Star Trek: Into Darkness.
Star Trek XII is taking abit of a beating by critics. It's not making as much money as hoped, although it's by no means failing. I had a chance to watch it myself, and here's my impressions of what I can remember from last week.
It's not-quite a remake of Star Trek II, which in my opinion was the BEST movie of the series. More on that later. It reuses two of the same guest characters, but to totally different effectiveness.
Kahn Noonien Singh: Just as murderously coldly calculating, but he dosen't have a personal beef with Kirk. He has one with Starfleet as a whole. He even takes effort to talk Kirk around to his point of view. His character gets used very well in this movie, and I throughly enjoyed his performance.
Carol Marcus: In the first iteration, she was the old love intrest of Kirk, the mother of his grown child who didn't know it, and the inventor of the Genesis torpedo. She was the driving force behind the events that played out as they did. It was her technology that set the stage and climatic final battle. Here, she's of course younger and is just meeting Kirk for the first time. But her role has been DRASTICALLY limited. She is now a payload specialist, who's job could have been handled by Scotty just fine. Other than a familial connection that's important later on, she's utterly replaceable in this movie. Oh, you get to see her in her underwear once. yay. While this is better than Scotty in his, still completely unnecessary.
The theme of this movie isn't so much Kahn and his quest for revenge, it's more about Kirk's growth, both as a man and a captain. A little too much, I think.
In the beginning of the movie, he's getting a dressing-down by Admiral Pike for being an oversized man-child. Without getting into the specifics of what's going on, he's told that he's being 'sent back to the Academy' for further training. Is there possibly a worse way to undermine someone's reputation? I mean think about it. You're a ship captain, one that found himself in the command seat of the flagship within 24 hours of leaving the Academy, while under flight suspension, on a rescue mission. Then you're busted back down again. Would ANYONE ever take this man seriously again? His command career would be destroyed, better to just boot him out cleanly and save your command structure from drama which you invented yourself. Fortunately this does not happen, so we're spared this embarrassing scenario.
I'll spare you going over more of the Kirk theme, there's plenty of it here. I'll just add that I think Chris Pine did a good job with what was delivered to him in the script.
Chekov's Gun. No, I'm not talking about Pavel Chekov, I'm talking about a literary device. The best way to describe it is a form of foreshadowing, delivered with a sledgehammer. There are at least three instances of it used that I can recall, which seems a little heavy to me. One with a dead tribble, one with a comment regarding the fact that a special starship can be crewed by one, and one regarding a description of the warp core (and showcasing of said engine). There could have been even more, but that's what I remember for now. Maybe we should call them "Chekov's Phasers" in context. :)
Ok, now on to some technical nitpicks. Some that I noticed, and some that were pointed out by others elsewhere, that I actually plan to defend.
The meeting room/killbox. Why hold a secure meeting discussing a renegade that knows Starfleet procedures in such an obvious place? Remember the man holding the meeting was the second antagonist of the movie. It's my theory that he was hoping something was going to happen there, further advancing his agenda. He survived it because he had a pre-planned evacuation out. The fact that such a useful tool (in his eyes) as maverick officer James Kirk was a fortunate stroke of luck.
On the meeting room topic, why didn't Kahn just beam in with his pocket transporter and kill everyone in hand to hand combat? There's a couple reasons why this may have been a discarded idea. The possible presence of armed security? Given how he manhandles the Klingons later, this is unlikely. More likely is a technical reason. His potable transporter may have only had power for one use, and that was to get him the heck out of Dodge.
Warp Travel between Kronos and Earth. It was too fast. Warp travel in Star Trek, even as a tool of science fiction, simply DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT. Those were speeds closer to folding space, not travelling through it. If you want a more 'realistic' sense of the gravitas of distance traveled, go watch Star Trek VI. You're left with the impression that it actually takes time to get form point A to point B. The second-best movie in the series, BTW. With VIII. IV, and XI rounding out my personal top-5.
The fight between the Enterprise and the Vengeance. The Enterprise is a clay pigeon for the ENTIRE BATTLE. While I can understand the context of the ambush and the damage they sustained, this is not what I really wanted to see. Again, see Star Trek II for an idea done spectacularly right. Even Star Trek X if you're just focusing on the melee at the end. (Say what you will, that was a great attempt at bringing 'epic' back to space battles. Although it did kinda fall flat). At no pint in the movie do they so much as warm up a phaser bank. What do they do? Shoot Kirk and Kahn at the enemy ship!
