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Star Trek Into Darkness (Spoilers)
Saturday, May 18th, 2013 02:06 pmI thought that Star Trek Into Darkness was pretty damned entertaining, and I'm just sad that I couldn't go with a giant group of friends to squee over it. ( Spoilery, happy things! )
This isn't to say that it was flawless, though. ( Spoilery, critical things! )
If anyone is contemplating seeing it in 3D, I don't know if I'd especially recommend it one way or another; there were one to two sequences that were made more exciting with it, but I suspect they'd be just as good in regular old 2D.
My biggest problems, though, have nothing to do with spoilers, and have to do with the over-hyping and eventual fan backlash:
1) I got really, really sick of hearing about this film months before it opened. The back-and-forth over who Engelbert Snickersnack* was actually playing was maddening, because in the end, who he was and what he did weren't the point (although they were catalysts for some of the conflict in the story.) It's a bit like getting mad that you've been spoiled for Citizen Kane by being told that Rosebud is the sled; if you're angry about that, you've hopped on the wrong train and wasted your time. So I was annoyed that so much of the publicity and pre-show talk focused on that, instead of trying to assure fans that this AU reboot, although doing some unconventional things, is true to the spirit of the original.
2) The fan backlash has been huge and while I understand that Trekkies/Trekkers/Your-Chosen-Sobriquet-Goes-Here are often easily riled (hell, even I'm on the defensive about some stuff in the above critical part), I got very tired of reading multiple comments on multiple forae to the effect of, "J.J. Abrams/This Actor/That Actress said [stupid thing about movie] and now I refuse to see it!". My beef with this attitude is that actors/writers/staff are continually saying stupid things about well-loved shows/books/movies/series and it does not diminish those beloved things. Sarah Michelle Gellar once said that she wasn't a feminist, because feminists were yucky women who don't shave their legs, and even though this was patently facile and insulting, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer one bit. (In fact, the irony of SMG playing a feminist icon still amuses me to this day.) I understand that some fans don't like the idea of a reboot AU at all, but the bar for hating on this movie was set far too low, and a lot of fans are missing out on what the film did right.
In some ways, this brouhaha reminds me of the fuss around the remake of "Let the Right One In" a few years ago; people were refusing to see the remake because they thought the original was so good that it didn't need one. At first, I was in this camp, but then I decided to give the reboot a try, and damned if it wasn't good in an entirely different way. A good story is worth telling twice, and the difference in storytellers and their techniques is just as interesting as the story itself.
~~~
*Yebisu has been making up new names for Benedict Cumberbatch for the last few days, much to my great amusement.
This isn't to say that it was flawless, though. ( Spoilery, critical things! )
If anyone is contemplating seeing it in 3D, I don't know if I'd especially recommend it one way or another; there were one to two sequences that were made more exciting with it, but I suspect they'd be just as good in regular old 2D.
My biggest problems, though, have nothing to do with spoilers, and have to do with the over-hyping and eventual fan backlash:
1) I got really, really sick of hearing about this film months before it opened. The back-and-forth over who Engelbert Snickersnack* was actually playing was maddening, because in the end, who he was and what he did weren't the point (although they were catalysts for some of the conflict in the story.) It's a bit like getting mad that you've been spoiled for Citizen Kane by being told that Rosebud is the sled; if you're angry about that, you've hopped on the wrong train and wasted your time. So I was annoyed that so much of the publicity and pre-show talk focused on that, instead of trying to assure fans that this AU reboot, although doing some unconventional things, is true to the spirit of the original.
2) The fan backlash has been huge and while I understand that Trekkies/Trekkers/Your-Chosen-Sobriquet-Goes-Here are often easily riled (hell, even I'm on the defensive about some stuff in the above critical part), I got very tired of reading multiple comments on multiple forae to the effect of, "J.J. Abrams/This Actor/That Actress said [stupid thing about movie] and now I refuse to see it!". My beef with this attitude is that actors/writers/staff are continually saying stupid things about well-loved shows/books/movies/series and it does not diminish those beloved things. Sarah Michelle Gellar once said that she wasn't a feminist, because feminists were yucky women who don't shave their legs, and even though this was patently facile and insulting, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer one bit. (In fact, the irony of SMG playing a feminist icon still amuses me to this day.) I understand that some fans don't like the idea of a reboot AU at all, but the bar for hating on this movie was set far too low, and a lot of fans are missing out on what the film did right.
In some ways, this brouhaha reminds me of the fuss around the remake of "Let the Right One In" a few years ago; people were refusing to see the remake because they thought the original was so good that it didn't need one. At first, I was in this camp, but then I decided to give the reboot a try, and damned if it wasn't good in an entirely different way. A good story is worth telling twice, and the difference in storytellers and their techniques is just as interesting as the story itself.
~~~
*Yebisu has been making up new names for Benedict Cumberbatch for the last few days, much to my great amusement.
