STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Agent Richard07, Apr 18, 2013.

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Grade the movie...

  1. A+

    18.8%
  2. A

    20.6%
  3. A-

    13.2%
  4. B+

    11.1%
  5. B

    7.9%
  6. B-

    4.1%
  7. C+

    5.7%
  8. C

    5.0%
  9. C-

    3.5%
  10. D+

    1.5%
  11. D

    1.6%
  12. D-

    1.3%
  13. F

    5.7%
  1. tobiasrichter

    tobiasrichter Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    One thing I still don´t understand - when they seem now to be able to beam peope right across the galaxy (I guess Earth-Kronos is pretty far away), why do they need starships at all? Will the future of Star Trek be like Stargate, hopping from one planet to the next?
     
  2. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    But they aren't. Section 31 appropriated the transwarp-beaming project.
     
  3. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I was very disappointed.

    I thought it was choppy, and that it lacked tension and emotional impact. The homage points were way too heavy handed. When Spock screamed Khaan the thought that went through my head was, "I want slap JJ in the face". I felt like Khan needed more build up, that Cumberbatch (who was certainly up for the role, no complaints there) was underused by the writers. Certain other things annoyed me such as the communicator call from out near Quonos to Earth and that Pike just blabbed out about Section 31 to Kirk. The tribble/blood deal was completely obvious and made doing the reverse death hands on glass khan yelling scene seem pointlessly repetitive with zero emotional impact. The whole thing just didn't work for me. Also rather irritated at a great line in the trailer never showing up in the movie.

    Things I did like:

    Uhura wearing the same earrings as the first JJ movie.

    Discussion about Spock/Uhura spat and emotions was tidy and worked well.

    Lashings of K/S slashiness.

    NIMOY!

    Visually attractive, very much enjoyed the London scenes.

    JJ's ability to keep so many huge things a secret, kudos to him for that one. I am now a bit worried that Star Wars VII will be a collection of homages and redone scenes from the earlier films though.

    I'm not going to vote in the poll because I'm hoping watching it again will improve my opinion. I really really really don't like not loving this movie.

    (Oh and btw in case anyone thinks I'm a Trek luddite I adored the first film, my absolute favorite Trek film.)
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2013
  4. Oso Blanco

    Oso Blanco Commodore Commodore

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    I had really hoped that this transwarp beaming nonsense from the first movie would never come up again, but there you go ... beaming from Starfleet HQ directly to Kronos ... has there ever been anything more facepalmworthy in Star Trek?

    I know I come across as if I didn't like the movie. Well, I did like it ... but those little things are kind of ruining it for me. The Klingon "D4" ship was another one.
     
  5. I am not Spock

    I am not Spock Commodore Commodore

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    -Benedict is Khan. It is flat out stated. (And he's awesome and chilling in the role, maybe better than Montalban). John Harrison is a misnomer, a false name he uses to hide his identity.
    - The other Botany Bay survivors are mentioned, but none of them are revived, besides Khan
    - Christine Chapel is mentioned, but not seen
    - Bones gets a few good scenes. He's not underutilised, don't worry.
    - Mickey Smith from Doctor Who is indeed in this, but he dies in the first ten minutes or so (he's the bomber)
    - Section 31 are explicitly mentioned, and involved in the story. Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) is working for them, and the USS Vengeance is a stealth military vessel, serving their agenda
    -Bruce Greenwood's Pike dies, and doesn't have a huge role in the plot
    - Chekov gets a red shirt
    - Kirk dies in the chamber (but gets revived). The scene plays out similarly to TWOK, but with Spock on the other side of the glass
    - Spock is the one who yells out KHAAAAAAAAAN, and he engages Khan in hand to hand combat at the end
    - Carol Marcus is a Starfleet officer, in this timeline, and has a British accent, and serves on the Enterprise.
    - The Prime Directive is mentioned
    - Kirk is chewed out by Pike, for screwing up on the away team mission, exposing the Enterprise to a pre warp culture
    - He is demoted, just as he was in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home
    - Scotty resigns from the Enterprise, but returns later on
    - The Klingons appear, redesigned. Tall, uglier, with rings on their forehead ridges. The new design looks cool, IMO. Their starships are also redesigned.
    - It is the Vengeance, not the Enterprise, which crashes on Earth
    - A tribble appears
    -Khan survives. He is placed back into cryostasis at the end. In a scene reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark
    -Leonard Nimoy as Spock Prime cameos, and talks about the Khan in his universe."

