by Bryant Burnette,
This is a difficult review to write, not
because I have nothing to say, but because I have so much to say that I feel as
if containing and structuring my thoughts is going to be difficult. As a result,
I'm going to write at least two different reviews, and possibly more, each
focusing on a different aspect of the movie. This, the first, is going to be a
simple thumbs-up-or-thumbs-down type review, completely free of spoilers; it is
designed with people who have not seen the movie in mind.
The second
will be chock full of spoilers; it will be a broader and all-encompassing
contemplation of the question of whether the movie does or does not work;
answering that question fully really can't be done without discussing certain
aspects of the plot that the filmmakers obviously do not want viewers to know
beforehand. That review will be for people who have already seen the movie, or
for people who don't mind knowing all of the plot points prior to actually
seeing it.
I might or might not vomit up a third review that examines
the movie's place in relation to the 48 or so years of
Star Trek that
have come before it. If the first review is for those who haven't seen the
movie and the second is for those who have, then that hypothetical third one
will be for Trekkies. But let's not get ahead of ourselves; those later reviews
aren't even written yet, and technically, neither is this one; so let me stop
the preamble and start the review!
To answer the most immediate question with no
further delay: yes, the movie is good. In fact, I think I'd go so far as to say
it is great; I would say it with reservations, but I'd still say it. This is a
wildly entertaining sci-fi/adventure flick that deftly balances excellent
character work with strong action set pieces. This is grand, high-concept
blockbuster-style film-making and if you like that sort of thing, this movie
delivers.
The basic plot setup is this: after a
planetary-survey mission to Nabiru goes spectacularly awry, Captain Kirk's
ability to effectively lead the Enterprise is called into question by
some of Starfleet's upper brass, including his mentor, Admiral Pike. Meanwhile,
in London, a terrorist bombing at a Starfleet library (or, as Starfleet calls
it, a "data archive") claims numerous lives and prompts Kirk and Spock and the
rest of the gang to take the Enterprise on a manhunt: they have been
tasked by Starfleet with finding the terrorist, a man known only as John
Harrison.
The subtext of Star Trek Into Darkness
includes a somber reflection on themes related to how nations and their
citizens should react and respond to terrorism. It's a timely topic (one shared
by Iron Man 3) that comes in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings,
but can -- and probably should -- be considered in a broader post-9/11 context.
You are officially forgiven if, having read those last two sentences, you assume
Star Trek Into Darkness is a big fat downer of a movie. It's a lot of
things, but a downer ain't one of 'em. Instead, the writers have done a
wonderful job of taking all that subtext and wrapping it into an
action/adventure movie that has a ton of well-earned laughs and never once feels
oppressive. I am reminded of the best way to get a dog to eat his medicine:
fold it into a piece of cheese and make him think it's delicious.
The acting is top-notch all the way around.
Most viewers will probably come away most impressed by Benedict Cumberbatch, who
plays the terrorist Harrison. I'm not one of them. Don't misunderstand me;
Cumberbatch is awesome. But I think Chris Pine as Captain Kirk steals the
show. Pine is a movie star. This was evident in the first film, and it's even
more evident here; all it's going to take is one great non-Trek starring role
for this guy to become the next Harrison Ford, or the next Tom Cruise, or the
next Will Smith. Yes, he's that good
great.
And, God forgive me for saying it, but...he's
better than William Shatner ever even thought about being. Again, don't
misunderstand me; I love me some Shatner, who even at his worst is an
interesting and compelling presence. And I think he gave a few genuinely great
performances as Kirk (in "The City on the Edge of Forever," for one example, and
in The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan for two others).
Here, Pine takes it to another level. He's brash, he's confident, he's cocky,
he's unconfident, he's conflicted, he's angry, he's sad, he's resigned,
he's annoyed, he's defeated, he's triumphant, he's a leader, he's a follower,
he's a man, and he's a child. Pick whichever of the two of those you feel are
the most contradictory, and sometimes, he's both of them in the same scene,
at the same time. At the end of this year, he will almost
certainly deserve an Oscar nomination; he will not receive one, and that's a
shame, because great work deserves to be lauded.
Also doing great work: Zachary Quinto as
Spock. I don't think he's as good as Pine, but he's pretty doggone good.
Leonard Nimoy, who originated the role of Spock, will always be my preferred
Vulcan, and comparatively, Quinto suffers. Luckily, the Spock we get in these
two movies is a rather different sort of character than Nimoy's Spock, and while
Quinto is not capable of playing Nimoy's particular brand of gravitas, he is not
being asked to do so. Nimoy's Spock is somebody who we suspected of having
emotions somewhere beneath that placid exterior; Quinto's Spock is somebody who
we know has emotions. Sometimes, they're not even beneath the
placid exterior so much as they are erupting from and disrupting it. Quinto is
pretty great at playing the conflict he feels between giving vent to his
emotions and repressing them, and while I am a little dubious about this new
series' ability to transition Spock into a more traditionally Vulcan character
in further films, I am really quite fond of what Quinto is doing here. And
heck, for all I know, the writers will simply continue to move their version of
Spock farther away from what Nimoy's Spock; sort of a case of "if you can't beat
'em, turn a corner and go in a different direction from 'em." That will anger
many a Trekkie; I won't be one of them, probably.
