Star Trek: Into Darkness

[clearspira]

First off: damn looking forward to it! It feels nice to finally return to Trek on Christmas Day.
Secondly: Given how all scores are relative to their series, and it looks as if the Abrams series has come to an end, and the fact that the Christmas episode is by tradition the worst of the series that it is in, AND we have yet to have a 0 rated Star Trek film... I am going to predict a VERY low score for this one.
And good thing too, because this is the Star Wars The Last Jedi of Star Trek.

In general I thought that the Abrams universe was great on paper but terribly executed. A chance to tell whole new stories with the original characters is not a bad thing, and because this is a separate timeline and not a reboot, nothing from what we loved is lost. We have the old, and we have the new side by side. And if the new fails, hey, you've still got the old there and waiting to love. And that is where *cough* STD failed. But I am not here to talk about that, I am here to talk about how this film KILLED the Abramsverse in retrospect.

Because all of that potential I spoke of about telling new stories with the old characters? They chose a fan favourite who predates Nero's incursion (so already controversial in a controversial series), they gave him a race swap, they cast an actor that could not possibly be more different from Ricardo Montleban,they gave him a different personality, and then they gave him superpowers. The original Khan was stronger and smarter, but believably so. New Khan is Captain America. But, wait, there's more. Because we are also going to bring back Carol Marcus, only instead of being anything like the woman that she was, we are just going to strip her to her undies and have her be the butt of a few Kirk and Spock shipping jokes before not really doing an awful lot with her.

Oh, and whoever decided to have Spock shout Khan's name after copying his famous death scene (only with Kirk this time! Its Original!) yeah, screw you. I don't know what you were intending with that, but no one laughed in the cinema that I was in.

NO ONE was asking for a reboot of The Wrath of Khan. And where Wrath of Khan was a deeply sentimental journey for characters that we had been following for years; Into Darkness to quote Chuck is ''and they fight, and they fight, and they fight, and they fight...''

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I've been waiting for this review for a loong time. Looking forward to it.

To me, one of the biggest factors leading to Nicholas Meyer's success is his literary sensibility. Not so much his (sometimes overdone) references to classics, but his understanding that every story needs to be about something. When I watch The Wrath of Khan, I'm continually impressed by the coherence of the piece and how everything relates and contributes to the central themes of the work. A few Trekkies dislike the violence, but it would be a severe misdiagnosis to see it as just an action/popcorn flick. It deals much more directly with an actual human issue than, say, The Motion Picture.

Into Darkness is a hollow, soulless copycat that has not aged well at all. The writers don't seem to understand what actually made Khan work. The movie follows some of the same beats, but those beats are stripped of their deeper meaning. At the time of release some people defended it pretty adamantly, and I wasn't sure how much worse I thought it was than Trek '09. Now I'd judge it to be by far the least of the Kelvin-verse movies.

[Sir Will]

I guess his opinion must have changed over the years. Or he ran out of worsts in the queue to do. IIRC, his initial quick review wasn't all that negative. But it has been years since I've heard it and it was lost to server moves some time ago. Then again, time and rewatches can certainly change your opinion of a piece. I think his initial video was made like right after it came out or something. Guess we'll see.

It's certainly worst to me. More often then not their 'homages' (rip offs) of Wrath simply made me roll my eyes.

[Yukaphile]

That's good, because he's been way too fair to the new Trek since the reboot. He's harsher on Enterprise, for God's sake!

[Makeshift Python]

I recall Chuck’s reaction over this film when it initially came out being “it’s fine” in a neutral way. Not terrible, but not great either. I look forward to seeing how he feels about it after all these years.

I thought it was better than ST09 just for addressing Kirk’s promotion to captain being questioned alone and taking him down a peg. It didn’t execute that idea in a way that I thought was satisfactory, but it at least had something more substantial to it than ST09. Even though Cumberbatch was a terrible miscast, he was more fun to watch than the boring Nero.

[Rocketboy1313]

The problem isn't that Cumberbatch was miscast, it is that Khan shouldn't have been the villain.
Ignoring the issues with continuity, the character in Darkness is a blood psychopath who wants to exterminate lesser peoples. That is not Khan. Khan wanted to rule the world because (and this is kind of true) he knew he was the smartest and strongest person and thus fit to rule. Yeah, he is the product of mad science, but denying his qualifications because of that is bigotry/jealousy and not valid (in his eyes anyway). Khan wasn't a warmonger, they said as much in "Space Seed".

