Star Trek Into Darkness (again)
Note: my history with ST:TOS + unspoilery reactions to first viewing were posted here.
Saw Star Trek Into Darkness for a second time. I wasn't reeeally planning to go again, but the friend I was catching up with had already seen The Hunt (Mads Mikkelsen) and actively wanted to see STID, so it wasn't a great hardship. It did enable me to get a better handle on the things I enjoyed and despised about the film, whereas the first time around it was basically Waiting For Cumberbatch.
Thanks so much to xanthe for chatting to me when I couldn't think of anyone else who'd seen it to annoy *g*. And bironic totally ruined my rewatch with her review, which began with describing it asStar Trek: All The Characters Cry. Because they bloody well do. I knew it was rife, but this time I counted. LOL.
The Crying Game
1. Father of little dying girl
2. Pike, dying
3. Kirk over Pike dying
4. KHANNNN over his crew
5. Carol Marcus over daddy (I think)
6. Spock over Kirk's not really dying
Honorable tear-ups: Uhura, Bones, Carol (again)
ANYWAY. I don't even know where to begin with this movie, but the obvious place is Khan. I'm going to start off by saying I dearly wish they hadn't reused him, full stop. Casting controversy aside, this intrinsically annoyed me. There are three seasons of "original" antagonists to work with, and many subsequent related series with presumably new and interesting ones. Could you not just give us something else, or god forbid, something new? I'm just... didn't we do Khan? Twice? And it was brilliant, so why even try when there's so much else, so many stories you could work with that haven't been done?
Right, so, that being said, we have Khan, so I'm dealing with it.
First the casting controversy. Now, I love BC immensely, but he really is the whitest man who ever whited, and Khan probably... you know, isn't. While I entirely sympathise with the point of view that they should have cast an ethnically Indian protagonist, this brings up its own set of problems, namely the "brown people are terrorists" trope. In a post 9/11 world, images of London blowing up coupled with an Indian villain is something that has potentially ugly racial undertones. This, however, could actually have worked out amazingly IF Khan had been a fully fleshed character. If he'd been painted as a desperate man pushed into a fight for the survival of his people against the Evil Starfleet Powers threatening his existence and that of his "family", that could have generated some real depth of sympathy and understanding for him. In order for it to work, he must be clearly painted as being in much the same bind as Kirk is, and that the real enemy threatening them both is Marcus. Sure, the film gestures limply in this direction, but the writing isn't there. Khan had no depth, and I couldn't really sympathise with him even though BC was heartbreaking in that one scene on a purely personal level. All the crying in the world can't compensate for an entire script, though.
To balance the picture out, we needed to feel and see that Khan has the same love and feeling for the frozen people in the torpedoes (well, in an evil kind of way) as Kirk does for his crew. That's the point, isn't it? "What would you do for your family?" It's not enough for him to explain it in a couple of sentences and weep the single powerful Tear of Anguish. Ideally we would at some stage (after his identity is revealed) have seen him 300 years ago, maybe learning of his and his people's incarceration, maybe even see them saying goodbye before being put away for an uncertain destiny. Or perhaps alternatively to see Marcus reviving him and seeing his reaction to knowing Marcus was holding the rest of his people hostage. At the very, very least, you'd think there'd be some opportunity for him to put a hand on one of the torpedoes at some stage and angst over it. I was seriously underwhelmed by his character even with BC in the role, even knowing his backstory. It could have been brilliant with an Indian protagonist if and only if the script had taken pains to create him essentially as Kirk's mirror image, in his own way equally sympathetic and willing to do whatever it takes, which I think it tried to do, but without conviction. The other thing with Shatner and Montalban was that they really were oddly 'compatible', acting-wise. They both had that slightly larger-than-life quality about them, the passion, the drama with a capital D, which the script fed into. Hell, they both even liked quoting ancient English literature at opportune times (arguably it's more ancient for Kirk, but whatever). Whereas Cumberbatch's Khan and Pine's Kirk are pretty much polar opposites - one cold, professional and calculating, the other impulsive, inexperienced and rash. So trying to draw upon their similarities was always going to be a tough call, even though their storylines would seem to suggest it. Pine's Kirk was outclassed in pretty much every way imaginable, and perhaps they tried to compensate for that by making Khan a far more minor role. Idk.
