Star Trek: Into the Darkness

[auriaephiala]

I liked this, the second installment in the Star Trek film reboot, better than the first. On the other hand, I borrowed it on DVD from the library, showing exactly how urgently I needed to see it. On the other hand, I had been checking the new DVD bins for it for a while...

What I liked about it:

• Benedict Cumberbatch, whom I'm sure had an absolutely wonderful time playing a deep-dyed villain, and who managed to give at least a semblance of believability to said character's seriously confused, confusing, and unclear motives. And who listened to the fight choreographer enough to look like an action hero. Still, it was disappointing to see him play a character without a trace of humour or self-analysis.
• lots of screen time and plot opportunities for Uhura, who is again played by the excellent Zoe Saldana
• some delightful scenes for Sulu (John Cho) as acting captain, and Simon Pegg as the ever-resourceful Scotty
• and particularly how essential Spock (Zachary Quinto) is to the plot, and how resourcefully he rises to challenges
• the link to the movie Star Trek II
• "where no one has gone before"

What I did not like about it

• I have never liked James T KIrk as a character, but this version is even worse than William Shatner's. Stupid, stubborn, swell-headed, and a pain.
• the plot holes and dangling threads (exactly how did they expect to walk away from killing & injuring all those Klingons on a Klingon planet?)
• the complete ignorance of Newtonian physics in far too many scenes (Kirk and Khan would have been blown off those fast-moving air scows almost immediately).
• the idea that you could just realign the engines by kicking on them and pulling them? And that that would be sufficiently accurate? The writers could have had Kirk grab some sort of instrument and pull on cogs carefully to make the alignment -- or include something that recognizes that this would be delicate equipment that required precision.
• the idea that any spaceship would be able to fly with that many holes blown in it (tho, to be fair, this was a problem throughout the Star Trek oeuvre).

What I really did not like about the DVD:

• the fact that it included an advertisement glorifying the US military and its "9/11 veterans" -- those people who invaded Iraq, perhaps? What I have really liked about Star Trek (an, in fact, a good part of this very movie) was that it did not glorify military incursions or shooting first, and was primarily about exploration and coming to rapprochements with other civilizations. I would just really like my escapism without a side of glory-hunting aggression or advocacy for police states.