Why Is "Into Darkness" So Hated?

All the more reason to view it as consent.

 

Fans since 2009 were saying they'd be asking Spock Prime about each and everything they came across to see how he dealt with it. How it Should Have Ended (back when it was a thing) even did a bit about it. So when I saw Spock ask his elder self about Khan, it seemed fine to me and clarified that he vowed not to speak of the future (unless in his own self interest, it seems)

 

I think what I didn't like about it was that it made me wonder just how often KelvinSpock was going running to PrimeSpock for advice, and what about the Khan situation was so unique that it would merit the phone call. Yes, things did escalate, but at the time it didn't seem like anything too far beyond the pale? It wasn't as though Earth was being threatened by a giant probe that was vaporizing the oceans and communicating in a language nobody could understand, or a mysterious 'thing' that was looking for its creator...

 

I blame Marcus for it. But yes, where’s the consequences of such a ridiculous overkill or wiping out downtown SF? A small memorial one year later?

How did the domino buildings further the plot in any way? Destruction of Vulcan, sure. Transwarp beaming, sure. That ridiculous crash? Sigh.

The film was OK, with lots of forgiving (Scotty hanging a lampshade on hiding the ship underwater doesn't excuse them hiding a ship under water, the stupid scene of a half-naked Carol Marcus was bad, but we've had that in enterprise too, the speed of the ships, which was a forgivable problem in the first film, and could I guess be just about blamed on editing -- i.e. it didn't actually take 2 minutes but we just didn't see the obvious cut)

For me it all fell over at the bit where the USS Marcus appeared chasing them in Warp.

They get knocked out of Warp at a point where they should have been out of warp anyway as they are literally next to the moon. They can then talk to New Vulcan, but not Earth, Spacedock, the Moon, Jupiter, etc. Apparently they can't bounce a message via New Vulcan.

What was Marcus' plan? To blow up the Enterprise and all hands, including escape pods, and ejecting the logs, in full view of Earth and Starfleet, with a secret ship, and then what? Military coup to take over the Federation?

Now that could have been a great film -- one based on VGer arriving back (I'm sure turn up a little early same way that the Botany Bay was found earlier), but dealt with in a different way by the crew.

 

Not that it needs to be justified, but if it needed to be justified, perhaps the formation of the quantum singularities that deposited Narada and the Jellyfish in the Kelvinverse caught the attention of the Kelvinverse's V'ger, leading it to return to Earth earlier than it would have otherwise.

This is one of the things I found most thought-provoking about the Kelvinverse, especially when you factor in that they have a source of future-dated information, albeit one from a different timeline. Does Spock warn the Federation about the more existential threats? Can he morally justify not warning them about something like the Borg? Do the existential threats even exist in this alternate timeline? Presumably so, as the known divergence points have nothing to do with said threats, but perhaps not?

 

The editing excuse doesn't even work in STID's case, it's maddening.

Abrams makes what is in essence the same blunder in The Force Awakens, where Han somehow drops out of hyperspace in the lower atmosphere of a planetoid, under its shields, right above the ground, without smacking into said planetoid.

 

No. Demonstrate the need for the Vengeance to protect the Federation and go to war with the Klingons.

That made sense to me. Marcus declares Kirk a criminal and would block their transmissions to Starfleet. New Vulcan still might be able to get through because of Spock's connections.

 

Section 31 sabotaged their warp core. Whether they had an agent on board or had a timed malfunction or what is never explained. But similarly not having communication is pretty obviously because the head of Starfleet has explicitly called them fugitives so nobody would listen anyway.

 

The joke I always make about that scene "I have sworn a solemn vow never to discuss the future. But since you're asking, I'll make an exception, just this once." Which I've always imagine is the line he gives every time someone asks him about the future.

 

I read some of the replies. I tired before reading all of them. But I think I can comment.

For me, the value in Star Trek by now is rewatchability. V is very rewatchable, ID isn't.

They say the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. That's how I (don't) feel about Into Darkness. I'll never rewatch it again.

