sabotabby | Star Trek: Into Darkness

A quick review, 'cause I have a long day tomorrow.

I...didn't hate it? I kind of thought I would. I didn't think it was actually a good Star Trek movie, but as a summer blockbuster with exploding spaceships, it was highly entertaining. I don't think a good Star Trek movie is actually commercially viable, and it also requires a good series, which we don't have at the moment. (What I wouldn't do for a DS9 movie, but that's never gonna happen.)

The puzzling thing about JJ Abrams' reboot is how fundamentally embarrassed it seems to be about the source material. Sure, there are winks and callbacks to TOS, but if you want an indication of what I'm talking about, calculate the actual on-screen time any of the characters are in the iconic uniforms. (Well, except for Uhura and that mini-dress. Not that she doesn't have the legs for it.) Kirk in particular seems to get into a leather jacket at the earliest opportunity. ("This can't be an official Starfleet mission!" Right.) And everything has to be constantly moving, lest the summer blockbuster audience get bored. At least he's limited most of the lens flare to the bridge scenes.

More central, however, is how the space exploration and meeting exciting alien thing—the core purpose of the original series and those that followed—is also faintly embarrassing to a modern director and a modern audience. There has to be a terrorism allegory, because sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi isn't relevant. The movie itself takes a fairly progressive stance in terms of the War On Turr, but whatever message it's trying to send is buried under the cool explosions.

(I like explosions, and so I enjoy this. But. This is why it's not a Star Trek movie.)

Stuff I liked:
• The new Starfleet uniforms. Um. Umf. Can we be wearing these all the time now? Like, I would wear those not even to be a nerd; they just look really great. Also Cumberkhan's various outfits were all really good.
• New design for the Klingons. I approve. I could even maybe get interested in the Klingons if they continue to be actually menacing and alien-looking.
• The opening sequence admittedly made no sense and was vaguely racist, but it was hella pretty.
• Acting Captain Sulu. Can we kill off Kirk and make Sulu captain?
• Chekov's look of abject terror at "go put on a red shirt." Also his goggles. It's a good look.
• Uhura actually getting to do some stuff and even shoot things.
• That weird looking bald alien/robot/whatever it was on the bridge, and the fact that in every scene, he did something else that was mildly weird and disturbing.
• Scotty having actual morals and acting like someone out of Star Trek.
• Cumberbatch was pretty good. I would have liked it if he was supposed to be someone other than Khan, for so many reasons, but honestly, if he's going to wear a long black coat and punch things, I'm going to be happy.
• In a similar vein, I'll pretty much watch Peter Weller painting a wall and be entertained.
• I liked the glimpses of Future London; unlike most sci-fi depictions of real cities, they kept some of the original architecture and tried to make the space-age buildings fit in coherently, with varying degrees of success. I'll buy it. I also liked the glimpse of Mickey from Doctor Who. <3 Mickey.
• I liked that guy's head exploding.

Things that make me go o_O
• Well, mainly that this didn't want to be a Star Trek movie.
• Cold fusion doesn't work that way.
• The natives weren't supposed to see the Enterprise. How did they not see it descending from the sky and going into the water to hide?
• Carol Marcus is supposed to be a scientist (but not that kind of scientist) but doesn't figure out that her father is immediately going to beam her off deck because she's a fucking idiot.
• Why do they have a tribble? Singular tribble, I mean. Have we forgotten about what tribbles do?
• Wouldn't blood from any of the human popsicles work? Why did they need Khan in particular?
• So basically anyone can be revived from the dead if they're quick enough about it now, right? Like, maybe the many, many other crew members who died besides Kirk?
• The chain of command doesn't work that way.
• A clear motive for Admiral RoboCop might have been nice. A motivation for why his crew was going along with it would be even better.
• Don't even get me started on the torpedos and how they didn't make any sense.
• It's a sign of progress when a white man can play an Indian character formerly played by a Mexican actor. How far we've come with affirmative action.
• Spock yelling, "KHAAAAAAAAN!" Only Shatner is allowed to do that.
• Seriously, not every movie needs to be about fucking terrorism.

Okay, so you have the Wrath of Khan, basically, but without any of the things that made that movie work. There's no history between Khan and Kirk. Everyone's still really young, so there's not any of the pathos that the characters are aging beyond their usefulness. Kirk and Spock are supposedly friends, but we don't see any evidence of this. (We do see homoerotic tension, though; thanks for putting that back in, JJ.) We, the audience, have a stake in it only because we're familiar with the original versions of all these characters, but their interaction completely lacks dramatic weight. And problems largely get solved, not through tough emotional choices, but by punching stuff.

Since a Star Trek movie about, you know, boldly going where no man has gone before, is not ever going to happen, and since studios won't take a risk on a big budget sci-fi movie that isn't part of some known franchise, I'm going to shrug off whatever nerd rage and just enjoy big dumb movies for what they are. Be honest, it's still more fun than Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And most of the others. I admit that I have terrible taste and my favourite is actually the one with the whales, but I have a feeling they won't try to remake that one.