And another thing: Just what was the title supposed to refer to? There wasn’t much literal darkness in the movie (if there had been, it would have been covered with bright splotches of light for no reason). Metaphorical darkness? None of the Enterprise crew really descend into the darkness of their souls, or anything like that. I guess it’s supposed to be the Federation descending into darkness by militarizing? But I don’t think anyone really complained about that. In fact, I’m not sure the word “dark” or “darkness” was even used at all on screen.
I presume the “Into Darkness” refers to Admiral Marcus’ betrayal of Federation principles, or somethin’ like that:
Coercing Khan into being an agent, commiting acts of terrorism against Fed citizens, trying to start a war between the Fed and Klingons, for starters. (I assume most of that is without the civilian leaderships’ approval.)
It’s a reboot. They decided to not do another Next Generation or come up with a Next Next Generation. If you don’t like them covering the same ground in a different way you should probably stay away from any reboots.
I agree about the lens flare. It’s Abrams signature and he likes it too much. I hope he leaves it behind for Star Wars if for no other reason than to give it its own look.
Why didn’t Kirk let scottie inspect the torpedoes? All he knew was that they were prototypes right? Not that there was a deep conspiracy behind it?
The shielding was preventing Scotty from doing the inspection he needed - they would not give him the specs to the torpedoes either.
Well, the really obvious failure of that scene, as opposed to the very moving scene in “Wrath of Khan,” is that there isn’t any particular reason to believe Kirk and Spock are close friends in “Into Darkness.” They have been working together for about a year and clearly still do not understand each other. Spock’s reaction makes no sense.
In “Wrath of Khan,” Spock and Kirk are best friends. They’re different, but Spock understands and likes Kirk, and Kirk REALLY understands Spock, far more so than Spock realizes. They have, from the fan’s perspective, been working together as friends and compatriots for well over a decades. It makes sense that Spock’s death would be a terrible blow to Kirk, whereas Kirk’s death in “Into Darkness” wouldn’t have anywhere near that level of meaning to Spock. (You can add to that the fact that “Wrath of Khan” is, thematically, almost entirely about mortality and how we deal with it, and so the scene fits in that regard; “Into Darkness” has no clear theme at all.) The movies have done a good job of showing Spock has emotions inside him, and has had to deal with loss and death, but his outpouring of grief over Kirk just doesn’t make any sense given what we have been shown about the character. Logically, he shuold have been far more upset at the death of Captain Pike.
For that matter, the same problem plagues the conflict between Kirk and Khan. Khan, in “Wrath of Khan,” isn’t scary because he’s superhuman. He’s scary because he’s an obsessive, violent sociopath who will kill everyone in the universe just to kill James Kirk. He’s scary for the same reason the Joker is scary, or Hannibal Lecter is scary, or Hans Gruber is scary; he is a person who is willing to disregard normal rules of human behaviour to effect some sort of horror upon characters we care about. Furthermore, he LOOKS scary; he’s big and mean and wild-eyed, while Cumberbatch is just another in a long and dismal line of “skinny person with an English accent who can kick ass because, magic.” He’s far less visually frightening than the Thin Man in “Charlie’s Angels.” In “Wrath of Khan” there is a backstory, fully explained on screen, that gives Khan a reason to really, really, really hate Kirk. But in “Into Darkness” it’s not at all clear why Khan would give a tin shit about Kirk, or Spock, or any of them, once he gets his people back. He just met Kirk, and has no particular reason to like him, dislike him, or even remember what color his hair is. He correctly hates Admiral Marcus - who is also a bastard, and who dies, and so at that point his continued fury is directed at Starfleet and, by extension, the unfortunate people of San Francisco. Which is a lot harder to get emotionally invested in, because “Starfleet” isn’t a person. If they ever unfreeze him, he still won’t, logically anyway, have as much reason to hate Kirk as the original Khan did.
Personally I like the idea of a reboot, but both scripts have left me feeling like they don’t really care much about story or plot. They can screw around with the Star Trek universe all they want, I don’t care, but you can still do it and have a movie that’s more or less logical within the limits of its own universe. Tribbles are already discovered? Great! Carol Marcus is now a weapons expert, not a biologist? Fine with me. Spoke and Uhura are an item? I love that. Bring on the changes! But a silly, illogical plot isn’t a good thing to have in any movie. The film was wonderfully made, visually speaking, and the cast is fantastic, but the story was just plainly stupid.