Speaking of the Flight of Icarus here, it should have come to a much different end than it did. They were jettisoned by airlock towards the enemy ship. Through skillful use of suit thruster packs and a helmet-mounted HUD, they sail themselves into the enemy hangar bay. Which is in the middle of depressurizing itself. Instead of sailing inside, they should have been blown back off course, and most likely into the side of the ship, by the escaping air.
The plight of the Enterprise. They were caught in close proximity to the moon and hammered badly. Hull breaches, escaping atmosphere, engines down. Where do they go from there? Gravity goes out and they're in free-fall towards Earth. Gravity is NOT that strong, else our moon would not be in orbit. Somehow they move a distance, with no power, that the Apollo program took 3 days to traverse in seconds. Every person on that ship should be dead from acceleration trauma.
Now, on a related note of the suspension of disbelief, let's pretend that gravity didn't go out until they were well and truly in Earth's gravity well. Some folks are saying things shouldn't have been falling like that in zero-G. Well, it wasn't zero-g. It was Earth-relative gravity and everything SHOULD have been tumbling around like that as the ship tumbled down. Which should have destroyed the ship. There's a scene where you see shuttlecraft in the background falling out of their berths. They have warp cores. Explosive anti-matter engines that are being tossed around like dice. One of them should have gone pop. At the very least tore a hole through the hull as they get jettisoned right out the skin of the ship. Large ones, probably enough to compromise the structural integrity of the space-frame.
Ok, almost done with things that stick out at me (for now). Finally, we get to the radiation wand warp-core scenes with Kirk. You've seen Star Trek II, you remember what Spock did. Kirk does the same thing, but there's a couple of key differences.
The first difference (that I approve of) is Kirk is actually FIXING something. You see the problem, and you know what needs to be done to fix it. No hands disappearing into the heart of a mysteriously glowing box, doing Spock-knows-what. This was a good change, actually.
The second difference was the effects of radiation. When he was talking to Spock through the glass (in II), Spock looked like hell. If you've never read the accounts of the victims of Hiroshima, you might not realize that, if anything, Paramount was being nice and under-stated what could have actually happen to him. There are stories of people who weren't killed outright whose bodies were basically red-and-pink piles of dripping meat-wax. Walking. It's horrible. Kirk looked like he'd just finished a particularly hard run with a heavy rucksack on. Even the radiation sickness in the movie "K-19" was more realistic. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't there for a gore-show, but at least TRY to be somewhat relevant.
Finally, the emotional impact of the events in the movie. When Spock died, it hurt. Alot. This was a character that we, as fans, came to know over the course of about 80 hours of TV, 4 hours of movie time, and the years between 1966 and 1982. I admit, I *still* get choked up over the emotion in that scene, and his funeral. It felt REAL, like a friend really had died. When Kirk dies in XII, my brain instantly clicked into analytical mode: "This franchise reboot is too new to kill off Kirk like this, and we have that dead tribble experiment going on with Kahn's regenerating blood. Gee, I wonder how this is going to turn out." For me at least, there WAS no emotional hit. This is someone that we've barely known for 4 hours, not close to 50 years. (Wow, has it been that long?)
J.J. Abrahms CAN do emotion like that, though. He proved it in XI. The interchange between George Kirk and Winona was one of the most emotional scenes I've ever witnessed! Maybe that's just my dad side showing through, trying to imagine a father sacrificing himself so that his son can live. But I was blown away by that. And watching Spock's mother just drop away off the cliff like that? I was NOT expecting that to happen. This time around? There were no real moments like that, aside possibly from the death of Admiral Pike.
Emotion is what made Star Trek II as great a movie as it was, and why XII isn't. You had Spock dying. The raw anger and rage of Kahn stemming from the death of his wife.. A father meeting his son, and having to come to grips that he's not liked all that much by him. Indeed, David doesn't even know that Kirk *IS* his father. We don't see when he learns it, but we see him at the end, telling Kirk how proud he is to be his son. And a man's grief over a death he finally couldn't cheat.
