If you don’t want spoilers, come no further. We instead suggest that you read this nice review Vagabond Prime wrote up. Otherwise, if you’ve already seen Star Trek: Into Darkness, or don’t care about spoilers, this is the place for you! We had some fairly divergent opinions on the latest Trek, although I think we all come down on the side of liking it (Miss Mecha doesn’t know if she can say she liked it… but she wishes she could like it a bit more).
What follows is our round-table discussion of the movie, spoilers and all!
Citizen-Bot: Before I start anything, let me say that I liked this movie. A lot, actually. But I think it fits into the second tier of Trek movies. It’s not as good as the last one, or First Contact or Wrath of Khan or The Undiscovered Country, but it’s in that same tier as Search for Spock or Generations. And probably better than those two. So. . .it’s my 5th favorite Star Trek movie? Is that faint praise? That’s like saying “It’s my third favorite Star Wars movie.”
Miss Mecha: Unlike Citizen-Bot, I walked out of that theater pretty conflicted about what I had just watched. That was a Star Trek movie? No, of course it was a J.J. Abram’s movie, and I was trying to go into it expecting what I loved about the last new Trek movie (which, in my opinion, was a whole lot better written than Into Darkness). To be honest, though, I just couldn’t come to terms with this one.
Only about five minutes into my viewing of Star Trek: Into Darkness, I had already started to get nervous about the progression of the film. As you know, we open on a planet where the crew of the Enterprise are trying to save the natives from an erupting volcano (while blatantly violating the Prime Directive). Why couldn’t we see a bit more time spent on this away mission? I felt like there was no reason to rush through this scene and piece together events with quick one-line dialogue (which, might I add, poorly tries to excuse the “We put the Enterprise underwater” bit). I’m not saying it needed to be a particularly lengthy away mission, but the opening scene is one of many examples that perfectly exemplify my main problem with Into Darkness – poor pacing.
Into Darkness never gives us any time to really enjoy what’s going on or interact with the characters before something else is blowing up again or putting the lives of the crew in “immense” danger (and I have to agree with my counter-bot Vagabond Prime when he says that you never actually got the feeling that anybody was going to die. The only exception, for me, was seeing Admiral Pike killed instead of paralyzed – which is honestly where I thought they were going to take that scene.).
Sith-Bot: I absolutely loved it and wanted to get back in line to see it again (and probably will tomorrow), BUT there were some glaring issues that really can’t be ignored, which I’ll get to later.
Swank-mo-tron: I don’t understand why people are saying this isn’t a Star Trek film. There was Kirk, Spock, Starfleet and a whole bunch of Star Trek stuff, only slightly more entertaining. It had interesting dilemmas, great action, and many of the reveals brought tears to my eyes.
Sure, Abrams directed it, and it had his fingerprints all over it, but that doesn’t make it not Star Trek, merely more palatable to a wider audience. That being said, I loved the hell out of this movie, though I had some problems with it. I loved it the same way I loved Superman Returns. It’s a well-constructed homage to another film I loved.
Citizen-Bot: I don’t understand why they’d say that, either. This was most definitely a Trek film. But let me ask a provocative question, which is more about Abrams than anything else: Is the fact that Cumberbatch’s John Harrison is Khan really a spoiler? I think a spoiler is generally something that has to happen near the end or where there’s a huge emotional payoff that is hollow if you hadn’t come on the entire journey (Dumbledore dies. Vader is Luke’s father. Spock dies at the end of Wrath of Khan.) Did it really spoil anything? It had been on IMDB for a month, it was revealed on numerous websites from Australia/New Zealand/Britain and. . . I kind of didn’t know how to process that information. I first was skeptical. (Nah, they wouldn’t. Would they?) Then I was hopeful (It would be awesome if they did.)
I feel like this was handled poorly from the get-go. Is JJ Abrams just so obsessed with spoilers and leaks that they couldn’t figure out how to tell this story without this shell game? If they’d just been up front, announced at Comic-Con “Yes, we’re tackling Khan. But this is not “Space Seed.” This is not The Wrath of Khan. This is a story of how Starfleet is handling getting its ass handed to them by some Romulans from the future, and they make a deal with the devil to try to catch up.” I don’t feel like that would’ve spoiled anything.
Then make just a couple of script changes. When Khan is first revealed in the hospital, and the officer from Section 31 asks him how he can save his daughter, he says, “I am Khan.” Then as Adm Marcus is explaining how this is a guy named David Harrison, either Spock or Pike or someone says, “They’re not telling us something.” And see, we as the audience know what they’re not telling, and we’re along for the ride. I think just being up front with us about this would’ve been better.
