Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

[Guest El Segundo Escupidor]

Note the lack of colon....

[youtube:2ze00uy5]diP-o_JxysA[/youtube:2ze00uy5]

So who do the Trekkers on CPF think the villain (Benedict Cumberbatch) is: Khan or Gary Mitchell or somebody else?

[Edgy MD]

Screaming blonde chick --- Ensign Rand?

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

idea.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Edgy MD wrote: Screaming blonde chick --- Ensign Rand?

Someone called "Carol Marcus," as per iMDB.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Screaming blonde chick --- Ensign Rand? Someone called "Carol Marcus," as per iMDB.

Carol Marcus was the woman in Star Trek II. She and Kirk had a son together.

[Guest El Segundo Escupidor]

Screaming blonde chick --- Ensign Rand? Someone called "Carol Marcus," as per iMDB. Carol Marcus was the woman in Star Trek II. She and Kirk had a son together.

That's a fan edit for sure. It probably is Rand or Elizabeth Dehner (Gary Mitchell's chick).

By the way in the official poster:



The antagonist (whoever he is) is standing directly on the (probable remains) of the Tower of London:

[Edgy MD]

I knew Batman would go bad.

It was only a matter of time.

[metsmarathon]

what... did nobody see this yet?

[TransMonk]

Too dark to see...

[Edgy MD]

Saw it last night.

Like the first one, some biggish plot holes that are easy enough to get past if you are willing to just enjoy the thrill ride, which is nicely paced as J.J. knows how to do. Man, the future is populated by the young and beautiful who just don't even know.

The villain turns out to be (redacted)=#fff5c2]Khan Noonien Singh(/redacted), but he's presented very differently from the who actor played him in the past, which would be fine if they hadn't previously put so much effort into getting lookalikes and actalikes for all the principles. The actress playing Carol Marcus maybe kinda looks like Bibi Besch, though certainly more petite, but the British accent sort of throws that aside. But you know, having a frosty and pale Brit with excellent diction will always make for a zexy zidekick as well as a daunting villain even if that villain is playing the part of a (redacted)=#fff5c2]Spanish-Mexican playing an Ottoman Turkish-Armenian-Indian Sikh(/redacted).

They throw a lot of bones to the geeks, with passing references to the likes of Harry Mudd, and also have scenes that are baldfaced references to scenes from the TV series and first film series that are now understood to have taken place in an alternate reality. Somehow, the creators seem to be saying, this timeline is unwinding similarly but differently. That's all good, I think, but at least one extended scene is such a literal re-working of a prior Star Trek scene, that it sort of chews up more space than it should, since you know exactly how it's going to unfold. This may just be my natural impatience. I had this problem the first time I saw Groundhog Day. "We know how this scene unfolds! Can you get to the part where it's different?!" But now I really can't get enough of Ned Ryerson.

One cool thing: Spock is almost as much the protagonist here as Kirk. Probably the best part.

It's a lot of fun. Not sure I'll ever get past or want to get past scenes of a villain blowing up city blocks and shattering a civilian population going about their day.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

I just have no interest in seeing this. With the whitewashing, 'splosions and beautiful people instead of substance, and the lack of actual exploring new worlds and boldly going where no one has gone before, I just don't see it as representing what is good about Star Trek.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I'll say this: with all due respect to Leonard Nimoy... I think Zachary Quinto takes Spock above and beyond what the role's originator did or could.

The plot-- apart from a lot of the callbacks to/mirroring-and-inversion of "classic"-flavor ST-- is a garbled, oversimplified mess; in the first, it was a lot more forgivable (if just as egregious), but here... it really felt like Abrams, Lindelhof and the writing staff were saving their a-material for something else (Star Wars?).

[Vic Sage]

loved it

[Edgy MD]

I like to think you could have somehow been briefer in your comments.

As to Willets' point, sure, it's about direct conflict and relationships and identity stuff and personal redemption --- as opposed to themes of exploration and discovery and ending conflict by searching for a set of values that are truly democratic and progressive, that the various TV series often tried to represent. But I think this is basically true of the film series in general --- almost entirely, in fact, since the ambitious but turgid first installment in 1979. The medium of films --- self-contained little units that they are --- probably demand those sort of conflicts: an immediate threat, a decisive resolution. On a TV show, in contrast, a broader plotline or theme can develop over an arc of several weeks or months or years, if you're lucky.

I think maybe that the films have been at their best, in that sense, when they were what the TV show wasn't. That Generations film kinda stunk. Would have maybe been a good few episodes of the TV show, though.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

It's a fair point that the Star Trek movies of the 80s & 90s were not about space exploration, but I figure if they're rebooting the series that space exploration should be in there somewhere. The two films thus far seem to be responses to terrorist attacks with a lot of earthbound action.

Generations wasn't all bad, in my opinion. I think they wrote themselves into a corner by deciding that Kirk and Picard must meet and Kirk must die (presumably under the belief that this is what the fans wanted). It kind of feels that they started with that conclusion and then tried to figure out a way to get there. All the same, I thought the movie was really good up until the point when Picard entered the Nexus and then it went off the rails.

