Efforts to understand, improve, or do less harm to the world around me.


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Monday, May 20, 2013

Why Star Trek - Into Darkness blows

I hated this movie. Spoilers!
  • Flashing lights, loud noises, and things exploding!  Oh dear me!
  • Chris Pine exudes authority like a scrappy dog: didn't feel he cared about anything even when he pulled a muscle trying to act like he did.  I think the two dimensions I got were "sad" and "risk taker".
  • At no point did I feel the villain was anything but a tool.  Spock was boring.
  • Everyone's flying out of the destroyed ship into space and nobody seems to give a f--k.  The Enterprise used to be the center of the show and now its something we can smash up like it's made of legos.
  • Only person I cared about in the whole move was Captain Pike, who they killed off pretty quick.  The only person I really liked was Simon Pegg (Scotty).

Worst moments:
  • After the ship get tossed and turned and everyone's flying around like confetti, 10 seconds later everything's normal again and looks at Spock like "what's he in a hurry about?"
  • No efforts or energy put into plugging these massive leaks that should kill everyone.  No efforts to triage or even address the hordes of more-or-less dead people.  Oh except that pretty blonde girl?  Let's heal her up!
  • They surgically removed a sequence from the first movie and inserted it this movie (radiation leak, main character sacrifices life to save the ship).  The first JJ Abrams movie just made a horde of references to the previous series, but ultimately went it's own way.  This one recycled and entire plot sequence.  I'm not sure it it was *exactly* the same because I walked out.

Anyway, this was all a big, stupid lark built from a whole bunch of other scripts, some from movies that had already been made.  I didn't care about the characters and didn't feel like anything took place anywhere other than a soundstage in Burbank.  In that sense, the painfully low-end budget old series beat them out here.  I really thought they were in space or on some other planet once in a while.

Now my personal message to JJ Abrams: For god's sake, hire a script supervisor or someone to work on continuity.  I get that Gore Verbinski can smash up a pirate ship and not really go back and address anything, but the assumption there is that pirates are disposable and these guys can take a knife or two in the gut.  I don't expect you to tie up all the loose ends, but pick 3 or 4.  Also, while we're on the topic, you should apologize for the final season of Lost.