In the words of Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrison: Shall we begin?
Last week I expressed my indecision regarding Iron Man 3 and its quality as the opener to the summer blockbuster season. Although my thought process took the scenic route (as it often does), I arrived at the conclusion that it was indeed a good film and a second viewing has upgraded it to 'good-to-great'. My bones to pick with those responsible are few and a bit arbitrary, but haters will indeed hate. Star Trek Into Darkness, however, has not caused such indecision.
Before jumping into this, there are some things I should point out. First off, I am not a Trekkie by definition. My interest in Star Trek has always been like my interest in hockey or UFC: I pay attention from a distance until something major is happening, and will sit down to it with enough background knowledge to not make an idiot out of myself. Playoffs, a big PPV, or a film for example. I've seen every Trek film several times, have seen many of the highest rated episodes of the original Star Trek, am almost finished watching through TNG, had waning interest in DS9 as it was on, and have never given Voyager or Enterprise a fair chance. I don't even have that much of an aversion to it, and I'm no longer the Star Wars fan that I once was. There's just so much bad mingled in with the good, even with the films. For every Wrath of Khan there's a Final Frontier, and for every First Contact there's an Insurrection. It's hard to justify jumping head-long into canon that's existed for, what, 50 years? It's why I've never gotten into the X-men comics, and why I'm thankful that Doctor Who has shorter seasons.
The other thing is that bias exists for this particular film because of how much I loved the first film, flaws and all. The lens flare thing that J.J. loves to do is something I can overlook, because every director has their quirks and even Abrams has fessed up to it. Do I love that a Star Trek film went to the time travel well once again? No, but it's happened every second or third film released anyways, so I prefer to think of it as a throwback. The biggest selling point for me was the perfect if not inspired casting of the crew, a subject that was touchy to begin with because gods forbid you piss off the internet Trekkie community. Lucas and Spielberg are still feeling backlash from that. Every crew member was cast and performed wonderfully in a mix of homage to the original crew while still making it a new character. There are some holes in the first film, yeah, but at least one that has always bugged me is addressed in STID, which was a big selling point for me. So I was walking into STID knowing there would be at least some things I'd love as long as little was changed. So fair warning to all who didn't love Star Trek 2009: this might not be your thing.
With that, let's boldly go into this review! (shut up, I'm hilarious.)
The plot of STID is something that its predecessor was not: simple. A criminal breaks loose from captivity, drops some knowledge (also some bombs), and takes off; and it's up to Kirk and company to track John Harrison down. It's only complicated by the typical Star Trek stuff like the prime directive of never interfering with any indigenous life (a rule that is more often broken than followed) and possible war breaking out with other galactic superpowers were the mission handled improperly. Y'know, the little stuff. What's nice about this film and how it plays out is, despite what my synopsis would have you believe, it does not in fact play out like a standard episode of Star Trek. A couple of the films had fallen into this trap (see: Insurrection), and it's easy to do. It didn't happen here though, and it was brilliant. The reason it felt more like a complete and separate film is the presence of subplots with several of the characters involved and how they all mingled together. One such subplot addressed the hole in the first film very well. I had a problem with the fact that a very young officer such as Kirk, who had a notorious reputation for slacking, rash decision making, and was technically still on probation for cheating on tests, was just given command of the most advanced ship in the fleet. It would be like giving Frank 'The Punisher' Castle command of The Avengers. It's awesome, and you'll get results...but it's a horrible decision. Such results play out in STID and becomes a thing that everyone needs to deal with throughout the film. When improperly done, subplots are nothing but filler, especially in blockbusters like this. Here, it was an asset to the film and made the characters, the story, everything stronger.
As I said before, the crew was fantastic in Star Trek '09 and continues to be strong. I always liked Kirk in command because I've always found him the most relateable of the captains of Star Trek lore. Let's look at the contrast: Picard didn't seem to get an emotion chip until after the Locutus incident (ironically enough). Sisko always came off to me as the 'angry black police captain' stereotype of Star Trek. I haven't watched much Voyager but Janeway always looked like the coldest bitch this side of Cersei Lannister. And Quantum Leap guy is just himself, in the same way that Richard Dean Anderson was always Macgyver no matter how many seasons of Stargate SG-1 there are. Kirk is arrogant, hot tempered, and a ridiculous lech. What human wouldn't be in his position? He's a young, charismatic and good looking captain of a state-of-the-art starship with a chip on his shoulder. He's a fucking pimp with a heart of gold, and is portrayed that way. Shatner will always have a special place in my heart, but Chris Pine is a great leader to this amazing cast.
