My review of Star Trek: Into Darkness(re-posted from my old blog)
It is a sign of my age that I saw this film on “standard” opening night, as opposed to late-nite sneak preview opening night two days earlier...and saw it in the company of ten teenagers students who are barely more than a third my age, and from whom my casual statement that I saw the original Wrath of Khan when it came out in theaters elicited gasps of awe...although whether pitying or reverent, I chose not to examine too closely.
I will say that, as with JJ Abrams' handling of its predecessor film, St:ID was a fun ride that did not in any way defecate on the near-holy phenomenon that Trek has become to so many people of (brr, dare I say it?) “my generation.” Leaving aside the proliferation of modern colloquialisms (everyone curses with “shit,” uses expressions like “throwing me under the bus”...I realize we use plenty of far-outdated expressions in our language today, but it's just a shift from Trek as we know it, Jim), I was once again impressed that Abrams didn't make a “for Trekkers” film and yet still did nothing in this film that contradicted Trek continuity (and he certainly could have, given that the last film established quite clearly that we're now in an alternate timeline and all bets are off). In fact, the nods to Trek canon, particularly the events of Wrath of Khan as they played out the “first time,” were substantial – from offhand mention of Harry Mudd, Christine Chapel, Carol Marcus, Tribbles...and of course, the “radiation chamber death scene,” and Mr. Scott sabotaging the Excelsior (ok, they called it the Vengeance in this film, but the ship was clearly a visual homage, albeit re-done in Michael Bay's jagged-ball-of-tinfoil style a bit).
Abrams actually went to great pains to make the departures in this history entirely plausible – the Federation basically shat its pants when that Romulan ship from the future wiped out Vulcan and most of the fleet, so they find Khan and intentionally wake him up decades earlier than Kirk would have in the original timeline, and predictable havoc ensues. The conscious reversals are a nice touch – Spock tricks Khan this time, Kirk “dies” in the reactor room, Spock screams “Khaaaaannn,” and, in an almost unheard-of aside conversation with Carol Marcus, we hear that Christine Chapel pined uselessly after Kirk, as opposed to Spock.
The acting remains good (Quinto, of course, is beyond good)...especially considering the actors have the task of embodying the essence of these established characters, as portrayed by previous actors with distinctive styles. They do just fine. The visuals? Gorgeous, and, thank the lord, far less inundated with lens flare. Starfleet tech continues to manage to look both true-to-old-school-retro and believably futuristic, which I know is a hard balance to achieve. True to Abrams' grittier style, whenever hull breaches happen, people get sucked, screaming, into space...something we always knew must have been going on but from which every Trek series always shielded us. I'm okay with this...it makes us all a little less cavalier and a little more conflicted when the Enterprise goes into battle.
What follows next isn't so much a complaint as a pointed observation: the homoeroticism factor between Kirk and Spock, always present in an understated way originally, takes front and center in this film. In fact, it's practically the entire film. To the point where Uhura is pissed off because Spock clearly feels a passion for Kirk that he cannot summon for her. The thought of Kirk dying sends him first into tears, then into a murderous rage – Uhura, by contrast, might as well be window dressing, the barest of “beards.” Kirk, too, gets just one bed scene, and in it he's ignoring the protest of his two naked catgirl companions to answer a call from his male mentor. Women are clearly an afterthought in these men's minds, at best.
I've no problem with that – this film actually “boldly went” farther in exploring male vulnerability, especially in the character of Kirk – than I've seen in most action films. No, the fact that women are clearly an afterthought in THE ENTIRE MOVIE was more than a little striking. Uhura does absolutely nothing except nag and henpeck Spock, scream in terror and cry. Even the one time she arguably is the best qualified crew member for the given crisis, when she has to talk down the Klingon sentries in their own language, she fails miserably and has to be rescued by male badass fighting (now, I know Uhura was always kind of useless, but I expected more from our own more enlightened era - I mean, every other crew member, even idiot Chekov, got at least one moment to shine). Carol Marcus is almost as bad – this supposedly brilliant weapons scientist panics during torpedo disarming and just rips out a bunch of wires, saving the day by dumb-luck accident. During the fight with Khan aboard the enemy ship's bridge, he kicks her once and she screams like he's ripped out her kidneys with a spoon, and then is out of the fight...while Kirk gets pummeled ninety different ways by Khan, never does more than grunt, and keeps fighting as if he's a video game character who is perfectly functional no matter how low his health bar gets, until he suddenly dies. Or how about when this "brilliant scientist" feels her dad's ship beginning to beam her off, and tries to RUN? Run. From a transporter beam. Oy vey. And of course, the completely unnecessary underwear scene.