Cumberbatch's villain is automatically worthy
of being discussed as one of the all-time great Trek villains, right up there
with Ricardo Montalban as Khan ("Space Seed" and The Wrath of Khan), John
DeLancie as Q (various Next Generation episodes), Alice Krige as the Borg
Queen (First Contact), and Marc Alaimo as Gul Dukat (numerous Deep
Space Nine episodes).
DeLancie always seemed to be having too much
fun to really hurt anybody, and Krige seemed like she was mainly interested in
having kinky sex; they're great baddies, but not necessarily
intimidating.
Montalban and Alaimo, though, seemed as if they
would just as soon murder you and your entire family as they would eat a
sandwich, and Cumberbatch is definitely working from the same mold. He's
awesome here, and gets to play a surprising range of emotions. Harrison, as
written, is even a mildly sympathetic figure; there are a couple of points in
the movie where I found myself getting close to sympathizing with his
viewpoints. Then I remembered that he'd blown up a bunch of people; I decided
he was playing me for a fool, and that I wouldn't have it. But the fact that I
even considered it speaks well of Cumberbatch's screen presence.
I'd also like to single out Bruce Greenwood for
praise. He plays Admiral Pike, and he's just terrific. He isn't in the movie
nearly enough (which was true of the first movie as well), and I wish there was
a way to have a spinoff in which Pike had the lead role. That'll probably never
happen, but Hollywood can make it up to me by casting Greenwood as Roland in the
Dark Tower movies Ron Howard wants to make. He'd knock that role out of
the park. He knocks most of his roles out of the park, and Pike is no
exception.
As for the rest of the cast...? I have little
but praise:
- Zoe Saldana is tasked with fretting over Spock quite a lot. There's also a
decent of amount of general-purpose fretting. All we really know about Uhura as
a character is that she really hates it when Spock doesn't show much evidence of
his feelings. Saldana does this with an appropriate mixture of anger (not
annoyance, but actual anger) and petulance that will not win over
any of the Trekkies who hated the Spock/Uhura romance in the first film.
Everyone else will continue to think she's pretty great, and hope that the
writers continue to improve at writing for her.
- Simon Pegg gets way more to do as Scotty here than he had in the first
film. He is still basically just comic relief (and yes, he continues to be
trailed by his peculiar oyster-faced sidekick), but Pegg is very good at comic
relief, so that's fine by me. He's also surprisingly good with the few serious
moments he gets; these are each crucial, and he nails every single one of them.
- Karl Urban isn't given a lot to do as Dr. McCoy, but what's there is superb;
I deeply hope that the third movie will give him the character development that
has so far been reserved for Kirk and Spock.
- John Cho has very little to do as Sulu, but he does get one great scene.
You could say much the same about Anton Yelchin as Chekov, except that he
doesn't get one great scene; he gets a collection of small good
ones. Cho and Yelchin are both good in their roles, and while I deeply suspect
that neither will ever be major players in these movies, there is evidence
aplenty that they'd be game if given the opportunity.
- Peter Weller -- ole Robocop himself -- has a small-ish role as a Starfleet
Admiral who is an associate of Pike's. He's deeply convinced that Kirk can't
hack it as a Starfleet captain, and he gets some good moments in the movie.
Weller is a real pro, and having somebody like him in a role like this one adds
a heck of a lot. One of my beefs with the various Trek television shows (and
the original movies) is that on all but a small handful of occasions, when
admirals and commodores and other top-level Starfleet personnel showed up, they
tended to be played by nobodies. As such, when one of these characters was
barking orders at, say, Captain Picard, it felt like exactly what it was: a
nobody pretending to have some power over Patrick Stewart. My theory was always
that nobody should be cast in those roles unless it felt, emotionally, as if
there might conceivably be a spinoff series in which you got to see that
character captaining a starship. Following that standard of assessment, can I
envision a series in which Peter Weller was a Starfleet captain? You're damn
right I can. Therefore, successful casting.
- Alice Eve plays a science officer who ends up aboard the Enterprise
during the hunt for Harrison. She's very pretty, and she looks very good in
a Starfleet-blue miniskirt. She isn't called upon to do a huge amount as an
actor here, but she's good at what she is asked to do. If you've seen any of
the trailers for the movie, you know she can scream quite capably; luckily,
there's more to it than that.
 |
| J.J. Abrams on the set of
Star Trek Into Darkness |
We've talked
about some of the stars, but we haven't yet made much mention of director J.J.
