REVIEW: Star Trek: Into Darkness

After dropping the ball for quite some time, I am now going to review “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” the second in the series of Trek reboots from J.J. Abrams.

                The aesthetic of the film is, as with the first, very busy.  First of all, this film does not escape the signature Abrams Lens Flare, which remains pretty inexplicable and distracting.  Aside from that, there are lights blinking everywhere, and they’re all very excited to be on screen.  The bridge itself has a lot of these blinkies, as I’ve heard them called, but is, otherwise, very smooth and sleek, with many of the surfaces looking as though they’re made of glass.  Some people might take issue with this reimagining of the iconic Enterprise command center, but I think that it works.  With how sparse and plywood-looking the original was, the reboots had a choice to either touch it up with modern effects and sensibilities of The Future, or reimagine it completely (into something like CIC from “Battlestar Galactica” or the command deck from “Mass Effect”).

Speaking of, I joked when the trailer first came out for this movie that “Oh hey!  They made a ‘Mass Effect’ film adaptation!  Cool!”  The storyline of the movie did turn out to be more in keeping with Star Trek, but the prop choices certainly do feel a little alien to the Star Trek universe.  The uniforms worn on the Enterprise are still updated versions of the original uniforms, but the film takes every opportunity to get the characters out of the bright, solid colors, and into dark jumpsuits and combat gear with colored stripes indicating officer-type, or into grey wool dress uniforms.  I was never too attached to the TOS uniforms (My favorites have always been the TNG movie/late DS9 uniforms), so the change didn’t bother me too much.  Likewise for the updated phaser rifles (which look like something one might actually issue to a security officer).

There’s not a whole lot to say about the music, I’m afraid.  It’s mostly reworkings and recyclings of the music from the first film.  Don’t get me wrong:  I liked the music from the first film.  That theme is great.  There’s just really not much that stood out as a “Duel of the Fates” or “Ride of the Rohirrim.”

The cast remains pretty good.  Zachary Quinto is still a great Spock, and Karl Urban keeps McCoy’s exasperated, sarcastic self vibrant and dynamic.  Zoe Saldana, John Cho, and Anton Yelchin continue to work well as the younger, hotter versions of Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov.  Simon Pegg is up to his usual standards and antics, providing some good comic relief, but being able to play it straight when necessary.  Alice Eve, a franchise newcomer, is not bad, although forgettable as Carol Marcus (I literally almost forgot to include her on this list).  I’ve never signed on to the Chris Pine hate bandwagon, and I think that he does pretty well as his cocky, swaggering Kirk.  The show is stolen, though, by Benedict Cumberbatch as the main villain  (SPOILER  1), who provides all the nuance and emotional range that the other villain fails to muster up (SPOILER  2).

The plot, for the most part, is solid.  There are some twists and turns, some reveals, and some neat action sequences, and, in a departure from the complete space cowboy antics of its predecessor, there are some ethical dilemmas.  The film ends with a note that it is dedicated to the victims and heroes of 9/11 and its aftermath (Pretty late on the bandwagon, there, Abrams), but the movie manages to actually explore some questions about the post-9/11 world, rather than simply resort to “‘Murrikuh!  Fuck yeah!” jingoism.  In an added stroke of luck, the quandaries that are brought up in the manhunt for Cumberbatch after a bombing in London (Can we really justify killing someone without a trial first?  Or through the use of remote controlled weapons that have the potential to cause massive collateral damage?  Is security worth compromising our core principles? etc.) all are presented in ways in which right and wrong start to get lost between conflicting variables and goals, all which seem important and valid.

That said, this is a Star Trek movie, and it is eager to mine the canon for gold.  A little too eager, I think.  There is a somewhat forced detour that seems built around getting some franchise staples on screen, mostly just to have a rumble and then never come up again (SPOILER 3).  Some scenes and backstory events are downright copies of (ahem, “tributes to”) scenes and events from earlier Star Trek films and episodes, but with minor changes.  I can understand the desire to allude to the larger franchise (if they weren’t going to use the Star Trek universe, then they should have just made it a sci-fi action/adventure of its own), and in some cases, I enjoyed it, but some of it felt just a little too much like pandering, or dropping someone’s name to the doorman of a club.

