Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J. Abrams, 2013)

[PfR73]

First teaser is up for the new Star Trek film!

It announces that a second trailer will be released on the internet on Dec. 17th. Probably the same trailer that will be attached to The Hobbit. IMAX screenings of The Hobbit are also supposed to have 9 minutes of footage attached.

The Japanese subtitled trailer contains around 13 seconds of extra footage near the end.

[dad1153]

Thanks, I'll make sure to skip all screenings of "The Hobbit" then (or show up just right before the flick starts). ;-)

[jindianajonz]

Ok, a little bit late, but this spoiler filled FAQ sums up exactly why I was so dissappointed in Star Trek:

http://io9.com/star-trek-into-darkness- ... -508927844" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm all for dumb fun, and can forgive a lot of things in a popcorn flick as long as it is entertaining (I actually liked X-men 3), but I really felt that this was an exercise in braingstorming ways to complete the sentence "Wouldn't it be surprising if..." without any regard to how it impacted the characters or story.

[cdnchris]

As the case with most movies of this type and me a lot of the same stuff bugged me yet I still liked it, lens flare and all. But I'm also not a serious Trekky, so it didn't concern me.

Spoiler

But yes, Spock's "Khaaaaaaan!" didn't work for me.

I was actually surprised the villain turned out to be Khan but only because I didn't follow the production so didn't know anything about the promise of a staple character. What really bugged me, though, more than anything else in the film, was why did he even bother to change his name? This would technically be the first time Khan would have appeared, so there would have been no level of infamy yet.

[jindianajonz]

As the case with most movies of this type and me a lot of the same stuff bugged me yet I still liked it, lens flare and all. But I'm also not a serious Trekky, so it didn't concern me.

I'm not a serious Trekky either (i've saw a few of the movies when I was a kid, and have never seen any of the shows)

But the plot/motivation holes in this movie were just so massive!

Spoiler

Particuarly, the idea to have Khan put all of his crew mates in missiles. As the link questions, what would happen in the extremely likely event that these things were launched? Sure, there was no fuel in them, but there's still probably a good chance these would slowly drift towards a planet with their warheads armed. And speaking of which, why would Khan even put functional warheads in these things?

Also, why would the Admiral send these Khan-designed missiles to attack Khan without even testing them? He has 72 of them, surely he would try test firing at least one of them and notice they have no fuel. And why would he even give Khan enough access to his crewmates to allow him put them into missiles, and how did he not notice that the 72 crewmates suddenly dissappeared at the same time Khan built these 72 missiles?

And if Khan really had that high level of access, why didn't he just free his crewmates right away and save us from this turd of a movie? I think they said only the admiral had the codes to unthaw them, but later the Enterprise was able to (presumably) safely remove a guy from a tube so that they could preserve Kirk when he "died"; surely Khan could have figured out a way.

The main problem with the movie for me is that these weren't questions I thought of when the movie was over; these were questions that were going through my mind as the plot was unfolding. And this is just from one single plot twist; as the link points out, there are numerous situations that rely on equally dubious motivations. Fun game: Try to map out each of the main villain's goals and their plan for achieving them, from start to finish!

[Matt]

The plot holes didn't bother me at all. What did bother me was the need for the writers to structure the film primarily as a commentary on the post-9/11 world. I know that the original series often commented obliquely on the issues of the day, but this just seems like they came up with the idea of

Spoiler

making Khan a terrorist

and then outlined the plot in terms of hackneyed political commentary instead of what would make for an interesting story.

[matrixschmatrix]

The plot holes are numerous, certainly, and the movie seems to be designed very much in the Prometheus mold of rushing past quickly enough that you don't really take the time to puzzle out how much of it makes sense. It's fleet and fairly entertaining, but I agree that the terrorism, such as it is, doesn't work well- it feels as though, for the second time, Abrams is using mass death as something of an incidental plot point, and it makes me much less interested in the interpersonal dynamics (which I think are much the most successful part of the movie.) The allusions to terrorism also seem both less interesting and less creative than those in Iron Man 3, and it doesn't really seem to be saying much of anything.

Spoiler

I also thought that both having Kirk's command of the Enterprise taken away and having Kirk get killed off, only to reverse both within about 20 minutes, seemed like bad writing- what on earth are we supposed to get seriously invested in here? Plus- they synthesized Khan's blood, so they literally have a cure for death on file, which seems like a huge can of worms that will probably never get brought up again.

It's fun, but I'm beginning to think that's the most one can hope for from an Abrams film- here's hoping the next one focuses more on the exploration and less on populations getting wiped out. The cast is pretty uniformly great, though- I'll probably show up to the next one no matter what, just to see Pine, Quinto, Pegg and so on hanging out.