Star Trek V was like that as well. Most people say it's all crap, but there's some really good stuff about friendship and mortality and some good action sequences. The problem is that the premise of the plot is the search to find God which just can't end well. If they find God there's no way to satisfactorily represent God on screen and if they don't find God (as happens in this film) it makes the whole story seem pointless.

So anyway, those are my redemptive readings of two Star Trek films that everyone hates, but I think are at least 2/3's good, not that anyone cares.

[Edgy MD]

That's the saddest little maudlin signoff. Come on! Buck up! People care! And it's enough that YOU care!

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Sorry, didn't mean to be maudlin. Was more a personal reflection on how much of a tangent I had gone off on.

Edited May 27, 2013 by Guest

[Vic Sage]

loved it

Edgy MD wrote: I like to think you could have somehow been briefer in your comments.

love it

[metsmarathon]

saw it loved it.

i mean, sure, there were gaping plot holes. the biggest pair of which are really...

1. how did nobody in starfleet not notice the giant supermassive militarized deathship being built next to jupiter?
2. how did they build it so quickly in response to the actions of the first movie? did i miss something? after the destruction of vulcan, marcus decides that someone like john harrison would be the perfect kind of guy to design the weapons demanded by such grave threats being posed to the federation. so he forces harrison to work for him, builds his starship (and surely tests precurser systems and has a kick-ass systems engineering process in place), trains its (admittedly minimal but not terribly bad-ass) crew, and has it mission ready basically in the time it takes kirk to screw up his captainship once. its stated that the prospective fiv year mission that the enterprise would evntaully embarq upon is super-long, so how long could he really have been out there fucking up his permanent record? a year? and they conceived, designed, concealed, and built that uss vengeance in the same time? bullshit. i know its the future, but goddamn, its gotta take longer than that to build a whole new spaceship.

everything else, i was mostly okay with, actually.

quinto is a superb spock. and i personally loved the TWOK redux thing they did there.

marcus was paper thin. he could have been much better with 15 minutes more runtime, i think. harrison could have exposited a smidge more, too.

the last fight was silly though. remember, vulcans are stronger than humans.

[Vic Sage]

not super-enhanced humans who they've already established as being superstrong.

[metsmarathon]

yeah, i suppose that i should elaborate on my last statement... the fight was silly for the whole "back of a hovercar" thing, not because sock was doing a fair job of holding his own whereas kirk could do no such thing.

i suppose it could have been elaborated upon that vulcans are stronger than humans, though obviously not stronger than superhumans. that was part of why spock went into the warp core way back in TWOK - that a human couldn't get close to the core. i did think it silly that kirk could just kick hte damned thing into place, and that with just the right final shove, it could self-align and maintain that position.

i guess one final gripe, which would have made for a far far shorter movie, and a quibble.

first the quibble. shuttlecraft sure do take the strangest flight paths, don't they? i mean, in general, they always seem to take the tourist-helicopter flight path as opposed to anything even remotely direct. though htey are really really fast, getting out to jupiter in a matter of hours? minutes?

anyways, the gripe. you're locked in battle with a starship. you've got energy weapons and torpedoes. why do they never target the bridge? certainly with the vengeance firing upon the enterprise, tehy knew exactly where the bridge was, and obviously also all the critical systems. why shoot everywhere on teh ship except the bridge, when the goal afterall was to kill the crew and destroy the enterprise? why wait till your superphaser is locked and loaded. why not just properly aim your regular phasers? i mean, i get that you want to first take out the warp drive. but then, why make swiss cheese when all you really need to do is go for the killshot? makes no sense.

[Vic Sage]

shut up.

[metsmarathon]

don't get me wrong. i really did like the movie.

maybe it's just inherent to the function of phasers that they are inherently impossible to aim. i dunno. it just irked me - i never really noticed it before, i guess because never before was it made so readily clear that the bridge of the enterprise has a big ol freaking window to space, hey, why not just shoot there? do the shields affect the aiming? because it seems that all other manner of sentitive equipment can be targeted, but not the bridge...?

its one thing to have crap aim with blasters or even torpedoes. but phasers are light-speed weapons, and at least in the final showdown, they were both at a virtual standstill in close proximity. ya gotta be able to target something. or is it just that there's some tremendous instability with harnessing such a sizeable amount of energy to make a phaser beam that aiming it is dicey and imprecise. i suppose i can go along with that. it's just never really explained in teh star trek universe, that i can recall.

i'm an engineer. i work with weapon-y things. these things bother me.

spock vs [harrison] was an excellent fight in a silly location.

[Edgy MD]

The bridge doesn't have a window, man, it's a "view screen" --- a monitor.

The hand phasers always bothered me. In the future, we'll have hand weapons that aren't particuarly more effective than a Saturday night special, but they'll make cool sound and light. Shouldn't those things be able to do auto targeting, and take out broad fields of targets?

[metsmarathon]

no, there was a scene in the movie where we zoomed right in from the outside, to see in from the bridge window. the camera then continued through the window and around the bridge so that we could see out. at least that's the cinematography that i remember.

and that's why it struck me how truly exposed they were.

