Twelve Reasons I Love Star Trek Into Darkness

I love the scene where Khan is video-talking to Spock after taking over the bridge of the Vengeance and he goes through all the steps they both are going to take until Khan would come out victoriously. It´s like a chess match, when Spock knows his opponent has the upper hand it doesn´t make sense anymore to continue. Khan beat Spock at his own game. Great scene and great perfomance by Cumberbatch.

@ King Daniel Into Darkness

Great additions to the list

 

Technically, Spock beat Khan at his own game. Khan was super-confident and Spock used it against him.

 

You all know I have my issues with the movie, but there are some things I loved about STID as well:

1. Carol Marcus.

I know everyone complains to the hilt about her space undies scene, but I think it's one of those situations where she wanted him to peak. She did have a significant role later in the movie, for all intents and purposes she saved the Enterprise.

You see more than this at the beach.


I'm glad it appears she's going to be part of the team going forward.

2. Sulu's sitting in the captain's chair.

John Cho's potrayal of our favorite helmsman has been outstanding in both movies. This speech to Khan was off the charts good. (love McCoy's response to it too)

Sulu: Attention: John Harrison. This is Captain Hikaru Sulu of the USS Enterprise. A shuttle of highly trained officers is on its way to your location. If you do not surrender to them immediately, I will unleash the entire payload of advanced long-range torpedoes currently locked on to your location. You have two minutes to confirm your compliance. Refusal to do so will result in your obliteration. And If you test me, you will fail.

Bones: Mr. Sulu, remind me never to piss you off.

Right up there with "Fly her apart then!" in TUC.

3. Greenwood and Pine's performance when Pike takes command away from Kirk. For the first time, I think Kirk realized that he had to answer to something. For the first time, he realized he truely didn't grasp what it really means to sit in that chair. Greenwood's Pike was truly outstanding in both movies. I'm sad that he's gone.

4. Scotty resigning. "I thought we were explorers?" brought a tear to my eye. The look of Kirk's face when he excepted was telling as well.

5. Spock out smarting Khan.

Khan: A wise choice, Mr. Spock. I see all 72 torpedoes are still in their tubes. If they're not mine, Commander, I will know it.
Spock: Vulcans do not lie. The torpedoes are yours.
Khan: Thank you, Mr. Spock.

Of course, Spock did not lie. Loved it.

There is allot to love in this movie.

 

Oh come now KingDaniel, don't be shy..

We need to hear it

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfP6o-61e2s[/yt]

I know I've listened to this piece a thousand times

 

Don't give the writers more credit than they deserve. They're not nearly that sophisticated. They admitted they threw it in for fan-service and they kind of regret it now (just as JJ has even regretted using so much lens-flare, after even his wife started bashing him for it). It was gratuitous by design.

If it were Baywatch, The Movie, it would make sense. But to throw it in how they did, when they did, was gratuitous and unnecessary.

As for the lover's spats, again, it's context. Because JJ paced this film like Star Wars Episode IV, there's no space to allow Spock and Uhura to have a relationship moment. All the character moments between Uhura and Spock are happening in the middle of these action set-pieces and cliffhangers. This is what makes it seem "unprofessional". They should be focusing on the mission (as lives depend on their professionalism as military officers) but their minds are drifting back to their selfish romantic issues.

JJ tried to have his cake and eat it too by having Pike tear Kirk a new one for being unprofessional, but he didn't simultaneously allow the plot to punish Uhura and Spock for putting their relationship drama so out front and center when they should have been focused and professional. This, I think, reflects JJ's superficial understanding of the value of military discipline. Kirk sacrificed himself because the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. But when it comes to the the rest of the crew he allows them to treat the Enterprise as Ridgemont High.