Swank-mo-tron: Yes. It’s a spoiler. I hadn’t heard and the revelation blew me away inside the theater.
Vagabond Prime: I would argue that the movie would have been stronger if he had not been Khan at all: Perhaps another augment, or someone who had been enhanced through nano-technology. Ultimately, Harrison being Khan just diminished things. Now, if they had kept him Khan and avoided the magical “Call Old Spock” bit, we could have avoided the cliched turncoat bit at the end. He had a reason for everything he did up to that point. Everything he had done was either for revenge against Marcus, or to protect the other Augments. Why would he turn on Kirk? He just wanted to save his people, and Spock pulls a dick move and phasers his ass into the ground. How about letting Khan have a hero turn? Kirk and Khan team up to take Marcus down. Things on the big ship start going horribly wrong, the warp core breach happens, Khan could even sacrifice himself to save Kirk. End of movie, completely unique spin on an iconic character, and Kirk learns about “real sacrifice” long before he’s an Admiral. That would have taken some balls. But no, let’s just recycle everything from Wrath of Khan.
Swank-mo-tron: Yep, there’s my problem with Khan in this film. The turning on Kirk for no reason.
Sith-Bot: I went in knowing that he was Khan, so I didn’t give the collective gasp the audience did when his name was first said on screen (although how they didn’t guess from the 5 minute exposition explaining his back-story before that is beyond me). I was really intrigued to see how they were going to handle his character due to the fact that he didn’t have the bad blood with Kirk that he did in WoK, and I think they did it well. By making Khan’s vendetta against Starfleet itself, they gave him that strong motivation he needed to be such a bad ass. Unlike Vagabond, I’m fine with the fact that the writers didn’t change him into a different character (hero or otherwise), but I’m in complete agreement about the space call to old Spock. Look, you’re reinventing this classic character, yet try to tie it all into a continuity that can not exist in your world; Space Seed and WoK can’t happen, so why try to tie them all together? Also, Khan’s turning on Kirk made sense as far as his character goes. He’s a bloodthirsty bastard who craves power, and Kirk would be in his way. Also, the fact that Spock phased him, obviously on Kirk’s orders probably didn’t help the situation any either.
Citizen-Bot: There were several plot threads I just wished they’d explored more. The whole issue about whether it was better to blow “Harrison” up on Qo’nos or use the long-range weapons. (A morality tale about Obama and the use of unmanned drones to kill terrorists vs sending in troops?) The weaponization/militarization of scientific discovery. The use of secret branches of the military or a military-intelligence service (Section 31 – always one of my favorite plot threads from Deep Space Nine).
Vagabond Prime: What was the intent of those missiles, anyway? Was Marcus giving them to Khan by firing them at him? Was he planning on killing them all and getting even with Khan? All this is really unclear. It’s implied that the Augments were going to be “set loose” on Qo’Nos.
Citizen-Bot: Which would’ve been a cool idea, too. I kind of feel like the writing process for this was similar to me playing with my toys when I was 10: dump everything out on the floor, and make it fit in, regardless of whether it makes sense to mix Transformers, Star Wars, GI Joes, and Ghostbusters together.
By the end I felt kind of pandered to. Like instead of trying to present a single artistic vision, this got muddled by trying to fit too much into one narrative. Like a sundae where you’ve put too many toppings on it, it’s important to remember to simplify.
Sith-Bot: I believe this is what’s called doing things for shits and giggles. But yeah, a lot of that did feel contrived, and it was easy to tell the writers ran out of ideas or reasons to get the crew where they needed to go, so they just made stuff up and hoped the lens flares would distract us from what was really going on.
Citizen-Bot: And it’s a new record!! We went over 1600 words without making a lens flare joke! I’d like to thank everyone for their restraint.
Vagabond Prime: Sorry, couldn’t read what you wrote through the lense flare…
Miss Mecha: My friends and I have been talking about this since we watched the film. First off, it wasn’t super clear what Khan’s goal even was when he was on Qo’nos. Okay, so he’s bombed the archives and presumably obtained valuable information prior to attacking Starfleet and beaming himself to Qo’Nos… so, what the heck was he going to do next? How long do you really think a guy can hang out on the Klingon homeworld with a gun and a heavy laser? Somehow Kirk shows up for all the right reasons and we’re not supposed to question the insane way all the circumstances have lined up.
Sith-Bot: I agree, that was really weak. If you’re gonna introduce Klingons, DO something with them instead of letting them get shot to hell and getting the crap kicked out of them and their ships.
