Star Trek: Into Darkness
Jun. 24th, 2013 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI very nearly didn't watch this one at the cinema. Even without reading past the spoiler cut, none of my friends seemed excited, or even vaguely approving. There wasn't a sudden explosion of fic, or indeed any fic that turned up where I was reading, where there had been for the previous movie. And I was somewhat apprehensive about that whole 'Darkness' bit, since grimdark is a pervasive problem.
But hey, it's Star Trek! I always watch Star Trek!
... but now I've watched it I am far from convinced it is Star Trek.
Plus some of the more familiar complaints would apply even if it were just some random movie with spaceships.
So it's kind of hovering on the line between 'those hours could have been better spent sleeping' and 'kinda wish I hadn't given them my money'.
But it only actively pissed me off when it was most directly a remix of previous Trek. And at those points, it really and sincerely did.
So, to get the obvious out of the way: Khan. WTF? Much as I adore Cumberbatch and his alien expressive face, it is not the face of a man named Khan. I knew it, I paid for the movie anyway, I... regret that.
And to continue with the usual suspects: Two named women! ... isn't that actually a decrease on last time? Also, did I miss something or did they actually just not talk to each other? Beyond that the complaints become a litany, and a very familiar one. It boils down to: Men act, women react. Men do things because they decide to do them, women try and influence men. Even picking up a gun was just part of persuading a guy to play nice. When women exist solely to be the moral conscience... hell, not even that, to emote at guys about how they'd be hurting them too: Jehoshaphat, are we not over this yet?
Also it's just plain bad craft when each of the men get their crowning moment of awesome, their thing that they do best that is their plan that only they could accomplish, and yet when either of the women try it, their awesome just goes smash.
When Uhura talks Kirk into letting her do the talking, that should work. She's the one with the language skills, the cultural knowledge, the practice, the intelligence, and all the character points poured into this area. She should own this.
Instead, she turns into instant damsel.
Why?
Same with Dr Carol Marcus. She's a weapons specialist, she goes out there with a weapon, if she has understood the design correctly then she should own it. And to be fair, the thing where the weapon traps the one disarming it happened to Malcolm, and I liked how that turned out. But this is her moment, or it should be, the one where her skill is crucial, and all that happens is she just gives up and trusts to luck and brute force.
Those are actually themes, and one of the core reasons I dislike this film: luck and brute force triumph over brains with a frequency that gives it an almost moral weight. And talking is never helpful.
Dr Marcus would never have had the same story if it were written for a man. We have an opportunity for a two sided fathers and offspring story, where Kirk and his mentor are compared with Carol and her father. I didn't feel it was developed enough to really work though. What both have in common is the mentor going out of their way to help the younger one's career. Dr Marcus we were told is an expert weapons specialist, but when it comes time to tell us about weapons, she tells us about how her dad let her in on all his weapons.
Consider a slightly different spin: A woman comes aboard on last minute transfer orders, a weapons specialist. Spock thinks it's sketch and investigates. Oh look, Admiral's daughter, using her mother's name, must be a fake. But alternate story says nope, this is what she does so she doesn't get any favouritism to do with her father, she never uses his name. She's not in his chain of command, let alone working all the same special projects. But she built up her expertise enough to notice something hinky going on with this one weapon that is being kept extra secret. Maybe she suspects it's a treaty violation. Maybe she worries her father signed off on something too unstable or not ready yet. Lots of possible reasons.
That woman is career focused and got where she is on the basis of her skills, both in terms of rank and in terms of turning up in the story.
The one we actually watched turned up in the story because her dad was ignoring her and not letting her play with his toys. And if she worked on every weapons project he did, did she have time for anything else, or is her dad her whole career?
So watch the plot unfurl and her rank, experience, expertise, it never comes into play. Her only role is to tell her dad he can't hurt Enterprise without hurting her, possible moment of awesome the second, but oops, she's forgotten the transporter.
She's the science officer and she forgot the transporter.
She's on the bridge with a guy who just ordered Khan hidden by moving him around because transporter, and she forgot the transporter.
So basically she falls out of the story due to stupid.
Oh, and then has horrible crunchy pain sounds and screams and watches her father die. That was kind of messed up.
So woman is there to scream and emote at horrible thing happening.
