Star Trek: Into Darkness (spoilers)

[Aesop]

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Loud, fun, another J.J. Abrams continued rebooting of the ST franchise. Sort of.

Unfortunately, somewhere in his past, Abrams saw Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

And consequently, decided to ape most of it in another reboot, which unfortunately looks more like a remake. And even more unfortunately, without ever seeing the original series episode “Space Seed”, or noting what a decent actor Ricardo Montalban could be.

Unlike the original ensemble, where there was Kirk, Spock, & McCoy, a second tier of everyone else, and a third tier of disposable red shirts, Abrams has decided to go with a first tier of Spock, and a second tier of Kirk and everyone else. Which gets the other partners in the ensemble more face time, but pretty much sucks on every other level. Not least of which is reinventing Carol Marcus as a hot blonde, introducing her and Kirk, and then after leaving that fat pitch hanging over the plate for the entire movie, never going there again.

And at every outing, it becomes more apparent what magic ensued because of Nimoy and Shatner is not repeatable by Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine. They’re good, but playing somebody else while somebody else is just one degree of acting more than anybody can sustain for an entire series of films, and this outing shows the weakness of walking on that crutch forever.

Abrams has also seen fit, rather than taking a golden opportunity to fill in the blanks of Kirk, Spock, and Star Fleet’s prehistory for the waiting audience, with following all the backstory of each by rote. And compounding that error by flushing the essence of what made Roddenberry’s vision of the human future enjoyable and hopeful, and instead substituting the absolute worst representations of current human behavior into the story, and featuring them as plot points. It's like watching a Rob Reiner movie about the military, or an Oliver Stone movie dealing with actual historical events.

To be fair ST:ID has done phenomenally well in box office at this point, primarily because there’s a dearth of people puking anything up on the screen lately worth shelling out ten bucks to go and see. On that level, the movie is worth watching. But all ST:ID does from where I was sitting, is to rub our noses into the fact that Quinto and Pine are not Shatner and Nimoy, and that Abrams isn’t Gene Roddenberry. And the sum of those parts was greater than the whole Abrams & company provide. Maybe even greater than they’re able to provide, which doubtless has some exec at Paramount up awake nights.

Perhaps, and hopefully, Abrams will drop forever the slavish need to re-invent the Star Trek movies, one by one, and instead rediscover the universe Roddenberry left us, decide to explore strange new worlds, and boldly go where no man has ever gone before. Instead of making every trip to this franchise another whirl on the Star Trek merry-go-round, where no matter which horse you sit on, you’re destined to keep going around in circles until you’re just tired of the ride, and trying not to hurl.

Rating:
Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent life here.

[Rod]

Pretty much agree with the review. I also think Abrams watched the Twilight movies, I'm sick of fights in low level lighting and flares of light everywhere.

[free_me]

Damn dude. Are you bored? You could have just left it at "It sucked!", which was pretty much my impression ... and predictable.

[Mike OTDP]

Yup.

I still like the idea of the adventures under the heroic Captain Pike...with Spock and maybe Kirk as red-shirted Ensigns.

[skb12172]

It was loud, it was fun, it was good for awhile, until we found out who the rogue Commander was, then it started imitating STII with a twist, and went downhill from there. The Dreadnought sure was cool, though. Wish he had developed that thread a little more/longer.

[RangerWT]

I guess I'm just a Star Trek nerd, bit I still can't get past the opening seen of of Abrams 2009 reboot. I can't figure out how the USS Kelvin got into to deep space with only one warp nacelle.

However, not to fear JJ Abrams will be bringing lens flares to Star Wars next.

[Steamforger]

I might make myself a pariah, but I enjoyed it. On some level, the twisty rehashing of Wrath even appealed to me in a "are we in control of our own fate or are some things, with slight differences here or there, always going to happen" kind of way.

Its a summer movie. If I want deep I'll read a book. I will note however the scene with the tribble in the middle of a battle was heavy handed forshadowing at the very best and blatantly out of place.

[Aesop]

Foreshadowing is fine.
I can even live with the occasional appearance in a script of The Exposition Fairy.

This craptastic outting spray-painted a huge blaze orange arrow on a large club, and then hit you in the face with it three or four times, to make sure you noticed it. Then when the time came to pay it off, grabbed you by the hair, dragged you across the room, shoved your face ear-deep in it and jumped up and down on your shoulders, all the while shouting "See? I told you this was coming!"

Apparently they don't teach literary techniques anywhere between 5th grade and the end of film school anymore.
Or all the screenwriters they hired were either sick that day for 12 years, or reading comic books.

I can hardly wait to see what happens when Disney and Abrams get their hands into the Star Wars franchise.
At this rate, Han will have turned gay, Luke will be sleeping with Leia, and the new Republic will be led by cross-bred Ewoks and Wookies, while Jedi master Dr. Phil is desperately trying to confront them with their issues. We'll be rooting for the stormtroopers to exterminate them all.

I'm okay with it if your $50 weekend YouTube video sucks donkey balls. But there's absolutely no excuse for a $100M+ flagship feature to be so hamfistedly pooch-screwed from the overture to the final credits. When Audi does Star Trek better than Paramount, it's time for the studio to do some public beheadings, followed by a number of ritual suicides en masse.

[Highspeed]

rediscover the universe Roddenberry left us

You are having a laugh aren't you ? It's the cheesiest sci-fi ever, with awful corny scripts, terrible special effects and Captain Kirk fighting 'monsters' in rubber suits which would shame a 50's B movie. I first saw it when I was about 8 years old when it got repeated on UK TV and it seemed like a load of crap to me even back then.
The subsequent incarnations got even worse, apart from that girl with the big tits, Seven of Borg or something ? nice baps. Not nice enough for me to watch that fucking bullshit though.
Fucking Trekkies...

[Dub_James]

I with Steamforger; It's eye candy, not brain candy. Actually enjoyed it better than the first one. As has been said, it's a Summer movie. I'm all for Roddenberry's concept, but he got the economic side horribly wrong, so it's best to enjoy it as an exploration and discovery tale.