Miss Mecha: And seriously, I can’t agree with you more about the pandering. I was so sick of callbacks and re-imagined scenes from The Wrath of Khan that I seriously almost laughed at the scene where Kirk was dying. First they send him into the core and let anyone that’s seen the original film know that he’s about to die of radiation poisoning (but don’t worry folks, because you’ll never actually feel like anybody’s in any real danger in this film), then we see him kick a device in the wrong direction to fix the warp core, and finally, we watch as he stumbles back to his most certain “death.” Oh, by the way, did Scotty really want to call Spock down there first or was he even going to try to call McCoy to see if anything could be done? No? Just let him roast? Okay, that seems like the thing to do.
Sith-Bot: I disagree here; Kirk’s dying got to me, and I didn’t find it cheap at all. Granted, it was a reverse rehash, but I felt as emotional as I did when Spock died in the original. Unfortunately, the way they were going to revive Kirk was telegraphed from the opening scene in the hospital, so I wasn’t too pleased with that. What they should have done was let Kirk stay dead and introduce a new captain in the next film. Sure, it would have pissed some people off, but it would have made for a more interesting and emotionally impactful ending, and it’s not as if he would have had to stay dead — no one dies forever in these types of movies.
Swank-mo-tron: Yeah, for me all the call backs were what worked the best. The second Carol Marcus was revealed, an image of David and the history of loss that caused for Kirk Prime appeared in my head, that moment of him falling over the chair in Star Trek III, and it almost brought a tear to my eye. I never felt pandered to once.
Citizen-Bot: They can have Alice Eve as Carol Marcus in every Star Trek movies from now until the end of the franchise. In fact, I demand it.
Miss Mecha: I wonder if it has anything to do with this?
Just kidding…I actually thought she was a great character and was happy to see the strong stance she tried to take against her father’s wrongdoings.
Vagabond Prime: The Carol Marcus stuff didn’t bother me in the slightest. It was all of the recycled stuff from WoK. Most of what worked in Wrath of Khan was because of history. No history, much less impact, at least for me. When Spock died in WoK, he was fucking SPOCK. He had been SPOCK for decades. These guys had been family for longer than I had been alive. New crew? They’re friends, sure. But hardly family… yet. I love that Kirk was going on his 5 year mission with who might be the love of his life on board. I really dug the re-imagined Khan, how he was found, used, etcetera. It was the sloppy throw-backs that kept getting to me. I would get into the movie, and then they would ape on WoK. Rush through something else, then ape on WoK again. Almost like the writers were setting up action sequences just to string along the WoK tribute show, and looking desperately for old Trek stuff to pull from. It was like “people loved it when Kirk shouts Khan’s name! Let’s do that! But have Spock do it!
Sith-Bot: What about when I do it? KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!
Citizen-Bot: My turn: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Vagabond Prime: MADALYN KHAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!
Sith-Bot: Thanks, I just spit out good vodka laughing.
Citizen-Bot: Na zdorovye, comrade!
Vagabond Prime: I have been struggling with some huge logic issues: Scotty can use the transporter to beam anyone across the galaxy onto a moving ship, but they can’t pull Spock out of a volcano. The transporters work just fine on the Enterprise during the scene that sets up Kirk’s command dismissal, yet they hide the ship underwater, allowing natives to see the Enterprise as it rises from the sea. There was no need for this to happen. They did it because it looked cool, and that’s it. One mention of “ionic interference” in the atmosphere would have shut me the hell up.
Also, why do we need to beam people onto the top of a moving shuttle (again, we can’t pull a stationary dude from a volcano, but the top of a fast-moving shuttle? SURE!) to get Khan’s blood? THERE ARE SEVENTY TWO FREAKING AUGMENTS IN SUSPENDED ANIMATION ON BOARD! If they are all genetically engineered super-men, you would think a medical genius of McCoy’s calibre would catch on to that. But shuttle-top fights look cooler.
Miss Mecha: I facepalmed at this point, because McCoy even went out of his way to remove one of them from the tube so Kirk could go in it (and keep the guy in a coma during that time). He couldn’t just… borrow some blood while he pulled the guy out for a bit?
Sith-Bot: I assumed it was because their blood was frozen so it was unusable right at that moment, and they needed to get it into Kirk as fast as possible before more lasting damage was done.
Vagabond Prime: You’re making excuses for shitty writing, Sith-Bot. One of those very same Augments is in a COMA on the ship somewhere.
Sith-Bot: Shitty writing aside, I was willing to suspend disbelief because I was drawn into the film. Sure there were a lot of mistakes, and I’m not excusing them, but I was having so much fun, I didn’t notice at the time. Looking back, I’m seeing a lot of the gaps in the plot, but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the movie. Could it have been better? Definitely, and I don’t even think I can say it’s in my top 5 Trek movies, but I still loved the hell out of it.
