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  • Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by Zettel at 14:11 on 10 May 2013
    Eyebrows boldly going where no eyebrows have been before. Deliciously the Latin for eyebrows is supercilia: and there is much superciliasness in STID. Chris Pine’s young Jimbo Kirk sports Healeyesque bushy beetle brackets in an archly arcing style of bifurcated unibrow. Spock’s (Zachary Quinto) perfectly plucked linear pair are inclined at a jaunty angle to give him a look of permanent surprise as if he can’t believe the 3 Stooges helmet haircut he has been lumbered with when he had asked for – ‘just a trim’ please. Not since Javier Bardem’s pudding basin cut…..

    As befits an arch-villain, the Bene Cu-Cumberbatch eye-thatches occasionally shoot up on either side like a couple of inverted √ signs ending with a villainous ‘v’ that Cu-Cumber can unilaterally raise and lower depending upon the dramatic need of the moment. The so cool Mr Cumber plays a rogue Star Fleet agent masquerading as one John Harrison until unmasked as the villainous Khan: a super-being with super powers (including super control of his cilia characteristics). STID contains some of the great eyebrow-actors of this generation. However these mere human beings are eventually eclipsed superciliasly by Klingon fleshy furrows.

    Cumberbatch has a ball as the malevolent Khan (Can we take over the world? – yes we Khan). Often mouthing some sublimely silly words, I swear the elegantly suave Mr C was on the edge of an uncontrollable fit of the giggles throughout – but we share in his diabolical fun and the sense of tense expectancy that generates.

    Mockery aside, STID is all good clean end-of-the-Universe-life-as-we-know-it fun with a breathless, breakneck opening sequence in which we meet one of the stars of Abrams’ movie – a fantastically dramatic score by Michael Giacchino. Like some of John Williams’ best, Giacchino builds to heart-rattling crescendos that superbly enhance the now de rigeur magnificent visual and special effects created by a group of talented people only marginally outnumbering the population of New York.

    Add in stunts, Art Direction etc and there are small states in the world with fewer people. The mere 3 writers who fashioned the meaning, sense and dramatic purpose of the narrative which in the end is what makes us want to keep watching and care what happens next, aren’t so much outnumbered as obliterated. There is nothing new in this: but Abrams’ ‘rejuvenation’ is of the Star Trek franchise, not the Star Trek imaginative legacy. We accepted the farcically cheap props and hilariously phoney sets of the original TV series without a moment’s demur because of the power of Gene Roddenberry’s imaginative ability to engage our minds and emotions in the adventures and fate of his faintly ludicrous characters. The Star Trek TV series was intelligent, creative fun, stirring the active imaginations of its loyal viewers in contrast to Abrams’ literal, visual and aural onslaught on our perceptions.

    Rodenberry invited us to a great party with lots of fascinating people engaged in intelligent, interesting conversations to listen in to. Abrams’ has charged admission to a rave where the music is so relentlessly loud that no one can hear a word anyone else says so we give up and just abandon ourselves to the beat. It’s fun. It’s a trip. It overwhelms the senses and dulls the mind. And it suffers, like all its effects-driven, comic-book competitors from the law of diminishing returns. The opening half hour grabs us and launches us into a stunning sense of travelling in space; embarking on a adventure. The dialogue, despite its distinctive Star Trek irony and self-mockery, keeps dragging us literally back to Earth and reducing the exhilarating pace to a disappointing plod. Even an actor of Cumberbatch's ability can't do much with "I'm going to walk over your cold, dead corpses." C'mon, I know evil is supposed to be banal but perleaassse.

    Following the traditional Spock/Kirk trope of human passions versus detached logic, Kirk saves Spock’s life and a whole planet of a primitive people but breaks a Starfleet rule of exploration by revealing the presence of the Enterprise. He is demoted when Spock’s snitchily accurate report reveals the breach. Before he can head off as 1st Officer to his mentor Commander Pike (Bruce Greenwood) a cleverly planned assault on the gathered heads of Starfleet introduces us to Cumberbatch’s be-cloaked rogue secret Starfleet agent we first know as John Harrison, but soon to be revealed as super-villain, or is he (?) Khan.