So my exceedingly roundabout point is that GIVEN the lack of depth in the script, it was probably better not to use an Indian protagonist. A secondary point is that if you just need a white guy to run around blowing up stuff and causing havoc and being very vaguely sympathetic, you might as well use "John Harrison" and forget Khan altogether. He could have been an offshoot from the same kind of genetic experiments that produced Khan, not "Khan" himself, while retaining that connection. Or give him superpowers through some other experiment. Change the 72 torpedoes for the single love of his life, or his actual family. Something. Given the overall lack of characterisation, I don't think it would have mattered for the essential story.
The only real reason to use Khan, therefore, is so you can build on his existing story, which I hate, but okay. Having accepted that, my biggest issue remains the reprise of the reactor scene, which I hate with the fire of a thousand exploding volcanoes. Mock all you want, but The Wrath of Khan is sacred Star Trek canon to me. Now, I don't say that you can't rework it like everything else, but if you're going to play with it, you'd better be careful, and you'd better be respectful, and ideally you should have something new to say, and this version was... none of those things. I hated the replay of the reactor scene the first time around, and this time I started facepalming as soon as Kirk and Scotty got down into engineering. The Wrath of Khan has such powerful echoes for me that this one suffered terribly in comparison, the same way listening to Russell Crowe in Les Mis instinctively made me superimpose Philip Quast's voice over the top in self-protection. The reactor scene just made me want to watch TWOK again instead of this... travesty. Spock's "Khaaaaan!" actually made me giggle each time; it was just so ludicrously inapt in every way. However, at the same time, I was genuinely moved by Spock crying, goddammit, because ZQ channels Spock so perfectly, and I'm not made of stone. However I deeply resented being made to care at the same time, which I think is the very essence of my entire problem with this movie. It was the genuinely caring while hating so much the whole being so obviously manipulated into caring.
Wait, there was more than Khan to this movie, right? Okay, there were things I enjoyed greatly, which I will talk about by way of compensation.
- Lots of things were pretty. The big fishtank meeting room was pretty; future London was pretty; the starships were pretty. I even loved the redesigned Klingons. The cast are pretty, with of course special mention for my glorious lizard king BC.
- I don't know or care anything about Zachary Quinto in any other role, but he single-handedly held this movie together for me. In many ways it was Kirk's story, but without ZQ, it wouldn't have worked as well as it did. He's the only member of the cast that truly echoes the original for me, and the main reason I didn't mind seeing the movie again (given that BC barely appears for the first hour). Loved a lot of his lines, and his delivery. I was really moved by the scene in the volcano where he thought he was about to die, and his reactions to Kirk and Uhura throughout; he really was wonderful.
- Tiny thing, but I enjoyed the way that Uhura's entire demeanour changed when she spoke Klingon, as though to accurately convey the sound required adopting a particular cultural "attitude", which I honestly think is somewhat true of languages.
- I love Pike. I just do.
- I also thought Marcus made a great villain. Thoroughly implausible, but great.
- Sulu was fun, Scotty was funny, and Bones was better than last time.
- BC's acting, which goes without saying. Even the second time around, his,"YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME SLEEP" was utterly terrifying. I also loved the quiet "I surrender" when he learned about the torpedoes
There were also many moments of inappropriate laughter.
- KHAAAAAN (never going to let this go)
- Action!Batch. Part of this was the Hair, and the way it flicked back and forth with the punching, or hung angrily over his face. I'm easily amused. He's much more effectively menacing when he's being still and quiet (he does a terrific reptilian eye-flicker), or behind glass (even in that unattractive space suit he somehow exuded power and competence). The shouting and running worked fine for me, but not so much the sidling and punching. There was a particular bit aboard Marcus' ship where he did this shuffling side-step with the phaser held downwards and then turned towards a console that made me laugh every time.
- Kirk ineffectually punching Khan. I can't even tell if this was deliberately played for laughs - it kind of felt like it was, but that would have been wildly inappropriate. He's so hurt over the death of Pike and he's trying to hurt Khan as much as he can and he... can't (resisting the obvious pun here, be grateful). The way Khan endures it all while looking mildly bemused just makes Kirk look pathetic and it ends up being funny (well, to me) when he really should have our sympathy.
- Carol Marcus' striptease because... why? She looked like a "dress me up" paper doll in that pose.
- Is it just me, or was Marcus' you-need-me-to-keep-you-safe speech totally channelling Jack Nicholson with that, "You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall."?
Things that really bugged me, apart from the Khan recycling.
