Star Trek Into Darkness, this time with SPOILERS

Let's get into it.

I will admit that I have never seen Wrath of Khan.  I've never been a Star Trek fan, so I never bothered, and thus may be missing something in Abrams' remake.  However, one of the things I loved so much about his first reboot was that it was so accessible - you didn't have to be a Trek fan to know what was going on, and you didn't have to be familiar with the characters to fall in love with them.  So I'm not willing to cut Abrams any slack on this front.

That said, here are my specific complaints about Star Trek: Into Darkness.

- As I said in my first review, I thought Abrams was telling us with his first Trek that he was off the leash, not to be constrained by the previously established Trek canon (however you may feel about that decision).  But what do we get as a follow up? A film that tries to shoe horn as much reference and remake that it possibly can into a story that would have been better served without it.  John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) was more interesting before the "reveal" that we're actually just doing Khan again.  The story of Kirk's disgrace with the Academy, and him getting called to task for his shitty captaining by his mentor Admiral Pike, was way more fascinating than the revenge drama we got.  All of this was washed away in the first twenty minutes of the movie.

- Let's talk about those first twenty minutes.  I was SO excited to see Pike's dressing down of Kirk, because it's a big character moment for him - yes, he's been insanely lucky so far, but the way he runs his ship and his attitude are dangerous and will probably kill someone someday.  To have another character, one that Kirk respects so much, actually call him out for that could have been a great story to follow - except that we forget about that the instant Pike dies.  The Federation takes the Enterprise away from Kirk...and then gives it back to him almost instantly.  His abilities as a captain are never in question for the rest of the film.  Even his bad decisions are mostly the product of him taking pretty solid advice from his crew.  It doesn't end up meaning anything.

- Which brings me to character motive, or lack thereof. As a Federation terrorist, Harrison was on the way to having some kind of motive - perhaps he was wronged by the Federation.  It doesn't matter, it didn't have to be complicated.  But by turning around and making him Khan, he has a tenuous motive for revenge against one specific member of the Federation (Admiral Marcus, who, um, what?  How can I give a shit about a conflict with someone I've never met before, and who's characterization wasn't explored enough to matter) and NOTHING to justify that last scene where he crashed the ship into San Francisco. Khan is only ever angry at one person: Marcus, Kirk, Spock.  But somehow, we're supposed to buy that he's this huge danger to the universe?

I feel like this is where it would have been helpful to have seen Wrath of Khan, because the scene with Old Spock gives some intimations of how dangerous Khan is - but the point is, we never see that in this version. He's some kind of superhuman, and I totally get why he hates Marcus, but the explosive destruction aimed at the Federation is never earned.

- Seriously, the Klingons were in the movie for two minutes and were more interesting than everything else.  Can the next movie be about them?

- The dialogue was brutal. Seriously, I love Karl Urban, he's a great actor, and we've seen that he's great at being Bones - so why why WHY would you reduce him to a series of stereotypical metaphors and one-liners?  All of the characters were distilled down to their TOS stereotypes (except, interestingly, Spock, who continually talks about being unable to feel and then being REALLY BAD at not feeling).

Speaking of, can we talk about how unfair Uhura's part in this whole thing was?  I alluded to it in my other review, but seriously: she's supposed to be capable and professional.  I do not believe at all that she would choose to fight about her relationship with Spock on the shuttle on the way to an extremely dangerous mission.  It was poorly placed, distracting, and damaging to all characters involved.

- For all that the stakes keep being raised, and the probability of death looms ever closer, I never felt like there was any tension.  With the sole exception of Khan and Kirk's flight through space (which would have been even more effective if it had been edited a little tighter), I never once was afraid for these characters.  Hell, Kirk died and I didn't take it seriously, because I knew what story we were in (which is another reason the Khan bait-and-switch doesn't work - yes, it's Spock that dies in the original, but that doesn't stick, either).  There is a way to create tension when your audience knows the ending of the story, this movie just never knows how.

- And at the end...nothing is different.  Khan is back in a cryo tube (which, how? How do you fight an super being back into a freezing tube?) Kirk has the Enterprise back. All the relationships are where they were in the beginning, because nothing was ever a serious threat to them.  The whole film felt like a wasted opportunity.

I'll probably go see more Trek films, if Abrams keeps making them.  But I won't feel the same kind of unreserved excitement I had before STID.  Which makes me really, really sad.