In short, did I enjoy the movie? Yes.
Am I surprised that it's not doing as well as predicted? No.
Could it have been great? Yes.
It's not-quite a remake of Star Trek II, which in my opinion was the BEST movie of the series. More on that later. It reuses two of the same guest characters, but to totally different effectiveness.
Kahn Noonien Singh: Just as murderously coldly calculating, but he dosen't have a personal beef with Kirk. He has one with Starfleet as a whole. He even takes effort to talk Kirk around to his point of view. His character gets used very well in this movie, and I throughly enjoyed his performance.
Carol Marcus: In the first iteration, she was the old love intrest of Kirk, the mother of his grown child who didn't know it, and the inventor of the Genesis torpedo. She was the driving force behind the events that played out as they did. It was her technology that set the stage and climatic final battle. Here, she's of course younger and is just meeting Kirk for the first time. But her role has been DRASTICALLY limited. She is now a payload specialist, who's job could have been handled by Scotty just fine. Other than a familial connection that's important later on, she's utterly replaceable in this movie. Oh, you get to see her in her underwear once. yay. While this is better than Scotty in his, still completely unnecessary.
The theme of this movie isn't so much Kahn and his quest for revenge, it's more about Kirk's growth, both as a man and a captain. A little too much, I think.
In the beginning of the movie, he's getting a dressing-down by Admiral Pike for being an oversized man-child. Without getting into the specifics of what's going on, he's told that he's being 'sent back to the Academy' for further training. Is there possibly a worse way to undermine someone's reputation? I mean think about it. You're a ship captain, one that found himself in the command seat of the flagship within 24 hours of leaving the Academy, while under flight suspension, on a rescue mission. Then you're busted back down again. Would ANYONE ever take this man seriously again? His command career would be destroyed, better to just boot him out cleanly and save your command structure from drama which you invented yourself. Fortunately this does not happen, so we're spared this embarrassing scenario.
I'll spare you going over more of the Kirk theme, there's plenty of it here. I'll just add that I think Chris Pine did a good job with what was delivered to him in the script.
Chekov's Gun. No, I'm not talking about Pavel Chekov, I'm talking about a literary device. The best way to describe it is a form of foreshadowing, delivered with a sledgehammer. There are at least three instances of it used that I can recall, which seems a little heavy to me. One with a dead tribble, one with a comment regarding the fact that a special starship can be crewed by one, and one regarding a description of the warp core (and showcasing of said engine). There could have been even more, but that's what I remember for now. Maybe we should call them "Chekov's Phasers" in context. :)
Ok, now on to some technical nitpicks. Some that I noticed, and some that were pointed out by others elsewhere, that I actually plan to defend.
The meeting room/killbox. Why hold a secure meeting discussing a renegade that knows Starfleet procedures in such an obvious place? Remember the man holding the meeting was the second antagonist of the movie. It's my theory that he was hoping something was going to happen there, further advancing his agenda. He survived it because he had a pre-planned evacuation out. The fact that such a useful tool (in his eyes) as maverick officer James Kirk was a fortunate stroke of luck.
On the meeting room topic, why didn't Kahn just beam in with his pocket transporter and kill everyone in hand to hand combat? There's a couple reasons why this may have been a discarded idea. The possible presence of armed security? Given how he manhandles the Klingons later, this is unlikely. More likely is a technical reason. His potable transporter may have only had power for one use, and that was to get him the heck out of Dodge.
Warp Travel between Kronos and Earth. It was too fast. Warp travel in Star Trek, even as a tool of science fiction, simply DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT. Those were speeds closer to folding space, not travelling through it. If you want a more 'realistic' sense of the gravitas of distance traveled, go watch Star Trek VI. You're left with the impression that it actually takes time to get form point A to point B. The second-best movie in the series, BTW. With VIII. IV, and XI rounding out my personal top-5.
The fight between the Enterprise and the Vengeance. The Enterprise is a clay pigeon for the ENTIRE BATTLE. While I can understand the context of the ambush and the damage they sustained, this is not what I really wanted to see. Again, see Star Trek II for an idea done spectacularly right. Even Star Trek X if you're just focusing on the melee at the end. (Say what you will, that was a great attempt at bringing 'epic' back to space battles. Although it did kinda fall flat). At no pint in the movie do they so much as warm up a phaser bank. What do they do? Shoot Kirk and Kahn at the enemy ship!
