Movie review: Star Trek Into Darkness (spoiled rotten)
(spoilers - in case you missed the previous two times I warned you!)
I saw Star Trek Into Darkness the other day. I can't see the title without thinking 'Star Trekking into darkness!' But whatever. As a movie to sit back and watch, it was good. It left me puzzling over plot holes and trying to figure out the nuanced changes to Star Fleet culture. Because gone is the peaceful, protective, expansionist Star Fleet of old, with their balanced, perfect culture and enlightened, progressive policies. In its place, we have this hodge-podge of militaristic paranoia (reasonable, given the 2009 reboot movie and the destruction of Vulcan) and sometimes caring, sometimes not about aliens races. Technology also seems wildly advanced from original canon in some fields (transporters, warp drive) and inexplicably primitive in others (medicine and weapons).
I could go on about the plot, but I'll leave you two links that sum everything up far better and more hilariously than I could.
Aside from that - Khan. I didn’t see that coming, but on the other hand, I saw one trailer once and never read any of the promotional materials. I didn’t watch the fandom community or even talk about it much with my friends. I walked into the movie knowing what I’d seen in the first reboot and of course a thorough knowledge of TOS, the original series movies, TNG, and a dabbling of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
What I liked best about the movie were the clever call-outs to TOS and previously established tropes. There was nothing that really knocked my socks off, but I found the movie mentally and imaginatively invigorating. It left me thinking about how the universe would play out now, how the familiar characters would spin off on different paths. I liked it.
What I didn't like was how some things just didn't make sense. J. Michael Strazinski, the creator of Babylon 5, was once asked how fast the ships flew. He responded that they flew at the 'speed of plot'. Which is to say that the ships went exactly as fast as he needed them to go for a dramatic scene. They showed up when they needed to show up - no earlier or later (like wizards!) While a funny answer on his part, a portion of me finds the answer frustrating and depressing. I like my science fiction to make sense. I like it to hang together and be consistent, with the veneer that you're telling me a story that could be true. Not one that's just cobbled together from whatever you thought sounded cool. That's the problem with the reboot Treks. They sound cool, but they show a distinct lack of thought about the consistency of the world. I think that's the real buzzkill about it.
I saw Star Trek Into Darkness the other day. I can't see the title without thinking 'Star Trekking into darkness!' But whatever. As a movie to sit back and watch, it was good. It left me puzzling over plot holes and trying to figure out the nuanced changes to Star Fleet culture. Because gone is the peaceful, protective, expansionist Star Fleet of old, with their balanced, perfect culture and enlightened, progressive policies. In its place, we have this hodge-podge of militaristic paranoia (reasonable, given the 2009 reboot movie and the destruction of Vulcan) and sometimes caring, sometimes not about aliens races. Technology also seems wildly advanced from original canon in some fields (transporters, warp drive) and inexplicably primitive in others (medicine and weapons).
I could go on about the plot, but I'll leave you two links that sum everything up far better and more hilariously than I could.
Aside from that - Khan. I didn’t see that coming, but on the other hand, I saw one trailer once and never read any of the promotional materials. I didn’t watch the fandom community or even talk about it much with my friends. I walked into the movie knowing what I’d seen in the first reboot and of course a thorough knowledge of TOS, the original series movies, TNG, and a dabbling of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
What I liked best about the movie were the clever call-outs to TOS and previously established tropes. There was nothing that really knocked my socks off, but I found the movie mentally and imaginatively invigorating. It left me thinking about how the universe would play out now, how the familiar characters would spin off on different paths. I liked it.
What I didn't like was how some things just didn't make sense. J. Michael Strazinski, the creator of Babylon 5, was once asked how fast the ships flew. He responded that they flew at the 'speed of plot'. Which is to say that the ships went exactly as fast as he needed them to go for a dramatic scene. They showed up when they needed to show up - no earlier or later (like wizards!) While a funny answer on his part, a portion of me finds the answer frustrating and depressing. I like my science fiction to make sense. I like it to hang together and be consistent, with the veneer that you're telling me a story that could be true. Not one that's just cobbled together from whatever you thought sounded cool. That's the problem with the reboot Treks. They sound cool, but they show a distinct lack of thought about the consistency of the world. I think that's the real buzzkill about it.