Review-ish: Star Trek: Into Darkness (spoiler-free)
I would still argue that the low standards that met JJ Abrams first Trek reboot were a result of a pleasurable gimmick… “Star Trek Babies.” “Hey! Spock gets laid! Kirk has daddy issues! It’s the same, but different enough to be fun again!” Never mind the lame villain, the illogic, and the meaningless flares that match the incomprehensible visuals.
Something happened on the way to this sequel… nothing. No one told JJ that it had to be better. Just keep going.
So for two acts, you have shockingly beautiful images directed with so little skill that you can’t really tell who is in any room, much less what ships or people are in what space during action sequences.
The opening sequence says it all. Lots and lots of cool imagery and not a whit of logic or real excitement. Why does Kirk mess with the primitive culture by stealing their religious figure? Why are they running? Why wasn’t Spock beamed in? Why are the Enterprise folks even considering breaking fundamental rules… or are we not expected to notice because the movie starts mid-Indiana Jones rip-off? (Oh yes, JJ proves yet again that he can’t hold Spielberg’s 40-year-old jock.)
But on top of breaking the Prime Directive, how about they break it AGAIN?
To be honest, this didn’t bother me that much until thinking about it later. I was too busy being frustrated by the crappy framing and Abrams’ sheer disinterest in making action scenes flow so the audience can anticipate and therefore stay engaged. He directs like a TV guy, where action is too expensive and audiences are fine with visual shortcuts. That’s with a $3-million-an-hour budget, not a $100-million-an-hour budget.
It wasn’t until the 3rd act that I got really angry in the theater as I watched.
Let me be clear… I generally like the acting. Loved Cumberbatch as Didi’s Brother (attempt at avoiding a not-so-significant spoiler). I was fine with the overall story, though it gets so convoluted at times, you need a f-ing guidebook.
But the details of the third act showed a lack of respect, perhaps a contempt, for the source material. There are a ton of good to weak winks at the audience about the older versions of Trek. But in this third act, it gets giddy with onanistic love about just how much more clever this team is than Roddenberry’s. And about 20 minutes before the end, I was in full disgust mode.
And then, they add laziness to insult by going the full Iron Man Three, devaluing any of what seemed to be truths of the “episode” and new series. As in, if Tony Stark just needed to decide to get the metal out of his chest all of a sudden, Fuck You.
I hope that there is a “Trek Babies 3” with someone who can shoot a movie doing it. Rian Johnson, maybe?
These are movies. It’s all a game. I get that. But drama has rules and all I am demanding is a little effort to honor them. Vader was Luke’s father. Batman’s dead girlfriend stayed dead. And the Titanic sunk at the end. In JJ’s world, Luke turns out to be Vader’s father and Leia is only a half-sister, so Luke can bang her and mock Hans endlessly about “sloppy seconds.”
Hisssssssssss… terical.
Could you be a bit more specific about Abram’s television director sensibilities? Because I honestly don’t understand what you mean. Do you mean that he doesn’t have a sense of geography and space how to structure a scene? His compositions are tv-esque? What is it?
“if Tony Stark just needed to decide to get the metal out of his chest all of a sudden”
I don’t get this complaint. Wasn’t it obvious to anyone else that he used a modified version of Extremis to make him finally strong enough to withstand the surgical removal?
I have not read the Extremis comic. Just seemed self-evident in the movie.
I do agree about the third act of this movie.
It seemed apparent in that final chase scene that his action sensibilities are severely limited. There was this one shot where Cumberbatch crosses the street, and the camera pans back across the street to catch Spock running across the same crosswalk. Its the most impotent chase shot I’ve ever seen. No sense of tension or speed. Plus at some point you realize you’re watching a movie called Star Trek and the finale involves two guys running through future London in an unexciting foot race.
Great review…and another thing i think I blocked out….
SPOLERS
Turning the shuttle as the MILLENIUM FALCON.
Outrageous.
LYT says:
May 17, 2013 at 4:04 pm
“if Tony Stark just needed to decide to get the metal out of his chest all of a sudden”
I don’t get this complaint. Wasn’t it obvious to anyone else that he used a modified version of Extremis to make him finally strong enough to withstand the surgical removal?
Um… no? The voiceover goes (paraphrased) “I fixed Pepper, then I fixed myself” implying that the removal of Extremis was analogous to the removal of the shrapnel in the chest. Not that he used Extremis to infect himself, then remove it.
Someone was also saying that in the Chinese version, it’s explicit that the Chinese dude was the only guy capable of removing the shrapnel – so even the writers think the removal had nothing to do with Extremis anyway.
Etguild2 says:
May 17, 2013 at 6:27 pm
SPOLERS
Turning the shuttle as the MILLENIUM FALCON.
It’s not much of a spoiler – it was in the damn trailer.
“It’s not much of a spoiler – it was in the damn trailer.”
So stealing from one of the biggest franchises out there is acceptable. From now on, let’s include iconic riffs in all trailers as part of the main plot…box office! box office!
Well, the guy is in charge of both franchises so technically it’s not stealing.
Lindelof Logic
For me, this movie is just generic franchise filler with weak nods to the mythology but painted with bland but shiny new colors. The movie is really a glorification of youth while killing off or sidelining the experienced. Ultimately, it is a mouse fart amplified by Dolby stereo surround sound and IMAX 3D signifying nothing. When you compare & contrast the death scenes of Darkness vs Wrath of Khan, you see the difference between experienced storytellers who lived rich lives and “cool” concept designers who fetishized movies growing up.
It makes absolutely no sense to play out the “Khan” storyline with characters who have little to no history with each other. Why would Kirk or Spock care about the other dying when they just met each other in the last movie? Why would Khan have such burning hatred for Kirk, a guy he never met until the start of this movie? What, did Kirk run over his puppy? Hit on his girlfriend? Step on his blue suede shoes?
You’re probably not actually looking for answers, but they are “it’s a year after the first movie” and “he doesn’t”.
A) A year is nothing. I wouldn’t sacrifice my life for someone I met a year ago even if they had a hot body and loved me all night long.
B) Why do the Khan storyline if there’s no personal vendetta between Kirk and Khan? Why not create a different villain altogether, or is the creative team entirely bereft of ideas?
