Thoughts (and spoilers) after the jump.
Basically I can divide this movie into Stuff I Liked and Stuff I Didn’t Like.
STUFF I DIDN’T LIKE
Okay, so Benedict Cumberbatch is, indeed, Khan. (Not “Khan Noonien Singh,” since calling him that would emphasize rather pointedly that the role has been whitewashed since Ricardo Montalban played him. Just “Khan.”) That, combined with the repeated thematic callbacks to Wrath of Khan, is a little worrying because the last thing I want from the rebooted Trek is for it to get a bad case of Reboot Syndrome, where you have to re-introduce every fucking thing that the original mythos created because why tell new stories when you can just tell variations on older, successful ones. The plot doesn’t mirror Wrath that greatly, but it’s enough for me to mention it.
I like Benedict Cumberbatch and I liked his performance – which was just alien enough to emphasize that Khan, in real life, would be kind of weird and offputting – but most of his time in the movie is spent punching things dramatically and it would have been nice for him to have some more conversational moments. I would guess there is at least one decent conversation scene on the cutting room floor.
Also, Alice Eve, who plays Carol Marcus, was a bit wooden at times, and by “at times” I mean “for most of the movie.”
STUFF I LIKED
I liked that the major overriding theme of the movie was about the necessity and dangers of militarism within an advanced society. The first reboot Trek in 2009 was at times a little more militaristic than I would have liked, and this sets back firmly on an opposing course in that regard (Spock’s dislike of the mission parameters being “immoral,” Scotty being angry at taking experimental classified weapons on board and declaring that he wasn’t a soldier, et cetera). Trek by necessity has to have some militaristic elements to it, because the big spaceships have to have big lasers because big laser battles in space are kind of important for Trek, and if you’re gonna have publicly funded giant spaceships with lasers then Starfleet has to be at least a pseudo-military, but the movie gets Starfleet back right into that sweet space of “look, we might have a lot of army things, but we’re not an army,” and that matters to me. And I liked that Trek goes right back into talking about currently relevant issues by making a sci-fi story be about them.
I liked that each of the main characters gets a real important drama point in the movie – another gripe about the first movie was that Uhura didn’t get enough accomplishment-time and they more than fixed that this time around, and more importantly most of the crew’s accomplishments aren’t just repeats of what they did in the first movie. (Chekov maybe runs a little light, but Chekov was always the least important of the original crew, so it’s not too bad.) As before, the performances are uniformly rock-solid excellence.
I liked that they mentioned the Prime Directive and treated it like a serious thing. I liked the Nimoy cameo (although that is a well they need to stop drawing from right now). I liked that Team Enterprise figured out most of the bad guys’ plans before those plans were executed (although generally not quite fast enough to outright stop them).
Generally, I liked the movie a lot. I do have misgivings, but on the whole I thought this was a strong outing.
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31 users responded in this post
I had huge problems with the sue of khan, because I found ti very dishonest. [Full discolusre: I have not seen Wrath of Khan, nor the TOS episode with Khan].
I thought John Harrison was an interesting villain. And the reveal that he was Khan did absolutely nothing to me. It did not shock me, it added nothing to the story. It should either be John Harrison the whole time or Khan the whole time,t hat switches adds nothing to the story, just as having Leonard Nimoy come back and say “I can tell you nothing about Khan, click” does nothing. That was the most useless cameo I have ever seen in a movie.
And that’s pretty much my only complaint because, you know, Tribbles.
Loved it. About the same little complaints as you, but overall it was a great movie.
I actually rolled my eyes at the Nimoy cameo. It was unnecessary (especially given his cameo in the first one) and was just fan service. I would say that was my biggest problem with the movie (which, by the by, I loved): the endless fanservice.
However, I do feel like they kind of cleansed themselves of the past, and can go in a totally new direction, free of any legacy now.
I really think Mudd’s behind all of this.
Being Australian, I got to see the film last Monday (why all of a sudden are we getting blockbusters before the USA?) and, while I thought it was a good film, it could have been better.
I agree with Sage above that the villain should have been one or the other for the whole film (preferably just Harrison). Also, making him virtually indestructible and that his blood had mystical healing powers made was a bit much to swallow.
Peter Weller was well, but I think it’s time to retire Nimoy no matter what he brings to the role of Spock.
I cringed at the reversed Spock/Kirk death scene and I may not be a doctor but I’m pretty sure that high radiation doses would damage a brain beyond repair despite mystical blood healing powers.
It’s a movie and I’m not going to get outraged at any assault on my sensibilities (real or imagined) but just a little more attention to the small details would make for a smoother story.