Except for Admiral Robocop. He is great. Peter Weller is great. It's lamentable he isn't the main villain and sad the plot all but forgot he was in the movie after Harisson turned into Khan.

Summing it up: JJ Abrams

 

I rewatch ID once a year.

 

The last five times I’ve watched a Trek film? Into Darkness. Previous watching? 09. Three times. The rest haven’t been watched in two or more years.

 

I rewatch 09 more, but ID is right behind it.

 

Nope, people are allowed to dislike a plot point even when other fans dislike that dislike. What a world.

I hated it and it felt like a cop out resolution to a manipulative situation and a lazily written scene. YMMV.

Magic Blood.

 

Yes they are.

And I'm allowed to call it nonsense when the opinions strike me as inconsistent.

It does.

 

Damien Lindelof had the wildest possible answer to this in an interview after the movie came out, talking about action-movie writing in general.

“Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world,” explains Lindelof. “And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world—you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that.”

“It sounds sort of hacky and defensive to say, [but it’s] almost inescapable,” he continues. “It’s almost impossible to, for example, not have a final set piece where the fate of the free world is at stake. You basically work your way backward and say, ‘Well, the Avengers aren’t going to save Guam, they’ve got to save the world.’ Did Star Trek Into Darkness need to have a gigantic starship crashing into San Francisco? I’ll never know. But it sure felt like it did.”

---

Where do you go after you’ve imploded a planet or two? The first J. J. Abrams–directed Star Trek featured two worlds squished, billions of casualties, and Earth itself on the brink of annihilation. Lindelof and the team behind Star Trek Into Darkness always wanted to conclude the sequel with a simple grudge match between two men. But how to earn all that smallness?

“It was always about Spock and Khan duking it out with the stakes being Kirk’s life,” says Lindelof. “But there were earlier story iterations where the Klingon Fleet was simultaneously heading for Earth to get retribution, only to be turned around via diplomatic intervention by Uhura. We dropped it pretty early on, as it didn’t feel intimate, cool, or earned.”​

"I'll never know, but it sure felt like it did," is seared into my eyelids.

 

Thought experiment time for all to consider: how would you have constructed a sequel to ST 09, while still working with Abrams?

And hopefully it's a lot of what people would do over, "well, I certainly wouldn't bring back Khan." We all know that.

But, what would you do? How would you construct the sequel to the biggest Star Trek film in recent history?

 

There may have been potential in the idea that Harrison (not Khan), would gain control of the Vengeance and force Our Heroes to beam over the remaining tubes, but without the switcharoo, before provoking a full-on war with the Klingons and then escaping with the Vengeance. Our Heroes could either avert or fail to avert the ensuing hostilities, depending on what kind of mood TPTB wanted to set for the next film.

Then at the end of the film, perhaps as a post-credits scene, return to the Vengeance, where Harrison opens up another tube to reveal Khan.

Heck, perhaps reveal that Harrison's real name is Joaquin or Joachim, if so inclined. It's certainly closer to "John Harrison" than Khan.

 

Maybe a still obvious, if less slightly less obvious, choice but I probably would have gone into depicting, focusing on early but big conflict with Klingons, draw prett y big inspiration from "Errand of Mercy" maybe with some elements and maybe "Day of the Dove" (other good episode(s) but one(s) the general viewers probably haven't seen definitely not memorized) but probably not directly with a Kor, also involve more other Federation members, show more of Kirk and Klingons growing to disdain each other but by the end also some grudging mutual respect. And/or the story element of having Kirk violating the Prime Directive in a way that backfires or at least has serious bad side effects and makes him respect it more. And/or you could go into the growing tensions between the Klingons and Romulans (or save that for a next film, more focus on Romulans again to round off trilogy).

 

I do think following up with the Klingons, and having an increasing conflict with them would be interesting. I do think Marcus' angle was actually more interesting to me, but I would keep the human augment angle, as soldiers to prevent further Klingon incursion. In so doing, ends up with a Prime Directive violation because of the impact on locals.