To answer a few of your questions:
1. Why does Kirk mess with the primitive culture by stealing their religious figure? Why are they running?
2. They’re running because the nearby volcano’s about to explode. Kirk steals the religious scroll so the natives will follow him out of the temple. There’s a later shot of the temple being destroyed by the volcano (crushed, actually).
3. Why wasn’t Spock beamed in?
Spock was in a super-hot volcano. Per Chekov, he couldn’t get a bead on his signal without being in his line of sight. That explains (barely) why Kirk decided to fly the Enterprise out of the water. Why it was in the water (besides the coolness factor) is anyone’s guess.
3. Why are the Enterprise folks even considering breaking fundamental rules… or are we not expected to notice because the movie starts mid-Indiana Jones rip-off?
That’s all Kirk 2.0. He breaks the rules, including the Prime Directive without approval from Starfleet. The Enterprise was sent to Nibiru to survey the planet and nothing else. At some point, they discovered the super-volcano was about to erupt and wipe out an entire civilization/planet and decided to act. Presumably, Spock agreed as he went down into the volcano to stop it from erupting.
4. What about the shuttle (paraphrase)?
They didn’t use the shuttle on Kronos. They used a smuggler’s ship to disguise their black ops mission. If you recall, they went pretending to be smugglers and NOT to be members of the Federation. They dropped the ruse when they were forced to land and Uhuru attempted to broker a peaceful solution (and failed).
5. Khan’s motivations.
Khan doesn’t hate Kirk or Spock except on principle (as genetic and moral inferiors). His hatred is directed at Admiral Marcus and the Federation for holding his people hostage to force him to work on their weapons programs.
As for Abrams’ visual style, I’m right there with you, though I think it’s a consequence of (a) Abrams trying to create a noticeable style in marked contrast to his TV work and (b) aping Michael Bay (not Spielberg) because he assumes that’s what audiences want. it’s a I’m hoping a better director will take the reins for ST3. Not holding out much hope, though, as Abrams/Bad Robot has the rights to ST until 2016, meaning (I think) Abrams will get to pick his successor.
If this alternate timeline was created in the previous movie on the day James T. Kirk was born, why would Khan, from 300 years earlier and thus part of our original timeline, suddenly have a British accent instead of a Mexican accent?
Why can’t they get brown contact lenses for Capt. Kirk so he’ll look like Capt. Kirk? His conception took place in our original timeline, so his eye color shouldn’t have changed to bright blue.
Loved the first one. Hated this one. Ineptly directed I thought. And they had no idea how to even end their main storyline in an interesting, exciting or compelling way so they ended up having to bolt on that re-entry climax which had nothing to do with anything and felt entirely forced.
SPOILERS… (which feels almost useless to say at this point)
“B) Why do the Khan storyline if there’s no personal vendetta between Kirk and Khan? Why not create a different villain altogether, or is the creative team entirely bereft of ideas?”
DUH! Because it’s the SECOND STAR TREK MOVIE. And, DUH, the ORIGINAL SECOND STAR TREK MOVIE had KHAN in it. So, DUH, the NEW SECOND STAR TREK MOVIE has to feature KHAN. Who cares if the logic used to make that happen is total rubbish. It’s THE NEW SECOND STAR TREK MOVIE which means it has to feature KHAN.
In twenty years when they RE-REBOOT the series, i have no doubts the THIRD SECOND STAR TREK MOVIE will no doubt also feature KHAN.
(Did the sarcasm play there?)
I’m not even the world’s biggest Star Trek fan, but i watched the original series and Next Generation. I’ve seen the movies. So i know the history. The minute Khan is in his cell basically delivering his endless monologue/backstory, i just started laughing. When we were talking in the other thread about bad writing, this is what comes to mind.
The original series had Kirk and company find the spaceship Khan and his buddies were frozen on, unfreeze them, and then we learn about their sordid past and how dangerous they are. Wrath of Khan requires the viewers to be familiar with the episode which basically sets up why Khan hates Kirk so much. Kirk made mistakes in the past, mistakes that drove the already murderous Khan insane, and thus you have an epic vendetta.
The movie has to try and do that all in two hours. So basically you have bad, exposition heavy writing trying to do the heavy lifting to make it seems like an epic hero/villain confrontation when the reality is this Khan doesn’t know Kirk or give two shits about him. Kirk hates Khan because he killed his surrogate father figure. So once again, role reversal. This whole movie was a bunch of role reversals that you would only get if you were familiar with the original series and movies, hence the motivating phrase of the creative team: fan service. Now its Kirk in the chamber instead of Spock. Now its Spock who yells KHAN!!!!! This is what passes for clever these days.
It’s the fan service that really provides all the WTF moments. I go back to the battle by the moon. The Enterprise is wounded. Things look bleak. Spock gets a line of communication open, and he calls….. OLD SPOCK?
The audience claps. You get to see Nimoy on screen, and what takes place?
“Hey Old Spock. What do you know about Khan?”
“He’s really, really evil. Super evil. Billy Zane in Titanic evil.”
So Spock, you couldnt figure out how evil this guy was after he single handedly took out a Klingon batallion and then took control of a super death spaceship and just killed a guy by crushing his skull with his bare hands?
Maybe you could have…. i don’t know… called for another starship to come beam the crew off the ship or get the rest of the fleet to come in and fight this massive war ship.
Did Old Spock’s thirty seconds to anything to serve the plot, or did it instead make new Spock look like a moron and do nothing but provide another bit of fan service. I think i would have enjoyed it more if theyd just gone a new route and not tried to shoehorn in the fan service villain with some really bad writing.
It’s like Abrams and company were given a box with all the pieces from Star Trek, and they had to rearrange the pieces but couldnt add a single new element. How else do you explain things like Carol Marcus? She had ties to the original Khan episode and obviously was a huge influence on Wrath of Khan. So they sit in a room looking at the Carol Marcus piece and wonder “how do i work this in?”
If you start applying that kind of logic to Into Darkness, so many things start to make sense. This is one long riff on the original with every creative decision motivated by obligation.