[Lefty Specialist]

As a big fan, I was ready to hate this movie. But they turned the whole Wrath of Khan thing on its head with the alternate timeline, and I loved it.

You want awesome Spock acting, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkByAkAdZs#at=14

[RealityChuck]

Some absolutely stupid moments:

[*:38kg1f8k]The entire opening sequence. Lots of WTF, but the most obvious one was, have they lost remote control technology? We could send a drone into the volcano today.[/*:m:38kg1f8k]
[*:38kg1f8k]What exactly was the plan that Starfleet had to attack Khan? He's on the Klingon home world. Did he think they'd never notice a bomb going off? And who they'd immediately blame.[/*:m:38kg1f8k]
[*:38kg1f8k]Why send all 72 of the bombs when they only needed one? If the point was to get Khan to rescue his compatriots, why not make him come to them?[/*:m:38kg1f8k]
[*:38kg1f8k]How did Khan know they send those particular weapons after him?[/*:m:38kg1f8k]
[*:38kg1f8k]Did that ship have any sort of security at all? Scotty just lands at their base and is given full access. No one notices him?[/*:m:38kg1f8k]
[*:38kg1f8k]Did Starfleet know anything about security? Setting up a meeting room with glass windows (and not bulletproof glass) instead of in an underground bunker?[/*:m:38kg1f8k]
[*:38kg1f8k]Khan clearly read the script beforehand. His actions made little sense unless he knew exactly what was going to happen.[/*:m:38kg1f8k][/list:o:38kg1f8k]

That said, the movie had enough in the tank to make it a decent adventure flick, if you didn't think about things.

[Edgy MD]

Some absolutely stupid moments: 1. The entire opening sequence. Lots of WTF, but the most obvious one was, have they lost remote control technology? We could send a drone into the volcano today.[/list]

This is pretty true. I'm more calling BS on them hiding under water instead of just floating in orbit, or in the atmosphere at a discrete distance.

2. What exactly was the plan that Starfleet had to attack Khan? He's on the Klingon home world. Did he think they'd never notice a bomb going off? And who they'd immediately blame.[/list]

Well, I understood that the rogue admiral was intending to provoke a war.

3. Why send all 72 of the bombs when they only needed one? If the point was to get Khan to rescue his compatriots, why not make him come to them?[/list]

Moreso, if the plan was to kill all of Kahn's companions, why not just kill them, rather than have Kirk do it unknowingly.

4. How did Khan know they send those particular weapons after him?[/list]

The idea seems to have been to send Kirk to exterminate Khan, kill his companymen unknowingly, and provoke a war with the Klingons.

5. Did that ship have any sort of security at all? Scotty just lands at their base and is given full access. No one notices him?[/list]

Yeah, in our age of the techno-survellance state, all of Star Trek history kind of looks silly, with people creeping around each other;s ships.

6. Did Starfleet know anything about security? Setting up a meeting room with glass windows (and not bulletproof glass) instead of in an underground bunker?[/list]

Also noticeably goofy at my end.

7. Khan clearly read the script beforehand. His actions made little sense unless he knew exactly what was going to happen.[/list]

Khan knows all, even when his enemies are irrational, except how he's gonna get outfoxed on the last move.

That said, the movie had enough in the tank to make it a decent adventure flick, if you didn't think about things.

Yeah, I dunno if J.J. Abrams is a genius madmen or if our standards have fallen so far, that he's now made two mostly appreciated and appreciable Star Trek movies without about 50 gaping plot holes and implausibilities between them.

[Vic Sage]

Some absolutely stupid moments: The entire opening sequence. Lots of WTF, but the most obvious one was, have they lost remote control technology? We could send a drone into the volcano today. What exactly was the plan that Starfleet had to attack Khan? He's on the Klingon home world. Did he think they'd never notice a bomb going off? And who they'd immediately blame. Why send all 72 of the bombs when they only needed one? If the point was to get Khan to rescue his compatriots, why not make him come to them? How did Khan know they send those particular weapons after him? Did that ship have any sort of security at all? Scotty just lands at their base and is given full access. No one notices him? Did Starfleet know anything about security? Setting up a meeting room with glass windows (and not bulletproof glass) instead of in an underground bunker? Khan clearly read the script beforehand. His actions made little sense unless he knew exactly what was going to happen. That said, the movie had enough in the tank to make it a decent adventure flick, if you didn't think about things.

That was true of the last one by Abrams, as well. His shit makes no sense. I never wanted to watch LOST, and this is why.
Still, the performances by good actors in younger versions of characters we love, even retrofitting ST:II story points, makes it all more fun than it has any right to be.

[dgwphotography]

I thought this movie was a steaming pile of crap.

When I read Vic's review, it made me want to make sure I hadn't lost my mind - this is the first movie that his view has differed so much from mine.

My final take was to compare it to The Avengers; Joss Whedon's love of the material showed through in almost every scene in that movie. In this movie, JJ Abrams' lack of love for the material showed through nearly as much.