- Uhura's role. I enjoyed her thing with Spock in the first reboot, but god, having a relationship spat while en route to a crucial mission, UNPROFESSIONAL MUCH? I couldn't believe it was happening even while I was watching it. Carol Marcus was pretty thankless, too.
- was there really anyone who thought Kirk would stay dead? The tribble thing was telegraphed from a mile away, and I'm the one who usually misses foreshadowing.
Plot holes (many of which were pointed out to me, but then multiplied).
- The big shuttle made of metal can't handle the heat of a volcano, but Spock in a spacesuit together with his sensitive voice transmission equipment... can?
- You can't hide a spaceship in orbit?
- My husband: "Since when can you transport to a Klingon planet? Okay, it's experimental, but make it bigger and you've pretty much... eliminated the need for starships."
- Come to think of it, why did Khan go to Kronos when Marcus had his "family" as hostages? Given the bodies were on Earth, wouldn't he want to concentrate on getting them back in the ensuing chaos?
- I didn't understand the whole Marcus thing either, really. Does Starfleet know about Vengeance, in which case why kill Kirk over it, or if it's a private thing, how on earth did he manage it? Is he part of some massive conspiracy? Are his crew rogue or just misguided? I wasn't clear on this at all, but maybe it's just me.
- xanthe (I'm paraphrasing): "Why did they need to get Khan back so badly when they have 72 other sources right there with them? And his blood can cure death? Hooray! No one need die ever again!"
So there we have it, folks. Instantaneous transport and immortality, coming to a Star Trek near you.
Random bemusement - the ending got me each time. When Kirk said something to the effect of "where shall we go?" I really, really expected Spock to say "out there". I haven't seen the movies for a long time, but I'm guessing there's an echo going on there somewhere. I just can't remember exactly where. Also, everyone talks about lens flares, and I can't say I even noticed. I don't know, it just all forms part and parcel of the shiny for me, I guess *g*
Tired now. LOL. I wrote most of this last night and am not in the mood to go over it again so apologies in advance for anything I've gotten wrong or which just doesn't make sense. I would like to give a pithy summary of how much I enjoyed the movie, but it's just too complicated for that *g*. Look forward to reading more of people's reviews! I have other fandom things to talk about, too, but that'll keep for another post.
Saw Star Trek Into Darkness for a second time. I wasn't reeeally planning to go again, but the friend I was catching up with had already seen The Hunt (Mads Mikkelsen) and actively wanted to see STID, so it wasn't a great hardship. It did enable me to get a better handle on the things I enjoyed and despised about the film, whereas the first time around it was basically Waiting For Cumberbatch.
Thanks so much to xanthe for chatting to me when I couldn't think of anyone else who'd seen it to annoy *g*. And bironic totally ruined my rewatch with her review, which began with describing it asStar Trek: All The Characters Cry. Because they bloody well do. I knew it was rife, but this time I counted. LOL.
The Crying Game
1. Father of little dying girl
2. Pike, dying
3. Kirk over Pike dying
4. KHANNNN over his crew
5. Carol Marcus over daddy (I think)
6. Spock over Kirk's not really dying
Honorable tear-ups: Uhura, Bones, Carol (again)
ANYWAY. I don't even know where to begin with this movie, but the obvious place is Khan. I'm going to start off by saying I dearly wish they hadn't reused him, full stop. Casting controversy aside, this intrinsically annoyed me. There are three seasons of "original" antagonists to work with, and many subsequent related series with presumably new and interesting ones. Could you not just give us something else, or god forbid, something new? I'm just... didn't we do Khan? Twice? And it was brilliant, so why even try when there's so much else, so many stories you could work with that haven't been done?
Right, so, that being said, we have Khan, so I'm dealing with it.
First the casting controversy. Now, I love BC immensely, but he really is the whitest man who ever whited, and Khan probably... you know, isn't. While I entirely sympathise with the point of view that they should have cast an ethnically Indian protagonist, this brings up its own set of problems, namely the "brown people are terrorists" trope. In a post 9/11 world, images of London blowing up coupled with an Indian villain is something that has potentially ugly racial undertones. This, however, could actually have worked out amazingly IF Khan had been a fully fleshed character. If he'd been painted as a desperate man pushed into a fight for the survival of his people against the Evil Starfleet Powers threatening his existence and that of his "family", that could have generated some real depth of sympathy and understanding for him. In order for it to work, he must be clearly painted as being in much the same bind as Kirk is, and that the real enemy threatening them both is Marcus. Sure, the film gestures limply in this direction, but the writing isn't there. Khan had no depth, and I couldn't really sympathise with him even though BC was heartbreaking in that one scene on a purely personal level. All the crying in the world can't compensate for an entire script, though.
