Star Trek: Into Darkness

As a coworker's insistence, I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness last night. It was fine. There will probably be spoilers going forward.

I found all the sqwaking about the Prime Directive at the beginning a tad ridiculous. By the time that race gets to the point where they'd enter the federation, the story about the Shiny Bird that extinguished the Giant Fire Hole will be a legend, nothing more. In the immortal words of the bandit, who gives a turkey? I find the idea of sitting back callously and observing a civilization dying to be pretty lousy. If it were a starship stranded, with life support failing, the Enterprise would help, and no one would blink. But these folks aren't advanced enough, so they're S.O.L? Pfft.

The whole bit with Kirk and Bones fleeing through the woods felt like I was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. That happened a couple of times, that feeling that a shot or sequence had been lifted from another movie. A couple of times, it was even the previous Star Trek. Kirk and Scotty dashing along catwalks through Engineering, this time not fleeing security. The Enterprise rising up out of the clouds. That last one was a nice shot, but didn't Abrams use essentially the same one when they came up out of Titan's atmosphere to get the drop on Eric Bana?

I was most impressed with Kirk when he decided to bring Khan in, rather than try to kill him with torpedoes (this was undercut by his futile attempt to pummel Khan into submission, but oh well). I don't know if that was supposed to be more meaningful than his offering up his life in exchange for his crew's safety, but it was to me. The bit with his crew was too obvious of a response to his argument with Pike about how none of his crew had died, despite all his questionable decisions. Choosing to capture Khan, in accordance with regulations, rather than simply assassinate him felt more significant, the moment when he stops and thinks about what he's doing and why, and decides to change.

I'm not sure it was the smart decision, necessarily, but it impressed me. We could argue it. Having Khan around helped thwart Marcus' plan to start a war, and also saved the Enterprise, considering Marcus was going to see it caught and blown to hell for one reason or another. On the other hand, killing him would have kept him from getting control of that ship and crashing it into San Francisco. Also, was sending down a landing party and getting into a firefight with Klingons less likely to start a war than a quick bombardment from space?

That 3 minutes Scotty said they had until Marcus' ship had active weapons went on for about 10 minutes. It was ridiculous. It also seemed to take forever for the Enterprise to actually fall to Earth.

In the original series and the first 6 movies, there was always the trio of Kirk/Spock/Bones that were the central figures. It seems like Abrams replaced Bones in that with Uhura. Which is fine, Zoe Saldana's a good Uhura. Passionate when she can be, professional pretty much always. I love the fact that she didn't hesitate for a second to start blasting Khan the second she beamed down there. I did find it ridiculous Khan took like 10 shots without falling over. I don't care how advanced his genetics are, that's just stupid. Also, I don't love Karl Urban as McCoy. He's a too much of a physical presence, looms over everyone (which Abrams could probably negate with some smart camera placement, but oh well), and he lacks the sort of rasp in his voice I associate with Bones. He tries for it, but it isn't there.

As for Cumberbatch, it's a different approach to Khan than I'm used to. More ferocity, less of that class and style Montalban brought to it. Of course, CumberKhan did say Marcus wanted him for his savagery, and his circumstances are different here. In the original series, wasn't the Enterprise the one who found him and thawed out Khan and his people? More friendly of an introduction than, "Make me weapons, or I'll shoot your friends into the sun". I don't know, he was all right, but he left me cold. Even when he was supposed to be truly angry, truly out for revenge, his performance felt detached. It worked when he was playing his games with Kirk, hinting at the things he knew, but once he was striking out in revenge, it still didn't have any heat behind it. He lacked something Montalban had (the willingness to go over the top?), and maybe that isn't fair, but Abrams is the one who decided to use Khan, who decided to draw all these parallels between his movie and Wrath of Khan, so it's his fault if I compare them and decide his comes up short.

To end on a positive, I did like the brief chase and battle in warp, and completely agree with my coworker that the sound the ships make in warp is pretty cool.