movie: star trek: into darkness

[seperis]

These are gonna be the shortest thoughts on Star Trek ever, mostly because I have cramps, though you may not know this, Star Trek can fix those for like, the entirety of the movie. I shall add this to my ibuprofen and water daily. Possibly hourly.

Comments

[bbuttercup]

On casting Khan, I have to wonder if Abrams intentionally cast Cumberbatch because he didn't look anything like Khan Prime. The script was so hush, hush, that casting too close to the original would have given it away from the get go.

[seperis]

I think there were multiple reasons, and that one was probably a big one. And that Cumberbatch can expressionlessly project how inferior everyone is to him without even trying. *g*

[samdonne]

Two--the entire downgrade for Kirk was the stupidest and pointless thing ever. It had no bearing on the movie whatsoever. It had no point whatsoever. It was random and I guess to show Pike and Kirk together, but it did nothing since we all assume Pike is Kirk's father figure and this did nothing.The first ten minutes actually gave me hope that this was going to be the movie I wanted to see, because STXI Kirk is in no way ready for command and his so-called greatness is all tell and no show. (Stripping people of their self-control in full view of their subordinates, 'for their own good'? Pull the other one.) He deserves to get kicked, and I was actually impressed for a second there, thinking Pike's hasty decision was going to be challenged. But by the end of this movie, all is forgotten, because once again the logical fallacy 'willingness to sacrifice self = wise and good leader' trumps all

[seperis]

YMMV, of course

[scrollgirl]

I agree with your comment. I was so enraged by Abrams using the Prime Directive not because Kirk violated it (hardly a new thing) but because Kirk seemed so *clueless* about the consequences. It was all a set-up to knock him down a peg when he really didn't need to be, if the narrative had simply treated the saving of that planet with a bit more gravitas and Jim hadn't called it "no big deal". The movie did absolutely nothing with that so-called demotion--it added nothing to the debate of the PD or the philosophy behind the Federation, except to show the brass as rule-bound hardasses.

I don't even know what part I find more annoying; that they did it badly, or that it existed just to add cheap emotional drama.

The former, for me. I can live with being emotionally manipulated, because of course they're going to up the angst quotient if they can. But if they aren't going to do it well, then they should have left well enough alone. If Kirk was going to violate the Prime Directive and suffer for his choice, the least Abrams could have

[seperis]

it added nothing to the debate of the PD or the philosophy behind the Federation, except to show the brass as rule-bound hardasses.

Pretty much this. They managed, however, to make a convincing argument of how the PD is terrible and evil with this one, though.

ETA: Also, I was enraged about the PD because of the racism. I mean, if the point was to show a planet in jeopardy, fine, but there are a million ways to do that without resorting to blatantly racist visuals.

I agree with you, but now I'm curious how you think it should haev been handled. I've been thinking on this actually, and trying to work out how I'd do it--or rather, how I'd avoid it. Then again, gah.

[firefly1311]

My twin sister and I were born 1959, so we grew up with the original characters. We didn`t like the movie and I couldn`t define what it was that made me feel uneasy about it but you nailed the flaws beautiful. Thank you very much for writing your thoughts down.

[seperis]

You're welcome!

It's a lot easier to watch the movie without any previosu or very little Trek knowledge.

[mahaliem]

There was a brief moment during the movie when I thought Khan might stay on the side of good, but the movie instead went for another fight with more and bigger explosions.

but if this wasn't almost a pre-Mirror Universe scenario, I don't know what is.

I hadn't thought about that, but you're completely right.

[seperis]

Marcus creeped me the hell out more than Khan did. I mean, Khan was already crazypants, but he didn't have an entire Federation of planets and superships behind him (though an argument could be made he didn't need one). The movie actually saying that Marcus was trying to militarize Starfleet--and wanted a war with the Klingons--is an interesting juxtaposition, because chicken-egg; did he want to militarize because of the Klingons, or were the Klingons an excuse to militarize Starfleet? I'm actually thinking the latter, since Marcus's argument is Kirk can't kill him because who will lead them to glory? Dude, not a good argument. He wants to be Alexander the Great, get a holodeck like a sane person.

I was (interestingly) impressed with Kirk's moral stance on Khan once they had him. I didn't expect him to do that quite so blatantly.

[ranlynn]

Well, ethnicity aside this is a Khan that did come back crazy-crazier and out for revenge. But he was after Adm. Marcus and not Kirk. This is a Khan that had been seperated from his 'family' and basically inslaved for years by the Admiral. One of them was gonna end up dead no matter what

[samdonne]

Nero crash landing in the past upset a whole bunch of apple carts in the TOS verse.

That's exactly how I saw it, and it would have been a much stronger movie had it embraced this narrative of a civilization careening off course after a major security incident, using these rebooted Kirk and Spock to drive the point home. Instead they sweep the consequences (of everything) under the rug and make it look like they stumbled upon a cool storyline by accident (which I'm pretty sure they did): The political exploitation of 'heroism', whereby the hero's own hubris is the very tool the PTB use to keep the masses subservient. A triumph of conservatism. I'll wait for the fic.

[seperis]

Well, ethnicity aside this is a Khan that did come back crazy-crazier and out for revenge. But he was after Adm. Marcus and not Kirk. This is a Khan that had been seperated from his 'family' and basically inslaved for years by the Admiral. One of them was gonna end up dead no matter what.

Yea, that's the Trek person in me. Khan was Kirk's enemy for a very specific reason and the vendetta against Kirk was personal; it's what made him dangerous. It had no freeze-dried crew prupose; this was pure and crazy revenge for the death of his wife, and he didn't actually care if he survived provided he killed Kirk because he felt Kirk--who had let him go and gave him a planet to settle on--had betrayed him.

So that's why for me, it was fundamentally a problem. This is an iconic character with an iconic, bigger than life personality and an iconic archenemy. This reduced him to a petty terrorist given five minutes of backstory and interchangeable with any other generic Trek enemy, and he was never that.

[clancy_s]

Having used Nero blaming old Spock for his wife, child and planet's death last movie imo blocked them using Khan's motivation from WoK - but then IMO reusing Khan was a bad idea.