Not only that, JJ seems to misunderstand Vulcans. He treats the Vulcan adherence to discipline not as an asset but as an emotional handicap. So when Spock loses his cool, it's treated as a way to "humanize" him rather than it being him falling off the wagon of his pseudo-spiritual discipline. It's a subtlety because Spock's character arc intentionally allows him to veer towards humanity, but at never point does Spock reject logic (like Sybok, for instance). Spock integrates measured doses of human emotion into his life. It's the limited way Spock bends the rules that makes the character interesting, not having Spock completely lose it, cry, yell Khan, and run down the guy and punch him senseless.

This mis-reading of the Vulcan mysticism plays into feeling the need to give him a girlfriend. And how much easier can you find him a girlfriend than throwing Uhura at him? And to set it up all off-screen so it's just "there" with no rationale? Why should we believe it or care since we've seen no build-up at all? And they can't because (here we go again) the pace of the film won't allow it to slow down and show a budding romance. So instead you're just given a romance in-medias-res and are expected to just accept it. (And don't even mention pon farr.) It falls flat.

 

THE WOMEN!

 

^

 

That Michael Giaccino piece is lovely.

I liked Alice Eve well enough when I first saw it, but on my second viewing I realized she's only marginally more convincing as a "weapons expert" than Denise Richards was in the role of a nuclear scientist in... whatever Brosnan Bond movie that was.

Would that it were true, but there's nothing involved in her role in deciphering the torpedoes that any other random character couldn't have done, unfortunately. She doesn't work out the puzzle or employ any discernible expertise, she just rips out a component.

 

Wasn't it at least partly a casualty of script changes?

Maybe she wanted him to peek, but I don't think it's quite enough to get him to peak.

 

I know, and I don't care. Come on, Star Trek (and TV in general) has ALWAYS done that. I don't see what the big issue here is.

Really? ... and this isn't?


I could provide about a million examples just in trek. (Males too, but I don't make it a habit of catpuring those )

No reason to go bannana's over this occurance.

Exactly!! It wasn't the context of the conversation as much as it was the timing. (I do have some context issues, but that's not what chapped my arse)

I think this I can almost forgive duo to it being a movie, not a TV series. Not sure this could have been seriously achieved in a movie. (or even two)

***STANDS AND APPLAUDS!!!!*** No more needs to be said. Thank you. They have totally lost Spock as we knew him.

Interesting, I hadn't considered the mysticism angle. I'll need to ponder that one a bit. I think we need to remember, this relationship was going on long before the first movie. So there is time here. (albeit we don't see it much, just like 7 & Chuckles in Endgame)

 

You forget her presense on the Enterprise is the only reason ADM Marcus ceased his attack. The Enterprise would surely have been destroyed. I've always deduced, because we weren't told precicley, that that was a reason she put herself on the Enterprise. There are quotes in the movie that hint at this, but I'm too lazy to find them right now

 

Nice...

I'm such a horrible speller.

 

I thought that's where they were going, except that he didn't cease his attack; he just beamed her aboard and carried on. It's Scotty that saves them, by sabotaging the Vengeance -- which was going to happen with or without her.

Basically nothing at all happens in the script that requires her to be there except the flashing scene. Trek is no stranger to skin, but it is unusual for an ostensibly major character serve no narrative purpose at all outside of that. So I get why that bugs people.

 

When I hear the phrase "Vulcan mysticism" I have to do a double take. The standard bearers of rational, scientific thought in Star Trek are "mystics"? When did they become the frakking Jedis??

 

^ Well, they do have all the mind-melding and ritual and meditation and stuff. Vulcan society as Trek portrays it is big into "logic" and science but has all manner of qabalistic trappings.

In retrospect it would have made no small amount of sense for the Vulcan "logic" tradition to be a straight-up outgrowth / component of some form of theology or religion. That would explain a lot.

 

Somewhere along the line the Vulcans went off the rails.

 

The plural of Jedi is Jedi.

There's a first time for everything, I guess...

 

You mean around "Amok Time"?

The real-world history of logic and philosophy might surprise you.

 

No, I know... I was just making a comment on a stereotypical fundamentalist's relation to the concept of logic. Sorry.

 

Ah, I get you, cool.