Ok, so Uhura and Marcus are idiots...but at least they're in the movie. I admit I didn't have a rewind option, but I don't recall seeing ANY female officers, security guards, anything, period, on the Enterprise (I think the "gathered admirals" scene at the beginning may have had a woman in the corner of the screen for a second). I don't know if I'm allowed to count the transgendered man/woman at helm. Nice to see that Earth's military has no qualms about that, or homosexuality at its highest ranks, but they apparently took a major backslide in accepting women? (Then again, I do remember Janice Lester in the Original Series with her complaints that a woman could never become a captain, so maybe JJ Abrams is just being true to the gender norms espoused back then...but I'm not really buying that). Oh boy does this movie fail the Bechdel Test.
So, misogyny aside, the only other major issue I had with the film is a bugbear far too common to scifi: the future isn't' “different” enough. Twenty-third century Earth seems to look and function precisely like 2013, except cars float and there are more skyscrapers. People dress the same, have the same habits, inhabit public spaces in the same way...which is of course ludicrous. Look at how a glimpse at public spaces in 1950 seems like a foreign culture to 2013 (from attire to gender norms, from penetration of advertising to technological innovations)...I'm just not buying it. I know it helps us empathize with the danger these people are in – they look “like it could be us!” - but there was a reason, I think, that Trek has traditionally gave us very few glimpses of Earth, so as to avoid having to illustrate the transformative implications of so much Trek technology. For example, we got offhand comments from Sisko in DS9 about “using up his whole semester's transporter rations” visiting home in his academy days...so where are the public transporter booths? Why so many vehicles when transporters should obviate that? Why are people carrying briefcases, for pity's sake, when you can either transport or replicate whatever you need when you arrive at your destination? Etc. Etc. It interrupted the fiction, which was annoying. But you can't have everything.
And of course, I have a couple of minor complaints: Khan is a whiteboy now, which doesn't quite make sense with his ambiguously Asian name (Khan Noonien Singh)...at least Ricardo Montalban's swarthy Latin-ness made him look reasonably “ethnic” of some sort. But Benedict Cumberbatch is simply too awesome for words, so I let that one slide. Ditto the inexplicable fact that Earth, once again, appears completely defenseless unless the Enterprise saves it, because that has been an irritatingly unbelievable trope of Star Trek for ages. I mean, come on – two starships are whaling the crap out of each other within the Moon's orbit of Earth, and Starfleet sends no one to investigate? (Remember, this time the rest of the fleet hasn't been wiped out by the Romulans as in the first movie...I mean, come on, we SEE plenty of other starships when Enterprise leaves for Klingon space). When the Vengeance is falling through the atmosphere to smushify half of San Francisco, no one down below thinks to blast it out of the sky or put up a shield or something?
It wouldn't bother me so much except the Klingons clearly didn't suffer from this stupidity: a tiny trading vessel penetrates Klingon airspace in a freaking uninhabited area of Qo'Nos, and they send half a dozen Birds of Prey after it. Of course, maybe this is part of Admiral Marcus' point about the Federation needing to militarize – they're too complacent, too naïve about how dangerous the universe can really be. But still. (I suppose that might also explain the slightly Nazi-esque new look of Starfleet uniforms, what with the hats).
In the end, though, what I liked most about this movie was how it kept true to Trek's vision of “finding a better way,” even when aired in our post-9/11 “keeping us `safe' justifies any twisted shit we do” world. In fact, that philosophy is the active antagonist force throughout the film, and Kirk is at his most heroic when he chooses, time and again, to clamp down on his instincts for vengeance and take the moral high ground (refuse to fire on Qo'Nos, give Khan a trial rather than summary execution...something that original Kirk never did!, etc)...ironically, Kirk is better at clamping down on his baser needs for vengeance than the Vulcan Spock is, who would clearly have killed Khan with his bare hands had Uhura and McCoy not needed his blood to save Kirk. No, this movie gave us clear acts of terrorism to get us angry, and then a hero who takes a stand and says that this shit only gets perpetuated when you become like your enemy in order to defeat him...that we can't lose sight of what we're defending as we take steps to defend it. Kirk, who begins the film violating Starfleet's principles (the Prime Directive) to save a planet (and his first officer), understands this better than the hypocritical Admirals who chastise him for it. That, more than the Don Juan-ing and shirtless fighting, is always why we have loved Kirk.
The irony is that “actual” Trek fell victim to Admiral Marcus' vision in its latter years, from the morally creepy stuff Sisko pulled in the Dominion War to the nearly-unwatchable Xindii plotline from Enterprise, where the needs of Earth (that was even an episode title) override anything and everything else. JJ Abrams has put Trek back on track towards being a beacon of hope for us, even as he's made the Trek universe grittier and more threatening than ever.
And for that, I thank you, sir.
