This is going to sound obsessive (and it is, I fully admit; I'm afflicted by mild OCD, and it affects me in rather idiotic and annoying ways), but after seeing Star Trek Into Darkness the first time in theaters, I hated the film, but couldn't place my finger on why. As soon as it was released on DVD, I obtained the cheapest copy available (it completed my Star Trek film DVD collection) and watched it again. I had to know why I detested the movie as much as I did.
Then I watched it again...
And again...
By the eleventh time I subjected myself to the damn thing, my niece and nephews had begun worrying about my sanity. (I didn't, of course. I know I've never been sane, so there's nothing to worry about.) Nevertheless, by that time I'd come to the following conclusions:
- In hindsight, the fact that the film was dedicated to the victims of the September 11th attacks should've been our first clue that the movie wasn't exactly a quality film. When a film written by a 9/11 Truther is dedicated to an event that was already a decade old at the time the film was released, buckle your seat belts and pray it's all over soon.
- That opening bit with Nibiru was truly wretched. The Nibiru reference itself had me grinding my teeth, but the use of "cold fusion" had me biting down in frustration so hard I was worried I'd shatter my teeth if I didn't unclench my jaw. I don't know if the writers thought they were being cute, or if they were aiming for that '60s TOS kitch, overshot, and hit "fucking stupid" instead, but damn. That scene alone had me ready to leave the theater (and I've willingly watched Battlefield: Earth for the lulz). I had no idea it was foreshadowing how terrible the rest of the film was.
- Loved the scene where Pike gives Kirk his due comeuppance for trying to hide what he'd done instead of owning up to it. (I should've realized the writers were trying to lull us into a false sense of security.) In all honesty, the rest of the film from this point to Khan's big reveal doesn't bother me all that much; some portions of it actually had me somewhat invested.
- ...Then we had the stupid scene where McCoy is trying to open the torpedoes with Marcus. When an otherwise straightforward scene like this is drawn out in such an artificial manner, it smacks of "padding the runtime". (I get that you have to be careful when disarming/opening up a torpedo of any kind, but does the torpedo really need to grab Bones' arm to make the scene tense? That's just overkill. The fact that Bones was used for this scene at all screams, "Give Urban something to do or he's gonna threaten to renegotiate his salary again!")
- Every scene from this point onward had me wishing I'd left the theater and asked for a refund for all the reasons Chuck mentioned and then some. Ripping off Spock's death from Wrath of Khan was bad enough, but having Kirk hopping around inside the warp engine like a damn video game character bopping about an unused map from Portal 2 is practically an outright desecration, as was Spock's reversal of the "Khan" scream. It wasn't cute. It wasn't clever. It wasn't well-thought out, or even thought-out at all. It was just plain stupid.
- Spock chasing Khan bored me tremendously, and still does to this day. Maybe I'm jaded because I grew up in the era of modern CGI (Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 were released in my younger days, and I'm a trained graphics nerd, so I'm well-versed in spotting even the most realistic-looking CGI by now), but damn, do I miss the days when chase scenes like this looked and felt more realistic and tense. If you'd traded Spock and Khan with Stallone and Assante from Judge Dredd, the scene would've fit right in with that movie's overblown, mindless nonsense.
- That's all surface stuff, of course. The film's total mishandling of its own themes, let alone the ruination of not only classic characters (the only characters that acted like professionals throughout the entire film were Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov; everyone else acted worse than merely "immature", and we're supposed to buy that these idiots are the astronauts of the future?), but of institutions as well (Section 31 is so out-in-the-open with their actions in the Bad Robot material that they may as well just retcon the whole "rogue agency" aspect away completely and admit they've made Starfleet into the Galactic Empire), made the entire experience feel like a headache-inducing trip through a 9/11 Truther's terrible Star Trek fanfic.
Star Trek Into Darkness is not such a film.
If it has a "0" rating, it has certainly earned it.
