Star Trek Into Darkness

[jetpack_monkey_ljarchive]

This will not be pleasant. I know a lot of you are looking to not have your squee harshed, so I've put this behind a cut.

What the fucking shit? What the fucking shit was that? It offended me as a movie lover. It offended me as a Trek fan. It offended me as a movie lover who is also a Trek fan.

I don't want JJ Abrams near Trek anymore and I'm pretty sure I don't want him near Star Wars. I really enjoyed the 2009 film, but you know, I think part of me only did so because I assumed they would move on from that particular story type and do some stories in the vein of, oh I don't know, Star Trek.

But no. Let's start with the film as a film, because honestly, the Trek fan in me is still a blinding white hot rage.

Some of the action sequences were completely unintelligible, especially the one on the Klingon homeworld. Carol Marcus's big emotional moment was ruined by the fact that she'd barely developed as a character up to this point and she'd transformed into a being entirely made of lens flare. Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Weller were both ridiculously bad. Cumberbatch in particular, with his choked up monologue and snarling anger, was almost unwatchable. I love Sherlock, so that pains me to say.

There were plot holes you could drive, well, a starship through, if I'm allowed to be cliche. What could Khan possibly hope to achieve by installing his crew into torpedoes. Originally I thought that maybe the torpedoes weren't actually armed, but apparently they were! So that was excellent planning. Good one, Khan.

Also, didn't they eject the warp core in the last movie? So how is it suddenly that a non-functional warp drive removes all critical functions from the ship? I mean, even if you don't take into consideration that Trek engineering never worked like that, it still makes no sense within the universe of new Trek.

We're moving into STID as actual Star Trek now. Which it's not. Who takes a rich universe like Star Trek and makes into Earth-centric action movie fodder? If your Star Trek movie's big climactic battle (ugh, battle) is a foot chase and a fistfight in San Francisco, you should seriously reconsider your decisions. All of them.

There's an entire galaxy out there, but you'd hardly know that if you watched STID. Sure, there's a detour to the Klingon homeworld, but that's pretty much what it amounts to. A detour.

It's like the screenwriters -- at least two of whom are notoriously awful at developing decent characters in a cinematic context -- are using the franchise as a means to make the audience fill in the characterization work on their own. Fanfiction does that, too, but it's an appropriation to continue the stories, to fix perceived flaws in their presentation, or to reconsider the characters. In good fanfiction, when you stray as far as this AU has, you make a strong effort to worldbuild so that the audience can center themselves in the new reality. Fanfiction doesn't make me feel like my fannish knowledge is being exploited to save someone else hard work. Star Trek Into Darkness does, and no amount of Alexander Courage music can soothe this seething soul.

I mean, who is Khan? What's his deal? What's his story? There's vague references here and there, but to really find out, you'd have to go watch Space Seed and Wrath of Khan. And you know what? I'd rather just watch those two.

Also, there's some serious A-level bullshit in appropriating the most emotional scene in Wrath of Khan for a cheap fucking emotional sting which doesn't even work. The two characters haven't earned it here at all and if you're propping the scene up on the residual emotions of Wrath of Khan (which is clearly what's happening here), then congratulations, you've just reminded us of a much better movie. Also, there was an easy out introduced with a heavy plot mallet midway through the film. Of course they're not going to kill Kirk.

I don't want to even get started on the Starfleet having a fucking Dreadnaught class starship (named Vengeance according to the credits). What the shit.

The whole thing is depressing, because it's a bad Trek movie, it's a bad movie, and the studio executives will probably stay this course until it stops making money. Going back to thoughtful, Roddenberry-inspired Trek will probably happen someday, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll just keep watching what I have. They can't kill the old shows and movies.
 

DW Post: http://jetpack-monkey.dreamwidth.org/471749.html ( comments). Comment at either location.

Comments

[destina.livejournal.com]

There is no way I am going to watch this movie. I just can't. I was already traumatized by the casting of Khan and the ridiculous coyness about that (like they knew how badly they had fucked it up even before the movie was finished), and every review I've read from someone who really loves Trek is just crushing my soul, so. No way am I sitting through it, and that pains me SO MUCH, because I have been a hard-core Trek fan almost since birth. It's especially annoying that they can't even get minor technical details right - like they don't realize that Trek fans notice everything. EVERYTHING. Meh.

[diannelamerc.livejournal.com]

FWIW, as an old-school, hard core Classic Trek fan... I loved it.

"Who takes a rich universe like Star Trek and makes into Earth-centric action movie fodder?" Um, Classic Trek?

Many, if not most, of your objections were standards in the Classic Trek: Philosophy snuck in between a lot of action-hero sequences. Rules flaunted left and right. Very Earth-centric, for all that they were supposedly on a long-term voyage away. It sounds like you're looking for a more NextGen Trek-Verse, which is very different, and this very much is not. (Both were "Roddenberry-inspired", the later was *far* more "thoughtful" about it than the former.)