Grade: A
- DTW
It is a sign of my age that I saw this film on “standard” opening night, as opposed to late-nite sneak preview opening night two days earlier...and saw it in the company of ten teenagers students who are barely more than a third my age, and from whom my casual statement that I saw the original Wrath of Khan when it came out in theaters elicited gasps of awe...although whether pitying or reverent, I chose not to examine too closely.
I will say that, as with JJ Abrams' handling of its predecessor film, St:ID was a fun ride that did not in any way defecate on the near-holy phenomenon that Trek has become to so many people of (brr, dare I say it?) “my generation.” Leaving aside the proliferation of modern colloquialisms (everyone curses with “shit,” uses expressions like “throwing me under the bus”...I realize we use plenty of far-outdated expressions in our language today, but it's just a shift from Trek as we know it, Jim), I was once again impressed that Abrams didn't make a “for Trekkers” film and yet still did nothing in this film that contradicted Trek continuity (and he certainly could have, given that the last film established quite clearly that we're now in an alternate timeline and all bets are off). In fact, the nods to Trek canon, particularly the events of Wrath of Khan as they played out the “first time,” were substantial – from offhand mention of Harry Mudd, Christine Chapel, Carol Marcus, Tribbles...and of course, the “radiation chamber death scene,” and Mr. Scott sabotaging the Excelsior (ok, they called it the Vengeance in this film, but the ship was clearly a visual homage, albeit re-done in Michael Bay's jagged-ball-of-tinfoil style a bit).
Abrams actually went to great pains to make the departures in this history entirely plausible – the Federation basically shat its pants when that Romulan ship from the future wiped out Vulcan and most of the fleet, so they find Khan and intentionally wake him up decades earlier than Kirk would have in the original timeline, and predictable havoc ensues. The conscious reversals are a nice touch – Spock tricks Khan this time, Kirk “dies” in the reactor room, Spock screams “Khaaaaannn,” and, in an almost unheard-of aside conversation with Carol Marcus, we hear that Christine Chapel pined uselessly after Kirk, as opposed to Spock.
The acting remains good (Quinto, of course, is beyond good)...especially considering the actors have the task of embodying the essence of these established characters, as portrayed by previous actors with distinctive styles. They do just fine. The visuals? Gorgeous, and, thank the lord, far less inundated with lens flare. Starfleet tech continues to manage to look both true-to-old-school-retro and believably futuristic, which I know is a hard balance to achieve. True to Abrams' grittier style, whenever hull breaches happen, people get sucked, screaming, into space...something we always knew must have been going on but from which every Trek series always shielded us. I'm okay with this...it makes us all a little less cavalier and a little more conflicted when the Enterprise goes into battle.
What follows next isn't so much a complaint as a pointed observation: the homoeroticism factor between Kirk and Spock, always present in an understated way originally, takes front and center in this film. In fact, it's practically the entire film. To the point where Uhura is pissed off because Spock clearly feels a passion for Kirk that he cannot summon for her. The thought of Kirk dying sends him first into tears, then into a murderous rage – Uhura, by contrast, might as well be window dressing, the barest of “beards.” Kirk, too, gets just one bed scene, and in it he's ignoring the protest of his two naked catgirl companions to answer a call from his male mentor. Women are clearly an afterthought in these men's minds, at best.
I've no problem with that – this film actually “boldly went” farther in exploring male vulnerability, especially in the character of Kirk – than I've seen in most action films. No, the fact that women are clearly an afterthought in THE ENTIRE MOVIE was more than a little striking. Uhura does absolutely nothing except nag and henpeck Spock, scream in terror and cry. Even the one time she arguably is the best qualified crew member for the given crisis, when she has to talk down the Klingon sentries in their own language, she fails miserably and has to be rescued by male badass fighting (now, I know Uhura was always kind of useless, but I expected more from our own more enlightened era - I mean, every other crew member, even idiot Chekov, got at least one moment to shine). Carol Marcus is almost as bad – this supposedly brilliant weapons scientist panics during torpedo disarming and just rips out a bunch of wires, saving the day by dumb-luck accident. During the fight with Khan aboard the enemy ship's bridge, he kicks her once and she screams like he's ripped out her kidneys with a spoon, and then is out of the fight...while Kirk gets pummeled ninety different ways by Khan, never does more than grunt, and keeps fighting as if he's a video game character who is perfectly functional no matter how low his health bar gets, until he suddenly dies. Or how about when this "brilliant scientist" feels her dad's ship beginning to beam her off, and tries to RUN? Run. From a transporter beam. Oy vey. And of course, the completely unnecessary underwear scene.