    (A+) I loved the movie. I thought it was a very entertaining thrill ride. Lots of humour, action, emotion, drama. I am a lifelong fan, who could name every episode, every guest star, every planet. It's essentially a reboot in all but name, but I am past that now. I think it's an entertaining take on a classic franchise.

    I think if Trekkies can just get over the fact they've essentially rebooted the universe, they'll get a kick out of this. This movie is fun. It's great that Star Trek is fun again, after the staginess, and PC nature of Berman's entries like Voyager.

    Five stars. Very entertaining movie
     
  6. SalvorHardin

    SalvorHardin Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Starships aren't taxis.
    They still need starships to do any meaningful exploration, go to unknown\uncharted places, do all sorts of analysis with the scientific instruments and sensors onboard etc etc
    They still need starships for defense. What good is beaming going to be when the Klingon or Romulan fleet shows up?
     
  7. Oso Blanco

    Oso Blanco Commodore Commodore

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    I'm still thinking about why this movie didn't keep up with my expectations ... I think the whole pre-release build up lead into a completely wrong direction:

    Into Darkness - There wasn't any more darkness to it than in the other movies. It was about one or two bad guys and a super ship and neither one barely had the chance to live up to it's potential. Cumberbatch was wasted in this role, they should have explored his character even more and they shouldn't have had him admit being Khan so early in the movie. Once I knew for sure he was Khan, I could foretell almost the entire rest of the film.

    And what about the official synopsis?

    They went to Kronos and Khan surrendered. What was so epic about that?

    So Spock and Uhura had a crisis ... so what?

    I must have missed this part ... or does Scotty resigning count?

    What sacrifice? Kirk gave his life, but we all knew that he wasn't really dead. And for those who weren't sure, didn't the Tribble experiment give it away pretty soon?
     
  8. Eddie Roth

    Eddie Roth Commodore Commodore

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    I should've known that coming here after seeing the film would mean reading comment upon comment of some canon-whore bemoaning how the film "tramples all over established Trek", respectively those who feel that "oh, it's not Star Trek at all". Hogwash, both of them.

    To those who haven't seen it (and you really shouldn't be in a spoiler thread at this point!): It rocks! Every bit as great as ST09, if for different reasons. Here they are (and they feature spoilers of course):

    1. The one small complaint I had about ST09, which I otherwise felt was an immense ride much like the Indiana Jones films, was that it evaded several of the elements which set ST apart from other sci-fi franchises, i.e. the focus on questions of morality and the commentary on current social issues. That is fully back in STID: The topic, obviously, is terrorism, but the film doesn't take the easy route by saying "Look, here's a fanatic who wants to destroy our way of life, and we must stop him", but complicates the matter by introducing another villain, one Admiral Marcus, who is a Cheney/Rumsfeld kind of hawk looking to turn the cold war with the Klingons hot and thus uses Harrison/Khan to achieve that. If you want to read Khan as an Osama bin Laden type, then this film clearly outlines the genesis of such types. After all, bin Laden was originally a CIA asset in Afghanistan being used in the fight against the opposing party in the Cold War, the invading Soviet Union. The lesson outlined here is that you cannot and should not ally yourself with an enemy just because he so happens to also be the enemy of your enemy. He might turn on YOU after he's done with the common enemy. (Kirk and Spock even have a nice bit of dialogue about this particular problem.) With this single plot choice, the relevance of ST as commentary on history has been restored, if of course it cannot explore the issue as deeply as a TV episode would've done - but then again, this is not really what one could ever expect from a summer blockbuster. And frankly, few if any of the previous Trek films ever did "message" as well as any of the episodes.

    2. On a related note, the Kirk-Spock dynamic is now played out to maximum effect with regard to the questions of morality ST is so famous for. Whereas ST09 portrayed their rivalry as petty in certain places (they seemed to be fighting because they annoy each other in their differences of character, much like high school kids would), now, when they're fighting, they do so because they have different approaches to the problem at hand. This means that the conflict between them comes not from the script, but rather from the characters' essences. Particularly in the early part of the film this is evident (a good old Prime Directive discussion) where both are equally right, they just need to learn that the other one's perspective is just as valid as their own and that they can be reconciled. The rest of the film is then precisely about that. This character relationship was probably my favorite part about STID.