    Following this attack, Khan flees to hide on the Klingon home planet of Kronos where Starfleet cannot pursue him on pain of provoking a war with the ever-belligerent warrior enemies of Earth. Kirk, re-instated as Captain of the Enterprise and reconciled with Spock, is charged with taking out Kahn’s hideaway in what amounts to a high-tech drone attack – the first of many contemporary ironies, perhaps unwitting, in Abrams’ movie. Kahn has deviously subverted this plan and for a while persuades Kirk to enlist his aid in thwarting an unexpected internal plot.

    Much eyebrow arching, beetling, furrowing later, with the quaintly comic assistance of Simon Pegg’s irascible Scotty and a lot of pseudo-scientific gobbledegook, Abrams recaptures the visceral excitement and headlong pace of his opening. In a less-than-heart-stopping moment we wonder whether Jimbo is gonna do a Judi Dench and beam up to planet Paradise. A profound dilemma: an end of franchise, end of cash-cow denouement…or not? As the Americans say – you do the Math.

    STID, despite its silly moments is great fun; especially if you don’t know or care about the thin vein of imaginative gold that was Roddenberry’s brainchild. It is hard to believe now that when first seen on TV, Star Trek wasn’t regarded as campy parody. Indeed when I was doing Philosophy at Kings in London in the seventies a post-graduate from Berkeley in California said that Star Trek episodes were occasionally used to set up (for context, not content) Philosophical discussions about Personal Identity, Telepathy, Time, even ethics.

    I’m not sure how much juice there is left in the franchise which begins to look as dried out, wrinkled and on the edge of oblivion as dear old Leonard Nimoy reprising his role as a kind of holographic Methusala intoning the eternal injunction that he may not help his Spockling younger self in any way that might alter events in the world: an ethical principle so absolute that it takes him about 10 seconds after stating it to break.

    Just two nice little ironies: I wonder how many Americans identify with Kirk’s acceptance of Spock’s ethical demand that Kahn must not be taken out as he, villain or not, must be accorded the right of due process and a proper trial. Yeah – pull the other one pointy ears.

    The other one is visually sublime and makes me wonder whether Costume Designer Michael Kaplan is a closet anarchist. During the obligatory patriotic platitudes delivered by a chastened Kirk, matured by the humbling necessities of command and leadership to the assembled serried uniformed ranks of Star Fleet, the camera tracks along the lines of fresh faced idealists. There is something unsettlingly, oddly familiar in the images. I am no expert in these things but it suddenly struck me that in their uniform, uniformed chilling homogeneneity these patriotic paragons of virtue and the American way, looked for all the world as if they were clad in the chic khaki hessian of the North Korean military.

    Now that’s what I call irony.

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  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by alexhazel at 18:44 on 11 May 2013
    I've just seen this film this afternoon. It was worth seeing, but I think the people who want to rejuvenate the Star Trek franchise ought to stop going back to earlier epochs of the Star Trek timeline. Every time they do that, they fail to make the technology look as if it is older than the era whose back-story they are trying to portray.

    For me, the best of the Star Trek franchise was the Voyager series. Ever since then, the writers have failed in so many ways to understand, or even care about, the established timeline and back-stories from the franchise. It's Star Trek, Jim, but not as we know it.

    (Kirk first met Khan in the original series, when he found him and his people in a long-lost vessel called Botany Bay. At least The Wrath of Khan was consistent with that timeline. This latest film isn't.)

    <Added>

    Uhura demonstrated that she could speak Klingon, in this film. So how come she couldn't do so, a few years later, during the Undiscovered Country film?
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by V`yonne at 11:53 on 12 May 2013
    Thank you for the review which I very much enjoyed I am going to see the film soon but I didn't go to the last one in part because of the two points you raise at the end of your piece. I think the films are losing their way in the same manner as Enerprise did. It became militarised. Star Trek was always about rights, compassion, freedoms, equality, friendships -- it has become a propaganda arm war war war -- boldly fighting the latest villain is just 'any other movie only let's put 'em in space' stuff and Star Trek offered hope above all and a new vision. That new vision has been lost.

