Star Trek Into Darkness
May. 26th, 2013 01:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jetpack_monkeyThis 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.
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.
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Date: 2013-05-26 11:37 pm (UTC)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*)