My 2 cents…
Starfleet IS a military organization. Always has been, in every incarnation of the series. It’s cast in the most positive light possible and they downplay the thumping of jackboots somewhat, but at the end of the day, it’s not a bunch of jolly space friends having space adventures, it’s Space Navy and when Picard tells them to do something it’s not fatherly advice, it is an order that cannot be refused.
I really feel like it had the same strengths as the first one: a good adventure plot, some humor, each of the crew gets to show off for a scene or 2, callbacks to the old series, etc. It’s a fun movie.
Unfortunately, it also has the same weaknesses: plays very fast and loose with physics, plot holes, inventing crazy capabilities that weren’t in any other Trek franchise, and just generally only makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard.
I could go into detail about these flaws, but will resist for now.
If you like Trek in the same way that you like other sci-fi action (technobabble, chase scenes, lazors and other special effects), then you’ll enjoy this one. If you like it in the sense of the TV series (ethical quandaries, hard sci-fi concepts, exploration, long moralizing speeches) this one might not be to your tastes.
I couldn’t get over the massive plot holes. It wasn’t even fridge logic, it was sitting RIGHT THERE going “So… does anyone actually work at Starfleet? Because there’s a massive space battle going on for, like, a couple hours within naked-eye-visible range of their headquarters, so you’d think they’d be interested. Also, who cares about capturing Khan alive for his blood when you have 72 people right there with the same superpowers, including one you just now decanted? Also…” and so on.
Then, too, I’d hoped that unqualified-moron Kirk would have gone all Prince Hal in this one, but nope. Instead, most of the movie is about everyone INCLUDING KIRK agreeing that it’s pretty stupid that anyone would want him to be captain, because he’s clearly terrible at it. Seriously, the first half of this movie is repeating the exact improbable series of events from the FIRST movie that led to Kirk getting the job he can’t do properly.
But even though Benedict just says “Khan”, Nimoy reminds us the full name is “Khan Noonian Singh”. And he has the same origin and all that, except hey presto, white guy.
Unless, when Eric Bana went back in time, there were further time ripples that went even MORE back in time and changed Khan into a British dude?
I just got back from seeing it this evening, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Yes, the plot had ludicrously huge holes in it, yes, they whitewashed Khan again, and yes, Alice Eve was stand-out wooden in most of her appearances. Khan’s magical healing blood, don’t get me started.
But the bits MGK listed above as liking, I also really liked, and I loved the inversion of the Wrath of Khan roles, and I utterly adored the Chekov’s Gun of a model of the dreadnought included in the scene in Admiral Marcus’s office with the rest of the starships. Rather pointedly at the advanced end of that line, to boot.
I also liked the casual reference to Mudd having run afoul of this Enterprise already as well.
I liked the opening sequence on Nimura for the most part*, too, highlighting as it does both the very good reasons for the so-called “Prime Directive” and why it cannot be a rigid, unbreakable rule if the show/movie is to make any reasonable sense/entertainment.
(*) Kirk just wanders into an obviously major temple, just-barely disguised and casually steals a seriously holy relic as a brain-free attempt at causing a distraction? (And McCoy just lets him?!?) This was the one point in the entire movie that almost broke my suspension of disbelief.
Overall, a lot of fun, a lot of surprising good bits, and I’m studiously refusing to apply any serious thought to the overall plot, cause it’s at heart a fun, dumb movie.
Also, I thought the Nimoy cameo was good for the “I can’t tell you anything, because of (good-ish) reasons, but I will tell you this: Don’t fuck about with this guy, he was the biggest big bad our Enterprise ever dealt with, and it cost us an awful lot to stop him.”
That said, yes, they need to stop having Nimoy appear both because that plot-hook’s played out already, and ’cause Nimoy is really getting frail and showing it. (The man is 82, after all.)
I didn’t have a problem with Nimoy’s appearance (it is, of course, perfectly logical that nu-Spock would try to use Spock-Prime as a resource in times like this), and it’s not that much of a problem that Khan was whitewashed, since we know from TOS that Starfleet has the tech to do some pretty amazing plastic surgery, and if Section 31 wanted to thaw out, say, Hitler for some reason, and give him not only a new identity but a Starfleet record, one of the first things that they’d do is make him as un-Hitleresque as they could. My main gripe was how painfully obvious it was that Kirk would be cured with magic Khan blood. (I can understand, though, why they would want to capture Khan rather than thaw out another guy, because McCoy doesn’t know that someone else’s blood would work; in fact, it would make sense that an absolute dictator would reserve certain genetic mods for himself.)