I liked the first Star Trek film because they messed with the formula and tried to do its own thing. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun. There was fan service there, but it didnt feel like fan service was steering the ship. Star Trek Into Darkness suffers because so many pieces felt obligatory.
The film is better suited for people who know nothing about OT because if youve never seen the episodes or movies, you wouldnt even know what these fan service moments are. You get a fun, harmless well acted space adventure.
And what kind of sucks is how they had some pieces there that could have worked better if theyd played some thing up. In Star Trek, Nero decimates the entire fleet, destroys Vulcan, and lays waste to half the galaxy. So you would think tensions would be high a year later. They keep mentioning the threat of the Klingons and looming war, but when did we ever see that? Not in the movies, at all. You would have to be familiar with OT to understand that. If they played up the desperation of the Federation, the fact that their backs are against the wall, so many more decisions make sense. But again, all you get is Peter Weller giving a Donald Rumsfeld-esque speech about needing to be better prepared. He comes off like a crazy war monger, but given the events of the previous film you would think there was logic to his actions. But no one else in the movie acts like there’s any real threat. Kirk is all excited about the potential of a five year mission. Everyone on Earth seems generally unconcerned about the threat of war. The stakes are right there and they don’t give it any focus, even though it totally justifies what Weller’s character is saying. But it doesnt matter is one guy is yelling in a room “WERE ON THE BRINK OF WAR”. Maybe, i don’t know, show the audience how bad things have gotten. Ratchet up that tension. Make Weller’s use of Khan make sense. He lost most of his fleet. They are in a severely weakened state. He started pulling out every cancelled weapons program they had ever mothballed looking for something to give the Federation leverage. I could buy into this plot point if there was any trace of this darkness that the characters spoke of.
And maybe that falls into what Dave is saying about Abrams having TV sensibilities, not just with action but with plotting. We never see the darkness, we only get to hear about it from people sitting around in rooms talking.
I just thought it was funny the local theater had “Star Trek 2” on it’s marquee. I feel like that explains a lot about our country.
Lighten up, Francis.
not sure who ‘lighten up francis’ is directed at, but i have noticed in the past detailed criticism about a film is often equated as ‘anger’ or ‘hate’. Not true. I still liked Into Darkness. It was fun. But i think we need to get past the idea (at least on boards like this where there are a number of writers) that criticism = hate.
I had fun with Star Trek Into Darkness, but it is a very dumb movie that wears its dumbness on its sleeve. And i loathe the idea that every movie is a love or hate proposition. Why cant you like something AND identify things that did or didnt work?
It’s that binary theory at play. Love/Hate. Good/Bad. Everything is a “0” or a “1”. Value/No Value. I believe in the fertile crescent between “love” and “hate”. It’s where good criticism lives. Fuck thumbs. Fuck tomatoes. The fun of discussing films lies between “love” and “hate”. And those who excel at that craft are the ones who navigate that zone effectively.
I feel like I need a little more than “crappy framing” and “it’s like TV shortcuts” to explain what’s so technically wrong with Abrams as a director. I do not get it. I feel like I have a pretty strong sense of visuals and I totally get how Bay can verge on incoherent EVEN when he slows down the cutting. But Abrams, I almost always have a clear sense of what’s going on and it almost always looks really good while I gain that sense so… what’s the problem?
DP often alludes to these technical filmmaking mistakes without explaining. Are we just supposed to understand that this movie is full of “crappy framing”? What in hell does that mean, in this case?
All Poland’s points about Abram’ s TV level direction are to my mind accurate,although nowhere near as apparent here as they were in Mission Impossible 3, which may as well have had a bunch of fade to blacks for commercials at certain key moments. Everything is foreground, everything is close-up, there’s no subsidiary detail or background interest. The polish and texture of a blockbuster from a Spielberg, a Cameron, a Nolan or, yes, even a Lucas is thus far what’s missing from Abrams big screen work (although I thought Super 8 was pretty charming), and the reason why I was hoping for someone like Kosinski to get the Star Wars gig. Whatever criticisms have been flung in Lucas’ direction, at least even the worst Star Wars flick has moments of genuine visual grandeur and power, something that I just don’t see Abrams being able to replicate.
This could start a good discussion. Who is good at directing action in the current group of filmmakers working today?
I’ll have to wait until Elysium to argue consistency, but i thought Neil Blomkamp had a real good handle on action. Everything in District 9 had such a great sense of scope and geography. Lots of things going on but everything flowed so well.
SPOILER ALERT
I too did not get the sense that Khan hated Kirk and Spock from the onsite. They were just mere inferior mortals in his way, and in fact, he wanted Kirk because he had different sensibilities from the rest of Star Fleet.
If anything my final feeling of this movie was it was a prequel to Wrath of Khan, setting up the basis for Khan’s hatred. I actually thought at the end of this movie they would show the marooned 72, (or is it 73?) cryogenically frozen pods on Ceti Alpha 5. That would have made a great parting shot in my book.
END SPOILER
The thing about this Trek crew is that they are at a disadvantage to the original crew. They do not have three years of prior TV history together to show that over time a special bond between Kirk and Spock was being formed. I am willing to give them a pass on this as we will always be unfairly IMO comparing the old to the new. And the old, and that relationship, is such big shoes to fill. Think about it, it’s one of the greatest male relationships in TV history. Methinks some doth protest too much.
JJ Abrams does not make it easy by presenting story lines straight out of the original Star Trek universe however, and thus is inviting those comparisons. I enjoyed this one, but I’m looking forward to seeing a completely new story in this 5 year mission, and perhaps a great Klingon War that takes place in this alternate universe. A fantastic space battle is my yearning for Star Trek 3. And yes, the Klingons could use some work. They looked TVish. And please JJ, lose the fucking blue flares already.
I would put Justin Lin in that group. As goofy as the past few helpings of F&F are (and I have seen 6 which surpasses all of them for truly jaw-dropping physics defying gags). Also Gavin O’Connor – Warrior and Miracle may be sports movies but he shot those hockey games and martial arts bouts like battle scenes and pulled them off. And Joe Carnahan might turn out to be John Mctiernan’ s natural heir.
So Into Darkness will open at 50% of what Iron Man 3 did.
Fast & Furious 6 will likely open higher.
Is a third Star Trek film a guarantee anymore?
