If I could summon up this movie in one word that word would be: Lazy.
This is one of the laziest screenplays and movies I've seen in a long time and is easily the worst of the Star Trek movies to be made. Even while I was watching it I kept saying to myself, "Why was this movie even made? Because I've seen it done much better with the original Wrath of Khan." I mean for the most part this movie is a remake, which in and of itself makes no sense considering what Abrams did with his first Trek movie. Where he basically reset the Star Trek universe, which ultimately means the stories should have gone in wildly different directions, not remakes or re-treads but completely new adventures. I just which Abrams' brain would have informed him of this.
Even the first Trek movie directed by Abrams I liked, considering there were a lot of things in that movie I didn't like, but over all I liked the movie. I enjoyed it and had a good time watching it. I thought of the good things out weighed the bad things, but I should have known better. I should have known those bad things were going to be the template for everything else Abrams was going to do with the Trek universe.
Now Abrams took all the things I didn't like about his first Trek movie and magnified them 100% in Into Darkness. Abrams basically did what George Lucas and the Wachowski bros did with their films. Lucas, when he redid his Star Wars films and then did the prequels and what the Wachowski bros did with the Matrix sequels. They took everything that made the originals good and threw them out of the window as they then built all of their new movies on all the bad things of the sequels or prequels. Everything I didn't like about his redo on the Star Wars films, Lucas magnified them 100% on the prequels. Everything bad with Matrix Reloaded was expanded upon 100% in Matrix Revelations. Apparently Abrams just took a page out of Lucas' playbook and ran with it and there's no indication that he's going to do anything else differently later on. If he considers this movie good, than I just don't know what more can be said for any film he does from here on out, since he's set his bar so "high".
Abrams basically took, with this film, everything that made Star Trek, you know Star Trek, and threw them out the window and replaced them with typical Hollywood summer blockbuster tactics. Gone is any form of character development, plot formation, and logic, which granted even Star Trek could stretch this a bit but at least it tried. Instead what we have here is a Michael Bay type of Star Trek universe, which is something Gene Roddenberry never even conceived of when he created Star Trek. Abrams seems more concerned with the appearance of character development, the appearance of friendship, the appearance of plot than the actual thing as he replaces these elements with explosion after explosion and action set piece after action set piece. Hoping the audience is too dumb to realize what is going on. This isn't so much a Star Trek movie as it is just an action movie with Star Trek labels placed all around it and names changed to match those in the Star Trek universe. But just because the names, labels, and places match those in the Trek universe that does not make it a Trek movie. This movie felt like the two new Die Hard movies (Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard) which had absolutely no real connection with the Die Hard universe and actually seemed to forget everything that made Die Hard, Die Hard but had the labels and names right, so therefore it must be a Die Hard movie.
Let me revisit the one word I have for this movie: lazy and I will show you what I'm talking about. Abrams doesn't earn anything in this movie. He just rides on the coat tails of what better people have already done, which basically is what Hollywood has been doing the last few decades with the constant remakes and reimagining of older movies. They've become so lazy and Abrams is just the offspring of this lazy mentality. He doesn't earn any relationship in this movie. Follow my logic here:
1. Suddenly Kirk and Spock are friends. There is never any scene of them working anything out or any scene showing us how they became friends, instead is just expected of them to become friends. Abrams is just abusing the knowledge and history of that relationship to be lazy, as it offers him an excuse to blow things up. Since this a re-imagined Star Trek universe, how am I to know these two people are friends? If these movies doesn't give me something to work with, something that shows how they became friends how am I to know what kind of friends they are, because even after the first movie I wouldn't call them friends. The first movie gave more scenes that supported them to be enemies than friends. Now all of sudden they're friends and Kirk is willing to risk a whole mission to break the Prime Directive to save Spock. Where are the scenes that set the stage for this kind of friendship? Since when does Spock cry? I would have bought this scene if Abrams had earned it with some character development but instead he would rather blow things up, than earn them the hard way by actually showing character development. It would have been really cool to have some actually scenes of friendship building with Spock, Kirk, and Bones (who has become only reduced to comic relief in this movie, which is a shame). I would have liked seeing the actors Pine, Quinto, and Urban build those relationships, it would have been fun to watch actually act instead of just reacting to the explosions and action scenes around them. Their relationship was such a focal point in Star Trek, even in Wrath of Khan their relationship scenes were the building blocks that made that movie work so well and the ending such a punch to the stomach. I felt sorry Urban who seemed to be just around to quote his patent line, "Dammit, I'm a doctor not a [insert random noun here]," phrase, which he does a lot in this movie.
2. Spock and Uhura's relationship is one of the worst I've ever seen done for any movie and is so forced on the aduience that the more they talk about their relationship the more I want them to die. Nothing in this relationship is earned at all and feels completely pushed on the audience because Abrams wanted some kind romance in the Trek universe and also wanted something that would shock the Trek fans. Which is fine but it's still got to work, follow the logic on this one. Uhura is some kind of language/communication expert, which means she studies not only languages but the culture of those languages as well. So she is familiar with the concept of alien cultures, being you know alien, different than those found on earth, which again means that the people of those cultures have different ideas, traditions, and a different way of life. You know they're different than the people on earth. Being a language/communication expert she would know this and have a good knowledge of cultures as being different. Yet, she gets upset at Spock and bitches and nags at him for being logical in all situations, which is something that you know all Vulcans are because it's in their culture. So she's getting mad at him for doing something that culturally everyone of his people do and she seems to want him to change from this. As a language/communication expert that has alien culture in her background, you would think she would more excepting of this and that she would be the one to change her viewpoint. I wanted to punch her so bad every time she opened her mouth and started nagging Spock about being logical because I was like, that's the relationship you chose to be in, shut up and deal with it. To reiterate what I said in the paragraph above, there is absolutely no scenes of relationship building between Spock and Uhura. Instead we get a few scenes of them kissing and hugging, which I guess is what Abrams calls scenes of building character because you know actually scenes of them talking about their relationship and working through issues is just too much. Hearing Uhura nag Spock about being logical and having no emotion seems to cover this in Abrams' mind.
About the only thing I really liked about this film was the scenes with Peter Weller and Benedict Cumberbatch who both more than lived up their potential. Even Bruce Greenwood continued to enlighten the movie. These three people had more going for them than the whole cast combined and were actually somewhat better than the over all cast, who only hampered by a lazy script that had nothing really for them to work with. I haven't even talked about Abrams' ripping off of Wrath of Khan's ending, which made no sense at all and was in no way earned and felt more like an after thought than anything else. I am not looking forward to anymore of these movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment