I like and do-not-like STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS. I am conflicted. There are a lot of problems. There's also some wonderful moments with a charming cast. I could watch Spock and Kirk and the whole gang squabble affectionately all day long.
The main problem is, of course, the plot.
Ok, no really, the main problem is Khan -- but I can't say that up there in the spoiler free zone.
It all comes down to this question: Who is Khan?
Who is he in the Star Trek universe? Who is he in INTO DARKNESS?
If all I had to go on was the movie, here's what I'd know: he's some kind of super human. He's some kind of smart guy. He's been frozen out in space for a long time, along with a bunch of people he calls family. Some Federation Admiral captured him and forced him to make weapons. He escaped and now he wants revenge and to get his family back -- so he goes all badass to do it.
This is what the movie shows us. Later on, we get Spock looking right at the camera and telling us that he's also a horrible, no-good evil villainy villain that did a whole bunch of bad stuff. He never really explains any of that, just lays it out there as a generality -- assuming that the audience is already familiar with Khan or that they'll just take his word for it.
So, if I'm a person with no prior frame of reference on this gentle English soul, I'd probably be more than a bit sympathetic towards him. The Federation stole his family and forced him into slavery to build a bunch of weapons. Sure there was some mumbling about him being a super bad guy, but they didn't spend all that much time explaining that, so it couldn't be that important right?
But I'm not a person with no prior frame of reference -- I'm a person with a completely good frame of reference. I love the movie that this weird fanfiction is meant to be echoing. I have a pretty good notion of who Khan is philosophically. (I also remember Khan as a person-of-color, but that's a whole 'nother story.)
This movie doesn't earn anything it tries to shove at us. It just references things and blows shit up.
Sidenote: The Most Egregious Example
Hey, remember when you were so incredibly sad because Spock died to save the ship and then there was that emotional scene with Kirk? Lookeee here, we got the reverse of that for you right here!
Only the original scene came after years of interaction, friendship, and love between these two characters. And it was very in keeping with Spock's philosophies. And it was beautiful and sad and at the time seemed very permanent.
What do we get here instead? A scene that just rips off the original. Spock and Kirk have known each other for less than a year. All that earned poignancy is just a reference to something that happened in another timeline. They act like they're desperately in love with each other, not good but recent buddies. And there's no chance that this death will stick -- no chance in hell -- so instead of sad it's just filler. We already saw Khan's blood rescue that little girl. We already know Bones is experimenting on dead tribbles. We already know this is a franchise and Kirk is the main character. He'll be back in half an hour tops.
(Plus the actual mirror of the repair scene irks me. In the original Spock goes in and actually fixes stuff -- with science! In the new version how does Kirk fix the ship? By banging the shit out of something till it works. Good thing an actual repair didn't need to be done, there's no way he'd know what the hell to do.)
To return to Khan:
I love Benedict Cumberbatch. I was incredibly excited that he'd be playing Khan. I thought we'd get some fantastic evil Khan dialogue out of him. I was hoping he'd make me love hating him, much like we all love to hate Loki in the Marvel movies.
But mostly they turned this fascist crazy man into a stompy, smashy super soldier. Not that I don't like watching him hit things, that's really great and all. But where's the spark that makes Khan into Khan? Why is this character anything other than a generic villain? Why should I care when he reveals his name?
I wish they'd just left him as Harrison or any other name, for that matter. I wish they'd made him up from scratch. The comparisons to the original are only going to bring you grief -- unless you really really commit. But this reboot crew isn't interested in committing to Star Trek -- they aren't really interested in Star Trek at all. Really they're most interested in all that sweet geek cash that's rolling into movie theaters right now.
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Also of note:
The AVClub is having a bit of a fanboy riot right now. Going back and forth between people who loved all the boom-boom and people who thought it was disrespectful dreck. There are lots of conversations about changing Khan from a person-of-color into the whitest of Englishmen. About the redo on Spock's death and Kirk's reaction (and how it was entirely unearned). And lots and lots of plot hole analysis.
This one is my favorite comment, which points out the plot hole that's the final nail in the coffin for me:
"Let's imagine you're Khan at the beginning of this movie. You're a superhuman would-be galactic conqueror, and you'd really like to defrost your super-friends to help you do so. Your first move isn't that bad: you blow up the place where the federation made you work on some super-secret tech. But then you get in a helicopter to shoot at the top brass of Starfleet. You don't get missiles or anything else that would be a more reliable way to kill the Admiral you hate so much; you just shoot until your futuristic helicopter gets taken down by a fire hose -funny how they still have those in the future, isn't it? Anyways, you have an awesome long-range teleporter that can send you anywhere in the Galaxy, so you decide to go to the Klingon homeworld.
Think about that for a second.
You want to defrost your friends and conquer the galaxy, but you chose to go to a hostile alien world that doesn't get you any closer to either of those goals. To get off that planet, you'd probably have to stage a daring one-man takeover of a Klingon ship and have TWO civilizations out to kill you instead of one. Good plan.
It's also incredibly convenient for the Admiral you hate so much. Because you just happened to go to the Klingon homeworld, he can use the long-range torpedoes you made for him to blow you up from light-years away; maybe you should have thought of that before you hid your friends inside those torpedoes. I you also must not have realized it was so easy to track where that teleporter sent you or to target the only life-form on that corner of the planet. You were incredibly lucky that Kirk chose to try capturing you alive.
So yeah, heading to the Klingon homeworld was a really dumb move on your part, and it was a really convenient way to let that Admiral put his plan into motion. Better think things through next time, Khan."
Yup. Think about that for a second. Set aside everything you know about Khan from the previous incarnation. Just think about what the movie actually tells you -- this is a man who wants to get his super soldier family back and will do whatever it takes to do it.
So why does anything in the movie happen again?
EDITED TO ADD MORE UGH-O
I'm also not thrilled with the technology inflation we get here. As of the end of this movie the Trek universe now has a transporter that can beam you across the galaxy and an almost infinite supply of magic blood that cures all diseases and brings people back from the dead.
Where do you go from there?