I saw Into Darkness because there was nothing else new to see. I was bored by the end. Liked the first Trek though.
They lost tens of millions in their opening weekend by not marketing the fact that they’re using one of the most iconic villains of all time. That’s like releasing the Dark Knight and not advertising the Joker being in it.
J.J. better stumble on some jedi holocrons or something because his shit is herniated right now and if he doesn’t bring some super dope wu to Star Wars 7 we will burn this motherfucker to the ground. He better clean his shit up and pray we don’t tear him a new one.
“Um… no? The voiceover goes (paraphrased) “I fixed Pepper, then I fixed myself” implying that the removal of Extremis was analogous to the removal of the shrapnel in the chest. Not that he used Extremis to infect himself, then remove it.
Someone was also saying that in the Chinese version, it’s explicit that the Chinese dude was the only guy capable of removing the shrapnel – so even the writers think the removal had nothing to do with Extremis anyway.”
Two things here. I recall him saying he did some tinkering, implying that he built on the Extremis research to figure out how to make it better and save himself.
As for the Chinese stuff, Shane Black and his cowriter had nothing to do with that. At the press conference they said they hadn’t even seen it. So whatever’s in there isn’t their version of what happened.
Regarding Trek, I had no problem with the action direction at all. I did have an issue with how the main death means nothing because its remedy has been so foreshadowed. And with a classic Shatnerism going to a character not named Kirk.
Abrams is so consistently B minus. He seems to only be able to paint by numbers. Look at his filmography.
Mission Impossible 3
Star Trek
Super 8
Star Trek Into Darkness
He’s a Director who works with established properties. Super 8 was the closest thing he had to an original project, and even that was nothing more than him rehashing 70’s-80’s era Spielberg. He’s a very capable cover band, but he doesnt seem to have an original bone in his body.
I mean shit, at this point, who doesnt know exactly what we’ll be getting with Episode VII? Homage and fan service. He’s going to grab Lucas’ paint cans and sling something together. He’s a completely new kind of Director: a franchise manager. Nothing i would ever call inspiring.
Scott,
Anyone who knows who Kahn is, is definitely seeing it on opening night.
AdamL,
I disagree. Maybe 50% of Trekkies knew it was Khan by then, but I doubt it (older Trek fans who don’t seek out spoilers certainly had no clue). And the larger point is this: having an iconic enemy to sell and get people talking about how amazing he is is the entire selling point. You WANT everyone and their sister knowing it’s Khan because you want them all talking it up to generate buzz. Khan is one of the pinnacle baddies in the history of science fiction on the silver screen, and you’re telling me that wasn’t a huge selling point that a good marketing team couldn’t take advantage of? I don’t buy it. Khan is the Darth Vader or Joker of the franchise, and he is the most bankable villain name in the entire Trek universe. Yet Abrams seems happy with a word of mouth campaign, something I’m betting Paramount is regretting heavily at this juncture.
Check it. John Hyams should be given a Marvel, Trek, Bond or Star Wars over JJ or one of his clones any day of the week.
“I thought Super 8 was pretty charming”
Was this the movie that presented a monster which kept kidnapping and eating innocent people, and yet at the end when he builds a spaceship we’re supposed to feel weepy to see him go? He ate some people not even ten minutes before Abrams tried to go E.T. on us!
(So why didn’t Kurt Russell have a teary-eyed moment when he realized all the Thing really wanted to do was go home?)
Calling Abrams a hack would be a compliment, since all he does is throw nonsensical gee-whiz action on the screen and think he’s providing entertainment.
“Check it. John Hyams should be given a Marvel, Trek, Bond or Star Wars over JJ or one of his clones any day of the week.”
This.
I wasn’t seeking out spoilers or Trek news at all, yet every Trek story posted on the MCN front page for over a year now has made passing reference to Khan being in the movie. It was common knowledge. Thus my utter confusion last week when IMDB was attacked by the studio for merely listing Khan in the credits.
We’re supposed to give Abrams a pass because his characters haven’t had much time to get to know each other…yet he goes with a storyline dependent on old relationships and old enmities and a long period of imprisonment. So again I say WTF?
(And you didn’t have to see IRON MAN 1 to know that forcing a guy to build weapons for you may not end well.)
I think Abrams is due for a reassessment, and why not start with Felicity, the first project he can truly call his own…which was cancelled because of a haircut. You really have to wonder just how little the show had going for it if a change in hairstyle was enough to drive the viewers away. And Alias, his attempt to copy the complexity of The X-Files without bringing the chemistry, which forced the network to attempt more than one reboot to draw more viewers in, to no avail. Then Lost, which again was all mystery and no delivery ending with even the most basic questions unanswered because many were so nonsensical that nothing worked besides “it’s magic, err, religion” (beginning with a smoke monster an exec thought was cool but had no reason to be there except a passing FORBIDDEN PLANET reference)….
All buzz, all hype, no sense, no storytelling, just sound and fury signifying nothing.
SamLowry, what on earth are you talking about? The hairstyle change in Felicity I believe happened at the beginning of the second season. The show was canceled after four seasons. It’s fascinating to me that you’ve turned around the idea that people stopped watching because of a haircut (which is unsubstantiated at best) to proof that the show was bad?! Have you ever even seen that show? It’s not great or anything, but it’s also not much like any of his other work. (Not to mention a TV show that he did not write and direct all 80 or however many hours of).
You also really, possibly willfully, misunderstand Super 8. In that movie, there’s a monster that’s been taking and in some cases eating people — after it escapes from imprisonment and in the process of trying to go back home. And then the kids actually confront its confusion and anger rather than trying to kill it. We’re not supposed to feel weepy because now we love the alien or whatever. You’re supposed to feel moved by what this kid helped accomplish and the changing relationship with his dad.
You can argue that it didn’t 100% land in the movie — I do feel like the alien is held back so long in the movie that it’s not as well-integrated into the story as it could be. But to get all snarky about how it’s a movie about how you’re supposed to get teared up over a murderous alien monster and pretend it’s E.T., I don’t know, that seems like deliberately misreading the movie in order to bag on Abrams. You’re supposed to maybe find some unexpected sympathy for the monster. Pretty typical Godzilla stuff, actually.