[lubitsch]

As a long standing Trekkie I'm grateful that the classic film were made before the great CGI onslaught began. In any of these old films you have two, three action sequences which drive the plot forward. In STID and his predecessor you have seven, eight distributed evenly throughout the film and the plot is merely written to connect them. Both films have a certain mystery element to them and somewhere in the middle there's an explanatory sequence where a character sheds some light on what we've seen ... or tries to do so, but tells the stuff so fast that you're supposed not to notice how poorly thought out it is. In the first film there's e.g. the destruction of Romulus ("And then the unthinkable happened, Romulus was destroyed" Why???) or some arbitrary time travel machinations, here it's e.g. the whole torpedo stuff. This is such incredibly lazy and sloppy work, I think it's clear that the writer's primary task is to deliver lots of spectacular action scenes, everything else is secondary.
And the direction is also ordinary intensified continuity cinema. Lots of cuts, endless close ups, these blockbuster films are an endles string of the same. Finally the new directions and spins the characters get, just tend to cheapen them. Pegg plays Scotty as a living gag. Quinto plays an autist who had more emotional outbursts in two films than Nimoy in 79 episodes and 6 films. And Pine's angry, brash teenage rebel shows nothing of Kirk's stern, serious attitude.

I'm glad when this hack and his writers will leave the franchise alone and move on to Star Wars which is far more suited to his ... ahem artistic temperament.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, yeah, how dare they sully the waters of The Final Frontier and Generations

[knives]

Those aren't the bad ones.

[lubitsch]

Haha, yeah, how dare they sully the waters of The Final Frontier and Generations

In both films the filmmakers tried to achieve something even if it didn't quite work out. Shatner e.g. is not half the bad director he is called. Despite the bad effects and the overdone comedy Final Frontier is a quite coherent portrait of a charismatic religious leader who partly gains our sympathy by seeking answers to fundamental questions and by helping others though it's some kind of brainwashing, too. This and the reactions of the crew forms a solid narrative core right down to Kirk's famous question to "god". And while Generations collapses under the deus ex machina that the Nexus provides, this film also tries to grapple with age, regrets and crucial choices which Soran, Kirk and Picard experience.

The first time that blockbusteritis show is in Nemesis with the completely gratuitous and un-trekkian car chase at the beginning. The mental rapes of Troi also belong in this category. Also why Shinzon exactly hates the federation remains unclear.
Ironically this much reviled film is to a certain degree clearly the blueprint for the Abrams films, there's a thinly motivated super villain with a huge starship, threatening mass destruction and lots of pointless action on the way.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, I don't disagree (though the campiness and brutally unfunny comic relief totally overwhelm whatever Star Trek V was going for to me) - Abrams seems pretty clearly to have jettisoned any concept of heady philosophizing in this series, and and is going for an entirely different action adventure tone. I don't think that's inherently a bad thing, though, and my problems with the new movies are primarily where they fail as action adventure pieces (ironically, this seems to happen most when they try to philosophize, as either Abrams or whomever is writing them seem to be pretty bad at anything particularly heady.)

[jindianajonz]

The allusions to terrorism also seem both less interesting and less creative than those in Iron Man 3, and it doesn't really seem to be saying much of anything.

Definitely agree with this. Iron Man 3 raised some interesting questions about

Spoiler

whether terrorism is a "product" that is easily marketed to us because we buy into it so wholeheartedly

while Star Trek

Spoiler

had a very muddled message that... what? Terror happens when you thaw out a 300 year old man? A drone strike is no subsitute for a boots-on-the-ground operation? I really don't see a purpose for the terrorism angle in this film other than as an attempt to give this film meaning by loosely tying it to a real world debate.

I don't know why this movie got me so worked up when a number of other bland blockbusters don't (I actually really liked Prometheus and felt the plotholes there were much more forgiveable; they seemed like things tacked on as an excuse for an action scene rather than inherent parts of the plot structure. God forbid we go 15 minutes without a cool action scene and an ADD high schooler gets a little bored). I guess I should just be thankful there was never a thread that would let me air my anger over "Warm Bodies"...

[lubitsch]

I don't mind pure action adventure films though Star Trek isn't the first franchise that comes to mind for this kind of stuff. I do however mind pointless action. It's lazy.

Let's take a random example, e.g. Star Trek III. Kirk spots a distortion, guesses it's a Klingon cruiser, hits first. The Enterprise isn't fit for a battle though and can't take the return. Kirk nevertheless outmaneuvres the Klingons though at a cost. Later he fights the Klingon captain amid the burning planet, they fall down a bit when the earth cracks up, finally he gets rid of him.
Now STID. Two men are shot out of an airlock, maneuvre at incredible speeds through tons of rubble, hit a tiny entrance and slide along the longest cargo bay or corridor ever seen in Star Trek. Is this supposed to be exciting? These people are no real characters who have any strategy and they don't fight real fights. They are more like Coyote and Road Runner, invulnerable and acting like in a videogame. Kirk and the Klingon fall down a bit, in Abramstrek people jump from heights on such tiny or fast moving objects, they'd be killed on the spot. Not to mention all these modern weapons which are even worse than 20th century guns or arrows at hitting people even when they hit otherwise literally everything in sight.