Plus, of course, random underwears moment.
Male gaze at work, how so obvious?
I mean on Enterprise they had the decon gel and a lovely excuse to get people nearly naked and gleaming and rubbing each other, but on Enterprise I didn't mind because it was very much an equal opportunities ogle. And by 'didn't mind' I mean 'have compilation disc of the best bits', which I'm slightly embarrassed about. But, point is, girls be eye candy, guys be also eye candy, it works out even. It feels less skanky that way. Further, they had an actual reason to get naked in that location, and they reacted to each other as if they were professionals who do this more often than we see this. Is Kirk's wide eyed reaction at a fellow officer changing into appropriate survival gear really supposed to be plausible? I mean, it's the second time it happened in this film, the costume change bit, the whole opening sequence with the shuttle and the sea involved having to get changed, it's got to be a feature of life in confined spaces. It shouldn't be new, weird, or difficult for them.
Other stuff I had a problem with: ... I'm actually considering going through scene by scene and maybe saying all of it?
*facepalm*
Okay, so, the beginning where they're violating the prime directive with gay abandon was kind of fun, especially the Enterprise worship, but it also made them all look stupid and incompetent. It worked, but it shouldn't have. Volcanos don't work like that. Also, did that Admiral call it a 'cold fusion device'? Did the writers really just pick words that mean cooling things down and sticking things together, like they did to the magma, and then just think that was how they worked together? There's technobabble and there's fundamental fail.
Kirk gets back and falsifies his report. The hell? This is an officer? The point of the film is to get him to take responsibility and step up and do the self sacrifice thing. Since when is that an appropriate theme for a Starfleet officer? Wesley understood that shit. "I'm with Starfleet. We don't lie." The teenager grasps the basics. Kirk doesn't?
The punishment for this, for breaking the prime directive and then lying about it, is terrible and dread and awful: Send him back to schoooooool!
... where he didn't graduate from yet in the first place on account of Heroics apparently being more important than knowing what the fuck you're doing. Since that was what they promoted him for in the first place, it would in fact make sense for them to be all 'my bad, actually you need to know shit, maybe be an ensign first!' But that wasn't what it sounded like. It was like, do something career ending, just go back to square one.
(Starfleet academy was so competitive Wesley, the super brain, didn't get in first try. Neither did Picard. reboot!Kirk gets two goes.)
And then it gets undermined anyway because boss who likes him decides he can be first officer and have a 'second chance', ignoring that school is also a second chance.
So basically favouritism, emotional ties, Thrilling Heroics and being Kirk are made more important to one's career than studying, being competent, and actually knowing what you're doing.
That keeps happening and it is not acceptable.
What else... the guy that set off the bomb in London, I didn't feel he was sufficiently motivated. I mean, be grateful to the guy, sure, but blow yourself and your co-workers up? Because your daughter is going to live? The hell?
I was expecting the story to give him a cause to believe in. Maybe some stuff about genetic engineering and the importance of not stifling progress. If the girl could only be cured by forbidden technology then joining with the guy breaking the grip of those forbidding it makes sense.
But as it stood, he's just paying back a favour. And that does not make sense.
The cure being Khan's blood... you know why it had to be? Because then they don't have to talk with him. They don't have to negotiate. They don't have to listen. They don't have to treat him like a person at all. The writers made a deliberate choice to make the cure be something they could beat out of the man. They set it up so their 'heroes' beat crap out of him but hey, didn't murder him! Give them all the plot cookies!
Khan didn't have to be a person. We didn't have to see him as a person. He didn't have to make that much sense.
The trite little ending makes some violence begets violence message, but it seems to think the problem is All Done by then. It draws the line somewhere between Kirk and Admiral Marcus, somehow. Kirk beating up a prisoner is never addressed. He gets karma for it when Khan does the same thing, but he doesn't lose being a Captain for it. Spock losing his shit and beating crap out of Khan is rewarded by getting Kirk back. The line is drawn somewhere past abuse, as long as he doesn't die.
It is creepy.
Why does Khan do what he does? I understood that Marcus tried to control him by keeping his crew on ice and threatening to kill them, but what tipped it? I missed that.