I’m waiting to get past the “massive ship free falls from same orbital distance as the moon–ignoring why it would fall out of orbit simply because the ship lost power–and does minimal damage” issue before I can get to the serious analysis.
Also: Ships drops out of warp at relatively random place on way to Kronos. But there happens to be a “planetoid” nearby that fortunately has a nearby sun, earth normal gravity, and a breathable atmosphere.
Also: Kronos is apparently just a couple hours away from Earth based on response time for Robocop to show up.
Also, where exactly was the Enterprise going when it was returning to Earth. It was shot out of warp a 250,000 miles from Earth. If they’d been in warp another half second they’d have been most of the way back out of our solar system. Really, Robocop was doing them a favor.
However, it is good to no know who’d win a fight between Robocop and Sherlock Holmes.
Khan didn’t give a shit about Kirk. He was an obstacle at times and at times a tool to be used. Until Kirk and/or the crew of the Enterprise killed his crew. Of course we knew they were removed from the torpedoes but he didn’t. He thought the only thing he cared about was taken away. Then it became personal.
I don’t entirely buy that.
Khan already knows Kirk and co are the kinds of ethical people who’d risk their own necks to capture a mass murderer on a hostile alien world rather than just shoot him from miles out. Also, he knows they’re willing to disobey clearly immoral orders at the risk of their own lives to do the right thing.
If Khan is half the supergenius he’s supposed to be, he should have considered the possibility his mates were cleared from the torpedoes beforehand by those same people. And you know…maybe gone into hiding and checked on that possibility before going into megalomaniacal “I’m going to toast San Francisco and possibly die/get caught in the attempt” mode. Especially since intricate plots and superhuman feats seem to be his forte.
i reckoning that the bits that are in the novel and not in the movie are deleted scenes.
khan should have taken a bit more time and scanned ALL the torpedos that he beamed over. that would tripped him on to spock’s cunning plan. spock pulled a real fast one on mr singh.
as it stands now… should someone thaw out, a certain vulcan better have another cunning plan to implement.
I’m a casual Trek fan, having grown up with a brother and his best friend who were in to TOS and the original 6 movies.
I musta been asleep through most of ST:II because the parallels between that and this movie escaped me. But seriously, I’ve slept through a lot of movies.
I enjoyed Scotty and Bones. I am endlessly tickled at Zachary Quinto’s similarity to Leonard Nemoy. I’m a huge fan of fist-fights/martial arts in movies so I actually liked those scenes (especially Kirk trying to beat the snot out of Kahn). I kinda liked the space races but they did seem oddly out of place.
So I enjoyed it as a movie in itself, and I enjoyed the little nods to the rest of the canon, that I could follow. I liked my brother’s reaction when Cumberbatch revealed his name! (He had avoided all spoilers)
I can see where the fanboys are coming from.
About what? That bit of casting (since it was the subject of the previous sentence)? Because if so, it’s not just Star Trek fanboys complaining from what I see; it’s a lot of people who think it’s straight out racist, pure and simple.
Does anyone know of a list of all the nearly-magical things that were invented to solve a 1-episode problem on the Star Trek shows, which were never mentioned again?
Because I recognized that the Khan’s blood = immortality juice thing was a big, game-breaking plot-hole, but it seemed like a very Trek sort of game-breaking plot-hole.
I agree that was a common tactic for episodic TV where, for the most part, things reset after each show.
Not so good a thing for strongly serialized movies.
But mostly, this one was so bad, I’ll cling to the idea that the internal logic of it requires that they stop making more.
I’m sure the dope can collectively come up with a fairly exhaustive one within a matter of hours.
Warp 10.
On TNG they invented immortality in the episode where the transporter turns half the main characters into children and then back into adults again.
Not to mention a self-aware AI superior to the ship’s computer in Professor Moriarty. The original command to the holodeck was to create an opponent capable of beating Data. The computer came up with an AI that despite its 19th century origins, hacked into the ship’s computer and took control, froze out its crew, and finally was convinced to release the ship after it was given its demands. They should just say next time to create an opponent that can defeat the Borg or something
If you use that logic then Khan is too smart for them to do anything to beat him. Change the name to Star Trek: Khan Wins.
Nope, sorry, I meant the whole treatment/reworking/paralleling/re-hashing of the iconic Star Trek moments from ST:II. I should have been more clear.
Can you people seriously not just enjoy a goddamned movie for the sake of a movie?
I saw it a few days ago with my son. It was 2+ hours of action. We loved it.
Do you have to over-analyze every scene? Really?
ETA: In the immortal words of Bill Shatner: “Get a life!”