Honestly, I found the gripes about “white-washing” Kahn can be solved with an easy explanation:
Spock Prime went into an alternate universe, not just the past. Which is kinda why the Kelvin had more weapons than those 39 Starfleet ships at Wolf 359.
As for the rest of the movie, I really have to agree with MGK’s likes list. Where this movie is strong, it’s really strong.
Although I think that Cumberbatch’s Harrison/Kahn thing comes from two different scripts being blended together for a final draft. It’s happened before.
Into Darkness was bad. More to the point, it was PREDICTABLY bad.
The project was helmed by Abrams and had the deep involvement of Kurtzman, Orci, and Lindelof, four people who have proven time and time again that they couldn’t craft a story without massive, idiotic plot holes if you pointed guns at their heads. It attempts to cash in on nostalgia without understanding why people are nostalgic for those things in the first place.
I said it after the first movie and I’ll say it again: I don’t know who this fucking… frat boy they’re for some reason giving starships to is, but he isn’t James T. Kirk.
Zachary Quinto fully inhabits the role of Spock (he may in fact be a better Spock than Nimoy was) but his “KHAAAAAAN!” should rank right up alongside James Earl Jones’ “NOOOOO!” as “awful, awful writing decisions and deliveries.”
I felt insulted as both a thinking human being and a Star Trek fan. I didn’t pay money to see this and urge other people not to do, as it will simply encourage Abrams.
I’m torn.
I’m a huge Star Trek fan, and liked the first movie despite some weak points. This movie was fun… but the more I think about it the more I have issues with it.
1) I really, really didn’t want this movie to be about Khan. I have about 15 different reasons, but i guess I’ll boil it down to three:
A: TWoK is the best Trek movie… ever. Because some decided ‘What if we took the cold-blooded eugenic superman of space seed who came > ‘Possible War with Klingons if we mess up’ > ‘Philosophical differences as to whether Starfleet is a warfleet’ > ‘Oh Noes the Enterprise is crashing’ > ‘Oh Noes Jim is dead’ > ‘Oh Noes we need the blood of one of the 73 super humans’ > ‘Oh Noes… I hope I don’t mess up my sad speech’.
Yes people die, yes people pay a price, yes there is drama etc… but compare that to TWoK where it starts at ‘Hey, training cruise’ and by the end it’s ‘God, we have to keep Khan from sailing away with the Genesis device’.
It was fun… and it was funny… and it was an enjoyable 2.5 hours…. but it was also meh… lost itself in fan service… had a pretty predictable final act and also ‘KHHHHAAAAAAAAN’
There was a much better movie stuffed in here where the admiral is the villain and Khan doesn’t feature at all. I hate that they went to all the trouble of a reboot, and then decided to immediately start telling the same stories.
I did like it, although when it got hardcore into the “it’s like Wrath of Khan, get it?” territory at the end, it was a bit of mixed bag. Personally, Kirk and Spock sharing the reversed roles “moment” still got me despite how silly it was. For me, they at least earned it by setting the story up.
I do really like the smaller moments that sort of called back (forward?) to stuff other than just Wrath of Khan. Having recently watched Space Seed, the elements from that were nice to see. The stuff with Sulu as acting Captain, was a nice nod. I especially like how this seemed to be working towards the heavily militarized Star Fleet of the evil Goatee-verse.
That all being said, the Tribble seen was probably a bit too much in the way of foreshadowing (the opener probably wasn’t enough, as they need some way for McCoy to find out how to bring Kirk back, but the scene made it too obvious that this will be important later, and why just randomly inject a dead animal with a someone’s blood? That being said, if you are going to have an animal that you test things on, a Trible makes a lot of sense.)
And Spock screaming Khan was a bit campy, but I think it does work, since it does sell that Spock is probably ready to murder the guy. They did go very close to copying Wrath of Khan in some instances, but they at least worked very hard to make sure those scenes worked into the context of the story.
After seeing the movie last night and mulling it over, i’m in the same boat as most of you. Liked it, but a little ehhhhh that they revisited Khan and did so closely just to have the cute references.
I’m no trekkie at all but I kinda rolled my eyes a bit during the Khan reveal just because Khan was such an obvious answer for a sequel villain that I didn’t think itd be him at all. And hell, had it been Khan in this movie or others? I was hoping that the whole “Altered timeline” thing was make it so that Khans appearance and history was RADICALLY different from the TOS…….
Which is what i’m hoping is going to occur in the third movie. The villains/threat should be completely outta left field (fuck i would lose my shit if it was the Borg, yes I know its wayyyy before their time) which challenges the viewers, pleases the diehard, and renders Old Spock completely useless.