At the end though, sequence goes, Kirk takes Khan to ship full of Marcus who tries to kill them, Kirk backstabs Khan at the first opportunity, but incompetently so Khan kicks his arse right back, Khan gives Kirk back to the Enterprise only so he can blow them all up together which is fair enough classic evil dude stuff except why did he want to kill Enterprise again? Khan gets all the bombs back, and doesn't check them for biological matter, which is something the Federation sensors can def do already. Khan thinks he got his crew back, then it all goes boom. At this point even Kirk assumed Spock had killed all Khan's people, so Khan assuming that would be pretty fair. So then he crashed into SF and... ran away from the ship bare handed for no readily apparent reason? And had a long crunching fist fight with Spock that I got very bored of. And got captured for his blood.
I know why Khan version 1 did things, but reboot CumberKhan I am missing pieces of.
I've been awake a very long time and there were lines I didn't understand because not subtitled, so I do mean missing, but I don't know how to fit it all back together.
If the whole thing was a gambit to get that one ship, the warship meant for a single survivor to crew, then okay, that's a plan. That basically worked. It's just a boring plan with no reason within the film.
What else... Klingons. Race is a thing, and then they're silent and violent and dead. Why use Klingons like that?
I'm bored. I can't be arsed to pick the film apart more. I was thinking on it on the way home on the bus and the more I tried to knit it proper together the more it fell apart in my hands.
Oh, while I'm here: The enemy's door is down.
Seriously, I'm not just saying that because the ad for Ender's Game was on directly before the film, I'm saying it because if something that basic was failed it's hard to read competence anywhere else.
They did give a vivid demonstration of why you don't fly head first into danger. Kneel, keep your repairable legs between your command and sensor arrays and any possible threats, you're in zero g so any orientation you have is all in your head anyway.
This is in a book read by many children. That is also read by some sections of the US military when training (I read Marines assign it??) This would not be a wild new idea to people who live in space.
And then there's the gravity and ship design issues. In any sensibly designed ship you just don't have that far to fall. This with the corridor running and the long drops and screaming, it's not Star Trek, it's Galaxy Quest. Which was mocking Star Trek but that's not the point. The point is the design made as much sense as the Imperial Death Star and it was stupid.
The swap isn't ideologically neutral. In Wrath of Khan Spock's sacrifice involves going into a contained area and fiddling with tech. Science solution. In this remix? Climb! Jump! Kick!
Yes, percussive maintenance was all it took. Good thing too, since Kirk never finished school.
This is what pissed me off. I was watching that thinking, someone watched Wrath of Khan and decided what would make it *better* was all this physical stuff. Run, jump, climb, kick, all you need in Starfleet is PE lessons and maybe some platform game practice. Not brain stuff, not science, not rational, not logical, just meat.
So we went right from that, where my distaste crystallised, to the scene either side of the glass door. And I wanted to like that scene. It's yanking on all the strong stuff. One short definition of slash is 'Wrath of Khan, if you take away the glass'. But this time? It was so obviously manipulative. This wasn't the climax, this wasn't the win, this wasn't the sacrifice, we already knew how he would be healed. So this was just yanking us around.
Further, it was another opportunity to make Vulcans be flawed when they're not being human. Emotional control is replaced by emotional cowardice, not having feelings because they hurt too bad. Instead of a positive choice of logic it's a negative choice of feeling too muuuuuuuch woe is meeeeeee. And I know, I know, this is what has been happening to Vulcans for a long time, this is maybe even the point in the first place, but it pisses me off. It doesn't just add some emotion to the mix of things one needs in life, it keeps pushing Spock until he gives up on that boring logic shit and gets real, meaning gets human, meaning feeling and expressing emotions in a socially appropriate to humans way.
:-p
If I wanted a human, why would I be watching Spock?
So I guess I really didn't like that scene. But I was so busy trying to wrench my brain around from the unfavourable comparisons and resulting grumpiness that I almost couldn't concentrate on it.
The idea of swapping Kirk and Spock's side of the glass, okay, play with that, but what I just watched? Didn't make me feel much except manipulated.
So was there any of the film I liked?
... I liked the music. I stayed to the end of the credits listening the music.
*really big sigh*
So maybe this wasn't my best day for watching. I've been awake a really long time. My original plan involved coming home much earlier, but I just finished college (all! finished! Work returned and log book picked up and Done now!) so I wanted to Do Something.