All in all, I enjoyed “Star Trek: Into Darkness.”  If you liked the first of the reboots, you’ll like this one.  Better still, the plot and characters have developed more nuance and depth since the last time, so this movie feels more like a Star Trek movie, and less like a movie simply called “Star Trek.”  And now, I leave you with some filk of the original Star Trek II

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPOILERS

1:  The main villain is Khan.  This movie isn’t a remake of “Wrath of Khan,” but it does insist on redoing a few scenes from the original Star Trek II…

2:  There’s also a Starfleet Admiral behind all this, and he’s hellbent on making a fleet of warships and then starting a war with the Klingons to justify commanding said fleet of warships, for no discernible reason.

3:  There are Klingons.  The plot is nominally about a secret plot to engineer a war with them (see above), but they only show up for one scene, long enough to show off some (weirdly redesigned) head ridges and bat’leths, and then we never hear from them again.  Klingons have always been a fan favorite, but if you’re going to include them, include them, please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

This time, I am reviewing Lorene Scafaria’s “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” which stars Steve Carell and Keira Knightley.  Below is the trailer:

                Despite the editing on the trailer, which highlights the more comedic portions of the film, “Seeking a Friend” isn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute knee-slapper of a movie.  Yes, there are numerous run ins with oddball characters (shown in the trailer as the irresponsible fireworks dad, the gas-mask wearing survivalist, the unempathetic cop, and the overly friendly restaurant staff), but these colorful characters have an air of desperation about them, their strange behavior coming off not as eccentricities that had always been there, but more as dysfunctional coping mechanisms to distract them from their impending doom.  The sentiment of the movie is not so much “the world’s ending, let’s throw a party!” and more a meditation upon how humanity might react to inescapable destruction.

Carell puts forth, as usual, a good performance as the sadsack Dodge, an insurance salesman whose wife (played by Steve Carell’s real wife) leaves him as soon as she learns that the world will be ending.  In the face of imminent death, however, he does a remarkable job of retaining his composure while the world falls to pieces, carrying on with his job and his life despite the futility of it all.

Knightly plays Penny, a somewhat flaky young woman with her head perpetually in the clouds.  Her bouncy optimism and whimsy contrasts nicely with Dodge’s orderly manner.  As the movie goes on, Penny’s ditziness starts to grate on the nerves, though, but that seems largely intentional, on Scafaria’s part.  The pair of Penny and Dodge serve as positive ideals for the end of the world, being optimistic and at peace, respectively.

The aesthetic choices of the movie are pleasingly subdued, with more shots of suburbs and corn fields than of urban riots and destruction.  I joked to my father while we watched the movie that it was an alternate ending to “Armageddon,” but the common theme of an asteroid-related Ragnarok is the only real similarity between the two movies.  There aren’t many explosions, there’s only one gunshot, and there are no montages of people waving ‘Murrikuhn flags.

I found the soundtrack to be more or less unremarkable.  It was made up, as far as I can tell (I’m no expert on contemporary music) of classic light rock, and some indie/alternative stuff from more recently.  I didn’t hate the music, but I wasn’t left humming anything to myself as I left the theater.

As far as plot goes, it’s more or less a roadtrip story, set within the framework of a cataclysm.  After the first half hour, in which the characters are established, Penny and Dodge flee the city they had been in due to rioting.  Both of them are trying to find their loved ones, with Penny wanting to get back to England to see her family, and Dodge wanting to reconnect with an old flame.  The two agree to help one another, and they depart.  To go into further developments would involve spoilers, but suffice it to say that the two end up getting what they need, rather than what they want.

All in all, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is a good movie.  It’s not the greatest thing I’ve seen this year (Thus far, “Moonrise Kingdom” remains my favorite new cinematic thing in the world), but it’s certainly worth seeing.  If you want a dramedy with a good heart and an existential crisis, this is a good pick.