Abrams has by his own admission no connection with Star Trek and his writers may like the franchise, but they throw in every five minutes some reference and think that they've captured the spirit of the series. Though this is a general method in modern blockbuster films based on older franchise. you always watch the same JamesBondMarvelComicStarWarsTrek film, there are just patches and quotes from either narrative universe which form a thin pastiche which is hung over the action sequence accumulation machine. Frankly it's a devastating sight.

[matrixschmatrix]

I think one of the most frustrating things about Abrams-Trek, to me, is how constantly he returns to the well of just watching the Enterprise get pummeled- every confrontation seems to comprise a volley of phaser attacks, a hull breach and a bunch of people we don't know flying through the frame and to their death, a terse announcement of what percentage of shields are left (why was the hull breached when there are still shields?) and a diplomatic exchange that ends with some non-ship combat solution presenting itself. It would be really interesting to see a Michael Mann-esque take on it, where everyone displayed real knowledge and understanding of their tools and profession, and a sense that real thought went in to what ship to ship combat in space would be like (or at least a convincing simulacrum derived from naval warfare.)

I don't think that all the action franchises have collapsed into one another at this point, though- there are definitely some things that seem to run through them, but it's not hard to distinguish a Casino Royale from an Avengers, and Nolan's Batman movies had a real stamp of his authorial personality on them. I think that the connection of these movies to the history of Star Trek is relatively thin, but as someone who's watched a lot of original Trek and never much cared for it, that doesn't seem like much of a sin.

[warren oates]

It would be really interesting to see a Michael Mann-esque take on it, where everyone displayed real knowledge and understanding of their tools and profession, and a sense that real thought went in to what ship to ship combat in space would be like (or at least a convincing simulacrum derived from naval warfare.)

I'd like to see something like this too. Maybe they should give the next iteration to somebody like Ron Moore.

[matrixschmatrix]

It would be really interesting to see a Michael Mann-esque take on it, where everyone displayed real knowledge and understanding of their tools and profession, and a sense that real thought went in to what ship to ship combat in space would be like (or at least a convincing simulacrum derived from naval warfare.)

I'd like to see something like this too. Maybe they should give the next iteration to somebody like Ron Moore.

Done and done.

[lubitsch]

Seriously if I would run the franchise, I wouldn't know what to do on the big screen. If you take 100million+ then you probably have no other way to get your money back and make investors happy. If you go for a lower sum, let's say a 10 million chamber drama, you end up in limited release and also won't get your money back.
Pre1960 there were few films which featured action nonstop, King Kong is one of these rare cases once they get to the island. Then with the James Bond films the basic structure is established, but into the early 90s conventionally well made films still could score big. But since CGI breaking through with Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park and the average shot lengths going down to 2-3 seconds, big budget films structurally march into one direction. Somebody like Nolan just seems to be outside of this trend, stylistically he's not different, he just narrates a bit more gimmicky, check Bordwell's analytical entry in his blog http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/ ... -vs-nolan/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just imagine today Star Trek the Motion Picture being released as one of the most expensive films yet and Paramount's great summer blockbuster. A film without a phaser shot, a villain, a 2001esque attitude towards space and time and a long talky sequence at the end. This wouldn't survive a day today.

[warren oates]

It would be really interesting to see a Michael Mann-esque take on it, where everyone displayed real knowledge and understanding of their tools and profession, and a sense that real thought went in to what ship to ship combat in space would be like (or at least a convincing simulacrum derived from naval warfare.)

I'd like to see something like this too. Maybe they should give the next iteration to somebody like Ron Moore.

Done and done.

It's not like I didn't know Moore started out in TV Trek and worked on those Next Gen films. I meant, that if they were going to militarize Trek, they might as well follow the example of at least the first season and a half of the Battlestar reboot. And for gosh sakes, to direct, don't hire Frakes.

[lubitsch]

And for gosh sakes, to direct, don't hire Frakes.

And why not exactly? He clearly prepared a lot for the job and shot Cause and Effect in a very clever and ingenious way. Throughout the series he was one of the best directors and in First Contact he started with the spectacular but also very fitting camera pullback from Picard's eye which beautifully illustrates the conflict between individual and hive mind. I can think of many worse directors working today.

[cdnchris]

I didn't even realize Frakes did First Contact, which for me was probably the best of the Next Generation movies, and one of the best in the whole series. Though I see he also did the next one, which, despite its intentions, was pretty insufferable.

[colinr0380]

And then after that he helmed Thunderbirds which was a terribly misjudged movie (too indebeted to that Lost In Space film in terms of tone and aesthetic mixed with a rather hackneyed 'the new generation of kids have to save the adults!' plot), though to be fair to Frakes it really was a poisoned chalice of a project with anything that moved away from the puppets on strings charm of the original series and its associated feature films really doomed to failure. But as lubitsch said about Star Trek that kind of thing, no matter how appropriate to the original material, likely wouldn't really have been acceptable as a big blockbuster action film, even one aimed at kids.

[rohming]

love First Contact, almost hard to believe Frakes directed it when you look at virtually everything else he's done besides the TV episodes.

STID is a perfect example of how a pretty good cast can go a long way towards making up for the flaws of an atrocious plot...but they can only go so far.