Movie: Star Trek: Into Darkness (5-17-13)

[Stickman]

[nyquillyn]

That's a lot of 'splosions.

[dimejinky99]

About to watch this at a midnight preview. Can't wait. High hopes.

[VinylGuy]

i read some bad reviews...even in web pages like aint it cool....

[McParadigm]

Even a lot of the good reviews give me cause for pause. When your great ringing endorsement is "this guy is great at blowing up set pieces," I....well....

[dimejinky99]

I am a huge star trek fan and sadly i have nothing good to say about this film other than they play faaaaar too much on the Kirk / Spock bromance. In the Star Trek vein, It's a thinly veiled war monger propaganda film and it has lots of explosions and fanboy in jokes and effects to try distract you from how meh it is.

He isnt entirely to blame but i am now dreading the new Star Wars films. This guy is fucking clueless.

[dimejinky99]

I am a huge star trek fan and sadly i have nothing good to say about this film other than they play faaaaar too much on the Kirk / Spock bromance. In the Star Trek vein, It's a thinly veiled war monger propaganda film and it has lots of explosions and fanboy in jokes and effects to try distract you from how meh it is.

He isnt entirely to blame but i am now dreading the new Star Wars films. This guy is fucking clueless.

And the corny assed 'twist' is the crappest sickener let down of all time.

Read the spoiler to save you the trauma of having to watch.

Spoiler: show

cumberbatch is Khan. Cue Kkkkhhaaaaaaaaaaaan scene

[red calzolaio]

Even a lot of the good reviews give me cause for pause. When your great ringing endorsement is "this guy is great at blowing up set pieces," I....well....

yep. Mr. Bay is also pretty great at that same thing.

never been a fan of Abrams.

[BurtReynolds]

Blame broader audiences and damn foreigners.

http://news.yahoo.com/star-trek-directo ... EA79xEDex_

[McParadigm]

I am a huge star trek fan and sadly i have nothing good to say about this film other than they play faaaaar too much on the Kirk / Spock bromance. In the Star Trek vein, It's a thinly veiled war monger propaganda film and it has lots of explosions and fanboy in jokes and effects to try distract you from how meh it is.

He isnt entirely to blame but i am now dreading the new Star Wars films. This guy is fucking clueless.

And the corny assed 'twist' is the crappest sickener let down of all time.

Read the spoiler to save you the trauma of having to watch.

Spoiler: show

cumberbatch is Khan. Cue Kkkkhhaaaaaaaaaaaan scene

Spoiler: show

Not only is that incredibly lame, but it's hilarious. They spent so much time hemming and hawing about the name of the character he'd be playing, and then they released the official version so quietly, that half the people out there are still stuck on the idea that it's Khan anyway.

[McParadigm]

It's a thinly veiled war monger propaganda film and it has lots of explosions and fanboy in jokes and effects to try distract you from how meh it is.

It seems to me like JJ Abrams’s entire understanding of how to score a “win” with a franchise piece is to emphasize physical iconography, sprinkle a liberal amount of referential quips in so that some people can feel oh so clever for having picked up on the joke, and then just make a personality-free action movie around that starting point.

I'm expecting Into Darkness to be good, mindless fun. The first Star Trek reboot was good, mindless fun. But that's sort of the problem: Abrams took something that used to be more than just good, mindless fun, and reduced it to that level....and that’s kind of a drag, to me.

[nyquillyn]

I have enjoyed all of Abrams films, but they lack style (with the possible exception of Super 8) and subtlety. Mostly, they just seem like really well made TV movies.

[B]

[BurtReynolds]

I thought people Liked his handling of the characters in the first one. I did anyway.sure they are pretty broad and cartoonish, but so are the originals. This one does sound Like its been Michael bayed, though. I think he's decent enough.

[dimejinky99]

So Spock meets himself, and is in both movies, Pike is still in there, and Abrams likes nothing better than pleasing fans.

They gotta figure out a way for young Kirk to meet old Kirk in the next one.
It's only right and proper.

[BurtReynolds]

I thought people Liked his handling of the characters in the first one. I did anyway.sure they are pretty broad and cartoonish, but so are the originals. This one does sound Like its been Michael bayed, though. I think he's decent enough.

why does my phone keep capitalizing the 'L' in "like"?

[McParadigm]

I'd rather they find a way to make Spock seem like the complex, almost unflappable guy who is perfectly capable of one-upping your pathetic little comic barbs, thank you very much, that he was before. Quinto's a good actor, but his Spock generally just seems like the nerdiest kid on the playground is hanging with the smokers and graffiti crew.

I assume most of the cutting room floor is riddled with dialog like "I can't help but notice that you initialed and dated form 11c, indicating that your itemized budget is ready for final review by a superior officer....but on form 11b, under subsection 3f, you failed to account for the number of uniform repairs your department typically accrues. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to sulk about this good long while."

[dimejinky99]

GNDN.

look it up

[BurtReynolds]

saw it. I thought it was ok. I mean, its not Star Trek, well in some ways it is, some ways it isn't, but it is a decent action flick. Most of the little twists worked for me.

Its like watching a modern PJ show. Still entertaining and not lacking on energy, but you wish they would just slow the fuck down.

On the way home it made me a little sad though. Because its not Star Trek, and it can't be. Star Trek isn't a big budget summer extravaganza. I don't blame Abrams for this. Its just the way this works. It has to justify the budget, and regular Star Trek doesn't. Its midbudget, and the midbudget is nearly dead. I... I have a lot of thinking too do...

