Star Trek: Into Darkness

[nineveh_uk]

I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness yesterday, and was unimpressed. Admittedly it is a long time since I saw Wrath of Khan, but I’m fairly sure that half of the film wasn’t spent in characters punching one another to ‘pow’ sounds. The upshot of this Punching Without Plot is that what could be an exciting narrative isn’t. The pacing is weird because every time something happens we have to pause for people to punch each other. There hasn’t been sufficient investment in the Kirk/Spock relationship as more than ‘antagonistic space buddies’ to give the death scene the emotional wallop it ought to have, so it has to have a lot more dialogue to spell things out – while saying less. Not to mention that instead of being the climax of the film, it gets less screen time than the next episode of punching.*

I also kept getting jolted out of the action by the difference in physical appearance between the other male members of the cast and Simon Pegg as Scotty, whose general lack of glossiness makes him look as if he is the member of a different species compared to the smoothed/fake-tanned/shiny rest of them. You can see that his skin is skin! It’s strange.

It's not a terrible film. I was in the mood for some undemanding entertainment and got it, it's just that it could have been much better undemanding entertainment. The acting is generally OK. Benedict Cumberbatch made as much of Khan as there was to be made. The underwear torpedo scene is even more egregrious than I had gathered from fandom. I think I'm going to add the old II, III, IV, and VI films to my LoveFilm list.

*I didn’t count. It may just be that the punching seemed to pass slowly.

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

*wipes away tears of laughter*

Oh dear, as I thought the first Star Trek reboot was infuriatingly stupid in the plot department, it sounds as if I'd better give this one a miss.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It is really quite stupid. I also found myself thinking a lot of "why don't you just tell your boss about that" and "why do planets in science fiction never monitor their airspace and jdestroy incoming stuff before it is about to hit a populated area?"

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I saw it when I came out and remember wondering when Simon Pegg started looking so rough, then realizing that he didn't -- he just looked like a normal human being. It was a fun way to waste time for a few hours but I wouldn't watch it again, and the underwear scene was just ... yeah. I was also a little tired of watching them try to make Spock/Uhura happen. Didn't they have the same argument about five times?

I did enjoy the Honest Trailer, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B22Uy7SBe4.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Given the fact that these people work on a spaceship, I feel that the "doesn't get much daylight" look is much more plausible. I got the feeling that Spock/Uhura was basically a way out of giving Uhura a plotline, except instead of being one of the crew who gets to do some skill-relevant stuff (except doesn't Scotty have several engineering deputies, you know, for his off-time?) she ends up with less screentime and just trailing Spock about. AT least Sulu and Chekov got personalities.

I had not seen the Honest Trailer before, and it is painfully accurate.

[dbassassin.livejournal.com]

Ha! So glad I'm not the only one who found it booooorrrring.

I have no recollection of anything that can be described as an "underwear torpedo scene", so perhaps I just wasn't paying attention, but I suspect I didn't miss much.

And yes, the hyper-glossy faces were creepy. Cumberbatch looked like he was laser-carved out of some kind of high-tech resin.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed that film makers can manage to make that sort of thing boring, and yet they do!

The underwear torpedo scene involves a scientist randomly needing to strip to climb into some sort of safety gear in Kirk's presence, ordering him to turn around, and him inevitably turning back when she's in bra and knickers. Funnily enough it is not thought necessary to show the same scene with Dr McCoy, who will be wearing a similar suit.