To balance the picture out, we needed to feel and see that Khan has the same love and feeling for the frozen people in the torpedoes (well, in an evil kind of way) as Kirk does for his crew. That's the point, isn't it? "What would you do for your family?" It's not enough for him to explain it in a couple of sentences and weep the single powerful Tear of Anguish. Ideally we would at some stage (after his identity is revealed) have seen him 300 years ago, maybe learning of his and his people's incarceration, maybe even see them saying goodbye before being put away for an uncertain destiny. Or perhaps alternatively to see Marcus reviving him and seeing his reaction to knowing Marcus was holding the rest of his people hostage. At the very, very least, you'd think there'd be some opportunity for him to put a hand on one of the torpedoes at some stage and angst over it. I was seriously underwhelmed by his character even with BC in the role, even knowing his backstory. It could have been brilliant with an Indian protagonist if and only if the script had taken pains to create him essentially as Kirk's mirror image, in his own way equally sympathetic and willing to do whatever it takes, which I think it tried to do, but without conviction. The other thing with Shatner and Montalban was that they really were oddly 'compatible', acting-wise. They both had that slightly larger-than-life quality about them, the passion, the drama with a capital D, which the script fed into. Hell, they both even liked quoting ancient English literature at opportune times (arguably it's more ancient for Kirk, but whatever). Whereas Cumberbatch's Khan and Pine's Kirk are pretty much polar opposites - one cold, professional and calculating, the other impulsive, inexperienced and rash. So trying to draw upon their similarities was always going to be a tough call, even though their storylines would seem to suggest it. Pine's Kirk was outclassed in pretty much every way imaginable, and perhaps they tried to compensate for that by making Khan a far more minor role. Idk.
So my exceedingly roundabout point is that GIVEN the lack of depth in the script, it was probably better not to use an Indian protagonist. A secondary point is that if you just need a white guy to run around blowing up stuff and causing havoc and being very vaguely sympathetic, you might as well use "John Harrison" and forget Khan altogether. He could have been an offshoot from the same kind of genetic experiments that produced Khan, not "Khan" himself, while retaining that connection. Or give him superpowers through some other experiment. Change the 72 torpedoes for the single love of his life, or his actual family. Something. Given the overall lack of characterisation, I don't think it would have mattered for the essential story.
The only real reason to use Khan, therefore, is so you can build on his existing story, which I hate, but okay. Having accepted that, my biggest issue remains the reprise of the reactor scene, which I hate with the fire of a thousand exploding volcanoes. Mock all you want, but The Wrath of Khan is sacred Star Trek canon to me. Now, I don't say that you can't rework it like everything else, but if you're going to play with it, you'd better be careful, and you'd better be respectful, and ideally you should have something new to say, and this version was... none of those things. I hated the replay of the reactor scene the first time around, and this time I started facepalming as soon as Kirk and Scotty got down into engineering. The Wrath of Khan has such powerful echoes for me that this one suffered terribly in comparison, the same way listening to Russell Crowe in Les Mis instinctively made me superimpose Philip Quast's voice over the top in self-protection. The reactor scene just made me want to watch TWOK again instead of this... travesty. Spock's "Khaaaaan!" actually made me giggle each time; it was just so ludicrously inapt in every way. However, at the same time, I was genuinely moved by Spock crying, goddammit, because ZQ channels Spock so perfectly, and I'm not made of stone. However I deeply resented being made to care at the same time, which I think is the very essence of my entire problem with this movie. It was the genuinely caring while hating so much the whole being so obviously manipulated into caring.
Wait, there was more than Khan to this movie, right? Okay, there were things I enjoyed greatly, which I will talk about by way of compensation.
- Lots of things were pretty. The big fishtank meeting room was pretty; future London was pretty; the starships were pretty. I even loved the redesigned Klingons. The cast are pretty, with of course special mention for my glorious lizard king BC.
