I just saw the movie for the first time...and it was a movie.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be but it is a film that I really am amazed to say it is aggressively not wanting to say anything about anything. Section 31 in the federation, politics as a whole, metaphors, and so on. I actually didn't dislike Into Darkness originally because I thought it was commentary on the Iraq War then I found out it was written by a 9/11 Truther and it reframed my take on it. In the end, I think S31 is just harmlessly...stupid.
Plus I love Rachel Garrett's hair.
But yes, the movie is just sort of stuff happening on screen and that is kind of fascinating that it is a Star Trek property that really goes out of its way to say nothing about anything. Plucky oddballs sent by government to stop Weapon of Mass Destruction and...they do. Its writers either played a huge amount of Mass Effect 2 after watching The Hunger Games or...no, actually I'm just going to say that was it.
If you think I'm making up the "aggressive apoliticalness" of the movie (if I may turn a phrase), I think its summarized by the YA fiction reshaping of Georgiou. Which is very unfair with YA fiction. Not so much Hunger Games as the Uglies The Terran Empire that was, at its worst, defined as a racist colonialist superpower that embodies the opposite of the Federation's power where people mindlessly jockeyed for power over who hates aliens the most or who has the biggest technological edge like a Space Rome now has teenagers compete to who can be the most ruthless. Literally, a contest for who can be the most evil because evil is good. Which is not how anything has ever worked power wise. But you don't have to deal with anyone saying its woke, though, or whatever, because it's not related to any real life ideology. It's not about Georgiou being the head of a racist colonialist superpower, it's about her personal relationship with her childhood bestie (that she murdered the family of).
Georgiou is Azula except that's not really fair to Azula.
Everyone else is kind of there to be Guardians of the Galaxy-style oddballs and they inhabit their quirky Omega/Knowhere-esque station. Rare is the movie that wouldn't be improved by a talking dog but this movie really needed a talking dog.
So much of this movie is also divorced from Star Trek while making little references here and there. Rachel Garrett is there, there's a Chiron, a human frozen from the 20th century like Buck Rogers, and so on and....I would probably love to know every single one of their stories more than the movie actually did. Did the Chiron guy flee before the end of everything?
Section 31 is also treated as defacto there. Which has never been its role. I think the only other time it was used that way was when William Boilmer was working for it with no attention being brought to its illegal conspiracy nature or whatever.
I mean it's a movie.
And Rachel's hair really was cool.
It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be but it is a film that I really am amazed to say it is aggressively not wanting to say anything about anything. Section 31 in the federation, politics as a whole, metaphors, and so on. I actually didn't dislike Into Darkness originally because I thought it was commentary on the Iraq War then I found out it was written by a 9/11 Truther and it reframed my take on it. In the end, I think S31 is just harmlessly...stupid.
Plus I love Rachel Garrett's hair.
But yes, the movie is just sort of stuff happening on screen and that is kind of fascinating that it is a Star Trek property that really goes out of its way to say nothing about anything. Plucky oddballs sent by government to stop Weapon of Mass Destruction and...they do. Its writers either played a huge amount of Mass Effect 2 after watching The Hunger Games or...no, actually I'm just going to say that was it.
If you think I'm making up the "aggressive apoliticalness" of the movie (if I may turn a phrase), I think its summarized by the YA fiction reshaping of Georgiou. Which is very unfair with YA fiction. Not so much Hunger Games as the Uglies The Terran Empire that was, at its worst, defined as a racist colonialist superpower that embodies the opposite of the Federation's power where people mindlessly jockeyed for power over who hates aliens the most or who has the biggest technological edge like a Space Rome now has teenagers compete to who can be the most ruthless. Literally, a contest for who can be the most evil because evil is good. Which is not how anything has ever worked power wise. But you don't have to deal with anyone saying its woke, though, or whatever, because it's not related to any real life ideology. It's not about Georgiou being the head of a racist colonialist superpower, it's about her personal relationship with her childhood bestie (that she murdered the family of).
Georgiou is Azula except that's not really fair to Azula.
Everyone else is kind of there to be Guardians of the Galaxy-style oddballs and they inhabit their quirky Omega/Knowhere-esque station. Rare is the movie that wouldn't be improved by a talking dog but this movie really needed a talking dog.
So much of this movie is also divorced from Star Trek while making little references here and there. Rachel Garrett is there, there's a Chiron, a human frozen from the 20th century like Buck Rogers, and so on and....I would probably love to know every single one of their stories more than the movie actually did. Did the Chiron guy flee before the end of everything?
Section 31 is also treated as defacto there. Which has never been its role. I think the only other time it was used that way was when William Boilmer was working for it with no attention being brought to its illegal conspiracy nature or whatever.
I mean it's a movie.
And Rachel's hair really was cool.