And anghus, right, a movie opening lower than other two movies, regardless of actual final totals, is totally how things work. Star Trek Into Darkness will make $200+ million and they’ll say “eh, but it opened to less than Iron Man 3 or Fast and Furious 6. That’s so embarrassing we should probably mothball the franchise indefinitely.”
For that matter, Star Trek ’09 opened to less than Iron Man or Iron Man 2. And made less than either. And made less than The Amazing Spider-Man. And yet… Paramount wanted a sequel.
I agree with bulldog — there’s a disadvantage in these movies that Abrams does exacerbate when he does deliberate riffs on old Trek lore, and I’m looking forward to the third movie where presumably that option won’t be as available to him or whoever.
But the nitpicking-to-death totally-over-it stuff about Abrams is puzzling to me. Was the previous series of Star Trek movies a parade of near-flawless masterworks, or was it a pretty fun sci-fi adventure series that built on the goodwill of a generally preferred TV series?
I think there’s a difference between building on goodwill, and going through the motions with unnecessary lip-service. There was no reason to pour $190 million into this film, and doing so, I think, put pressure on the filmmakers to deliver what they thought would net them a $700 million worldwide gross.
What they need to do now for a 3rd is, ironically, similar to what they did between THE MOTION PICTURE and WRATH OF KHAN. Slash the budget, and get back to what made Star Trek great in the first place thematically.
The biggest problem they face is that in making a reborquel instead of a reboot, any problem they do face presumably has to have some connection with either the destruction of Vulcan, or an interaction with the original timeline.
“Although storytelling and timeslot changes also likely contributed to the ratings decline, a network executive said WB actors’ future hair changes would “be given more thought at the network than it previously would have”. In 2010, TV Guide Network listed the hairstyle change at No. 19 on their list of “25 Biggest TV Blunders,” with several commentators arguing that it was the reason that the ratings of the show dropped.”
Then the Wiki page lists 8 TV shows that made snarky references to Felicity’s hair.
The show’s viewership dropped from 4.4M to 2.2M–that’s half. And no, I didn’t watch it–why would I watch a girl’s show?
I did actually made it all the way to the end of SUPER 8, the only Abrams movie that can claim that accomplishment, and I do believe the first time we see the monster is when it’s killing a lab technician. How’s that supposed to help us feel any sympathy for it?
And that boy at the end was clearly getting misty-eyed about the departure of a monster that just ate the sheriff and a waitress ten minutes previously–and had kidnapped his GF half a movie ago because it wanted to do the same to her. The whole reason the boy went into the monster’s lair was to rescue his GF before the monster could eat her…and then he’s sad to see it go?!?
Again, WTF Abrams?
Whoever wrote that crap must’ve gone off their meds when they wrote the ending.
EDIT: The film’s Wiki page lists Abrams as the solely credited writer. So there.
Oh, Star Trek…Box Office Mojo is predicting $75M–I’m guessing that’s bad?
As far as the “they should have promoted the iconic villain instead of hiding it” arguement goes for the box office, anybody who knew Cumberbatch’s character was going to be revealed as someone important to the Trek mythology damn well had Khan as their number one with a bullet guess. This has to be one of the stupidest secrets ever conceived, not the least because of the impossibility of this movie establishing a back history the way Star Trek 2 was able to do it with Montalban and the original television series thanks to the years that had passed and the genuine darkness that movie embodied as well.
I would have put the Khan vs. Kirk angle front and center on every trailer and TV ad I could. Especially since the television ads had no hint of a story that would compel somebody to get up and go see this movie. Random images and critic quotes just really aren’t motivators.
I suspect the biz counts on a large number of youngsters to go to whatever new movie is playing this week, no matter what it is or how it’s marketed. If it’s new, if there’s a lot of buzz, if all their friends are planning to see it, they’re there.
And I suspect that’s the reason they hid Khan. Youngsters don’t know or care about anything more than ten years old, so to hype up a villain they’ve never heard of would only alienate them and make them think this might as well be some black and white silent movie that their parents would like.
(On a related note, last week I overheard a high-schooler trying to convince his friends that they had to see THE BIG LEBOWSKI and they were all “Yeah, whatever.” Old movie = couldn’t care less.)
It has been argued that this reboot was/is following the formula of the Batman reboot. Well, look at the social awareness levels that TDK reached with a Joker centric campaign. He is THE BAD GUY in the Batman mythology and was marketed as such.
Khan is THE BAD GUY in the Trek mythology. Put him front and center. It’s a secret that wasn’t really a secret, should not have been treated as a secret, and should have been the coming of age story for this new crew as they truly face life and death issues. Kirk and Spock had already bonded when Wrath of Khan happened. Into the Darkness should have been the reason they bonded.
I disagree that young people don’t care about anything more than ten years old, that would depend on how many young people you know. They cared about The Joker because he was the new cool thing that even my father knew.
I liked into The Darkness, and would recommend it, but the marketing department fucked up. maybe Memorial weekend will cushion this softer than expected opening…or maybe it wont.
SamLowry, whatever the reasons for the ratings dip on Felicity, I don’t follow how if people are stupid enough to stop watching a show because of a haircut, then it’s clearly Abrams’ fault for making them care. Does that sound like absolute crazy talk to anyone else?! You’re not EVEN saying the show was so bad that people must have gotten sick of it really fast to stop watching in season 2. You’re saying the show was so bad, that people only stopped watching it because the character got a haircut. Do you find that generally, if people hate a show, they need some kind of a reason to stop watching it?!
As for Super 8, I’d say that half the POINT of that movie is that you shouldn’t just hate something and howl for its blood because it did something terrible. Like I said, the Godzilla analogy: the creature created this destruction, but people are the ones who tried to cage the creature and keep it from going home in the first place. Is that SO difficult of a concept to grasp? That the kid feels empathy for the creature when he actually encounters it? You sound like you’d prefer a movie where the kids hunt down an alien, kill it dead, burn the corpse, and rejoice. Actually, no, you sound like if that happened, you’d be complaining about how uninspired and predictable it all was.