This particular something leaves me wanting to write my spaceship movie. Not wanting to watch this one.
But hey, it's Star Trek! I always watch Star Trek!
... but now I've watched it I am far from convinced it is Star Trek.
Plus some of the more familiar complaints would apply even if it were just some random movie with spaceships.
So it's kind of hovering on the line between 'those hours could have been better spent sleeping' and 'kinda wish I hadn't given them my money'.
But it only actively pissed me off when it was most directly a remix of previous Trek. And at those points, it really and sincerely did.
So, to get the obvious out of the way: Khan. WTF? Much as I adore Cumberbatch and his alien expressive face, it is not the face of a man named Khan. I knew it, I paid for the movie anyway, I... regret that.
And to continue with the usual suspects: Two named women! ... isn't that actually a decrease on last time? Also, did I miss something or did they actually just not talk to each other? Beyond that the complaints become a litany, and a very familiar one. It boils down to: Men act, women react. Men do things because they decide to do them, women try and influence men. Even picking up a gun was just part of persuading a guy to play nice. When women exist solely to be the moral conscience... hell, not even that, to emote at guys about how they'd be hurting them too: Jehoshaphat, are we not over this yet?
Also it's just plain bad craft when each of the men get their crowning moment of awesome, their thing that they do best that is their plan that only they could accomplish, and yet when either of the women try it, their awesome just goes smash.
When Uhura talks Kirk into letting her do the talking, that should work. She's the one with the language skills, the cultural knowledge, the practice, the intelligence, and all the character points poured into this area. She should own this.
Instead, she turns into instant damsel.
Why?
Same with Dr Carol Marcus. She's a weapons specialist, she goes out there with a weapon, if she has understood the design correctly then she should own it. And to be fair, the thing where the weapon traps the one disarming it happened to Malcolm, and I liked how that turned out. But this is her moment, or it should be, the one where her skill is crucial, and all that happens is she just gives up and trusts to luck and brute force.
Those are actually themes, and one of the core reasons I dislike this film: luck and brute force triumph over brains with a frequency that gives it an almost moral weight. And talking is never helpful.
Dr Marcus would never have had the same story if it were written for a man. We have an opportunity for a two sided fathers and offspring story, where Kirk and his mentor are compared with Carol and her father. I didn't feel it was developed enough to really work though. What both have in common is the mentor going out of their way to help the younger one's career. Dr Marcus we were told is an expert weapons specialist, but when it comes time to tell us about weapons, she tells us about how her dad let her in on all his weapons.
Consider a slightly different spin: A woman comes aboard on last minute transfer orders, a weapons specialist. Spock thinks it's sketch and investigates. Oh look, Admiral's daughter, using her mother's name, must be a fake. But alternate story says nope, this is what she does so she doesn't get any favouritism to do with her father, she never uses his name. She's not in his chain of command, let alone working all the same special projects. But she built up her expertise enough to notice something hinky going on with this one weapon that is being kept extra secret. Maybe she suspects it's a treaty violation. Maybe she worries her father signed off on something too unstable or not ready yet. Lots of possible reasons.
That woman is career focused and got where she is on the basis of her skills, both in terms of rank and in terms of turning up in the story.
The one we actually watched turned up in the story because her dad was ignoring her and not letting her play with his toys. And if she worked on every weapons project he did, did she have time for anything else, or is her dad her whole career?
So watch the plot unfurl and her rank, experience, expertise, it never comes into play. Her only role is to tell her dad he can't hurt Enterprise without hurting her, possible moment of awesome the second, but oops, she's forgotten the transporter.
She's the science officer and she forgot the transporter.
She's on the bridge with a guy who just ordered Khan hidden by moving him around because transporter, and she forgot the transporter.
So basically she falls out of the story due to stupid.
Oh, and then has horrible crunchy pain sounds and screams and watches her father die. That was kind of messed up.
So woman is there to scream and emote at horrible thing happening.
Plus, of course, random underwears moment.
Male gaze at work, how so obvious?
