Star Trek into darknes

Post Reply New Topic

What do you think about this movie, I was on it in the cinema on release.

Recently I decided to re-watch,

What do you think of the main, villain Khan Noonien Singh?

I have to admit that even, sympathy for him, especially after he told to Kirk, "what do you do for you family"?

It seems that he was only about his companions, he cared about

Both JJ Abrams ST films have been watchable, but not great. The whole time-travel twist in the first one has just given him free license to keep rehashing previous story lines and call backs to old episodes, without introducing any really new ideas. Frankly, Khan has been done to death and he was a pretty minor character on the original series to begin with. It was a fairly ingenious idea the first time (in 1982) to dredge up a character from a fairly forgettable episode to feature as a major villain in a feature film, but enough already.

Abrams just doesn't seem to get that lens flares and attractive actors and high speed action sequences do not make a great story all by themselves, and I can tell he doesn't get it by the fact that he keeps hiring that hack Damon Lindleof as a writer, who can't string a decent story together and wrap it up cohesively to save his life. They should call him Captain Plothole.

Anyway, to answer your question - no, I had no sympathy for Khan in 'Into Darkness.' His only true interest in his "family" of companions was in the consolidation of power. I never felt he had any emotion towards them whatsoever, they were tools for him, a means to an end. He seemed to me to be the penultimate psychopath, with no concern for the well being of anyone else, as long as he got what he wanted. His calling them 'family' was a verbal ruse intended to evoke sympathy, I never believed he felt that way for an instant. I would have believed that Ricardo Montalbán's "Khan's" companions were 'family' to him, but he seemed a more human character. Cumberbatch could have been an evil cyborg.

Star Trek Into Darkness was actually one of my top movies from last year. The only problems with it were the lens flare (why?) and the ending, which pretty much everyone agreed was a ripoff of TWOK.

I quickly noticed similarities of Wrath of Khan, but I liked it. I'll bet they were able to do things they couldn't do with Khan back in 1982.

I hated the movie, and I hated the villain. It was a bad ripoff of Wrath of Khan (with some elements of Undiscovered Country), and ultimately rehashing the 2009 reboot as well (all the characters hitting the same notes they did in the first one, no character growth).

Neither villain is well written, nor are they very sympathetic. There are a lot of unanswered questions, which I doubt will ever be answered. They did try to answer the obvious bad casting one in the comics (surgical alterations, and wiping his memory), but it will never come close to fixing that mess.

*Has no hopes for anything remotely satisfying to come out for the 50th anniversary in two years* I just hope after the third reboot, Star Trek will get a new TV series, written by better writers.

I thought it was quite good, which surprised me since I did not really care for the first JJ Star Trek. I'm not sure if it was helped or hindered by the fact that it was a quasi-remake of the original Star Trek 2, but I think I mostly fall on the side of wishing they'd done something a little more original.

I thought it was better than the 2009 Star Trek movie, but IMO, the underwear scene involving Carol and Captain Kirk was unnecessary and distracted from the rest of the movie.

Ummm, not keen, and I speak here as a Star Trek fan who watched the first broadcasts of TOS back in 1969. I can sit back and watch numbers II, III and IV anytime because they're damn good adventure movies with characters I can relate to but the last two Star Trek movies with the new cast just leave me cold.

OK, I'll bite, why are the new Star Trek movies unwatchable?

1) I grew up with the Enterprise crew and even managed to adjust to Star Trek The New Generation because the characters were people you could relate to. Cmdr Scott and I are both engineers, Geordie La Forge and I both had trouble with the ladies and I REALLY had the hots for Uhura when I was a kid. The new crew seem to be kids playing with the grown-ups toys.

2) Simon Pegg as Cmdr Scott. Totally silly casting.

3) The direction in the movies is horrible. Far too many spinning action shots and far too much use of lens flare.

4) The new movies are TOO different, for example the destruction of Vulcan.

5) The movies are too 'dark'. All of the Trek series have humor in them, 'The Trouble With Tribbles' being a prime example along with the treatment of Cmdr Data in his search for humanity.

For me, they aren't quite unwatchable (I actually enjoyed the first one). Into Darkness was just an extreme disappointment, the characters went through the same motions as in the first reboot movie*.

Some of the things that have made me the most angry, have been all of the things J.J. Abrams has said, blaming everything but himself and his writers for the perceived failure of Into Darkness. He blamed the video game, he blamed the fact that CBS held onto the rights to continue making merchandise with the original cast (claiming it causes 'brand confusion'). He at least admitted that lying about Khan might have been a mistake (not that Khan was a mistake of course, which was the bigger problem), and the lens flare was a bit much.

Then there are the plot holes, the fact that it feels like a Star Trek for Dummies movie (reduced to an action movie and not much else), the weak characterization, and the most enraging part being the scenes ripped from Wrath of Khan, which don't even really work for this movie.

Oh well, I could rant about this for days. Might need to go rewatch Pacific Rim, the thing that got me over my disappointment and anger the first time.


*Kirk has father figure issues again, Spock has anger issues again, Uhura has been reduced to an annoying girlfriend again, Bones gets shafted for the Kirk/Spock/Uhura trio again (I hate this so much, because I love Bones and Karl Urban is about the only redeeming thing in the reboots), Chekov is Russian, Sulu sometimes gets to do things, Scotty is still Scottish, and the movies are still terrible to female characters. There is no character development.

Don't get me started on the "free fall" dynamics when they are so far up in orbit that there is no way that would have happened in the first place.