion, plot, and tension to Wrath of Khan," didn't mind that it did. So take it as you will. To me, Scotty's "You'd better come down here" fell flat compared to the original, and it felt disrespectful to, for instance, toss off the "needs of the many" line while Spock was in the volcano five minutes into the movie. YOU HAVEN'T EARNED IT, ABRAMS.
ALSO, total hypocrisy that Kirk unseated Spock in Reboot because Spock was "emotionally compromised" after the destruction of his world and the death of his mother, and yet in Into Darkness Kirk was clearly emotionally compromised by the death of his surrogate father right before he retook command but no one gave him crap about it. Grr.
Were we supposed to feel bad when the unnamed Starfleet review board relieved Kirk of command? Because from where I was sitting, he should have lost the Enterprise after the Nero mission, anyway. Good for Starfleet Command for sending him back to school! …For the thirty seconds in which that almost happened. Oh, Pike, you should have known you were doomed again the second you put yourself between Kirk and the captain's chair.
Sort of a nice touch that Peter Weller called Kirk "son" and didn't realize the nerve he was touching.
The whole "militarization" debate in Into Darkness confuses me on a foundational level. Which is Starfleet supposed to be in this universe, primarily scientific exploration or primarily military? I mean, they are military; Starfleet Academy is a military academy. But I can't get a grasp on the balance between that and the curiosity seeking/intercultural communication because all we're getting are action movies. In Reboot, Pike said, "We are a humanitarian and peacekeeping armada," which made me laugh because, what? Reboot implied that the arrival of the Narada altered Starfleet evolution toward militarization/defense. Now they're talking about militarizing and I can't tell what the baseline is anymore.
Probably I'm just thinking about it too hard.
Assessing aspects of this movie with regard to original Trekverse
Speaking of remixing. Now that I've accepted/resigned myself to the Rebootverse's aesthetics, it was interesting to see its versions of things like Birds of Prey and Klingon makeup (conclusion: stuff has mostly been put on steroids or turned laser blue). Now that I've been able to divorce the Rebootverse's characterizations from those of TOS, it was interesting to see its portrayal of things like Spock's balance of human and Vulcan (conclusion: more drama, less complexity, Quinto is still the best of the cast).
Along the same lines, I'm less frustrated with the fact that the timeline is jumbled-we've got Tribbles, Klingons with ridged foreheads, Harry Mudd and Khan, and the five-year mission hasn't even started yet-and how there's better/different-looking technology than in TOS (holograms, transporters)-than I am head-scratchy in trying to reconcile the movieverse with the rest of the universe.
I thought Into Darkness did an okay job in selecting a classic Trek plot (from the DS9/late TNG era, anyway): crew uncovers a Starfleet conspiracy, works through the ensuing disbelief and disillusionment, and navigates the dangerous, frightening waters of trying to right it. It wouldn't have suited TOS, so it should suit a prequel even less, but given that this prequel is in theaters today, after the '60s and after the other series have aired, I get that it wanted to go dark instead of idealist.
Quotes I agree with from other people's reviews:
A.O. Scott @ New York Times
Maybe it is too late to lament the militarization of "Star Trek," but in his pursuit of blockbuster currency, Mr. Abrams has sacrificed a lot of its idiosyncrasy and, worse, the large-spirited humanism that sustained it.
"Star Trek Into Darkness" does not quite stand by itself as a satisfying movie, but then again it doesn't need to. It is the leg of a journey that has, remarkably, lasted for nearly half a century. I hope we never tire of Kirk, Spock and the others. I also hope that they stick around long enough to find a new civilization, since the one we have now does not fully appreciate their gifts.
Andrew O'Hehir@ Salon
This alternate universe features many of the same characters and a roughly similar reality but all kinds of stuff is different and wildly inconsistent […] The Abramsverse is considered canonical by hardcore fans only because they have no choice; it's "Trek"-flavored, but largely made-up and WTF.
One of the biggest differences "Trek" buffs have noted between the Abramsverse and the "Prime Universe" is the disappearance of moral cost and consequence (as in the destruction of Vulcan in the 2009 film). Here we see an enormous terrorist attack, many times bigger than 9/11, which comes and goes as a plot element [and isn't brought up again.]
There's absolutely nothing wrong with "Star Trek Into Darkness" - once you understand it as a generic comic-book-style summer flick faintly inspired by some half-forgotten boomer culture thing.
Charlie Jane Anders @ io9
Star Trek Into Darkness tries to give fans exactly what they expect, in exactly the right quantities with the right packaging. The result is somewhat insulting to actual Star Trek fans, because nobody enjoys inept pandering. And it falls short of being a good action movie, because it actively lowers the stakes over and over, instead of raising them. […] This is a film that's simultaneously trying too hard and aiming too low. […] probably the best you can say about Star Trek Into Darkness is that it is fun, if you can turn your brain all the way off.
Angela Watercutter @ Wired (Aside from the grr-inducing headline/premise)
A classic line is a classic line, but Bones doesn't need to keep dropping "Dammit man, I'm a doctor…" just to establish his Bones-iness. In short, as io9 points out, at some point in Darkness "fanservice becomes the movie" and it begins to feel more like a tribute than an extension of a broader narrative.
daasgrrl 1
I actually came out of it giggling because I just didn't know how to feel - it felt like some massively meta-AU-prequel-sequel-reboot-crossover-only-in-fandom thing, and at times I found it completely, inappropriately hilarious, while at others I felt shamelessly emotionally manipulated...
J. Bryan Lowder @ Slate
Its preference for violence and political intrigue makes Abrams' vision more Star Wars than Star Trek-which renders his closing use of the classic, soul-stirring promise "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before" ironically bittersweet. Something tells me that Abrams' crew will be approaching those new worlds and new life forms with phasers in hand far more often than tricorders.
lettered
I'm totally willing to accept that nu!Kirk is not going to act like TOS!Kirk. Nu!Kirk had a completely different childhood and a completely different life. And I'm totally willing to accept that nu!Spock is not going to act like TOS!Spock. Nu!Spock’s whole planet is gone, not to mention that Nero's actions have apparently had an impact on how Starfleet has evolved. But oh God, if you're going to tell me over and over again that they are different people, make them different people. I'm totally not cool with this Kirk getting the same scene as TOS!Kirk, as though they are the same people.
[...] for me, Star Trek is about ethics, morality, optimism, cultural understanding and acceptance. It's an earnest wish for a better future. It's about the joy of exploring new places and learning new things and meeting new people. Star Trek is not actually about Tribbles. Star Trek is not actually about Klingons; Klingons are about how to deal with a culture that is vastly different and people who may want to kill you. Star Trek isn't about Khan; Khan is about the evils of racism and racial superiority; Khan is about the ethical treatment of criminals; Khan is about the mistakes of our past-both the distant past and the immediate past; Khan is about loyalty and friendship and revenge. Star Trek isn't a piece of glass; that piece of glass is about years of friendship and trust and overcoming difference and learning to understand each other; it’s about sacrifice and loss and love.
liviapenn for a laugh-out-loud rant
The end of this movie is Kirk & Spock & the gang FAILING to stop Khan from crashing a GIANT SPACESHIP into a populated city and destroying Starfleet academy, AND PLUS they don't even tell us whether or not they averted the war with the Klingons, BUT IT'S OKAY, because we have the medical ethics of a Stargate Atlantis episode and Kirk's going to be okay. YAYYYYYY.
Also for reference, because I am getting lazy:
daasgrrl 2
musesfool
thingswithwings
oliviacirce
Please feel free to counterargue, echo, link, whatever!