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Why not just create a new villain?
Posted on 05/30/2013 9:12:47 PM PDT by garjog
My Review of Star Trek Into Darkness -- short version: wait to rent it.
Long version: Disappointingly annoying.
What follows could be considered a spoiler, but there is nothing original in this film, so there is nothing that can be spoiled. Sorry.
We went to see Star Trek into Darkness on Saturday. Very crowded and had to sit close. I was an original fan, captivated by the television series in the late 1960s, with Star Trek scrap books and posters, models of space ships and everything.
There are serious problems with the Into Darkness script that are not merely anathema to Trekkies. First we discover that the villain is a famous one from the original series. He has a British rather than Latin accent and doesn't look at all like the other character. So the casting was wrong. But, we are baffled how this villain will re-appear in the future of the life of the crew who begins the Five Year Mission at the end of the film. Won't they all know who he is?
Also, a tribble appears. But, we don't see tribbles until the crew is well into their mission in the future. It is a life form that they discover in their voyage, which this crew hasn't begun.
THEN Spock has a romantic relationship with Uhura. Wrong. Officers in the military, or any professional, are not going to be kissing each other on duty. And we all know that Vulcans have a mating ritual that occurs every seven years. Vulcans don't date. This is out of character for Spock. (You know that a focus group of writers said that they had to add romance).
In the same way this dog's breakfast of a script adds a new female character, an admiral's daughter, as a "second science officer", apparently to add romance to planned sequels and perhaps for gender equity. So, in addition to Kirk, Spock and Bones, we now have a hot blond babe. This is like adding a fourth female Musketeer to please feminist reviewers .
Then Kirk is killed by radiation and resurrected exactly like Spock in one of the first Star Trek films -- that is taking allusion to other films a bit too far. It is more like cutting and pasting.
MORE.
Star Trek shows often made commentary on social or international controversies. Into Darkness apparently is a tip to the Truthers because the Admiral uses deception to purposefully start a war. Every story needs conflict, but to moralize that the war on terror was started by Bush is just plain stupid (and insulting on memorial day).
ALSO, Into Darkness begins with a suicide bombing in which we are led to sympathize with the suicide bomber. He HAD to do it, see? (No, committing suicide and killing 40 innocent people to get what you want is immoral.)
And Chris Pine doesn't look or act like a military trained captain. He looks like an actor rather than a commanding leader.
Finally the show is two hours long, too loud and has long close cuts of faces better suited for television. I could tell that my wife Teresa wanted to walk out about an hour into the show.
Positives: wonderful special effects and endearing imagery that reminds us of what we love about the Star Trek universe.
Let's hope that each and everyone of the writers of this twisted, just-plain-wrong insult of a film are replaced before the next sequel.
Why not just create a new villain?
Karl Urban definitely channels DeForest Kelley.
He also played Eomer in Lord of the Rings and is from New Zealand.
I agree. Shatner's Kirk became Captain of the flagship at an early age because he studied and was serious in his youth. Pine's Kirk is the class clown who in no way should be trusted with anything breakable. The audience seems to remember Shatner's Kirk as a lone wolf, but looking at the old episodes, it is mostly unmerited, especially compared to Pine's Kirk. Chris Pine takes it to an extreme it doesn't deserve. If they reboot the series again, I fully expect the Enterprise to be manned by those singing chipmonks.
” time to give up on this whole debacle, after all the original Star Trek is a lefty’s wet dream”
Did you notice that they place a transgender character at the helm on the bridge?
How progressive of them.
The blonde, while not functional in this movie, actually has a reason to be there in the timeline, so I let that pass. She is Carol Marcus, who will have a fling with Kirk and have a son, and then go off and invent the Genesis device with her son in time for the Wrath of Khan.
I won’t see it if Whippie Goldberg’s not in it, and that’s that!
“This Star Trek universe is an alternate one. “
OK. Good point. I forgot that. I wrote this quickly with not a lot of research.
Now I remember that the new Star Trek was meant to be an alternative universe. That could explain the plot inconsistencies.
The new Khan doesn’t have to be like the old one. The new Kirk can be a playboy instead of sharp by the books guy. A hot babe can be a main character.
But, it seems like a cop out for script writers.
After two weeks, that movie has deteriorated into a series of bright flashes and some cuts of movement with no form, and lens flares. But still, Carol Marcus in her underwear is one of the few things I can actually remember seeing.
Not all of them. Khan needs to be pretty much the same, because he took over a third of the world back in 1993. Then he escaped in his pods to float for 300 years. 300 years later is when the alternate universe forks off, so why would Khan look different?
Spoiler Alert...I just want to give fair warning...
Overall, I liked it a lot, even more than the 2009 Star Trek movie, which I also liked. Here’s a rundown on what I liked, and also a few things that I didn’t like as much. Surprisingly, I really liked Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain, even though he didn’t match up very well in terms of the established character of Khan from previous appearances. He was very effective in projecting a character that was believably menacing, an opponent that would be difficult to defeat. In fight scenes, he actually seemed convincing as someone who has been genetically engineered to be five times stronger than ordinary humans. I liked the new Engineer Scott quite a bit...he was more than just a bit player in this one, and the scriptwriters, and the actor, succeeded in making him likably vulnerable, funny, and brilliant all at the same time.
The things I didn’t like quite as much...Chris Pine as Captain Kirk is ok, but just not believable as a starship captain...he doesn’t have the gravitas (or the ridiculous overacting either) of William Shatner. Chris Pine is 32, but looks younger, and at times, he almost seems like a teenager. Zachary Quinto as Spock...he’s actually ok too, but his character doesn’t even seem like he’s making any effort at all to reign in his emotions...he’s just too angry or irritated all the time. For me, this just doesn’t quite work for a character that is supposed to be half-Vulcan. When Leonard Nimoy showed any emotion as Spock it worked really well, because even the slightest display of emotion stood out, and was effectively amplified against the predominant backdrop of Vulcan passiveness.
The engine room death scene didn’t work very well, and they shouldn’t have even tried to do it. When Spock died in the 1982 Wrath of Khan, it was very powerful emotionally (for me anyway), partly because there was a strong friendship built up over years between Kirk and Spock. In Star Trek, Into Darkness, the scene had almost zero emotional effect when Spock had to watch his friend Kirk die...these two ‘friends’ barely knew each other in this alternate Star Trek timeline. In fact, it felt really cheap that they even tried to pull a reverse Spock-Kirk death scene, almost like they were trampling on something sacred.
Here is another problem I just heard on another review. We are told that the frozen dudes in the drones are 300 hundred years old. But, that would mean that they were frozen in 1995.
” She is Carol Marcus, who will have a fling with Kirk and have a son, and then go off and invent the Genesis device with her son in time for the Wrath of Khan. “
Right. You are much better informed. I should have done a bit more research. Just jotted down my feelings of dislike after seeing it.
We’re not going to get the perfect movie so we have to take what they give us. That said, I won’t get my hopes up too high when I eventually see this thing. The scene about the suicide bomber will bother me.
I'm making a list of JJ Abrams fans, reading between the lines, I'm wavering on adding you, I'm not convinced you are one of his biggest fans.
That would be a safe assumption.
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