Abrams On Star Trek Into Darkness Flaws

J.J. Abrams took part in a “celebrity nerd-off” with Stephen Colbert last weekend in New Jersey, and naturally the topic of Star...

More...

 

Honestly, 5 minutes of STII parallels from a different timeline hardly seems like sacrilege. Purists get over yourselves. Get out of your basements.

RAMA

 

It's the future we are concerned with. From the same site:

JJ. I hope for the best but expect the worst.

 

You don't get a say in what others like or dislike or where to live. It used to be that lens flares were the effects of amateurish photography. Now it's like pissing in a bottle and calling it art. Also, the basement meme is tired. You might as well go for the whole spectrum of prejudicial jokes and phobias when you say things like that about individual preferences.

I appreciate that Abrams is listening and showing some introspection. It would seem to run counter to the artists, and even the consumers, who do not think the audience is worth considering.

 

I enjoyed Into Darkness so let me start there. But, it had some problems. I don't personally find the references to Wrath of Khan the issue, although I will admit that Spock's "Khaaaaan" scream took me out of the movie. I think the problems can be nailed to one point:

Why did it have to be Khan?

What purpose in the storyline did he serve? Why did there need to be 72 torpedoes? Why couldn't Section 31 just have initiated its own supersoldier program and John Harrison was a man who was brought into the program, was used by Admiral Marcus and revolted? (Granted, yes, now I hear the fanboys whining that its a rip-off of Winter Soldier. Sigh.) Or even moreso, why couldn't Harrison just be a disgruntled Starfleet intelligence op and take out some of the superhuman aspects of the character?

But, why did it have to be Khan?

The references to Star Trek II are minimal at best and based upon the storyline, they did work okay (excluding the Khan scream in my book).

 

I think in the case of JJ's Star Trek movies, the audience were considered a bit too much. JJ has stated time and time again that he made these Star Trek movies for 'movie fans', not Star Trek fans. Please find anything where Abrams says the same thing about his work on Star Wars.

 

I agree with pretty much all of your points. I think that Harrison could have been his own character, augmented soldier from Section 31 gone rouge. But, the Captain America connection is one that would cause complaints as well.

Khan simply was the popular choice. It's funny because they worked so hard to create their own continuity and yet still felt beholden to prior Trek works.

Regardless, the 5 minutes of one scene and having Khan as the villain for the last third of the film doesn't ruin my enjoyment of it.

 

What's interesting is you could actually have your Khan references that way. Have someone tell Admiral Marcus that they're just creating another Khan Noonien Singh. That's all that needed to be said.

I think, overall, it would have been a far more interesting story. Harrison, who maybe was career Starfleet, one of their finest in security, with a family background in the fleet was recruited by Section 31 and then realized the atrocities he's been made to commit.

You want an even more personal connection for the audience to grab hold to? -- He and Kirk were friends at the Academy.

Hell, you want to make it an even more personal connection for Star Trek fanboys? -- make him Gary Mitchell.

Then at the end, as opposed to "killing" Kirk and having Harrison/Mitchell and Spock racing across San Francisco, Harrison/Mitchell sacrifices himself to stop Admiral Marcus. Movie written. Problems solved. You have your classic Star Trek connection. You have your Khan reference but it's not over the top. Hell, Carol could still be there and serve the same purpose, but she be that "blonde technician" that in the Prime Universe Mitchell references, but instead, she and Mitchell hooked up.

This is a movie I would have loved far more than what we got.

 

Here's a question I have-does Star Wars need that? Regardless of personal opinion, Star Wars is far less of a niche product that Star Trek, as odd as that sounds.

I mean, I can think of films where a character is considered odd for having not seen Star Wars, but regarded as a odd being a "Trekkie."

The idea that a Star Trek film being designed for non-Trek fans is a bit more necessary when a property is considered very insular and inaccessible.

You and I think very similarly

 

It makes me a bit sad that a film director who makes successful movies that are fun to watch feels the need to come out and apologize to a tiny minority of "fans" who are going to complain no matter what.

 

Or -- and I know this is unthinkable under the rubric that online criticism exists in some alternate universe where no one is capable of being right about anything -- maybe Abrams saw the complaints, thought about it, and actually agrees with some of them? Shocking!

 

How ironic it would be for fans to agree with Abrams' agreement with fan disagreements. Holy feedback loop, Batman!

 

The "Khaaaaaan!" scream was a bit much. Everything else was fine.

 

Would you really want Harrison (as Harrison or Khan) to be the hero of the movie? Makes no sense to me, at least. It had to be Kirk who made the sacrifice and defeated both Marcus's plan and Khan. If Harrison takes himself out stopping Marcus, Kirk's been neutered as a hero.

Khan was also shorthand for the fans for how dangerous he really was. Abrams said part of the reason Cumberbatch got the part was he had a really interesting take on Khan. It could be Khan was to be played more "Khan-like" (unsympathetic character, passionate, conniving), but the Khan we see at least tries to evoke empathy with the audience for his plight, he's more inscrutable than passionate, and more calculated than conniving. He's also not psychotic and borderline irrational as he is in TWOK.

And for the thousandth time, I thought it was quite neat that Khan played such an important role at a critical moment in the lives of both Kirks, with each Kirk learning something important about himself and coming out of it a better person for the encounter.

 

Stid had some problems, like it happens with many sequels that don't live up the expetations and success of the first movie, but it was still successfull and critically praised for the most part..I think some blew everything out of proportion.

For me, the first part of the movie is great (I too think Harrison didn't need to be Khan, it ruined an otherwise interesting character), it's the second that was a let down on some aspects. As for the nods, that is true they went a bit over the top with them
My impression was that they tried to please the trek fans that didn't like the first movie but it backfired on them. Ultimately, I think many people's frustation was the feeling that the first movie promised us something new but the sequel makes it seems that the reboot isn't fully allowed to be its own thing.

 

Exactly. The 2009 film ended with the nuEnterprise warping off into parts unknown...and the next movie features Earth, a revenge story, and two old yet reinvented characters.

Nothing wrong with the story as such but they could have done the "Kirk learns what it means to command" story, and let it be a payoff from the first film, but do it without referencing WoK multiple times.

 

Hollywood being Hollywood, it was probably to be 'risk adverse'. Khan's a known quantity, something even the ''casuals'' in the audience can identify with, and a part of the hype machine.

All of which makes it doubly ironic that the Paramount marketing geniuses then came up with all that cloak & dagger bullshit about who he really was, so they didn't even advertise his true identity on the poster or in the trailer (something that Abrams has since admitted was a mistake, saying they should've just come clean and milked it for all the publicity it was worth.)

 

This isn't even remotely accurate.

 

I love the lens flares, they make the movie feel more real and less digital.