Star Trek: My first summer disappointment

I'm coming out of hibernation because I saw the new Star Trek film last night, and I have a lot of feelings about it. Specifically, I have a lot of BAD feelings about it, which have left me disappointed to the point of anger - which, on the one hand, is kind of ridiculous, because at the end of the day, movies aren't worth getting mad about...but on the other hand, I was SO EXCITED about this one. JJ Abrams' first Star Trek is one of my favorite m movies. I had it on my top ten list for 2009. I thought it was Best Picture material.

Into Darkness is...not. It manages to feel both bloated and hollow, drilling the same parallels into you over and over again with all the subtlety of an anvil, taking what were some of the best things about the 2009 film and tossing them merrily out the airlock.

I'm going to do this review in two parts, a spoiler free one and one where I can more fully enumerate the crimes of Star Trek: Into Darkness, the better to fully explain how I came to leave the theater feeling like I saw a different movie than everyone else I know (believe me, I wish I'd seen the one everyone is raving about. That sounded like a GOOD movie.).

To start, it's too long by about a half hour. The first twenty minutes are great - they move along, reveal some interesting conflicts, and get the action started...which then almost immediately tapers off into endless, pointless fight sequences and way, WAY too many shots of various crew members running down the white hallways of the Enterprise (which, by the way, has anyone ever bothered to map out the ship? Because I had no idea where we were supposed to be in the ship most of the time).

In addition to feeling padded out with unnecessary running, poorly edited action sequences, and revisiting the same plot points over and over, Into Darkness seems to take pleasure in wasting some of its best resources. Karl Urban as Bones is reduced to stupid metaphors and bitter one liners (to the point where another character actually says to him, "Enough with the metaphors!"). Uhura manages to somehow be both more and less interesting, getting to accompany Kirk on a mission but choosing the worst possible moment to bitch about her relationship problems. In fact, most of the crew, such strong presences in the first film, are basically reprising that here - hardly anyone gets anything new to do, or even say.

There's some good stuff here, not enough to assuage my feelings about it as a whole, but just enough to be frustrated by the film. The first two scenes are excellent, as Kirk' s methods and attitudes are called into question by the one person who's opinion he might actually care about. There's enough of the Klingons seen that I wish they'd been the villains of the film. And Benedict Cumberbatch, our actual villain, delivers monologues both traffic and sinister in a way that might have given me chills...If the material he'd been given had had more punch. But it's all so bogged down in senseless, motive-less buckshot that I had trouble keeping the good stuff in mind.

The conflict introduced in the opening sequence is pretty instantly brushed aside for something much less interesting, so that Abrams can pull what I'm sure he thought was an epic level bait and switch...but which ends up pretty much guaranteeing that the rest of the movie has no tension, because you now know exactly how it will end. This might be my biggest criticism and biggest disappointment: I thought that, with his first Trek, Abrams was making a grand statement that we were now playing by his rules. The old timeline was scrapped, he could send the Enterprise and her crew wherever he wished, and it would all be new, and fresh, and exciting. Into Darkness is none of those things. It is a group of people patting themselves on the back for being clever and good looking, while offering nothing in the way of new experience. I know you can do better, Mr. Abrams. I sincerely hope your next effort is more with my time.

My favorite science fiction movies

I saw X-Men: First Class last Friday, and it was pretty great!  (Read my full review here.)  Watching it got me to thinking about how much I liked X2, which reminded me how much I love superhero/science fiction film, which reminded me of how much I loved putting that animated films list together, which led to this!

Science fiction is a pretty big component to my life - it's most of what I read, my friends are all nerds, I was president of the club in high school (no joke!  I also like going to conventions when I have the money.).  And since recently there has been a spat of TRULY EXCELLENT science fiction film produced, it made sense to me to do my top ten favorite sci-fi flicks.

Remember: this list and a (hypothetical) list of what I would consider the top ten BEST sci-fi movies are probably not the same!  But these are the ones I go back to over and over again - partially because they're really good movies, and partially because they're fun or enjoyable and I like watching them over and over.  (This is why there are no Star Wars films here - I do not deny their superiority in the genre, but when it comes to a movie I want to watch on an average Saturday night, Star Trek wins every time.)

Also, these are not ranked because I kept changing my mind.  So I just ordered them alphabetically.

