95%
on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 297 reviews)
Runtime:
127 minutes
Directed
by: J.J. Abrams
Starring:
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana
From:
Paramount
Runtime:
132 minutes
Directed
by: J.J. Abrams
Starring:
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban, Peter
Weller
From:
Paramount
Yep,
here is me talking about the two latest Star Trek films. I've already
talked about my history with the whole series so I won't recap that.
Sad to say I ended up coming across some spoilers for Into Darkness
and one of them was me stumbling onto a webpage and that may have
been a dumb error on my part; the other spoilers, though, it was
people being blabbermouths and I am not happy about that as I would
have preferred not having that knowledge beforehand. When I talk
about Into Darkness I'll be non-spoiler then I'll hide my spoiler
thoughts with white text so you have to highlight it to read it.
As
for the '09 film, there are several things I could carp about but
overall it's minor stuff and I happen to enjoy the film. It certainly
opens in a strong way, with Nero's ship from the future destroying
the USS Kelvin and Kirk's father being brave and giving up his life
to save the lives of many, then you see how the crew got together and
met each other, and this establishes that these movies are in an
alternate universe from the original series and films, so they can do
whatever they want to, like Spock & Uhara being lovers, or what
have you. It's fine big-budget entertainment that's also part of a
legendary franchise and I say it works fine in both realms.
Last
night at midnight I saw Into Darkness, and sad to say it's a typical
sequel, meaning it's inferior. It isn't awful; it's just that with
the pluses and the minuses, it turns out to be average overall. I've
seen some sequels this year that were awful (I'm looking in your
general direction, A Good Day To Die Hard); this isn't that but I was
hoping it'd be good. At least there are exciting scenes... you know,
big action setpieces and all that, and there are other sorts of
entertaining moments. But it's the script and story that let it down.
I wish they wouldn't have made some of the choices that they chose to
make, I'll put it that way.
Like
I said, it's not awful; it's just disappointing due to the missteps
they made. At least Cumberbatch was cool as... well, whatever villain
he was. I'll be back tomorrow night. Now, onto MAJOR SPOILERS, so
don't highlight and read it unless you don't care to see the movie at
all or you're just that damn curious.
Of
course Benedict Cumberbatch is Khan, despite not looking like he's
from India nor even looking Mexican like the original Khan. This is
never explained. The whole thing with Peter Weller's character being
an important member of Starfleet and yet ends up being the villain...
I have little problem with the general idea. How it was executed,
though... doesn't always make sense.
But boy do they do a lot of fan
service for the hardcore Trekkers, but real obvious things so I don't
know how they would feel about all the references or how entire
blocks of dialogue and plot points are taken from Wrath of Khan but
modified so that it'd be different and it would surprise people...
yeah, I could have done without that. But the deus ex machina that
gets introduced late in the movie to bring back someone from the
dead... it just seems lame and unneeded, as if the death ended up not
meaning a whole lot if he wasn't gone for long before being revived
in a contrived way. Wrath of Khan, this isn't, that is for sure. Too
much stupidity and I wish the script and story would have been more
solid.
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