Star Trek Beyond: The least bad reboot
It was fine! I didn't hate it! Time given to characterization, some funny jokes and insider references, impressive action sequences and sets and uses of relative gravity, a classic plot, nothing overwhelmingly infuriating.
I wonder how I would have felt about this movie and about the reboot series in general if Beyond had been the first installment. Would I have been less angry with the series because Beyond had fewer irritations regarding character, tone, theme and modern action movie trends? Or did it take Reboot and Into Darkness to lower my expectations enough to enjoy this one? The world may never know.
Brief thoughts on the good and the bad:
(-)
I just don't see James T. Kirk getting bored in space.
(I guess you can argue that it's consistent with his characterization in the first two movies, where he joined Starfleet on an impulse, got a captaincy way too early, handled a rapid series of action-oriented crises and personal losses in a decimated organization and could now conceivably be running up against the realities of day-to-day missions? But boredom with exploration and intercultural communication doesn't sound like the nerdy, curious, optimistic Kirk we grew up with, and it's not something Star Trek tends to focus on. Not that the latter wouldn't be interesting if done in more depth, I suppose.)
(Also, NOW Kirk wants Spock to be captain, after shouldering him out of the way in Reboot because Spock Prime told him to and despite being compromised himself in Into Darkness in the same manner that caused Spock's demotion? I suppose you can say this shows character growth and the evolution of their friendship/working relationship since Reboot, but still: argh. Will we ever see a remix where Kirk serves as Spock's first officer? So curious.)
This trend of casting black actors & actresses in SF/F and then hiding them behind alien makeup and voice effects. See also Lupita Nyong'o in Star Wars: TFA, [ETA: Oscar Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse], possibly Zoe Saldana in Guardians of the Galaxy, etc.
thedeadparrot said she enjoyed the nod to classic Trek with the theme of a Starfleet officer gone rogue, which is a good observation. I would have liked it more if we'd discovered at the start that somehow the captain of the Franklin had survived all these years and everyone debated the ethics of extending human life and losing one's humanity and the value of letting go of vengeance/hurt/anger, along with the thin unity vs. conflict stuff we actually got. (There are valid critiques of the Federation. We just didn't hear any of them.)
[ETA: Not only Idris Elba but ALSO Sofia Boutella as Jayla, JFC. I didn't know she is Algerian.]
Total inconsistency with previous reboot installments when they explained Krall/Edison's anger by saying that he had to stop being a soldier because Starfleet isn't a military organization. Did we not just struggle through two movies about how first the Narada attack and then John Whoever Harrison's so-called terrorism sparked runaway militarization?
It looked like Krall/Edison was going to have a change of heart when he saw his reflection in that glass shard and decide to help Kirk open the hatch. Disappointed he did not.
The Terran-centricity of the Federation is nothing new, but I thought it was funny that Spock mentioned it would be unfair of the Federation to show favoritism to any particular planet by building a starbase there, while Starfleet Headquarters is on Earth (for reasons, I know) and the people who run Yorktown -- which is, btw, called Yorktown -- are human along with the majority of the starship crews we see, etc.
Jayla's huge false eyelashes.
Beyond did a better job with women and with male characters' treatment of them than the last two. Even if everybody seems to have daddy issues while mothers, dead or alive, don't count. Still, a note of disappointment that it was "a woman's weakness" that gave the villain the MacGuffin piece he needed, even if it supported the movie's main theme of the importance of mutual support.
(~)
I can't wait for this ubiquitous action-film special effect to fall out of favor where things turn into a swirling cloud of dark gray metallic particles. It probably has a name. I think of it as the graphite effect. In Beyond, we got it twice: once with the swarming ships in space and again with the ancient alien bioweapon. At least they ended up making the swarming a plot point. Chattering insectoid drones with an exploitable flaw sort of based on actual math/science > red matter.
The Beastie Boys hack was funny -- if questionably plausible and hard to pick apart because things moved so fast -- particularly the shattering of the shield around Yorktown. Did it belong in a Star Trek movie? I'm still not sure. (And how did the shield-shattering not seem to have any detrimental effect on the atmosphere/environmental controls?)
Wrestling with how I feel about the inclusion of the photo of the original crew in Ambassador Spock's personal box. It felt less like emotional appropriation than Into Darkness, but it also broke the fourth wall for me because the photo was a movie promo shot. Maybe if it had been a candid? IDK. I get what they were trying to do, though, reminding new!Spock of the importance of being part of a crew with deep relationships.
I'm also iffy on the decision to crash the Enterprise. We saw it falling, sparking, in Star Trek III, and it was sad. We saw the saucer section separate in Generations and it was a wild ride through the rocky forest. Beyond had elements of both, but by virtue of repeating them, lacked the same punch. And the loss of a Starfleet flagship didn't carry the same stakes on a practical level because apparently in reboot universe starships are built so fast that the whole fleet has been replenished in the few years since the Narada massacre and then we get that time-lapse drydock construction sequence at the end? (Who's manning all those ships we don't see but assume exist, anyway? A crop of fresh Academy graduates? A bunch of qualified pilots/engineers/doctors/scientists/etc. from other planets who were given Starfleet commissions after so many experienced officers were killed?) AND YET, again, it didn't feel like a shorthand the way the radiation scene did for many people in Into Darkness. Plus, the action sequences around the breakup of the ship were great. More on that in a sec.