Abrams, who might well be the movie's MVP. He famously came to
Star Trek
as somebody who was not a fan; he'd grown up more of a
Star Wars guy,
and had never really paid much attention to Trek. He familiarized himself more
fully with the shows and movies once hired for the job of directing
Star
Trek, and in interviews now he claims to have become a fan of the series in
the course of that research; but frankly, he never sounds terribly convincing
when he says it, and if I had a gun to my head and had to guess, I'd guess that
he's fibbing a wee bit. He strikes me as the kind of guy who likes the concept
of
Star Trek, but maybe isn't all that won over by the execution of that
concept in the pre-reboot series and movies. When watching his two Trek movies,
with their messy humanity and their wit and their passion, you can practically
see Abrams watching an episode of
The Next Generation or
Enterprise or
Voyager or
Deep Space Nine and saying, "Okay,
fine, but what if we do this with people who yell at each other and break the
rules and crack jokes and get drunk and sometimes like to fuck?"
"What if
Star Trek were exciting?" he might theoretically ask. These movies are
the answer to that question. Some Trekkies have recoiled from it, and for the
life of me, I cannot sympathize with their viewpoints. I love
Star Trek,
but there is no getting around the fact that the original was very much a
product of the sixties. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and it continued to
inspire people for decades afterward. Certain aspects of it still do, too. But
the show came out during an era in American culture in which people truly
believed that not only
could things get better, they
would
get better, and
were already getting better. The American
dream might be working slowly, but it
was working;
demonstrably so. And in the future of that dream? The stars.
Do people
still believe that in 2013? I'm sure that some people do, and I'm equally sure
that a lot of people will lie and claim to believe it even if they don't. But
as a culture, I think we're in an awful dark place right now, and it seems apt
to get a whole lot darker before the light starts shining again; and for the
record, no, I really
don't think we believe it. We want to
believe it; but I think we're afraid it might have slipped away somehow. No
need to take sides politically to see that, because it's evident no matter which
side you're looking at. The mere fact that we actually believe the country
splits down the middle ideologically speaks to that notion, I'd say. One of the
questions
Into Darkness asks is: aren't we better than this? In one key
scene, Scotty confronts Kirk and more or less accuses him of warmongering. "I
thought we were explorers," he says, angrily and confusedly. I thought so too,
Scotty.
The whole movie seems to ask a simple question: is this really
who we are? Are we the kind of people who will let ourselves be swayed toward
doing the wrong thing just because somebody else has done something really,
really bad to us? That's not what Starfleet is about, Scotty seems to be
saying. Starfleet is just an imaginary idea, of course; but in a way, you can
say the same thing about America. Some segments of Trek fandom have objected
strongly to the Abrams films because, they say, the movies lack the core ideas
of moral philosophy that the original had. I simply don't find that to be the
case; the Abrams movies, instead, are canny enough to realize that the America
of this millennium so far does not itself possess that core idea of moral
philosophy. We are, in a sense, lost.
So rather than pretend we
aren't and have the subtext of his films feel weirdly anachronistic, Abrams has
opted for a different approach: he's pointed toward the right direction and
said, "Hey, guys...? Shouldn't we be going
that way?" These new
versions of familiar characters are headed in that direction right along with
us; they haven't quite gotten there yet, but we sense that they will, and
through them we sense that we can get there, too. As such, this reboot-universe
Star Trek feels every bit as of-its-era as the original series did of its
own era. To me, that seems appropriate, and it reinforces the core philosophies
of Trek; it doesn't refute them or bury them, or ignore them, it's merely
realistic about them.
Apart from that, on a purely technical level,
Abrams is getting better with every movie. He's got a genuine gift for
directing actors. That fact makes me even more anxious than I already was to
see his next movie:
Star Wars Episode VII. There's only been one
Star
Wars movie directed by somebody who had a flair for directing actors: the
director was Irvin Kershner, and the movie was the best of the bunch,
The
Empire Strikes Back. I'm guessing Abrams combined with
Star Wars is
going to equal gold. That said, I also feel bummed out that we probably won't
see another Abrams-led
Star Trek movie. I certainly hope Paramount gets
somebody with similar talents.
Visually,
Into Darkness is a
marvel. The cinematography is great; the use of color is absolutely stunning,
especially in the opening sequence. (This is my cue to implore you to see this
at an IMAX screen if possible.) The visual effects are as good as CGI is
currently capable of (which is pretty damn good); the costumes, which (I am
delighted to note) continue to be way more inspired by
The Motion Picture
than one might expect, are excellent; the set design is impeccable.
Speaking of set design, some Trekkies have hated the new
Enterprise.
Not me; I even kinda dig the largely-reviled engineering set, which looks
suspiciously like a brewery. But leaving engineering aside, the ship interiors
are just gorgeous; this is easily my favorite Starfleet vessel of
all.
It's also worth pointing out that Michael Giacchino, who provides
the musical score, does terrific work. He leans heavily on his main theme from
the previous movie, but when your main theme is that good, why wouldn't
you?
To sum up: I think this is a fine piece of entertainment. You
need not be a Trekkie to enjoy it; in fact, it might help a wee bit if you
aren't (although a familiarity with the previous film is recommended). This
time of the year seems to be designed for big, thrilling movies that make us
laugh, gasp, clap, and cheer. This one has all of that, and it also has a
beating heart of real emotion at its center. And yes, there's some serious
subtext in there, too, but don't worry:
Like the dog swallowing its
cheese-wrapped pill, you'll think it's delicious.