I mean on Enterprise they had the decon gel and a lovely excuse to get people nearly naked and gleaming and rubbing each other, but on Enterprise I didn't mind because it was very much an equal opportunities ogle. And by 'didn't mind' I mean 'have compilation disc of the best bits', which I'm slightly embarrassed about. But, point is, girls be eye candy, guys be also eye candy, it works out even. It feels less skanky that way. Further, they had an actual reason to get naked in that location, and they reacted to each other as if they were professionals who do this more often than we see this. Is Kirk's wide eyed reaction at a fellow officer changing into appropriate survival gear really supposed to be plausible? I mean, it's the second time it happened in this film, the costume change bit, the whole opening sequence with the shuttle and the sea involved having to get changed, it's got to be a feature of life in confined spaces. It shouldn't be new, weird, or difficult for them.
Other stuff I had a problem with: ... I'm actually considering going through scene by scene and maybe saying all of it?
*facepalm*
Okay, so, the beginning where they're violating the prime directive with gay abandon was kind of fun, especially the Enterprise worship, but it also made them all look stupid and incompetent. It worked, but it shouldn't have. Volcanos don't work like that. Also, did that Admiral call it a 'cold fusion device'? Did the writers really just pick words that mean cooling things down and sticking things together, like they did to the magma, and then just think that was how they worked together? There's technobabble and there's fundamental fail.
Kirk gets back and falsifies his report. The hell? This is an officer? The point of the film is to get him to take responsibility and step up and do the self sacrifice thing. Since when is that an appropriate theme for a Starfleet officer? Wesley understood that shit. "I'm with Starfleet. We don't lie." The teenager grasps the basics. Kirk doesn't?
The punishment for this, for breaking the prime directive and then lying about it, is terrible and dread and awful: Send him back to schoooooool!
... where he didn't graduate from yet in the first place on account of Heroics apparently being more important than knowing what the fuck you're doing. Since that was what they promoted him for in the first place, it would in fact make sense for them to be all 'my bad, actually you need to know shit, maybe be an ensign first!' But that wasn't what it sounded like. It was like, do something career ending, just go back to square one.
(Starfleet academy was so competitive Wesley, the super brain, didn't get in first try. Neither did Picard. reboot!Kirk gets two goes.)
And then it gets undermined anyway because boss who likes him decides he can be first officer and have a 'second chance', ignoring that school is also a second chance.
So basically favouritism, emotional ties, Thrilling Heroics and being Kirk are made more important to one's career than studying, being competent, and actually knowing what you're doing.
That keeps happening and it is not acceptable.
What else... the guy that set off the bomb in London, I didn't feel he was sufficiently motivated. I mean, be grateful to the guy, sure, but blow yourself and your co-workers up? Because your daughter is going to live? The hell?
I was expecting the story to give him a cause to believe in. Maybe some stuff about genetic engineering and the importance of not stifling progress. If the girl could only be cured by forbidden technology then joining with the guy breaking the grip of those forbidding it makes sense.
But as it stood, he's just paying back a favour. And that does not make sense.
The cure being Khan's blood... you know why it had to be? Because then they don't have to talk with him. They don't have to negotiate. They don't have to listen. They don't have to treat him like a person at all. The writers made a deliberate choice to make the cure be something they could beat out of the man. They set it up so their 'heroes' beat crap out of him but hey, didn't murder him! Give them all the plot cookies!
Khan didn't have to be a person. We didn't have to see him as a person. He didn't have to make that much sense.
The trite little ending makes some violence begets violence message, but it seems to think the problem is All Done by then. It draws the line somewhere between Kirk and Admiral Marcus, somehow. Kirk beating up a prisoner is never addressed. He gets karma for it when Khan does the same thing, but he doesn't lose being a Captain for it. Spock losing his shit and beating crap out of Khan is rewarded by getting Kirk back. The line is drawn somewhere past abuse, as long as he doesn't die.
It is creepy.
Why does Khan do what he does? I understood that Marcus tried to control him by keeping his crew on ice and threatening to kill them, but what tipped it? I missed that.