    I agree with alexhazel. I had hoped Enterprise would take us back in terms of technology to a time when transporters were being invented, replicators were limited, friendships were being forged with difficulty with the Vulcans, Klingons were just being introduced etc etc Instead they rewrote Star Trek history -- threw away the plot and we got WAR. So I stopped watching and other old fans stopped too.

    I didn't go to the last film. I thought it would disappoint. I have seen it on TV. Okay -- I will give the film a chance and I know the casting is good so that has swayed me but I miss gentler times when everything didn't have to explode. I want my dose of escapism.
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by alexhazel at 11:59 on 12 May 2013
    It's the old story of what happens to a franchise when a new director/producer/writer gets on board. Look what Jonathan Frakes (aka Commander Riker) did to Thunderbirds, when he directed the film.

    The first rule for any new blood in a franchise ought to be to see the preceding episodes/films/etc. and understand what it's about. Unfortunately, egos big enough to want to be in charge will often lack the humility to do such things.

    <Added>

    Mind you, the James Bond franchise has never been particularly faithful to the character in the books.
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by V`yonne at 15:10 on 12 May 2013
    That's true Alex. But I think in the case of Star Trek they are trying to launch it for a new audience and they don't really care what 'the faithful' think of the matter -- rather like the way they hvae 'sexed-up' Dr. Who. The Dr was an ancient being -- a time lord -- he wasn't meant to be young, virile, sexy -- any of this nonsense -- a bit off the point but I believe a similar thing is going on with ST.

    <Added>

    Having said that Kirk was always a dream-boat!
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by alexhazel at 16:00 on 12 May 2013
    I suppose the only consolation is that they did the same thing with Emerdale Farm - turned it from a different kind of soap, set in a farming community, into a clone of Corrie, East Enders and all the rest.

    It's no longer permitted to be different and have a unique selling point, in film and TV. Everything has to be a clone of some mass-market franchise or other.
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by Bunbry at 22:08 on 12 May 2013
    I'm not sure if anyone remembers, but in Kirk's day Klingons didn't have the ridged head they have in TNG. Diana Troy once asked Worf about this. His brilliant reply?

    "It's something we never talk about"
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by alexhazel at 22:22 on 12 May 2013
    Actually, that was the one point where the Enterprise series was a bit cleverer. They actually came up with a plausible explanation (a Klingon scientist doing some kind of genetic experiment which went haywire).

    Diana Troy once asked Worf about this.

    It was actually an episode of Deep Space Nine. Sisco, Worf, O'Brien and some others somehow ended up in the past, embedded in the storyline from the original series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles". I think it was Chief O'Brien who, on seeing one of the Klingons in that episode, asked Worf, "Those are Klingons?"

    (That was probably the cleverest insertion of characters into a past timeline that I've ever seen in any TV series. It was done seamlessly, and it really looked as if the DS9 crew were there on the original Enterprise with Kirk, Spock, and co. Sisco even presented Kirk with the Captain's Log to sign.)
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by Zettel at 00:38 on 13 May 2013
    See - I was right. It's always been an 'ighbrow show.

    Thanks for the comments.

    regards

    Z
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by Bunbry at 19:42 on 13 May 2013
    It was actually an episode of Deep Space Nine.


    Ah yes... I'm never knowingly one hundred percent right
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by alexhazel at 20:00 on 13 May 2013
    It's about the only episode of DS9 that I remember, probably because it was such an original idea. After that, the series degenerated into almost constant war between the Federation and the Dominion. They were obviously prepping us for the films that were to come.

    Personally, I just want to see the Tardis materialise on the bridge of the Enterprise. I wonder how Kirk would have done against the Daleks?
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by Zettel at 20:21 on 13 May 2013
    Easy - just run upstairs.

    Z
  • Re: Star Trek Into Darkness***/* JJ Abrams
    by alexhazel at 21:49 on 13 May 2013
    Apparently there was an episode of Dr Who where the Doctor did exactly that - and the Dalek levitated up the stairs after him.

    I think Kirk would just get Scotty to nobble them. They are machines, after all. Or else he'd call up the Klingons and tell them, "Hey, these things just said something bad about your fathers!"