Odd visual parallels to Alien/Prometheus and... oh, what was the other one? Memory already fading.
We never found out what happened to that woman's crew, did we? Or was she saying she made up even that part of the story?
(+)
Among the things that felt most Star Trek to me were the discussions of mortality and lost fathers and questioning one's place in the universe. Kirk's birthday and contemplation of death and the meaning of (his) life: more thematically Star Trek II than the supposed remix was last time, down to the toast to perfect eyesight when we know Kirk will end up with old-fashioned glasses. Same themes that drew me so strongly to Generations as well: Picard's grief over René, the possibility of extended life while around you people are dying, the handing off from one generation to the next (in that case Kirk to Picard, in this case Ambassador Spock/old crew once more to new Spock/new crew).
I really enjoyed a lot of the action sequences involving the Enterprise's destruction. The crew's shock and fear at encountering an(other) alien technology against which Starfleet weapons were useless -- the relentless pounding of the drones through the support pylons until the nacelles were cut off (!) -- the chase in the crashed saucer that went inside and outside and up and down. I had a hard time following who was in what part of the ship as it broke apart, since it seemed like it mattered, but things became clear soon enough.
The Spock-and-McCoy scenes, especially the hurt/comfort doctoring one. (Even though, still, I can't write "Spock and McCoy" to refer to Quinto and Urban without pain.)
Little homages to classic Trek like Scotty cracking his knuckles when he sat down at the old computer and the joke about the implausibility of the giant green hand.
The way they handled Leonard Nimoy's death. Quietly moving. Beautiful shot of the lone figure from a distance.
Also the cut to Chekov's face when they toasted to absent friends at the end. :( We were talking about it after the movie and decided there would have been time for them to re-edit that bit if they hadn't already shown him there before Anton Yelchin's death. We also made sad noises at the dedications in the closing credits.
Loved Jayla's look. Beautiful face markings. Equally appreciated that she had held her own on that planet and started getting the Franklin back up and running, and continued to have skills to contribute even after the Enteprise crew took charge of the ship.
Shohreh Aghdashloo didn't do much, but I liked her a lot in The Expanse so that made me like her as the commodore, too. Such a sultry voice.
Okay, that ended up not being so brief. What did you think, if you've seen the movie? Being offline Thu-Sat means I probably missed the initial burst of reactions on Twitter.
ETA: And one more thing.
Originally posted at http://bironic.dreamwidth.org/339160.html, where there are
comments.
I wonder how I would have felt about this movie and about the reboot series in general if Beyond had been the first installment. Would I have been less angry with the series because Beyond had fewer irritations regarding character, tone, theme and modern action movie trends? Or did it take Reboot and Into Darkness to lower my expectations enough to enjoy this one? The world may never know.
Brief thoughts on the good and the bad:
(-)
I just don't see James T. Kirk getting bored in space.
(I guess you can argue that it's consistent with his characterization in the first two movies, where he joined Starfleet on an impulse, got a captaincy way too early, handled a rapid series of action-oriented crises and personal losses in a decimated organization and could now conceivably be running up against the realities of day-to-day missions? But boredom with exploration and intercultural communication doesn't sound like the nerdy, curious, optimistic Kirk we grew up with, and it's not something Star Trek tends to focus on. Not that the latter wouldn't be interesting if done in more depth, I suppose.)
(Also, NOW Kirk wants Spock to be captain, after shouldering him out of the way in Reboot because Spock Prime told him to and despite being compromised himself in Into Darkness in the same manner that caused Spock's demotion? I suppose you can say this shows character growth and the evolution of their friendship/working relationship since Reboot, but still: argh. Will we ever see a remix where Kirk serves as Spock's first officer? So curious.)
This trend of casting black actors & actresses in SF/F and then hiding them behind alien makeup and voice effects. See also Lupita Nyong'o in Star Wars: TFA, [ETA: Oscar Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse], possibly Zoe Saldana in Guardians of the Galaxy, etc.
thedeadparrot said she enjoyed the nod to classic Trek with the theme of a Starfleet officer gone rogue, which is a good observation. I would have liked it more if we'd discovered at the start that somehow the captain of the Franklin had survived all these years and everyone debated the ethics of extending human life and losing one's humanity and the value of letting go of vengeance/hurt/anger, along with the thin unity vs. conflict stuff we actually got. (There are valid critiques of the Federation. We just didn't hear any of them.)
[ETA: Not only Idris Elba but ALSO Sofia Boutella as Jayla, JFC. I didn't know she is Algerian.]
Total inconsistency with previous reboot installments when they explained Krall/Edison's anger by saying that he had to stop being a soldier because Starfleet isn't a military organization. Did we not just struggle through two movies about how first the Narada attack and then John Whoever Harrison's so-called terrorism sparked runaway militarization?
It looked like Krall/Edison was going to have a change of heart when he saw his reflection in that glass shard and decide to help Kirk open the hatch. Disappointed he did not.