At the end though, sequence goes, Kirk takes Khan to ship full of Marcus who tries to kill them, Kirk backstabs Khan at the first opportunity, but incompetently so Khan kicks his arse right back, Khan gives Kirk back to the Enterprise only so he can blow them all up together which is fair enough classic evil dude stuff except why did he want to kill Enterprise again? Khan gets all the bombs back, and doesn't check them for biological matter, which is something the Federation sensors can def do already. Khan thinks he got his crew back, then it all goes boom. At this point even Kirk assumed Spock had killed all Khan's people, so Khan assuming that would be pretty fair. So then he crashed into SF and... ran away from the ship bare handed for no readily apparent reason? And had a long crunching fist fight with Spock that I got very bored of. And got captured for his blood.
I know why Khan version 1 did things, but reboot CumberKhan I am missing pieces of.
I've been awake a very long time and there were lines I didn't understand because not subtitled, so I do mean missing, but I don't know how to fit it all back together.
If the whole thing was a gambit to get that one ship, the warship meant for a single survivor to crew, then okay, that's a plan. That basically worked. It's just a boring plan with no reason within the film.
What else... Klingons. Race is a thing, and then they're silent and violent and dead. Why use Klingons like that?
I'm bored. I can't be arsed to pick the film apart more. I was thinking on it on the way home on the bus and the more I tried to knit it proper together the more it fell apart in my hands.
Oh, while I'm here: The enemy's door is down.
Seriously, I'm not just saying that because the ad for Ender's Game was on directly before the film, I'm saying it because if something that basic was failed it's hard to read competence anywhere else.
They did give a vivid demonstration of why you don't fly head first into danger. Kneel, keep your repairable legs between your command and sensor arrays and any possible threats, you're in zero g so any orientation you have is all in your head anyway.
This is in a book read by many children. That is also read by some sections of the US military when training (I read Marines assign it??) This would not be a wild new idea to people who live in space.
And then there's the gravity and ship design issues. In any sensibly designed ship you just don't have that far to fall. This with the corridor running and the long drops and screaming, it's not Star Trek, it's Galaxy Quest. Which was mocking Star Trek but that's not the point. The point is the design made as much sense as the Imperial Death Star and it was stupid.
The swap isn't ideologically neutral. In Wrath of Khan Spock's sacrifice involves going into a contained area and fiddling with tech. Science solution. In this remix? Climb! Jump! Kick!
Yes, percussive maintenance was all it took. Good thing too, since Kirk never finished school.
This is what pissed me off. I was watching that thinking, someone watched Wrath of Khan and decided what would make it *better* was all this physical stuff. Run, jump, climb, kick, all you need in Starfleet is PE lessons and maybe some platform game practice. Not brain stuff, not science, not rational, not logical, just meat.
So we went right from that, where my distaste crystallised, to the scene either side of the glass door. And I wanted to like that scene. It's yanking on all the strong stuff. One short definition of slash is 'Wrath of Khan, if you take away the glass'. But this time? It was so obviously manipulative. This wasn't the climax, this wasn't the win, this wasn't the sacrifice, we already knew how he would be healed. So this was just yanking us around.
Further, it was another opportunity to make Vulcans be flawed when they're not being human. Emotional control is replaced by emotional cowardice, not having feelings because they hurt too bad. Instead of a positive choice of logic it's a negative choice of feeling too muuuuuuuch woe is meeeeeee. And I know, I know, this is what has been happening to Vulcans for a long time, this is maybe even the point in the first place, but it pisses me off. It doesn't just add some emotion to the mix of things one needs in life, it keeps pushing Spock until he gives up on that boring logic shit and gets real, meaning gets human, meaning feeling and expressing emotions in a socially appropriate to humans way.
:-p
If I wanted a human, why would I be watching Spock?
So I guess I really didn't like that scene. But I was so busy trying to wrench my brain around from the unfavourable comparisons and resulting grumpiness that I almost couldn't concentrate on it.
The idea of swapping Kirk and Spock's side of the glass, okay, play with that, but what I just watched? Didn't make me feel much except manipulated.
So was there any of the film I liked?
... I liked the music. I stayed to the end of the credits listening the music.
*really big sigh*
So maybe this wasn't my best day for watching. I've been awake a really long time. My original plan involved coming home much earlier, but I just finished college (all! finished! Work returned and log book picked up and Done now!) so I wanted to Do Something.
This particular something leaves me wanting to write my spaceship movie. Not wanting to watch this one.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-26 10:20 am (UTC)the science!Fail is explained in depth and detail.
and, yes, all of this.