District 9 (2009)

2009 was a wonderful year for science fiction film, and ALSO for summer movies, which are two of my favorite genres.  District 9 and Star Trek both opened to critical acclaim - expected for D9, less so for Star Trek (which you'll see further down the list), but both ended up being far better than anyone really thought.  And D9 does a lot of things incredibly well: yes, the apartheid metaphor is rather heavy-handed what with it being set in South Africa and all, but D9 starts obviously and works its way into the subtle, even while the movie becomes less mockumentary and more flat-out action.  By the end you don't know who to root for, because you've seen deplorable as well as sympathetic behavior from all the major parties involved.  It's too easy to hate the humans, and D9 doesn't ask you too - like Vickus, our main character, is forced to, it asks you to give everyone a fair hearing.  And it breaks your heart a little, too, and I'm a sucker for that.

Equilibrium (2002)

 

I think everything I love about Equilibrium can be summed up in a scene about a quarter of the way through the film, when Christian Bale rips the frosted sheet off his window and looks out at the city he lives in really for the first time.  It’s raining, but the view is also bathed in sunlight, and the whole thing is rich and emotional and beautiful.  It’s one of the first things to affect Bale’s character in an emotional way, and he makes you feel that with every heaving breath and wide-eyed stare.  He’s almost suffocating in beauty.  While Equilibrium can feel a little overwhelming at times (there are a lot things that are never explained, like where exactly this is all taking place), but the story at its root is deceptively simple and ultimately beautiful: it’s a movie that wants you to celebrate in the things that make you feel.

Also there is a puppy.

The Fifth Element (1997)

 

Of the two big sci-fi adventures that Bruce Willis is part of, this one is clearly superior (not that I don't love Armageddon, because I do, but let's be serious here).  Willis strikes just the right tone as our embittered, reluctant hero, getting dragged along to save the world despite his own preferences or his best interests.  Mila Jovovich has never been more charming, either before or after, and her character Leeloo has rightly become iconic.  The amount of asskicking this woman does is BREATHTAKING.  

But what I really love about Fifth Element is how COLORFUL it is.  It's a joy to watch, not just because of the wonderful characters and dialogue or the tense action, but because every shot is a neon beam of color against the outer space backdrop.  The visual style is akin to a Vegas light show, which is perfect for the pulpy feel and elemental themes of the whole adventure.

Inception (2010)

Is it a dream or reality?  If you really get bent out of shape over that very last image, you're missing the point.  And the point is an extraordinarily well-told and well-acted film with hyperactively memorable effects that excavates the depths of human imagination.  This is a movie that definitely rewards repeat viewings, as you're going to miss little background details the first time you see it while you're trying to process the story.  There are moments when it's a little too in love with its own cleverness, sure (the hospital scene springs immediately to mind), but overall this is going down in film history as the movie that pulled science fiction out of the "genre film" box and into the mainstream in a way that even Star Trek couldn't.  It also cements the notion that big summer blockbusters can *gasp* be Best Picture material; unfortunately, even though District 9 was nominated the year before, it didn't really have a chance at the title.  But Inception did, and hopefully people will remember that in Oscar seasons to come.

Independence Day (1996)

Yes, the science in this movie has problems.  But I fall firmly on the side of, "In a movie about an alien invasion, why are you worried about what kind of vehicles Will Smith can actually pilot?" and "They blew up the WHITE HOUSE, people.  WHO CARES if Jeff Goldblum wrote a fake virus on a Mac that somehow works on an alien computer system?"  In other words, if you're complaining about the realism of the hard science elements, you're probably thinking too hard.  I firmly support rollicking violent movies with lots of explosions, and Independence Day hands those out like candy.  Fortunately for us, the violence is side-by-side with  truly brilliant and sympathetic characters, and one of the best "We will survive!" speeches this side of Return of the King.  It's hard not to get a little teary when Bill Pullman is pulling out all the stops like that, and when you have actors as likeable as Pullman, Smith and Goldblum, it's impossible to resist pumping your fist in the air victoriously after the final confrontation.  Give in to the fist-pumping, my friends. 