The Terran-centricity of the Federation is nothing new, but I thought it was funny that Spock mentioned it would be unfair of the Federation to show favoritism to any particular planet by building a starbase there, while Starfleet Headquarters is on Earth (for reasons, I know) and the people who run Yorktown -- which is, btw, called Yorktown -- are human along with the majority of the starship crews we see, etc.
Jayla's huge false eyelashes.
Beyond did a better job with women and with male characters' treatment of them than the last two. Even if everybody seems to have daddy issues while mothers, dead or alive, don't count. Still, a note of disappointment that it was "a woman's weakness" that gave the villain the MacGuffin piece he needed, even if it supported the movie's main theme of the importance of mutual support.
(~)
I can't wait for this ubiquitous action-film special effect to fall out of favor where things turn into a swirling cloud of dark gray metallic particles. It probably has a name. I think of it as the graphite effect. In Beyond, we got it twice: once with the swarming ships in space and again with the ancient alien bioweapon. At least they ended up making the swarming a plot point. Chattering insectoid drones with an exploitable flaw sort of based on actual math/science > red matter.
The Beastie Boys hack was funny -- if questionably plausible and hard to pick apart because things moved so fast -- particularly the shattering of the shield around Yorktown. Did it belong in a Star Trek movie? I'm still not sure. (And how did the shield-shattering not seem to have any detrimental effect on the atmosphere/environmental controls?)
Wrestling with how I feel about the inclusion of the photo of the original crew in Ambassador Spock's personal box. It felt less like emotional appropriation than Into Darkness, but it also broke the fourth wall for me because the photo was a movie promo shot. Maybe if it had been a candid? IDK. I get what they were trying to do, though, reminding new!Spock of the importance of being part of a crew with deep relationships.
I'm also iffy on the decision to crash the Enterprise. We saw it falling, sparking, in Star Trek III, and it was sad. We saw the saucer section separate in Generations and it was a wild ride through the rocky forest. Beyond had elements of both, but by virtue of repeating them, lacked the same punch. And the loss of a Starfleet flagship didn't carry the same stakes on a practical level because apparently in reboot universe starships are built so fast that the whole fleet has been replenished in the few years since the Narada massacre and then we get that time-lapse drydock construction sequence at the end? (Who's manning all those ships we don't see but assume exist, anyway? A crop of fresh Academy graduates? A bunch of qualified pilots/engineers/doctors/scientists/etc. from other planets who were given Starfleet commissions after so many experienced officers were killed?) AND YET, again, it didn't feel like a shorthand the way the radiation scene did for many people in Into Darkness. Plus, the action sequences around the breakup of the ship were great. More on that in a sec.
Odd visual parallels to Alien/Prometheus and... oh, what was the other one? Memory already fading.
We never found out what happened to that woman's crew, did we? Or was she saying she made up even that part of the story?
(+)
Among the things that felt most Star Trek to me were the discussions of mortality and lost fathers and questioning one's place in the universe. Kirk's birthday and contemplation of death and the meaning of (his) life: more thematically Star Trek II than the supposed remix was last time, down to the toast to perfect eyesight when we know Kirk will end up with old-fashioned glasses. Same themes that drew me so strongly to Generations as well: Picard's grief over René, the possibility of extended life while around you people are dying, the handing off from one generation to the next (in that case Kirk to Picard, in this case Ambassador Spock/old crew once more to new Spock/new crew).
I really enjoyed a lot of the action sequences involving the Enterprise's destruction. The crew's shock and fear at encountering an(other) alien technology against which Starfleet weapons were useless -- the relentless pounding of the drones through the support pylons until the nacelles were cut off (!) -- the chase in the crashed saucer that went inside and outside and up and down. I had a hard time following who was in what part of the ship as it broke apart, since it seemed like it mattered, but things became clear soon enough.
The Spock-and-McCoy scenes, especially the hurt/comfort doctoring one. (Even though, still, I can't write "Spock and McCoy" to refer to Quinto and Urban without pain.)
Little homages to classic Trek like Scotty cracking his knuckles when he sat down at the old computer and the joke about the implausibility of the giant green hand.
The way they handled Leonard Nimoy's death. Quietly moving. Beautiful shot of the lone figure from a distance.
Also the cut to Chekov's face when they toasted to absent friends at the end. :( We were talking about it after the movie and decided there would have been time for them to re-edit that bit if they hadn't already shown him there before Anton Yelchin's death. We also made sad noises at the dedications in the closing credits.
Loved Jayla's look. Beautiful face markings. Equally appreciated that she had held her own on that planet and started getting the Franklin back up and running, and continued to have skills to contribute even after the Enteprise crew took charge of the ship.
Shohreh Aghdashloo didn't do much, but I liked her a lot in The Expanse so that made me like her as the commodore, too. Such a sultry voice.
Okay, that ended up not being so brief. What did you think, if you've seen the movie? Being offline Thu-Sat means I probably missed the initial burst of reactions on Twitter.
ETA: And one more thing.
Originally posted at http://bironic.dreamwidth.org/339160.html, where there are
comments.