Star Trek: Into Darkness

[clearspira]

I think we now know Chuck's opinion on STD. Because that ending rant applies equally to that show as this one. I approve.

Also, isn't it ironic that in Carpenter Street Archer threatened to beat an unarmed prisoner and here Kirk is actually beating an unarmed prisoner? Multiple times? Yep, Archer is now more sane than Fake Kirk. Bye bye, Kelvinverse. You had potential that you wasted, you suck, you remind me too much of STD and TLJ, and you all make Enterprise look better by comparison.

Oh, and PS, I find the Carol Marcus in her undies scene disgraceful. It made Fake Kirk look like a pervert and is demeaning to her character, her actress, and the audience. File this up with T'Pol's Pon Farr in the ''why the stereotype of Trekkies all being virgins persists'' cabinet.

I like sexy women. I do not like sexy women in scenes that play no role in the story and just demonstrate that our main character is a slack jawed perverted idiot.

Says more about Abrams that he left this in than us, I think.

And on that last note, isn't it also funny that Abrams would later bring us Rey? I don't want to start yet another Star Wars discussion, but the same man that has tried many times to champion his strong women in that franchise brought us this travesty of a scene. And for that matter, brought us this shrew version of Uhura too. Its all just a bit hypocritical.

[clearspira]

That was some pretty good analysis! Only real question I had was "where's the score?", lol.

I was wondering that. He must have forgotten to include it. The Christmas ep is always a 0 though.

[bronnt]

I mean, they think the heart's in the leg and react in shock to the idea of a headache so...

Considering that, 200-300 years earlier they engineered Khan so that his blood gave near-immortality to the human species, I'd say that Star Trek medicine is gradually getting WORSE over time, somehow.

[CharlesPhipps]

One actually doesn't need to disbelieve in strong women while also believing in fanservice.

[Worffan101]

I, too, like sexy women and like to see a woman showing skin in a movie. I was way too turned on by the Sofia Boutella/Charlize Theron sex scene in "Atomic Blonde" for anything else to be true. I like the 2010 Nikita show, and enjoy the scenes where Maggie Q dresses up and does something sexy (and the scenes where she kicks ass, but you get the idea).

What I don't like is a blow-up doll in a bikini being posed and presented to me as if it were a character.

god damn this piece of shit movie. Because of this, Beyond is probably the only halfway decent picture we're going to GET out of this fucking reboot.

And for all the complaints about Simon Pegg--at least Beyond was intelligent and thoughtful beneath the action and glitz.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

One actually doesn't need to disbelieve in strong women while also believing in fanservice.

A badass woman overcomes actual challenges and triumphs over them. Someone we can root for, or at least identify with. Whether good or evil, true, female characters often fall on a spectrum of physical attractiveness but if they're not a compelling or interesting character, we don't care. We can't care.

That said, it isn't really an issue with Into Darkness... Not when everything else is so horrible.

[CharlesPhipps]

Well, on my end, this remains my favorite of the three movies for multiple reasons:

1. The movie nicely corrects some of my issues of the first film. Kirk is not the same man that he was in the original timeline due to lacking his father's influence. His delinquent side never gets polished off and he seriously screws up multiple times. The ending results in Spock and he achieving more of a balance.

He's NOT ready for the chair he's been given and we see him having to go through a lot of humiliations and failures before he becomes worthy at the end.

2. It does have a fairly anti-War on Terror perspective and while the Truther matter is bullshit, the fact is I view the three movies as a continuing series. The Federation has had its 9/11 in Nero's attack on Vulcan and has created a darker more malevolent Federation. The fact they choose to use Section 31 as a massive operation is good storytelling to that effect.

3. I actually appreciate that Spock is suicidal because we've long known the Federation has shitty mental health. No one can tell he's suffering clinical depression from the death of his planet and mother but as a Vulcan he can't show how raw his pain is. So, only Uhura is picking up on the fact.

4. I love the idea of Louise Marcus and Kirk having a chance to actually show their relationship on screen and while the "Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter" is nothing new, I feel like it worked exceptionally well here and illustrated the complictaed confusing emotions of your dad being the bad guy.

5. I like the general moral ambiguity that comes from the fact Khan is the aggrieved party here and tries to be reasonable but everyone keeps pushing his buttons so that he becomes the terror they're so afraid of him becoming.

6. Admiral Marcus is probably my favorite of the villains even if he is a retread of Admiral Cartwright. The fact that he ISN'T A Khan clone is a big point in his favor and I think Admiral Robocop does an excellent job on his point.

7. Bruce Greenwood does a great jiob as Pike, illustrating the kind of captain which Kirk should be but isn't yet (and in a different universe Bruce Greenwood would have been a Pike in a reboot series or a Kirk). I believed in his fatherly relationship with Kirk and why the latter is so obsessive because he's projecting his pain from his father's death onto Pike's death.

8. The movie does a nice reversal with Khan and Kirk in the fact that the former doens't know Kirk from Adam while the latter unwittingly destroyed Kirk's life by taking away his closest loved one-surrogate father.

9. The movie had a decent balance of characters so when we have "Scotty Gear Solid" it was genuinely surprising.

[Nick JM]

Okay, even if you can explain why Khan LOOKS different in this movie and nothing like Montalban, there's zero explanation of why his characterization is completely different. With Montalban, Khan was a passionate, regal, proud man of elegance and sophistication. He carried himself with theatricality and authority, and made people subservient to him. Cumberbatch's Khan is the complete opposite. He's a cold blooded scene chewing sociopath with no grace or elegance whatsoever. You look at both performances and they are absolutely nothing alike.

I've felt since opening weekend that so much of this issue could've been easily washed away by saying that it's not Khan, but one of his augment followers. In Space Seed, Khan's life support nearly failed when they tried reviving him on the Botany Bay. What if in this timeline Admiral Marcus' efforts actually ended up killing Khan because they couldn't stabilize his life signs? That leaves one of Khan's followers as the main villain seeking revenge for Marcus inadvertently killing his leader, this Prince among men that ruled over legions of people at one point in time. There's no real point in doing a reboot of the franchise if all you're going to do is recycle the same thing that was done before and just do it worse. An idea like this would've taken the familiar but twisted much of it in a different direction. Granted, this is far from the sole crux of the problems with this film, but changing their thinking to consider a different approach going into this might have lead to better ideas than what we got.

[CharlesPhipps]

Okay, even if you can explain why Khan LOOKS different in this movie and nothing like Montalban, there's zero explanation of why his characterization is completely different. With Montalban, Khan was a passionate, regal, proud man of elegance and sophistication. He carried himself with theatricality and authority, and made people subservient to him. Cumberbatch's Khan is the complete opposite. He's a cold blooded scene chewing sociopath with no grace or elegance whatsoever. You look at both performances and they are absolutely nothing alike.

I think actually there's scenes where Khan is actually demonstrating some of his regality. He takes Kirk's punches with aplomb and tries very much to be a man who is reasonable...to a point. Khan certainly helps Rickie/Mickie at the beginning with his daughter even if his price is high. His motivations are his people.

The big difference is he's been enslaved by Starfleet and Marcus for an indeterminate period of time and has extreme difficulty trusting anyone from the Federation--which our heroes back up. Mind you, he is an incredibly dangerous warlord and a murderer but his actions are motivated by our heroes being uncompromising themselves.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That was some pretty good analysis! Only real question I had was "where's the score?", lol.

I was wondering this too, but when he's talking about how this flubbed more than Nemesis, I got a bit of trepidation anticipating the final score moment. By principle, the whole thing about that homage scene and Nicolas Meyer not really blessing it speaks a bit for itself.