Other of your objections, well, I simply don't agree with. *shrug* I liked the twist on the emotional WoK sting--how they *didn't* go all-out with it (because the characters hadn't earned it, and they had a clear solution waiting), but touched on it as a "similar situations tend to lead to similar results", and that both were admittedly trying a "What Would X Do?" approach that lead even more neatly to the role reversal.

And I loved what they did with Khan. (And think Cumberbatch did a great job.) Now I'm stuck with knowing SS and WoK cold, so I can't speak to whether those who hadn't seen them would be completely lost on Khan or not, but I had thought there was enough background. The events of WoK never happened here, so none of that is relevant to this Khan to begin with. He was never exiled to Ceti Alpha IV, he never lost anyone he cared about (they're still in those 72 pods), and he never spent years being forgotten and abandoned to die slowly. (Really Starfleet? You didn't notice a planet *going missing* in a system you had charted??? That's just cold.)

Throwing all that out, as we must for this, I think they covered the basics well enough--super genetically engineered humans were created, ended up scaring the hell out of their creators, were flash frozen to neutralize them as a threat, ended up somehow (blame incompetent black-ops procedures) lost, untracked, and drifting in a derelict ship in space somewhere for three centuries. Found by a manipulative warmonger who held the crew hostage to force their leader to obey him and had no *clue* how very outmatched he was.

I was fascinated by the very different sort of Khan that existed having never experienced any of the events of either SS or WOK. What if someone with fewer scruples than the Enterprise crew had found Khan and tried to use him to their own ends? He'd been forcibly put in a coma 300 years before and been secretly awakened, what, maybe five years before? He'd adapted to the new world because that's what he does. He'd seen through Marcus' motives, because he's a lot smarter than Marcus. He'd made his own contingency plans focused on taking over the nearest big ship, rescuing and reviving his people, and taking over the universe--starting with his own home world and the place he'd been awoken and kept prisoner: Earth. ("Space Seed" plot/motivation checklist: check, check, and done.)

And just a factual correction: The torpedoes weren't armed... until Scotty pulled out the people, stuck in warheads, and armed them, thus using Khan's one emotional weakness (wanting his people back safe with him) to blind him long enough that he missed considering that "his torpedoes" might not have the same contents he left them with. I loved that it was his one demonstrated emotional vulnerability that they used to take the (otherwise) completely heartless, unmovable, super genius down. (Not random bad luck, or one of the crew being an Mary-Sue even *more* super genius, just 'cause, or them finally managing to reach his buried soft squishy heart, or the vague superpower of being the heroes--as many, many movies do.) Pretty nice writing right there, IMO.

[diannelamerc.livejournal.com]

And, one thing I will never not-love them for in this series is nailing Spock's character. He is *not* Data. He is not emotionless. The Vulcans embraced logical non-emotion centuries ago because their own natural emotionality and violence scared the ever-loving hell out of them and almost destroyed them completely. Now even the pure Vulcans are naturally creatures of seething emotion kept in insanely careful, constant control by Sarek's teachings: centuries of tradition and a lifetime of vigilant training. Spock, being half-human, raised with a human mother, and living among humans instead of Vulcans from what Vulcans at least would consider a very early age, is pretty damned remarkable in keeping the kind of respectable control that he does manage.

The fact that these movies, in keeping with the best old-school writers, *remember* that the "Vulcans feel no emotion" is carefully cultivated, bullshit propaganda, makes me just want to love and hug them. It's very Avengers' Hulk, really: They're emotional *all the time*. (Although they'd die rather than admit it... and how illogical is that, hmm? :) They've just got an amazing amount of hard-earned, iron-willed control of themselves.

There's a reason I've always loved Spock and been lukewarm at best on Data: Someone constantly struggling to live up to (and often re-evaluate) the ideals by which they are determined to live their lives is a hell of a lot more interesting (to me) than confused fish-out-of-water. (The characters in many ways served the same function in the crew, but were in essence complete opposites, which far too many people never seem to *get*.. --[Sorry, Classic FanGirl rant at too many TNGers who think Spock is just "Classic Data" escaping. Reining that back in now. :)

Anyway, I'm truly sorry the movie was such a disappointment for you. Especially contrasted with how much I loved it (especially, ironically, the "philosophical" parts they played with).

I'm very much looking forward to the next one, and I have no problem with letting them loose on Star Wars, considering I have far less emotionally invested in that universe, and SW has always been very straightforward "space opera adventure" with precious little attempt at anything philosophical in it at all. Honestly, I think it would be hard to screw it up and that any actually addressing of philosophical issues would only be an improvement. (I would dearly *adore* seeing the Jedi actually get called on the blatant oxymoron/hypocrisy of "Only a Sith speaks in absolutes", and actually have to recognize the irony in acknowledging that light and dark are balances and will always be equal--and then gunning the Sith down to two and being surprised when the Jedi are then promptly carved down to two. *eyeroll*)

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

I am actually comparing it to original Trek, which far more than TNG and the other post-TNG series, actually went out and explored strange worlds and new civilizations. You know, they boldly went. And when they did, they did social commentary and philosophy and all those things the new movie series is missing.