Jurassic Park (1993)

I had originally intended to write a thing about how compared to any other movie that came out in 1993, Jurassic Park is still easily the best looking of the bunch, but then I looked at a list of everything released in 1993 and there were some supremely excellent releases then (Nightmare Before Christmas!  Dave!  True Romance!  Benny & Joon!).  SO.  New plan.  I would still like you to consider the effects in Jurassic Park, though, because movies are made NOW that don't look this good.  The tension in this movie is just so well done - never before has a single cup of water been so terrifying.  The way light and shadow are used to enhance the prey-like feeling of being stalked by dinosaurs, and the use of animatronics, still make this one a great late-night scare.  Plus, awesome performances from Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum, two of my favs.  There will LITERALLY never be a moment as breathtaking as when Neill sees the brachiosaurs for the first time, jaw open and fumbling with his sunglasses.  Even thinking about it recalls the swell of music and that soaring, breathless feeling you get with pure, cinematic joy.

The Matrix (1999)

why martha do you like dystopian future movies NO WHY DO YOU ASK.

If you asked me what I thought the defining film of my generation is, my answer would be The Matrix.  Not only is it a technical marvel wrapping up a fairly simple story that's saturated with intriguing philosophical questions, but it manages to capture the human/technology relationship in a captivating way.  From the beginning the machines are running the show - think about it, when's the last time you woke up in the morning and didn't check your e-mail first thing?  The Matrix makes all of those little decisions (checking your e-mail, updating Facebook, even punching in a Google search) a little bit chilly when you think about how much you rely on various tech to get through your day.  But instead of continuing this thesis on why The Matrix is RELEVANT, I can tell you short and sweetly why I love it so, so much: exciting action, empathetic characters, amazing effects.  Oh, and also its cultural relevancy.

Minority Report (2002)

Tom Cruise gets a lot of flak from people, and to be fair, dude is sort of nuts.  But he's definitely a brilliant actor and Minority Report showcases some of his best work.  One of the few cases where (in my honest opinion) the adaptation eclipses the original work, this film shows two sides of science fiction to great effect: you get the high-tech glossy side, with shiny technology and gleaming metal surfaces, and the seedy, dirty, dystopian worldview that remains so popular today.  While classism isn't necessarily the point of the movie, it is an integral part of the world the movie takes place in, and if there's one thing I love it's rich, complex world-building.  And heart-pounding chase scenes!  Also a good dose of clever cinematography, such as when Cruise and the pre-cog are on the run in the mall and she keeps foreseeing little details like the umbrella.  Sometimes I feel like I get a new detail every time I see this one, it's like a film that keeps on giving.

Star Trek (2009)

I confess to literally not caring AT ALL the first time I saw a teaser for this one.  I have never been a Star Trek fan; I'd seen a handful of episodes, mostly for an anthropology class I took in college (I know, right?), and I was not really impressed or charmed by Shatner or the kitschy feel of it all.  But then the release date was announced for my birthday, and we actually got to see bits of the footage in trailers, and I'm completely in love with Chris Pine, so you know.  These things happened.  And I saw it opening night, and I LOVED it.  Pine is the PERFECT Kirk, with all of Shatner's fratboy bravado but none of the scenery chewing, and Zachary Quinto encapsulated Spock's cool logic while bringing a good dose of human sensitivity to everything.  The only issue I had with it was that I wanted Eric Bana's Nero to be more...something, I don't know.  It's like, they try to make him a sympathetic villain, but then also try to cash in on the Kirk/Khan relationship, and both end up not quite getting there.  But otherwise this movie is one of the finest ensemble casts in years, and provides scads of entertainment every time I watch it.  Which is a whole lot.

X2: X-Men United (2003)

Technically, I suppose superhero movies are their own subgenre of film at this point, but X-Men has too many science fiction tropes going on for me to leave it off this list.  I also happen to consider X2 one of the best superhero movies to have been made this side of The Dark Knight.  It's pretty much the perfect sequel - it picks up a few loose threads from the first film but also has its own stand-alone story, and William Stryker makes a much better political foe than Senator Kelly does in X-Men.  I really enjoy watching Magneto and his Brotherhood circle warily with Professor X and his X-Men, as they figure out how to work together out of necessity; plus I have always been enamored with the relationship between Professor X and Magneto (which, as a side note, is mostly why I loved X-Men: First Class so much).  Finally, it's hard for me NOT to love this movie, since Nightcrawler is my very favorite X-Men character and in general I think the movie does a really good job with him.