Speaking of the Flight of Icarus here, it should have come to a much different end than it did. They were jettisoned by airlock towards the enemy ship. Through skillful use of suit thruster packs and a helmet-mounted HUD, they sail themselves into the enemy hangar bay. Which is in the middle of depressurizing itself. Instead of sailing inside, they should have been blown back off course, and most likely into the side of the ship, by the escaping air.
The plight of the Enterprise. They were caught in close proximity to the moon and hammered badly. Hull breaches, escaping atmosphere, engines down. Where do they go from there? Gravity goes out and they're in free-fall towards Earth. Gravity is NOT that strong, else our moon would not be in orbit. Somehow they move a distance, with no power, that the Apollo program took 3 days to traverse in seconds. Every person on that ship should be dead from acceleration trauma.
Now, on a related note of the suspension of disbelief, let's pretend that gravity didn't go out until they were well and truly in Earth's gravity well. Some folks are saying things shouldn't have been falling like that in zero-G. Well, it wasn't zero-g. It was Earth-relative gravity and everything SHOULD have been tumbling around like that as the ship tumbled down. Which should have destroyed the ship. There's a scene where you see shuttlecraft in the background falling out of their berths. They have warp cores. Explosive anti-matter engines that are being tossed around like dice. One of them should have gone pop. At the very least tore a hole through the hull as they get jettisoned right out the skin of the ship. Large ones, probably enough to compromise the structural integrity of the space-frame.
Ok, almost done with things that stick out at me (for now). Finally, we get to the radiation wand warp-core scenes with Kirk. You've seen Star Trek II, you remember what Spock did. Kirk does the same thing, but there's a couple of key differences.
The first difference (that I approve of) is Kirk is actually FIXING something. You see the problem, and you know what needs to be done to fix it. No hands disappearing into the heart of a mysteriously glowing box, doing Spock-knows-what. This was a good change, actually.
The second difference was the effects of radiation. When he was talking to Spock through the glass (in II), Spock looked like hell. If you've never read the accounts of the victims of Hiroshima, you might not realize that, if anything, Paramount was being nice and under-stated what could have actually happen to him. There are stories of people who weren't killed outright whose bodies were basically red-and-pink piles of dripping meat-wax. Walking. It's horrible. Kirk looked like he'd just finished a particularly hard run with a heavy rucksack on. Even the radiation sickness in the movie "K-19" was more realistic. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't there for a gore-show, but at least TRY to be somewhat relevant.
Finally, the emotional impact of the events in the movie. When Spock died, it hurt. Alot. This was a character that we, as fans, came to know over the course of about 80 hours of TV, 4 hours of movie time, and the years between 1966 and 1982. I admit, I *still* get choked up over the emotion in that scene, and his funeral. It felt REAL, like a friend really had died. When Kirk dies in XII, my brain instantly clicked into analytical mode: "This franchise reboot is too new to kill off Kirk like this, and we have that dead tribble experiment going on with Kahn's regenerating blood. Gee, I wonder how this is going to turn out." For me at least, there WAS no emotional hit. This is someone that we've barely known for 4 hours, not close to 50 years. (Wow, has it been that long?)
J.J. Abrahms CAN do emotion like that, though. He proved it in XI. The interchange between George Kirk and Winona was one of the most emotional scenes I've ever witnessed! Maybe that's just my dad side showing through, trying to imagine a father sacrificing himself so that his son can live. But I was blown away by that. And watching Spock's mother just drop away off the cliff like that? I was NOT expecting that to happen. This time around? There were no real moments like that, aside possibly from the death of Admiral Pike.
Emotion is what made Star Trek II as great a movie as it was, and why XII isn't. You had Spock dying. The raw anger and rage of Kahn stemming from the death of his wife.. A father meeting his son, and having to come to grips that he's not liked all that much by him. Indeed, David doesn't even know that Kirk *IS* his father. We don't see when he learns it, but we see him at the end, telling Kirk how proud he is to be his son. And a man's grief over a death he finally couldn't cheat.
In short, did I enjoy the movie? Yes.
Am I surprised that it's not doing as well as predicted? No.
Could it have been great? Yes.