You don’t finish JJ Abrams movies on principle. You say a movie must be crap because people stopped watching it for an arbitrary reason, not considering that maybe it’s the arbitrary reason that could be stupid. You sound like you hated this longer than I’ve known who this guy is. It’s kind of bizarre.
“And anghus, right, a movie opening lower than other two movies, regardless of actual final totals, is totally how things work. Star Trek Into Darkness will make $200+ million and they’ll say “eh, but it opened to less than Iron Man 3 or Fast and Furious 6. That’s so embarrassing we should probably mothball the franchise indefinitely.”
Well, it does kind of matter on the perception front. With four big new releases coming out, STID had this weekend to grab headlines and build up word of mouth before FF6, Hangover Part 3, etc etc.
So this week’s headline will be STAR TREK 2 UNDERPERFORMS DOMESTICALLY. And in this crowded month, there ain’t really time for a second chapter. Paramount has been dumping money into franchises that barely break even, so its probably silly on my part to assume there wont be a third Star Trek movie, even if Into Darkness does underperform.
EDIT – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tde9dAH96Ns
I just saw this video. Seems appropriate, and kind of funny.
Eventually, the story has to come out, how Into Darkness was originally written as a remake of the original series The Cage, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and The Menagerie, and Par demanded Khan, so Lindelof was brought in to ramrod the character into the script.
Watch those Trek episodes, and you can see how that material would have made perfect sense for this entire storyline, sans Khan.
It could have been a fascinating dynamic, where Kirk’s quasi-father figure, Pike, abandoned his first apprentice Mitchell, and now pits the two against each other. It just feels so apparent to me that this was the original intention.
The way they light Cumberbach’s eyes, his prisoner soliloquy, Pike’s heavy involvement, the possible love triangle with Eve’s Carol, who has a hair style that is identical to Sally Kellerman’s in the Trek episode…
Their has to have been a major re-write at some point, otherwise, Abrams and Lindelof are f-ing idiots obsessed with Losting every goddman property they get their hands on.
i’m not even a huge trekkie and that sounds plausible martin s (wasn’t there talk early on of a re-write to bring in khan as the series’ quintessential villain, after the criticism of the first installment decrying the romulans and Nero as a rather weak villain? i seem to remember something about that, but i might be imagining things)
Uhura actually says to Spock, “You got this.” So much dumb in this film.
“Do you find that generally, if people hate a show, they need some kind of a reason to stop watching it?!”
Yes I do, Jesse. Though what I said was “You really have to wonder just how little the show had going for it if a change in hairstyle was enough to drive the viewers away.”
It’s a tipping point. Maybe they didn’t actively hate it (though I have heard of many who watch reality shows “ironically” while supposedly hating the whole genre) but they must’ve been iffy, iffy enough that it took an unappealing haircut to finally make them change the channel.
It happened to me on Lost just before the beginning of season 2 when it was announced that survivors from the tail would be introduced, when I had been complaining that there were too many characters on the show already (mostly on Television Without Pity), and it happened again during Abrams’ TREK 1 when Pegg went sliding down the pipe (no, I will not call him “Scotty”), though I had already been watching the movie at 1.5x speed (too fast for sound, but slow enough for captions) due to the utterly imbecilic opening sequence. My tipping point in SUPER 8 came rather unfortunately at the end when they boy decided the man-eating monster was just misunderstood so he could still have that E.T. moment at the end.
Unfortunately, I also had a tipping point with “Breaking Bad”, which I’d been interested in seeing for years, then finally found season 1 on sale real cheap and started watching when I was busy and had no business watching. The opening was great, then we get the flashback, and the moment the mom tries to get the family to eat turkey bacon I realized I had other things to do. It’s been weeks, and I hope to get back to it sometime, but….
One HUGE difference between Trek and Batman–today’s kids grew up with Batman cartoons so they all know who the Joker is, but the only Trek they’ve had over the same time period was “Enterprise” and movies full of actors who weren’t named Kirk or Spock.
No Khan to be found there, so no reason to hype him up for the teenagers.
I’m not a girl, but I liked FELICITY a lot and watched the entire run, even after the haircut. It wasn’t the most flattering ‘do in the history of hair, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of thing that would make me dump a show I was otherwise enjoying. Maybe it was a “tipping point” for some people, but if so, those people were dumb.
No doubt Khan would have helped more in marketing.
Even if “kids” don’t know who Khan is, there is a fantastic thing with the internet where they can look stuff up. If you marketed Khan, I’d bet these youngster would simply look it up and feel smarter and more sophisticated. I also happen to know some under-25 year olds who are excited about Khan being in it, so it makes it much harder for me to generalize.
Hell, I loved Star Trek II growing up, but I never had any clue who Khan was other than what was in that movie. Why did I like it? Because I was a kid and my imagination filled in the gaps for me. The very idea of a supervillain archenemy is box office. Some vaguely dangerous guy running around London isn’t so much.
Leah – when you’ve got time, watch Where No Man Has Gone Before. It was always one of the best episodes and the correlation of characters just feels to close.
Re: Marketing Khan. When the whitest guy in England doesn’t look like an Indian tyrant, how absurd is it going to appear? People will scoff. Hell, Indians will laugh at that blatant political-correctness.
Sadly, I could see how Abrams and company would delude themselves into thinking, “if we tell everyone it’s Khan from the start, then they know the story, so we better hide it”.
But..if they wanted to use Khan that badly, then they should have expanded on the original episode, while foreshadowing Wrath’s beats. Since this is an alternate timeline, Wrath doesn’t occur because of some different action Pine-Kirk takes when defeating Khan, compared to Shatner-Kirk, such as Pine killing Khan, not sending him to Seti Alpha, etc…
To not think of this, when that had at least two years to work on the script, leads me to believe Khan was not the original choice.
The first Con I attended was in the ’80s, and after dark, after most had already left, they played “Space Seed” in the TV room, which was packed with hardcore types since you couldn’t find the episode in video stores back then and syndication had dried up years earlier.
Near the end, the room is absolutely silent when Kirk announces his modest proposal…until someone in the back yells “Don’t do it, Kirk! You’ll regret it!” Everyone cracked up.
You can’t find moments like that anymore.