They should have just had Cumberbatch playing a Section 31 agent that went nuts after having augmentations. His goal is to start a war with the Klingons because he wanted more people to be augmented and creating a scenario in which the Federation would do that to fight a war made sense to him.

As is, you have to disregard everything about Khan we know from the franchise, while at the same time going "oh hooray! It's Khan". It is contradictory.

[Karha of Honor]

I recall Chuck’s reaction over this film when it initially came out being “it’s fine” in a neutral way. Not terrible, but not great either. I look forward to seeing how he feels about it after all these years.

I thought it was better than ST09 just for addressing Kirk’s promotion to captain being questioned alone and taking him down a peg. It didn’t execute that idea in a way that I thought was satisfactory, but it at least had something more substantial to it than ST09. Even though Cumberbatch was a terrible miscast, he was more fun to watch than the boring Nero.

I am curious what he thinks of the potential of this story if it was much less of a homage.

No Kirk death scene and KHAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!!!

No Deus Ex Nimoy Spock.

[Karha of Honor]

The problem isn't that Cumberbatch was miscast, it is that Khan shouldn't have been the villain.
Ignoring the issues with continuity, the character in Darkness is a blood psychopath who wants to exterminate lesser peoples. That is not Khan. Khan wanted to rule the world because (and this is kind of true) he knew he was the smartest and strongest person and thus fit to rule. Yeah, he is the product of mad science, but denying his qualifications because of that is bigotry/jealousy and not valid (in his eyes anyway). Khan wasn't a warmonger, they said as much in "Space Seed".

Our view of the competence government both dictatorships and democracies have changed. I am not sure people would have bought it.

[Worffan101]

Huh, I was certain Chuck was going to do The Orville's "Cupid's Arrow". Guess that's next week.

Either way, I can't WAIT for this piece of crap to get a good, classic SFDebris treatment, with both the serious analysis of the film's flaws (its "subtle" 9/11 "truther" message, its character-less and unsympathetic Kirk, the way it completely skates over the nightmarish fridge logic of what Section 31 did to CumberKhan, its contribution to the snowballing post-DS9 misunderstanding of what Section 31 fundamentally is, its incoherent plot, the way it's literally just 3-4 bland action set-pieces threaded together with "Captain Kirk is the dumbest creature alive", etc.), and the old-school rant at the obscenely stupid writing.

I've been waiting for this review for a loong time. Looking forward to it.

To me, one of the biggest factors leading to Nicholas Meyer's success is his literary sensibility. Not so much his (sometimes overdone) references to classics, but his understanding that every story needs to be about something. When I watch The Wrath of Khan, I'm continually impressed by the coherence of the piece and how everything relates and contributes to the central themes of the work. A few Trekkies dislike the violence, but it would be a severe misdiagnosis to see it as just an action/popcorn flick. It deals much more directly with an actual human issue than, say, The Motion Picture.

Into Darkness is a hollow, soulless copycat that has not aged well at all. The writers don't seem to understand what actually made Khan work. The movie follows some of the same beats, but those beats are stripped of their deeper meaning. At the time of release some people defended it pretty adamantly, and I wasn't sure how much worse I thought it was than Trek '09. Now I'd judge it to be by far the least of the Kelvin-verse movies.

Yeah, I think it's worse than Nemesucks or Final Frontier. At least the latter was enjoyably bad in places and the former had Sir Patrick Stewart and a couple of scenes where the actors actually gave half a shit.

Jesus. This is what the Trek movie reboot consists of now. One deeply flawed, mediocre movie; one absolute garbage fire; and one legitimately good film that was a box office bomb due to a horrendous ad campaign and the last two movies being duds. What a fucking shame.

Especially since Beyond was actually really good.

[Karha of Honor]

Huh, I was certain Chuck was going to do The Orville's "Cupid's Arrow". Guess that's next week.

Either way, I can't WAIT for this piece of crap to get a good, classic SFDebris treatment, with both the serious analysis of the film's flaws (its "subtle" 9/11 "truther" message, its character-less and unsympathetic Kirk, the way it completely skates over the nightmarish fridge logic of what Section 31 did to CumberKhan, its contribution to the snowballing post-DS9 misunderstanding of what Section 31 fundamentally is, its incoherent plot, the way it's literally just 3-4 bland action set-pieces threaded together with "Captain Kirk is the dumbest creature alive", etc.), and the old-school rant at the obscenely stupid writing.

Why would you assume it's a 911 truther movie opposed to some other incident Truther movie?