Into Darkness We Go

Warnings as always, this film reaction does have spoilers in it, some pretty big ones to, so if that's not your thing steer clear. It's the 10th of May, twenty thirteen, it's half past one at night, and I've just watched Star Trek Into Darkness.

I can't really say I've ever been a Trekker or Trekkie, although I did once participate in a Twitter based "WARS vs TREK" challenge on Trek's side, but I've always liked the idea of it. A few years back, in fact the year leading up to the Stark Trek reboot, I decided to plough through Star Trek before the reboot could potentially ruin the series for me. I was surprised at how much I actually liked it, the original series was well-thought out, entertaining, and brought important issues of its time (and ours!) into light. I fell in love with the characters and consumed everything I could of the original crew. I believe this is the reason why I'm one of the few who really, really like Star Trek: The Animated Series, the extra stuff possible by having the original crew animated was really great.
I went on to The Next Generation after having watched all of the original films, but I couldn't make it pass the second season (something many have claimed I really should try, as the series apparently really takes off in season three). Instead of continuing on with my plan of watching all Star Trek, I just went ahead and tried to find everything Original Crew related. I read a bunch of comics and short stories. For me Star Trek is Kirk, Spock, Bones, Sulu, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Chapel, Rand, everyone aboard good old NCC-1701 (and NCC-1701-A).

After having discovered all of this amazingness I was really looking forward to J.J. Abrams' 2009 "Star Trek", though of course cautious. I ended up really not caring much for the 2009 "Star Trek" at all, I've not even seen it again since that premier all those years ago. I just couldn't get past how young everyone was, how they acted, and how the film treated the original original crew. I didn't think much of it, I wasn't really annoyed, it just wasn't anything for me. If anything, the film had inspired me to seek out Star Trek, and I was, and am, grateful.

Fast forward a few years, and Star Trek Into Darkness is really ramping up on its advertising, people are discussing everything about it, what might happen, and who might be in it. I kept half an eye on the whole ordeal, seeing if anything interesting popped up, but part from the major discussion of who Benedict Cumberbatch was going to portray nothing really triggered my interest.

Fast forward yet again, and it's now, and I've just watched Into Darkness, I just had to. I hadn't planned on it, but I was invited, and it's not really like me to reject an invitation to a science fiction film. What followed was 133 minutes of trying to get really excited, but never being it. I just had a lot of problems with it over all, things I normally wouldn't have problems with. For example, the film starts with the Enterprise being submerged at the bottom of an ocean. It was pretty well established in the original series that the Enterprise can't even enter a planet's atmosphere, it's not built for that. In fact, if I remember correctly, a ship like that wasn't built for quite some time. But alright, I'll buy that it can fly in a planet's atmosphere, though it seems to lack any aerodynamic traits required, but that it can stay under water like that? Don't tell me that they thought of that as a possible use while building the ship. First time I've openly questioned a tech decision in a film in a long while.

But let's not get into problems I might have with technology that some writer thought might exist several decades into the future, my main problem is that the characters are supposed to be the original crew. They aren't another up-and-coming team of young rascals, I might have been fine with them, but I just can't wrap my head around that the people I'm watching are supposed to be Kirk and his gang. To me it all just registers as some stupid sketch show parody of the real deal. I don't see Kirk and Spock, I see Pine and Quinto.
They seem to try to emulate Shatner and Nimoy into the uncanny valley, I can see what they're trying to do, but they're not pulling it off. I end up seeing a film about no one, and that's kind of sad.

NOW! Let's get to some big spoilery bits, if you don't like spoilers but you've read up to this point, now's the time to jump off.
So Cumberbatch was Khan, yeah? Yup, that's who I thought he'd be, and for a while hoped he'd be, but still I'm disappointed. I wanted it to be a new person, a new villain for the new crew to deal with. Instead I'm left with a rehash of a really great character that not even Cumberbatch can do justice. I have to admit, for a while I was actually shaking in my seat of excitement and audibly giggling when I realised that they were indeed going to announce that John Harrison was in fact Khan, but that was more of a masturbatory reference reflex. I was being told to recall feelings I had of Khan from before, and those are great, but the Khan in this film just wasn't Khan at all, now was he? No. Ricardo Montalban was Khan, from the highest hair, to the lowest toe. Cumberbatch is nothing but a cheap copy meant to instil feelings of yesteryear.

It's all just masturbatory references through out the film. It borders on a remake of Wrath of Khan, a remake that doesn't dare be a remake, but it is. For example, in the very beginning Spock is ready to sacrifice his life and he says his famous Wrath of Khan line "the good of the many, outweigh the good of the few", hinting at what is going to happen later. Then, at the end, Kirk has to go into a radiation filled room, fix the warp core drive majigger and essentially kill himself. Spock then comes up to the glass door, looks at Kirk, and puts his hand besides Kirk's on the door, just like the scene in Wrath of Khan except with the roles reversed. Now, what followed was to me the stupidest moment of the film. Spock yelled out "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" in truest Kirk style. It was horrible, it didn't fit the film, it didn't fit Spock. It was all just so damn wrong, I cringed in my seat. I get annoyed just thinking back on it. Bah, perhaps I'm overreacting. Perhaps if I rewatch this film in a few years, I'll feel differently. In fact, reading what I've written, I am overreacting. It's not as bad as I want it to be, it's just that the film made me wish I'd stayed at home and watched Wrath of Khan instead.

I kind of wish I could watch the film over again without having all the knowledge of the original crew series, many I've talked to who have not seen Star Trek before quite enjoyed the film, and seemed to not find the same things bad that I did, and I suppose that's a good thing. After all, this rebooted series is supposed to be aimed at a new audience, make a new generation swoon over space exploration, and humanoid aliens galore. And for that purpose, it seems to be working.
I did not like Into Darkness, but maybe you did or will.

One last thing, can we talk about how absolutely ridiculously lazy writing it was to have young Spock contact old Spock about how to defeat Khan? I smiled when I first saw Nimoy on the screen, but that scene was so stupid, and wasn't even needed for the final takedown of Khan!