Why do people think Khan would make a bit of difference in the marketing? People who love Trek would be extra excited but I can’t see it moving the needle for ordinary people. It would be like if you were disinterested in a Popeye movie and someone told you, ‘But this one has BLUTO!!!’. So what. Trek is an odd franchise that plays narrowly to its very large base. You can excite that base, but it is very difficult to create converts.
This is the problem with branded Holywood – they insist on the Trek Brand, then jettison what is cool or unique about it, Khan included. The younger folk don’t know or care, the older have good memories of Wrath. The result? Mess.
I had the same experience as Sam in the early 80’s at a con. The line where Kirk or Spock says at the end of the Space Seed episode something like, “It would be interesting to return to their planet to see how they’ve progressed…” brought a big laugh.
As far as a Trek 3, Paramount lost releasing rights to Marvel and Dreamworks, Indy may have gone to Disney with Lucasfilm, they have Transformers, Mission Impossible, and…….Spongebob perhaps? They almost don’t have a choice in continuing the franchise.
Well they have GI Joe and Paranormal Activity, though don’t know how much longer either will last. They have a lot riding on rebooting JACK RYAN and NINJA TURTLES.
Joe and PA are small fish (though PA generates a hell of a lot of cash), Ryan might have some potential but skewed pretty old even before they threw it in mothballs for a decade. Paramount is releasing fewer films than the other majors (between mid May and October of last year they only managed to release the Katy Perry concert movie), and has no superheros or animation department. If it weren’t for Transformers these guys would slowly morph into Lionsgate.
While i personally like the shift they have done recently to modestly budgeted films with decent returns (flight, Reacher, Pain and Gain), I would suspect that no matter what the return on investment is, any studio wants some high profile barnburners to trot in front of shareholders.
“To not think of this, when that had at least two years to work on the script, leads me to believe Khan was not the original choice.”
While I can’t argue that they should have come up with a better script than what they did – Abrams mentions in the commentary to his first Trek that they *almost* put on a post-credits stinger of the Botany Bay floating in deep space – so they were thinking Khan from the jump.
I agree Paramount needs bigger options, which is why they’re commissioning TMNT and HERCULES films.
As for PA, I think it’s really helped the cash flow the last few years (if you add the four films up you have $714 million worldwide on a combined $13 million production budget, or probably $125 million total with P&A), and they really, really need something to stick if it dries up this October….I’m also confused as to why they don’t still have distribution rights to the PANDA and DRAGON franchises. They ended up getting at least a $150 million profit off of AVENGERS and IM3 for essentially doing nothing.
They might be better off going for a 20th Century Fox model, which, minus animated films, doesn’t seem to give a crap about domestic theatrical anymore.
Paramount cannot be this desperate for properties.
Wait.
How insane of a conversation is this?
We’re trying to figure out what they can remake/reboot instead of saying, I dunno, develop something new for f’s sake.
Man. Originality has tapped out.
Yeah, someone should do an obituary for Originality. It was great while she lasted.
You both are about 10 years late.
To be fair, it’s not that originality died. It’s that we as audience members (or even as professionals) have come to expect rehashing old characters and plots as necessary for success. That’s sad.
Star Trek is a real money-making franchise again. This new one opened well because people liked the last one. I could follow the story and knew who was in which ship. This wasn’t Transformers where the action was so fast you didn’t know which bot was which. You are getting very old if you couldn’t follow the straight forward action of this new Star Trek.
And who’s to say Khan won’t return? If he does, it will make a later film stronger.
Anyway, I had a good time watching it. I knew these new films were never going to have to follow the canon very closely if at all, but apparently some here actually care about such nonsense.
Martin, I don’t think anyone is saying that this is a good thing, but after the release of the 12th trek, and staring off into the 6th FF,3rd Hangover, 6th Superman, and countless other sequels, remakes, and homages (White House Down and Pacific Rim could be called original but they are not exactly walking on new snow) its not exactly an inappropriate conversation.
I too would like to go back to the days of more original summer movies, though if any of those were hits they would be sequalized and eventually we would be right back in the same situation.
I think one of the problems I have with all of these is that the propeties themselves have become draws instead of being vehicles for the actors that are in them.
“I knew these new films were never going to have to follow the canon very closely if at all, but apparently some here actually care about such nonsense.”
Why are people so quick to throw out these reductive defenses which have nothing to do with the actual critisism at hand? Few if any are complaining about a lack of adherence to canon (hell, pretty much the only mentions in this thread say it adheres/borrows TOO MUCH)- the complaints are almost all about lazy writing. But people keep waving their hand, ignoring what’s actually written, then inventing a straw man they can easily dismiss – rather than actually discuss the films genuine problems. Inane.
That was pretty much what Moriarty said about the Superman script: Written by someone who’d heard of Superman, but didn’t know much about him and wasn’t all that interested in finding out.
He concluded (in 2002) that it was the worst script he’d ever read.
And now the writer is being put in charge of Star Wars. But considering what Lucas did to it over the last 14 years, he could hardly do worse.
Oh they will do worse.
I don’t have much affection for the prequels but I have absolutly no faith in Disney. Sure they have been able to make a ton of money on their films but when was the last time you left a live action Disney movie with a feeling any stronger than gentle amusement, if not total disdain. I take a chance every once in awhile on a Disney rental and am almost never able to finish them. Alice and Pirates 4 I reached the end of out of sheer force of will, Prince of Persia, Tron Legacy, Sorcerer’s Apprentice were too much for me. I would take the prequels over those absolutly any day.
Hey here’s a pressing ST ISSUE:
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES
A
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?
“When you compare & contrast the death scenes of Darkness vs Wrath of Khan, you see the difference between experienced storytellers who lived rich lives and “cool” concept designers who fetishized movies growing up.”
“I’m not even the world’s biggest Star Trek fan, but i watched the original series and Next Generation. I’ve seen the movies. So i know the history. The minute Khan is in his cell basically delivering his endless monologue/backstory, i just started laughing. When we were talking in the other thread about bad writing, this is what comes to mind.The original series had Kirk and company find the spaceship Khan and his buddies were frozen on, unfreeze them, and then we learn about their sordid past and how dangerous they are. Wrath of Khan requires the viewers to be familiar with the episode which basically sets up why Khan hates Kirk so much. Kirk made mistakes in the past, mistakes that drove the already murderous Khan insane, and thus you have an epic vendetta.”