    3. In my stream of conciousness review here, this would be the place to mention, as some have before me, that there comes a scene late in the film where the writers go a little on the nose with their nostalgic celebration of that classic character relationship. In a remake of sorts of Spock's TWOK death, Kirk is now the one to sacrifice himself for the ship and he and Spock share a goodbye through a plate of glass. It's a scene that works, ultimately, but yes, the word-by-word homage goes just one step too far in its self-referentiality. Much like Spock Prime's line to young Kirk in ST09 "I have been and always shall be...", an iconic line in a different context just doesn't quite have the same impact it used to have.

    4. If, however, you feel that as a Star Trek fan, you just can't cope with the new creatives using the franchise as a toy box from which they pull whatever they feel serves their goal best to present an entertaining (and in this case thoughtful) adventure best, you just shouldn't watch the film and content yourself with reruns. The adage is tired, but what Abrams does is truly not your father's (that being "your") Star Trek anymore. In the theater last night, the little self-conscious reactions of some of the Trekkies in the moments mentioned before really got on my nerves.

    5. Bad Robot really did a great job of keeping the surprises secret, big or small as they were. While I had been accidentally spoiled as to the villain's identity, I had no idea Leonard Nimoy would be in this. Aces! Or that Pike would die. As for the "big" secret, ultimately, knowing it beforehand didn't change my appreciation in any way. So I wonder if the secrecy was really just a strategy to keep internet geekdom's negativity at bay. We saw four years ago already how militant some people got at barely the idea that the new villain might be Khan. Turns out there was no reason to be so hostile to the idea, the character works perfectly fine and it's an interesting "what if" take on his story. Khan, having been co-opted by the secret service as a super-weapon and his friends being held hostage, has become much more dangerous than his old self was. In fact I would say that the character's motivation is a lot more convincing here than it was in either Space Seed or TWOK. In a very biodeterminist notion in the old stories, he became the villain only because he was created to be ambitious and power-hungry (and later because he wanted the old and tired revenge). Here, he's actually fighting for something. The film convincingly creates a situation halfway through where you could imagine that Khan might actually turn out to be an unlikely hero of the story. It never fully goes there, but the implications are a great bonus for the suspense of the story.

    6. Finally, especially the very beginning and the ending once again underscored that Abrams and the writers do unterstand what ST is all about. The film is indeed not about "Darkness", but the pioneer spirit and optimism that sets ST apart and it knows that the crew of the Enterprise are explorers, not warriors (something that cannot be said for all of the first ten films!). Here's hoping that the next film can find a way of bringing more fun and action-packed blockbuster stuff without relying only on fistfights and space battles. I take the Nibiru opening as a tantalizing hint as to what is still possible in this renewed franchise.

    Don't let anyone dissuade you. Star Trek Into Darkness is a great film, and a great Star Trek film as well.
     
  9. gaghyogi49

    gaghyogi49 Commander Red Shirt

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    Thanks for a great and thoughtful review I fully agree with! :-)
     
  10. Oso Blanco

    Oso Blanco Commodore Commodore

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    Those attributes could be applied to James Bond as well. And I was more talking about how it worked as a whole. It's just as with the main characters compared to their original counterparts, some work and some don't.

    Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Pike ... they were all very convincing. But Scotty and Chekov? No way! The same goes for Cumberbatch. I really wish they had left Khan alone and made Cumberbatch play somebody - anybody - else.
     
  11. stargirl

    stargirl Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I just saw the movie tonight, and I do have a lot of thoughts which I'm way too tired to post here mostly, but the one thing that I'm left with is EXACTLY what you just said StarMan- that whole last section, it just pulled me right out of the movie with all its WoK references/quotes/re-enacting. I get they were trying to pay homage, I guess, but at some point my brain just went 'ENOUGH I GET IT' and the 'KHAAAAAAAAN' really sealed it. And I came home and I've started rewatching the actual Wrath of Khan and I just... I feel like if they were going to basically remake such a brilliant movie there should have been much more depth, and meaning to it?