There's a lot of more of the same for the rest of the characters, with new elements mixing with nostalgic qualities essential to each character. Spock is still a cold prick at times, Bones is still a crazy bastard that has always reminded me of Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Chekov still can't pronounce the word 'vessel'...but Scotty has a familiar! Uhura's job description goes beyond 'answer the fucking phone!' It's awesome. Alice Eve's addition as the arbitrary love interest for Kirk was an appreciated one (because she's hot). But the real story here in terms of new cast is the Cumberbatch's turn as John Harrison. There has always been an absence of sympathetic villains in Star Trek, most of which are either alien, cyborg, or psychotic. Harrison was the first antagonist who has had an actual motivation behind his actions that had nothing to do with taking over or destroying the federation. He had a legitimate gripe and just went about it the wrong way. The presentation of Harrison reminded me very much of Tom Hiddleston's Loki in Thor and Avengers. He doesn't start out evil, just...misunderstood. His speaking was slightly annoying, in that he just had to over enunciate every single word he could, but other than that, he was a worthy villain portrayed expertly with lots of nice throwbacks to the original canon.
Speaking of which, I've been hearing a lot of complaints that there are too many references/homages/whatevers to the original show and films from which this reboot is based. I could see how the references could annoy some in the midst of all the changes that have been made to the crew and progression of the story of the Enterprise. Hell, it was exactly this argument that caused my dislike of Skyfall. But the difference here is that a lot of this was not only well done, but it made sense. I've stated in previous posts about my hard-on for continuity in a series of films, and this one really took a lot from its predecessor in explaining some of the plot holes and motivation behind the actions of the characters. You have to remember that the events of the first film drastically changed the course that this group of characters was on, but it was still going the same direction. So yeah, similar things happened here that have happened with the Shatner-led crew, but with some changes thrown in, some subtle, some drastic. It made sense, but is in a nutshell why I HAAAAAAAATE time travel as a story's lynch pin. It will literally explain everything away regardless of how contradictory or plothole-y it is. So Eric Bana, Doc Brown, Marty McFly, John Connor, and their ilk can gooooooooooo fuck themselves.
That leads me to my final point: there are things that happen in this movie that are just pants-on-head ridiculous. No amount of movie science jibberjabber is going to explain some of the elements of this plot, even despite the time travel precedence. There will be moments where you will find yourself just chuckling and muttering 'bullshit' under your breath. The thing is that this is not a compliant. Anyone who's ever watched a single Star Trek episode, much less a Trekkie, can not only excuse shit like this happening, they should fucking expect it. Pretty much every episode ends in Scotty or Wesley-fucking-Crusher or the god damn BLIND GUY spouting off nonsense about a made up many-syllable word like 'superultracapacitor' or what the fuck ever and poof, problem solved. I mean, Christ, the computer consoles aren't even in braille, how in the blue hell does Geordi get anything done? The shit pulled in STID is standard fare for an outing on the Enterprise. Far worse films have attempted to pull off far more ridiculous stunts. Basically, if anything silly done in this movie turns you off of it, you were never going to enjoy it anyway so rest easy.
STID was a great in-your-face follow up to Iron Man 3 in terms of summer blockbusters, and will probably make my top 10 this year. J.J. Abrams delivered on a successful sequel to a uniquely great reboot of a treasured franchise. It's been announced that he will not be taking the direction on the next Star Trek entry, and that makes me sad, but the near perfect combination of fanservice and homage with Abrams' own style and fresh feel make me feel really good about his taking on Star Wars Episode VII. I think the Star Wars universe is in safe hands after watching this film, and most Star Wars fanboys should feel the same.
But seriously, J.J. If you manage to fuck Star Wars up any further than it has been, then from Hell's heart I will stab at thee.
Knight Owl
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