Just a couple of many examples, again, arguments that have nothing to do with what was in Into Darkness. But I’m creating straw men. Okay.
In the end, I’m actually glad that Abrams is taking over Star Wars because grinding out feature-length toy commercials for Disney will keep him out of commission for several years, allowing other and perhaps better directors to take over the science fictional tentpoles.
And Brack, it still comes down to bad writing. Perhaps it’s Spider-Man 3 all over again–there may have been a great story at one point, but someone high up decided far into development to force in a major villain who had no connection to what had already been written. So this Frankenstein creation doesn’t come together properly and ends up smelling putrid.
This is why construction companies take ownership of the project once a certain point is reached because if they don’t the owners will keep trying to change the plans right up to opening day.
Abrams isn’t taking over Star Wars. He gets his movie, will probably screw it up, and then Affleck gets his turn. That’s right… AFFLECK!
“Just a couple of many examples, again, arguments that have nothing to do with what was in Into Darkness. But I’m creating straw men.”
So you’re saying there wasn’t a long expository monologue in the middle of the movie where Khan recounts how exactly he came to be which highlights the variances in his back story?
Smooth move, Ferguson.
Hmm, Rachel Edidin’s writeup of INTO DARKNESS seems to be a split decision. Or not.
She says “The pacing is choppy and weird, racing past plot holes and lingering on brutal hand-to-hand combat drawn out so far past the point of feasibility that it actually gets boring” (this echoes a comment Moriarty made about Abrams’ MATRIX-inspired Superman screenplay), and “The result is a mishmash of story fragments that don’t really fit together, dubious causality, a plot driven by crises that never quite stand up to scrutiny–and, of course, Carol Marcus.”
(Marcus is a fairly useless character in this movie, inserted mostly for her underwear scene, which Lindelof admitted was gratuitous.)
But then she says the choice about who should die at the end actually works, since this person realized he was the most worthless, expendable member of the crew. She hoped Abrams would be brave enough to let this death remain until at least the next movie (though by skipping the Genesis device part of KHAN they erased the ability to bringing him back), saying “Sure, it wouldn’t have fixed Into Darkness entirely. The pacing would still have been terrible. The plot would still have been riddled with holes. But it would have bumped it up from promising mess to flawed masterpiece.”
So what does Abrams do? Reverse the death in a matter of minutes.
“The old Trek movies weren’t flawless, but they were brave.” Now that’s an epitaph you can live with.
I agree with that criticism. Especially the leaving Kirk dead part. Because there was no Genesis device, we do not know how they would bring Kirk back. We know they would bring him back in the third film, but not knowing how, leaving that question unanswered would have built up a lot of momentum for the next installment. Hell, Abrams could have very much made this in the model of Empire. Khan lives. Kirk dies. There’s an uncertainty about the future. The end of the movie could have been the Klingons preparing to invade the federation, because it seems like things were heading that way…
I also liked Kirk dying because it completes the idea of the Kobyashi Maru. Kirk doesnt believe in no win situations. The point of the Kobyashi Maru in Star Trek was about having to accept loss, to understand the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Kirk finally got it.
There’s a lot of Into Darkness that works really well, but there’s a lot that feels like Abrams taking a hammer to get a square peg into a round hole.
I agree that it would have been very brave to leave Kirk dead. However it would also up to infinite degree the comparisons also being made between the two Star Treks. I could see critics spewing negativity at how badly Abrams fucked up the death at of a key character and how he is not fit where smell Gene Roddenberry’s jock strap.
To me Abrams is in a damned if you damned if you don’t position.
I’ll see it again, forget all the references to the old Star Trek for the 3rd one. We’ve done it twice now. Enough. Give me the all out Klingon war with the Borg lurking in the wings that I’ve been waiting out, and lets finally see the the full Star Fleet at all it’s might.
wow… I thought the movie was terrific and so did the 7 others of us seeing it today. Huh. Oh well.
Re: Kirk’s lesson, I don’t really think he develops anything. He’s always been a daredevil in Startrek Babies – willing to put his own life on the line. He’s always been willing to acknowledge the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – as long as the “few” is himself. But he’s never had to chose between 2 bad options where one of the options wasn’t “do it myself”. He breaks the Prime Directive because the consequences fall on him alone. In fact, this is Pike’s criticism when he chews Kirk out at the start – Kirk acts like rules are for other people.
At the finale, Kirk still breaks the rules to sacrifice himself. He never learns the lesson, where he has to choose and live with the consequences of his decision. The other crew even take the decision out of his hands, by volunteering to stay with him. The only marginal development is when he has to decide whether to obey a potentially unlawful direct order – which isn’t really a development at all, since either choice results in him “disobeying” the rules.
I enjoyed watching it, but it really doesn’t hold up after, which might be the most obvious thing I’ve ever said.
Someone referenced this earlier, but without the history of the five year mission, the Kahn plot isn’t earned. And the callbacks to the original movie consequently don’t make any sense. Spock, who stoically watched his own mother die in the first film is going to lose it when a guy he’s known for a year and still doesn’t really like dies?
And the death holds no value. Remember, in WoK, Nimoy publically stated he didn’t want to play Spock anymore. Sure, there were skeptics that assumed it was a money play (which it turned out to be, although I think he held out for some directing gigs). When Spock dies, we all thought that was that. No one believes that Kirk isn’t going to come back. THAT would be boldly going where they’ve never gone before.
They rebooted for a reason. Should have done something new. Instead, we got a remake within a reboot.
As is always the case with internet message boards, no one posting likes the film or tv show in question. Except of course, for everyone else.
I’m done.. thought we had a smarter group here.. adios.
i liked the film. and i liked the tv show.
are you only reading parts of posts?
I liked TOS and the even-numbered movies featuring those actors. FIRST CONTACT was the only Trek movie I’ve liked since.
And what a jaunty board it would be if all we did is sit around singing the praises of whatever was served up for discussion.
Offering praise is like cheating–an easy out–because no one ever asks why you liked it. But criticize and you’re expected to come up with justifications. It actually requires thought, in other words.