Spoiler: show

cumberbatch is Khan. Cue Kkkkhhaaaaaaaaaaaan scene

Spoiler: show

Not only is that incredibly lame, but it's hilarious. They spent so much time hemming and hawing about the name of the character he'd be playing, and then they released the official version so quietly, that half the people out there are still stuck on the idea that it's Khan anyway.

Spoiler: show

yeah why the big secret? I just assumed it either him or someone just like him. Its not like the movie is set up for a big reveal. He just blurts it out.

[McParadigm]

saw it. I thought it was ok. I mean, its not Star Trek, well in some ways it is, some ways it isn't, but it is a decent action flick. Most of the little twists worked for me.

Its like watching a modern PJ show. Still entertaining and not lacking on energy, but you wish they would just slow the fuck down.

Everything above.

As summer popcorn goes (that's a qualifier worth rereading, folks), this movie was pretty ace. It had all the top components....a villain who wasn't just some middle management miner dude with a poorly written grudge and a ship with no lights, more flash and bang than a nudist colony during swinger season, Peter Weller looking (but, sadly, not sounding) like an unexpected Tom Waits cameo, some surprisingly emotive acting that mostly redeemed a hit and miss script, and, finally, fun and unaffecting action sequences packed with amusing one-liners and a great Hollywood love of both physics ("We're literally like a mile off the moon and the power just went out so what the hell we're FALLING INTO EARTH'S GRAVITY LOL") and shortcutting ("We're almost at war with these people just fly straight on in oh a year later we're not at all so whatevs").

None of that bothered me. Some of it probably even helped a bit. I just didn't think of it as Star Trek...more like a random post-2000 summer scifi blockbuster with a lot of Star Trek jokes tossed in....and it was fun. In fact, even though I pretended it was called "Two Guys With a Lot of Eyebrows Save the World While Simon Pegg Rethinks His Career Choices" (copyright), some of the Trek stuff actually worked in their favor. Outside of the ham ending, they mostly did Spock better this time than they did in the first one, even explaining his newfound walling off and inner turmoil pretty well when they weren't KABOOMKABOOMWAPOWing up the place. They also built the movie as a pretty good setup for why the Enterprise crew would be so loyal to Kirk during the exploration mission. So, even though it wasn't much Star Trek and wasn't worth measuring on that level, you could still lean a little on the basic ideas of those characters (not the characters themselves, mind you, as they have yet to show up in this reboot franchise).

The only things that chafed my ass were as follows:

It was so fucking proud of how nostalgic it is. It' s kind of sad when a rich and textured idea is worth little more to its new owners than as a nice backdrop for explosions and a chance to put a lot of "Hey you old fuckers remember this fucking shit because you're not 20 anymore?" stuff in. Nostalgia is just fine in very small doses...when you reach the point of aping a majority of the dialog for the pinnacle emotive moment of the movie, literally taking huge portions word for word from a completely different movie just so some person in the audience who deserves to never know happiness again can say, "Oh, dude, that's so cool, that's from...," then you've stopped having an idea and started to just sort of owe other people money. And speaking of apes, "I need to action up EVERY sequence, or people might notice that I've got nothing, so...Chris, act like you're a very angry monkey and that bit of electronics is a place where you wish you could poop. It'll play out as really powerful on film. I promise."

JJ continues to be the quintessential factory-film creator. He isn't interested in finding HIS voice....he's just assuming that you'll get moist and musky over his ability to be kinda Spielberg like in that one scene did you see how I was almost Spielberg guys I was almost Spielberg for real I

I still miss (my old man picture probably belongs here) the way that, when sets were physical events with matte paintings for wide shots, actual thought went into things beyond "What would look cool?" A ship crashes into a city (because JJ Abrams' basic Star Trek message is "fuck San Fransisco....fuck it right to death"), and it destroys more property and previously functional human meat than can currently be found in the entire Midwest. So then, in yesteryear, what would happen next? We might zoom in on this great smoke-filled disaster area, squaring off and having our big confrontation inside the ruins.

Why? Because it's visually arresting. Because it connects the significance of the two events. Because it gives weight and power to the massive loss that just occurred.

In a CGI world, however, long distance running and long jumping are apparently the new battle mode. It's like Super Mario Brothers taught an entire generation how to fight. So you, the hero, chase the bad guy for half a city block, while both of you deal with such elaborate problems as "I just broke an old woman" and "that's a big jump nevermind already made it," and suddenly you're in a place where the glass is completely unshattered and people are STILL GOING TO WORK. Fight here? Ha ha, no thanks. So you hop into a city space traffic scene so tired and corny it might belong in a Star Wars prequel, if that in turn wasn't lazily borrowed from the Fifth Element.

Why does this happen? Because, if you have to work your nuts off for your visuals, you have to think about them first. When you can literally get whatever the fuck you want by hiring some software junkies, you stop asking questions like "A million people just died an Englishman's sprint away....so why is everybody just sitting in traffic and heading in to work?" and start asking ones like "How do we keep these attentionstroke defitards from taking off their 3d glasses and going home to touch their peepees, because my god I must loathe humanity to be doing this?"

So, yeah. It IS a fun film, so long as you pretend it's just some silly nameless rollercoaster ride....which, hell, is what it is anyway, I suppose.

Right Peter?