Vagabond Prime: My last gripe, promise: why did Kirk need to be stripped of command at all? He’s back in the Chair in ten minutes. You could have had the strong reprimand, even the lecture/pep-talk in the bar. That could all be present in the story and still have Kirk in place to see Pike die. All of the emotional gravitas would still be there. EVERY other Captain in the area was present at the big meeting, we don’t need Kirk demoted to get his ass in the conference.
Here’s the sad part: I was completely on board, logic flaws and all, until the Celestial Phone Call to Spock Prime. From that point forward, the movie pretty much trampled every ounce of good will I had towards it. Anyone who bitches about Vader’s “NOOOOOO” in Revenge of the Sith had best have the same gripe about Spock’s “KHAAAAAAAN!”. It’s just as bad, if not worse.
Swank-mo-tron: I never once bitched about Vader’s Nooooo. Nor Spock’s Khaaaaan. I dug ‘em both.
Vagabond Prime: You and I are united on our love of Revenge of the Sith, Swank. I’m talking about all the haters out there that immediately point out the “NOOOOOOOO” as why that movie sucks.
Citizen-Bot: I loved Vader’s Noooooo! I hated the middle finger to the fanboys in the ROTJ Blu-Ray version, but that’s a different story. And I got a big goofy grin when Spock when all Shatner on that Khaaaaaan!!!!!!
Sith-Bot: The NOOOOO didn’t bother me in ROTS either, but as you said, ROTJ was a different story. Maybe I’m lame, but I liked it. I wonder if Chris Pine felt like he got robbed, though, “Khan should have been mine, dammit!”
Citizen-Bot: Note to Chris Pine: In next contract re-negotiations, make sure to add a rider that no one gets to yell “Khan!!!” except for you.
Miss Mecha: I can’t stand this part of the movie, at all. They go out of their way to have future Spock say that he’s vowed not to share any information about the future, and then immediately violate that because, otherwise, how could these characters from an alternate timeline ever possibly figure out how to take down Khan by themselves? It’s almost as if they’re discrediting this crew a bit. Can they not figure out anything on their own?
Sith-Bot: That was the worst part of the movie; groan worthy, laugh out loud for the wrong reasons bad.
Vagabond Prime: I still enjoyed the hell out of Into Darkness, but we have to address the “Highlander 2” levels of stupidity the writers threw in there!
Citizen-Bot: I just think they were trying to be too clever. Rather than actually being clever, they just were saying, “See how smart we are? You wanted ______? Here it is! You wanted _____? There it is!”
Sith-Bot: He just threw it all at the wall to see what would stick, and while there was a lot of good stuff there, it also ended up being a pretty big mess.
Vagabond Prime: With all this lip-service to Trek-That-Was, I’m surprised there wasn’t a reference to “Turnabout Intruder”. I’m all for paying tribute, but if you want me cheering, do something original. Cumberbatch rocked his part; he would have rocked it no matter what. Give him something worthy of his performance. The whole cast is exceptional, they deserve something better than “big summer fun”. We can have smart in “big summer fun”, too.
Sith-Bot: Cumberbatch was excellent, and it’s a shame he wasn’t in it more. Considering how much the story revolves around him and how much hype there was for his character in the ad campaign, he didn’t have nearly enough screen time.
Citizen-Bot: Every second he was on screen he was a delight. Love him.
Miss Mecha: Okay, I love Cumberbatch – give me more of him anytime! Really…
So, in closing on some of my gripes, I did enjoy about 30 – 40% of the movie, and if the film had taken the time to be smart and figure out the pacing, I think there was a lot of potential this movie could have capitalized on. Yes, there were fun moments, and yes I did like some of the dialogue, but overall I just left the theater disappointed and wishing they had taken the time to let us breathe a bit between all the shiny and excitement they were trying to cram in.
Vagbond Prime: It’s the Del Taco of Trek movies: Great while it’s in front of you, then you’re uncomfortable and wondering what the hell was really there an hour later.
Sith-Bot: But like Del Taco, you get a craving and just have to go back and do it again!
Citizen-Bot: Now I want Del Taco. Damn you!!!!! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!! And I want to go back and see this movie again. And despite all my bitching, this is still my second favorite movie of the year so far.
Vagabond Prime: So do I, and I will buy it on BluRay when it comes out. But it gets to stay at the kid’s table when I’m watching my fave Trek movies. This movie is a crap-ton of fun, and there is nothing wrong with that. But when I know what you are capable of as a filmmaker, I’m less likely to give you a pass. Luckily, anything that went screwy with this was just because JJ was day-dreaming about Episode 7. If there is one thing we know about that from watching this, it will be exciting as hell.
So, what do you think, fellow robots? Love it? Hate it? Let us know!