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Star Trek Into Darkness (Spoilers)
I 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. Good Things Included:
1) Uhura negotiating with Klingons. I loved how brave she was in this scene, especially given how great the stakes were, and it's to Zoe Saldana's credit that I could completely sympathize as I watched Uhura putting aside her fear and moving forward anyway.
1a) Uhura being awesome in general, especially during that final fight scene. I'd like to think that I would have the ovaries to beam down onto a moving vehicle to save my boyfriend from a superhuman, homicidal maniac (thankfully, I've never been tested on this front, and hope I never will be!).
2) Design and spectacle. One of the things that I love Star Trek for is its vision of future technology, and this new installment did not disappoint. Cars moved along the ground like sleek fish without wheels; desktop computers didn't just look as though someone had scraped the apple logo off the back, but instead like real items that we could look forward to one hundred years down the line; and future San Francisco is a beautiful city, a tremendous mix of old and new. (There are still cable cars in future!SF!)
2a) The Enterprise itself. There's a beautiful shot towards the end where the ship emerges out of a cloud bank, battered but flying, and I realized how much that object meant, as a symbol of the story and the future it represents. Gorgeous.
3) Bones, Kirk, and Spock all bickering with one another was fantastically funny and it felt natural and good. I liked the running theme of the script that all three of them (although Kirk and Spock mostly did this) had to learn empathy in order to do what was right, not what was easy.
4) The villain is... well, he's excellent. I really don't want to spoil this, and I'm still chewing it over, so I'll just be all cryptic here.
This isn't to say that it was flawless, though.
1) The converse of #1 above is Not Enough Uhura, and really this movie's whole problem is Not Enough Ladies, Too Many Mans (to quote Flight of the Conchords.) Uhura did get several cool scenes, but I was annoyed that much of the rest of her time was taken up bickering with other characters or looking worried. Alice Eve as Carol Wallace-Marcus had even less to do, except to deliver one line that had teeth and then flirt with Kirk the rest of the time. Props to the bridge crew for being a nice mix of different people with different skin tones, but why is that just in the background? Can we please move that to the foreground, and give the ladies more to do? After this movie, I think Kirk and Spock have developed as characters quite enough, and it's someone else's turn.
2) Plot holes--wait, in the torpedos? What? Why? Yes, I know there were plot-specific reasons, but that was just preposterous. I'm sure that if I go poking at this story too hard, it will all fall apart, but it's a summer blockbuster, and I'm not looking for intricacy here. Still, in the torpedos? What? And how could our villain fall for such a simple trick at the end? Dude, what?
3) Inevitable science problems. I'm pretty sure space doesn't work that way. It was also nice to see so much of the Enterprise's engine systems (and props to the design team for making it look properly futuristic and not too industrial basement), but I'm still a little mystified how certain problems became so big, and what the hell was going on. Also, gravity. Uhm... pretty sure it doesn't work like that, either. Again--summer blockbuster, but...
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.
1) Uhura negotiating with Klingons. I loved how brave she was in this scene, especially given how great the stakes were, and it's to Zoe Saldana's credit that I could completely sympathize as I watched Uhura putting aside her fear and moving forward anyway.
1a) Uhura being awesome in general, especially during that final fight scene. I'd like to think that I would have the ovaries to beam down onto a moving vehicle to save my boyfriend from a superhuman, homicidal maniac (thankfully, I've never been tested on this front, and hope I never will be!).
2) Design and spectacle. One of the things that I love Star Trek for is its vision of future technology, and this new installment did not disappoint. Cars moved along the ground like sleek fish without wheels; desktop computers didn't just look as though someone had scraped the apple logo off the back, but instead like real items that we could look forward to one hundred years down the line; and future San Francisco is a beautiful city, a tremendous mix of old and new. (There are still cable cars in future!SF!)
2a) The Enterprise itself. There's a beautiful shot towards the end where the ship emerges out of a cloud bank, battered but flying, and I realized how much that object meant, as a symbol of the story and the future it represents. Gorgeous.
3) Bones, Kirk, and Spock all bickering with one another was fantastically funny and it felt natural and good. I liked the running theme of the script that all three of them (although Kirk and Spock mostly did this) had to learn empathy in order to do what was right, not what was easy.
4) The villain is... well, he's excellent. I really don't want to spoil this, and I'm still chewing it over, so I'll just be all cryptic here.
This isn't to say that it was flawless, though.
1) The converse of #1 above is Not Enough Uhura, and really this movie's whole problem is Not Enough Ladies, Too Many Mans (to quote Flight of the Conchords.) Uhura did get several cool scenes, but I was annoyed that much of the rest of her time was taken up bickering with other characters or looking worried. Alice Eve as Carol Wallace-Marcus had even less to do, except to deliver one line that had teeth and then flirt with Kirk the rest of the time. Props to the bridge crew for being a nice mix of different people with different skin tones, but why is that just in the background? Can we please move that to the foreground, and give the ladies more to do? After this movie, I think Kirk and Spock have developed as characters quite enough, and it's someone else's turn.
2) Plot holes--wait, in the torpedos? What? Why? Yes, I know there were plot-specific reasons, but that was just preposterous. I'm sure that if I go poking at this story too hard, it will all fall apart, but it's a summer blockbuster, and I'm not looking for intricacy here. Still, in the torpedos? What? And how could our villain fall for such a simple trick at the end? Dude, what?
3) Inevitable science problems. I'm pretty sure space doesn't work that way. It was also nice to see so much of the Enterprise's engine systems (and props to the design team for making it look properly futuristic and not too industrial basement), but I'm still a little mystified how certain problems became so big, and what the hell was going on. Also, gravity. Uhm... pretty sure it doesn't work like that, either. Again--summer blockbuster, but...
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.