And the original Trek was *never* Earth-centric. They went to Earth three times in 79 episodes, all of which were time travel eps. It wasn't until the movies that they started hanging around Earth and even then half the time it was just a jumping off point.

I think that a lot of the interpretation of Khan relies on how well Cumberbatch worked. I don't think he did at all, so we'll have to agree to disagree here. I will note that Khan still doesn't stand on his own. You still have to extrapolate his motivations from his character's reaction under different circumstances.

Also, the film is incredibly unclear as to how much of the early events of the movie are Admiral Marcus's plot and how much of it is Khan going rogue. I still have no clue.

The torpedoes had to be armed. Marcus wouldn't have given them to Kirk if they were not. By Khan's own confession, he was caught installing his people in the missiles, so Marcus knew they were in there. So they were armed. Unless there's a specific line of dialogue contradicting that, but if there is, then it makes even less sense, because there was no freaking time to pull all of those bodies out and put explodey material in.

[diannelamerc.livejournal.com]

Well, then we'll just continue to disagree. :)

(And I am sorry that it was such a disappointment to you. That sucks beyond the telling, regardless of why.)

I would argue that the social commentary was neither as all-pervasive in TOS as you suggest, nor as absent as ITD.

I see a need to extrapolate motivations to generally be a good thing in characters, and in keeping with the thought-fodder you see lacking in this. (But again, I can't speak to working from a blank slate on Khan--although I will admit I believed them when they said they weren't doing Khan and only realized it must be at least a Khan-type character when he started handing the Klingon patrol their asses. And up to that point I was still doing fine.)

Again, I don't think avoiding a "here's what happened" layout of how exactly Marcus and Khan's plans interacted is a bad thing. Skipped on screen because it doesn't technically matter to the plot, but gives great fodder for later fan discussion and argument--which is TOS all the way!)

I admit to a three-weeks' delay in watching it meaning I don't remember the specifics as clearly as I might. I spent the entire beginning of the movie thinking those torpedoes were designed to backfire when fired from next to the warp core and Khan was counting on the "fire and take him down" plan to explode the Enterprise... after that I kept switching theories on the nature of those torpedoes every five minutes.

I would, however, argue that there was indeed enough time between when they first learned what was in the torpedoes and when they were beamed to Khan to trade his crew for explosives. But there was clearly time to pull all the bodies out, they did it. (I would guess a mass internal transporter beaming and Scotty pulling that part off in about 5 minutes flat, no problem.)

Marcus knew they were in there, and hence held them hostage, threatening to dump them or launch them into something, not explode them. There would be no particular reason for Marcus to have put explosives in there originally (they were unneeded for the threats he was making)and every reason for Khan to avoid it.

I gotta disagree, I don't think there's a line of dialog _supporting_ that, and no reason for them to be.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

I think leaving this at an agree to disagree point is good. I'm actually finding more things that piss me off about STID in the course of this discussion and that list is already brimming full.

[deejay.livejournal.com]

Ayup. Saddest I have ever been in a movie theater in my life; I found myself furiously facepalming as I overheard scads of Trek fans all around me (all ages and genders) either yelling out their gasps of dismay or outright LAUGHING derisively at the screen. I just felt so embarrassed for everyone involved. ={

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

This film is really just a prime example of the shift in dramatic story-telling over the past ten years or so. It used to be that if you had a good, dramatic story with characters you wanted to build up, you made a movie, and if you had a bunch of characters who just kinda shot stuff up and had adventures, you made a TV serial. Now, that's been reversed. You get on TV to show characters develop over long term, because audiences have shown they love that sort of thing and will continually watch it, while you make big explodey movies that people can show up for a few hours and turn their brains off.

[davetheinverted]

FWIW, we fanwanked why Cumberbatch didn't really work *as Khan* by deciding that he *wasn't*. Marcus thawed one pod; he didn't get Khan, he got Khan's first officer. This not only explains the rather glaring ethnicity issue, it also explains why this "Khan" is laser-edged hardass with none of the easy charisma that Montalban brought to the role. He may call himself Khan, but he does that *once*, and not the full name. We think he's sort of taking on the role of Khan in his absence.

Dav2.718

[diannelamerc.livejournal.com]

FWIW, it's even easier than that:

"Kahn" isn't necessarily a name. Historically it was a title, akin to "Chief", used throughout a wide swath of Central Asia.

The guy in the brig in STITD never said he was Khan Noonien Singh. Spock Prime is the one who made that leap (presumably from the similar circumstances) without any proof at all. (The fact that the guy in Space Seed gave such a full 'name' beginning with that word certainly makes it plausible that he was actually using it as a title.)

This could have simply been another ship of frozen superhumans from the Eugenics Wars who were serving under their own Khan (personal name unknown).

[davetheinverted]

That could also work...


Dav2.718