- I don't know or care anything about Zachary Quinto in any other role, but he single-handedly held this movie together for me. In many ways it was Kirk's story, but without ZQ, it wouldn't have worked as well as it did. He's the only member of the cast that truly echoes the original for me, and the main reason I didn't mind seeing the movie again (given that BC barely appears for the first hour). Loved a lot of his lines, and his delivery. I was really moved by the scene in the volcano where he thought he was about to die, and his reactions to Kirk and Uhura throughout; he really was wonderful.
- Tiny thing, but I enjoyed the way that Uhura's entire demeanour changed when she spoke Klingon, as though to accurately convey the sound required adopting a particular cultural "attitude", which I honestly think is somewhat true of languages.
- I love Pike. I just do.
- I also thought Marcus made a great villain. Thoroughly implausible, but great.
- Sulu was fun, Scotty was funny, and Bones was better than last time.
- BC's acting, which goes without saying. Even the second time around, his,"YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME SLEEP" was utterly terrifying. I also loved the quiet "I surrender" when he learned about the torpedoes
There were also many moments of inappropriate laughter.
- KHAAAAAN (never going to let this go)
- Action!Batch. Part of this was the Hair, and the way it flicked back and forth with the punching, or hung angrily over his face. I'm easily amused. He's much more effectively menacing when he's being still and quiet (he does a terrific reptilian eye-flicker), or behind glass (even in that unattractive space suit he somehow exuded power and competence). The shouting and running worked fine for me, but not so much the sidling and punching. There was a particular bit aboard Marcus' ship where he did this shuffling side-step with the phaser held downwards and then turned towards a console that made me laugh every time.
- Kirk ineffectually punching Khan. I can't even tell if this was deliberately played for laughs - it kind of felt like it was, but that would have been wildly inappropriate. He's so hurt over the death of Pike and he's trying to hurt Khan as much as he can and he... can't (resisting the obvious pun here, be grateful). The way Khan endures it all while looking mildly bemused just makes Kirk look pathetic and it ends up being funny (well, to me) when he really should have our sympathy.
- Carol Marcus' striptease because... why? She looked like a "dress me up" paper doll in that pose.
- Is it just me, or was Marcus' you-need-me-to-keep-you-safe speech totally channelling Jack Nicholson with that, "You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall."?
Things that really bugged me, apart from the Khan recycling.
- Uhura's role. I enjoyed her thing with Spock in the first reboot, but god, having a relationship spat while en route to a crucial mission, UNPROFESSIONAL MUCH? I couldn't believe it was happening even while I was watching it. Carol Marcus was pretty thankless, too.
- was there really anyone who thought Kirk would stay dead? The tribble thing was telegraphed from a mile away, and I'm the one who usually misses foreshadowing.
Plot holes (many of which were pointed out to me, but then multiplied).
- The big shuttle made of metal can't handle the heat of a volcano, but Spock in a spacesuit together with his sensitive voice transmission equipment... can?
- You can't hide a spaceship in orbit?
- My husband: "Since when can you transport to a Klingon planet? Okay, it's experimental, but make it bigger and you've pretty much... eliminated the need for starships."
- Come to think of it, why did Khan go to Kronos when Marcus had his "family" as hostages? Given the bodies were on Earth, wouldn't he want to concentrate on getting them back in the ensuing chaos?
- I didn't understand the whole Marcus thing either, really. Does Starfleet know about Vengeance, in which case why kill Kirk over it, or if it's a private thing, how on earth did he manage it? Is he part of some massive conspiracy? Are his crew rogue or just misguided? I wasn't clear on this at all, but maybe it's just me.
- xanthe (I'm paraphrasing): "Why did they need to get Khan back so badly when they have 72 other sources right there with them? And his blood can cure death? Hooray! No one need die ever again!"
So there we have it, folks. Instantaneous transport and immortality, coming to a Star Trek near you.
Random bemusement - the ending got me each time. When Kirk said something to the effect of "where shall we go?" I really, really expected Spock to say "out there". I haven't seen the movies for a long time, but I'm guessing there's an echo going on there somewhere. I just can't remember exactly where. Also, everyone talks about lens flares, and I can't say I even noticed. I don't know, it just all forms part and parcel of the shiny for me, I guess *g*
Tired now. LOL. I wrote most of this last night and am not in the mood to go over it again so apologies in advance for anything I've gotten wrong or which just doesn't make sense. I would like to give a pithy summary of how much I enjoyed the movie, but it's just too complicated for that *g*. Look forward to reading more of people's reviews! I have other fandom things to talk about, too, but that'll keep for another post.