    But overall, I liked the acting (particularly Benedict's, although yes I'm one of those people incredibly, incredibly disappointed that they whitewashed Khan, sigh). I didn't mind the plot but it was so choppy and there was so much there relying on character relationships that at this point just wouldn't be as deep as they are? or at least we haven't seen why they would be? WoK worked because it had the years of the series, plus a movie, plus the implied decades spent together with these people... overall, even though I liked the movie and think I probably just could never dislike anything 'Star Trek' at this point, it felt like a shallow re-do of Wrath of Khan D: which makes me sad :( and honestly I really do expect better of Star Trek than whitewashing, no matter how much I love Benedict Cumberbatch :(
    Having said all that I still voted the movie as a 'B' because I love seeing 'Star Trek' on the big screen no matter what, I loved the cast and the acting, and I just felt - when I could ignore the problems my brain kept trying to remind me of - that it was a fun, action-focused ride.
     
  12. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    The character doesn't work for you, because you probably can't let go of your mental image of Montalban-as-Khan.
     
  13. Chu'lak

    Chu'lak Lieutenant

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    Can you paraphrase Kirks speech at the end? Is it "Risk is our business" cool or "I once saw a gazelle learn to run" lame?
     
  14. Oso Blanco

    Oso Blanco Commodore Commodore

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    It was more like "I learned something today ..."
     
  15. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Did they REALLY do that? Seriously? That sounds like a MAD TV sketch, especially the KHAAAAAN thing.
     
  16. stargirl

    stargirl Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Ahh, I'm terrible at remembering quotes straight after only seeing something once but - I didn't think it was too lame ? (definitely not 'gazelle' lame, lol)...
    This is really spoilery so don't read if you don't want the final bit spoiled (even though I may be recalling it inaccurately):
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    What he said, from what I can remember, was basically: 'I've realised, when fighting evil/hate, we can become evil/hate. We should try to prevent that. Our friend and commander, Christopher Pike, once told me the speech [for something - a ship christening maybe?] and I'd like to read that now. [cut to a shot of the Enterprise] These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, it's 5 year mission...' etc.
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    Idk, it was definitely a bit cheesy but hey, it had the star trek music and lovely shots of the enterprise and I forgave it everything because... I just really love star trek I guess haha. I don't think it was that bad overall (but I didn't realise it was something people had been complaining about! I guess I just found the previous ripped-straight-from-wok scenes (and the whitewashing) more noticeable and memorable as something to complain about) :)
     
  17. stargirl

    stargirl Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    yeah, they really did lol :/
     
  18. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    This sounds like a mocking of TWOK rather than a homage to it.
     
  19. donners22

    donners22 Commodore Commodore

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    Just got back from seeing it.

    Brief thoughts:
    - Better than the last one, which I rather disliked.
    - The 3D was used really effectively; not just tacked on, and not thrown at you.
    - The bald guy from the bridge needs to be in the next film!
    - Kirk made some damn stupid decisions (some thankfully circumvented by his crew, but they didn't reflect well on him) and still doesn't impress as a leader. Then again, Cumberbatch's demise was brought about by the most bloody obvious trick imaginable.
    - There were some gaps in logic, liberties taken with time/distance and inconsistencies with canon, but then the same could be said for Wrath of Khan.
    - Speaking of Wrath of Khan, that was the part which really bugged me. I was not sure whether to roll my eyes or burst out laughing when that particular scene at the end started and it just got worse - particularly when the cheat out of it was all too damned obvious. It took me completely out of the film.

    Overall quite good, but the fanwank at the end dragged it down.
     
  20. stargirl

    stargirl Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I feel like they were intending to do a homage, but it kind of came off as a bit shallow and a bit of a cheap re-enactment?
    I'm watching WoK right now, and Into Darkness just can't compare imo, so maybe I'm biased... but they literally quoted it several times, even beyond the ridiculously obvious "KHAAAAAAN" lol. (also the scene where Kirk is dying and they put their hands up on the glass, he doesn't say 'because I'd miss you' like StarMan mentioned, they actually say 'because I'm your friend' - obviously recalling back to WoK. and I mean, it's a nice scene between nuKirk and nuSpock and everything, but it just doesn't have the same meaning in this new universe), and idk - like I said in a previous post, to me it just doesn't work without those years of the crew being a family and building up a history.

    I don't know, I mean I feel so strange about my own opinions to this movie - I definitely need to see it again I think... There are several things that really disappointed me as a fan of the show (whitewashing, recreating iconic scenes without the same meaning, making Chapel into a cheap fling, WHITEWASHING, taking away the history behind the Kirk/Spock Wrath of Khan scene), but still, I enjoyed it? I don't want to sound like I hated it... I just have sad feelings as someone that has looked forward to this for years, and has loved trek for my whole life :/ But it's good! and fun! honestly :)
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2013