Canon-Strike IX: Star Trek

[prinnysquad]

I genuinely can’t remember a thing apart a bike race, and I don’t know if that is a genuine memory. And maybe Spock? Once again, I don’t know.

I remember enjoying it, but not feeling any desire to watch it again. It’s not the actors’ fault, I just didn’t have that inner glow you get from the classic cast.

[Dogg Thang]

You’re thinking of BMX Bandits.

[prinnysquad]

That explains an awful lot.

[Neon Ignition]

Star Trek: Into Darkness
The second Kelvin timeline movie takes place next with Kirk briefly losing command of the USS Enterprise until a new threat brings him back to action. The film plays incredibly liberal with timeline events both directly and indirectly with Khan and the USS Vengeance largely seeming to ignore how heavily affected they would be by the Kelvin timeline causality. Once again Kirk faces the genetically engineered character who now appears very different to before whilst also facing a threat from within Starfleet itself. The film was a hit back on release but the detraction it's faced has increased with time, standard it seems for Abram's helmed sequels.



Does Into Darkness cement the Kelvin timeline as good or bad for Star Trek?

[Dogg Thang]

I hate this movie. It brings all the worst crimes of Abrams in one muddled package. It's a messy movie that barely makes a lick of sense but moves so fast in what feels like an attempt to stop you noticing what nonsense it is. All the things that Abrams just about got away with in the previous movie, he fails to get away with here because there is just so much of it. It's all contrived and riddled with convenient coincidences that are impossible to ignore because there's not actually all that much else.

And it reveals one of Abram's fatal flaws, one he would repeat in Rise of Skywalker - I don't think Abrams is capable of creating emotion. Instead, he puts in call backs to moments from movies that did have emotion, as if that in itself is emotional. Trying to mimic Wrath of Khan here when not a single one of the moments was actually earned or even made sense in the context of the movie made this film unintentionally hilarious in places. There was actually laughter in the cinema at what were supposed to be dramatic moments.

So yeah, I think it's absolute mess of a movie. A misfire in almost every way. And that's even before we get into the bizarre casting of Cumberbatch, Scotty being a straight-up murderer and the magic blood.

[Asura]

And it reveals one of Abram's fatal flaws, one he would repeat in Rise of Skywalker - I don't think Abrams is capable of creating emotion. Instead, he puts in call backs to moments from movies that did have emotion, as if that in itself is emotional. Trying to mimic Wrath of Khan here when not a single one of the moments was actually earned or even made sense in the context of the movie made this film unintentionally hilarious in places. There was actually laughter in the cinema at what were supposed to be dramatic moments.

[MENTION=16665]Blobcat[/MENTION] will probably be along to talk about this, but I remember in the scene where "Kirk" dies. People in the cinema were crying - and she turned around to me and whispered "are they seriously watching the same film we are?"

[Baseley09]

Into Darkness seemed good in the cinema but as the watches roll by it's horrendous with some good graphics. The OG Kahn story callbacks was one if the standout tentpoles of how washed up Hollywood can be at times

[Blobcat]

Crap. Weird crying audience but the only good thing I can remember of that film was the sound quality was good.

[Dogg Thang]

One other thing about this movie became really apparent on a rewatch. All the crew aged and felt less like a bunch of kids on the bridge and more like they belonged there... except Spock. I think it was a combination of the actor not ageing (I’m sure he’s happy about that) and the poor writing that didn’t display any real growth, placing him further away from the original Spock than other characters were from their counterparts. So Spock felt wrong and the stuff with him and Uruha arguing was straight up embarrassing.

[Baseley09]

So Spock felt wrong and the stuff with him and Uruha arguing was straight up embarrassing.

More or less embarrassing than the a star ship destroying enemies with the beastie boys.

[Dogg Thang]

More or less embarrassing than the a star ship destroying enemies with the beastie boys.

The Beastie Boys makes everything better.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm okay with Into Darkness but again, as a fairly mindless action movie. It has some decent sequences but the Khan stuff and the nods all play poorly which is an insanely obvious bad trap to fall into when Nemesis made the exact same error just two movies before. I'm going to call it now though, controversially, it's not the worst of the Kelvin trilogy...

[Dogg Thang]

Well I suspect we’ll get to that but Into Darkness is so packed full of ridiculous rubbish beat after beat that, with the amount of stuff you have to excuse to place it above anything, placing any movie lower will feel like the “but her emails” of Star Trek.

[Neon Ignition]

Another film Abrams messed up featuring R2-D2 then

[Dogg Thang]

The real shame about Abrams is that he's clearly incredibly talented in some areas. He's great to kick off a reboot because, although he tends to go too far with it, he finds a way of approaching pre-existing material with reverence while still being able to move a new story forward. He's an incredible visual director, if you excuse the lens flairs, and with Star Trek really made it solid and used the sense of space when so many movies were relying too much on CG. And he knows how to plant story seeds... he just doesn't know how to wrap them up. It's like he's missing a directing partner who could bring the things he lacks.