After talking about the flick with some friends yesterday, I came to the following summary:
‘Star Trek Into Darkness, is Wrath of Khan for people who haven’t seen Wrath of Khan. Having seen Wrath of Khan a billion times, and always being up for seeing it again? I’d prefer that to seeing Into Darkness again.’
There were definitely things that I liked, but overall it was too little new stuff wrapped around a core that had been done better previously.
And while, as a fan, I liked the fan service moments (Mudd references, Capt. Sulu, etc) when you start sticking too many of those in, all of a sudden the line between ‘big movie script’ and ‘fan fiction fridays’ starts to blur.
And Spock screaming Khan was a bit campy, but I think it does work, since it does sell that Spock is probably ready to murder the guy. They did go very close to copying Wrath of Khan in some instances, but they at least worked very hard to make sure those scenes worked into the context of the story.
Except at that point, as far as Spock knows? Khan is dead on his crippled ship.
Oh and a final note, wherein I finally put my finger on what bothers the hell out of me about this movie.
TWoK is a treatise on why the quest for revenge is self-defeating. There are multiple points in the movie where Khan can sail away, victorious, and Starfleet would likely never be able to catch him. That he can’t put aside the thirst for revenge is what leads him to his very bad end.
Kirk’s motivation in TWoK is to stop Khan, because Khan is a danger to the Federation… not to revenge himself on Khan for any of Khan’s early triumphs in the movie.
So it’s sort of troubling that in Into Darkness the primary motivation for Kirk is revenge. And while it’s a motivation that he then abandons… it’s a mantle that’s picked up by Spock shortly thereafter.
At it’s best, Trek isn’t about revenge… it’s about looking past that (hell, you could say that the Undiscovered Country is completely about teaching that lesson to Kirk again)… so I kind of wish it wasn’t such a primary motivation for both sides.
@Christian Williams
“Kirk’s motivation in TWoK is to stop Khan, because Khan is a danger to the Federation… not to revenge himself on Khan for any of Khan’s early triumphs in the movie.”
I got the impression that Kirk wanted to get Khan because he killed Christopher Pike. Kirk explicitly told Marcus he wanted to go after Khan himself.
At the end, I saw Kirk’s speech as not only a rebuke against the militarization of Starfleet, but also a message about the futility and danger of seeking revenge.
It’s interesting that the Klingon homeworld is right around the corner and that they can accurately shoot torpedoes at a certain spot from the Neutral Zone. Also, whitewashing Kahn? Should they have gotten another Mexican guy?
Also, whitewashing Kahn? Should they have gotten another Mexican guy?
Well, they did try to hire a Puerto Rican guy first.
All excellent observations, and I agree with MGK re: loved the movie despite a few shortcomings. My first thought leaving the theatre: If they had special suits that could help them survive inside volcanoes and travel through space from one ship to another, then why didn’t they keep a few “in case of emergency, put this on” suits outside the big radioactive chamber?
Also: hats? Starfleet officers wear special military hats now as part of their dress uniforms? I don’t want to be a in future that makes you wear hats.
@jchandsom
That is my point.
In the Wrath of Khan Kirk is after Khan because he is a danger to the Federation, particularly after he gets Genesis. Here…. Kirk wants to kill Khan for killing Pike… and later only slightly tones that down to wanting to bring him to trial.
It is a bad motivation for the character.
@Kevin Wilson: Australia often gets films before the US. Sometimes we’re used as a test market to see how audiences react. Plus we screen new films from a Thursday while the US typically screens new films from a Friday.
It also depends a bit on what is screening in the US versus Australia at the time. The US is the major market that film distributors want a hit in, so they’ll time the release of the film to hopefully find a ‘sweet spot’ for maximum attendance, while Australia is a small-but-active film market where finding a clear release date is less important (to international film distributors; local distributors and cinemas would feel differently).
Also, the International Date Line. The more ticket sales they can cram into the “opening weekend” the more money they get to have for their next project. Same reason they have started having Thursday openings in the U.S.
It gets confusing when someone mentions Chekov’s Gun when discussing a Star Trek movie.
My big takeaway, which was hinted at in the Corvette scene in the previous film, was that James T. Kirk is a fan of the Beastie Boys. And that makes me happy.
I liked it, but like the last film, it’s a little dodgy plotwise. And science isn’t a strong suit of these writers–Star Trek used to make a handwave at that, at least.
Why is Admiral Weller bothering with the big, black, no-crew ship; or Khan? He’s got Scotty’s transwarp beaming equation, and bombs. He could beam bombs to the Klingon homeworld and level it, without even having to go outside.