Ok, so Uhura and Marcus are idiots...but at least they're in the movie. I admit I didn't have a rewind option, but I don't recall seeing ANY female officers, security guards, anything, period, on the Enterprise (I think the "gathered admirals" scene at the beginning may have had a woman in the corner of the screen for a second). I don't know if I'm allowed to count the transgendered man/woman at helm. Nice to see that Earth's military has no qualms about that, or homosexuality at its highest ranks, but they apparently took a major backslide in accepting women? (Then again, I do remember Janice Lester in the Original Series with her complaints that a woman could never become a captain, so maybe JJ Abrams is just being true to the gender norms espoused back then...but I'm not really buying that). Oh boy does this movie fail the Bechdel Test.
So, misogyny aside, the only other major issue I had with the film is a bugbear far too common to scifi: the future isn't' “different” enough. Twenty-third century Earth seems to look and function precisely like 2013, except cars float and there are more skyscrapers. People dress the same, have the same habits, inhabit public spaces in the same way...which is of course ludicrous. Look at how a glimpse at public spaces in 1950 seems like a foreign culture to 2013 (from attire to gender norms, from penetration of advertising to technological innovations)...I'm just not buying it. I know it helps us empathize with the danger these people are in – they look “like it could be us!” - but there was a reason, I think, that Trek has traditionally gave us very few glimpses of Earth, so as to avoid having to illustrate the transformative implications of so much Trek technology. For example, we got offhand comments from Sisko in DS9 about “using up his whole semester's transporter rations” visiting home in his academy days...so where are the public transporter booths? Why so many vehicles when transporters should obviate that? Why are people carrying briefcases, for pity's sake, when you can either transport or replicate whatever you need when you arrive at your destination? Etc. Etc. It interrupted the fiction, which was annoying. But you can't have everything.
And of course, I have a couple of minor complaints: Khan is a whiteboy now, which doesn't quite make sense with his ambiguously Asian name (Khan Noonien Singh)...at least Ricardo Montalban's swarthy Latin-ness made him look reasonably “ethnic” of some sort. But Benedict Cumberbatch is simply too awesome for words, so I let that one slide. Ditto the inexplicable fact that Earth, once again, appears completely defenseless unless the Enterprise saves it, because that has been an irritatingly unbelievable trope of Star Trek for ages. I mean, come on – two starships are whaling the crap out of each other within the Moon's orbit of Earth, and Starfleet sends no one to investigate? (Remember, this time the rest of the fleet hasn't been wiped out by the Romulans as in the first movie...I mean, come on, we SEE plenty of other starships when Enterprise leaves for Klingon space). When the Vengeance is falling through the atmosphere to smushify half of San Francisco, no one down below thinks to blast it out of the sky or put up a shield or something?
It wouldn't bother me so much except the Klingons clearly didn't suffer from this stupidity: a tiny trading vessel penetrates Klingon airspace in a freaking uninhabited area of Qo'Nos, and they send half a dozen Birds of Prey after it. Of course, maybe this is part of Admiral Marcus' point about the Federation needing to militarize – they're too complacent, too naïve about how dangerous the universe can really be. But still. (I suppose that might also explain the slightly Nazi-esque new look of Starfleet uniforms, what with the hats).
In the end, though, what I liked most about this movie was how it kept true to Trek's vision of “finding a better way,” even when aired in our post-9/11 “keeping us `safe' justifies any twisted shit we do” world. In fact, that philosophy is the active antagonist force throughout the film, and Kirk is at his most heroic when he chooses, time and again, to clamp down on his instincts for vengeance and take the moral high ground (refuse to fire on Qo'Nos, give Khan a trial rather than summary execution...something that original Kirk never did!, etc)...ironically, Kirk is better at clamping down on his baser needs for vengeance than the Vulcan Spock is, who would clearly have killed Khan with his bare hands had Uhura and McCoy not needed his blood to save Kirk. No, this movie gave us clear acts of terrorism to get us angry, and then a hero who takes a stand and says that this shit only gets perpetuated when you become like your enemy in order to defeat him...that we can't lose sight of what we're defending as we take steps to defend it. Kirk, who begins the film violating Starfleet's principles (the Prime Directive) to save a planet (and his first officer), understands this better than the hypocritical Admirals who chastise him for it. That, more than the Don Juan-ing and shirtless fighting, is always why we have loved Kirk.
The irony is that “actual” Trek fell victim to Admiral Marcus' vision in its latter years, from the morally creepy stuff Sisko pulled in the Dominion War to the nearly-unwatchable Xindii plotline from Enterprise, where the needs of Earth (that was even an episode title) override anything and everything else. JJ Abrams has put Trek back on track towards being a beacon of hope for us, even as he's made the Trek universe grittier and more threatening than ever.
And for that, I thank you, sir.
Grade: A
- DTW
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