BEFORE: I'm going to treat this as an "extra" film and watch two today, since I'm still behind on the count for the year, thanks to two weeks of vacation and all that. Exceptions must be made for "Star Trek" films, which are important. My original plan was to watch the new "Star Trek" on this 3-day weekend, and review it later, but I feel that would be sort of deceptive, so I'll write about it now.
This interrupts my spy chain and screws up my linking, but I couldn't help noticing the coincidences - since the actor who plays the main villain in this film is also currently famous for playing Sherlock Holmes on the BBC. And I can find a new linking - Jude Law provided a voice for the animated film "Rise of the Guardians", and so did Chris Pine (last seen in "This Means War") - see, that was easy!
THE PLOT: After the crew of the Enterprise find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Star Trek" (Movie #142)
AFTER: And here's the other reason I'm reviewing the film now, instead of with my other sci-fi films that are over a month away - some plot similarities I can't ignore. In "Game of Shadows", Sherlock Holmes dealt with anarchist bombings that were intended to bring about a World War. In "Into Darkness", there are terrorist bombings that seem to be devised to bring about an interstellar war - that's an awful big coincidence, if you ask me. Plus we've got the two lead characters thing - Kirk/Spock, similar to Holmes/Watson and the hero/villain battle of wits, Kirk/villain, similar to Holmes/Moriarty.
Plus, another coincidence, "Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows" borrowed liberally from a famous piece of the source material, the short story "The Final Problem", and this film borrows elements from one of the original Star Trek TV episodes, namely "Space Seed". Plus, just like last night, it's the 2nd film in a series, and the one in which they choose to introduce a major villain.
Backing up a bit, if you remember, they re-booted the franchise due to some suspect time-travel in the 2009 film, so the makers are free to devise a plot that goes in a different direction from the old "Star Trek" universe. It can feature the same characters, but in a different way, with a different spin. They can cherry-pick the best plots of the "Star Trek" timeline if they want, and discard the rest, or do something completely unique.
(Quick, what do Star Trek, James Bond and DC Comics have in common? All have undergone major re-boots in the last few years - great news for new viewers/readers, bad news for those of us who remember the old stories, which have now been invalidated in some way.)
So I think I went into this new Star Trek film at something of a disadvantage - I'd read the debate in entertainment magazines for months over whether this new villain was actually a spin on an old villain. I maybe learned a little too much about the plot before-hand, because it seemed pretty clear, and since I was a big fan of "Star Trek II" (but not "Space Seed"), about halfway through I started to see where this crazy ride might end up as a destination. I wasn't completely right, but I was close.
And this is the problem with a re-boot, whether it's Superman, Batman, Bond or the Star Trek crew. The characters have to remain familiar enough so that we all will recognize them and like them right away, but they have to be new and different enough to justify the re-boot. I don't envy the writers, who then have to walk a very fine line. But I think with "Trek" that it paid off - so far restarting the timeline seems like the smartest thing they could have done. But in other ways it almost feels like cheating - how many do-overs should a franchise be entitled to?
So to me, this is Kirk/Not Kirk, Spock/Not Spock, and maybe-Khan. I'm not giving out any more details, you can check the IMDB if you're curious. But if you're a real Trekkie, you've probably seen this by now, and if not, you might not care. But I care. And if you're going to bring back an old villain (and I'm not saying they did...) you better make sure you've got a fresh take, and that he's somehow better (or badder) than he was before. By the way, this goes double for General Zod in the "Superman" films.
I think they largely succeeded with this "Trek" film - there's action, comic relief, they advance all of the characters along with the plotline. But as with "Game of Shadows", I'm still missing a little bit of the old magic - so many of the old shows centered around solving problems, technical or social. How are Kirk & company going to fix the warp-drive, complete the mating ritual on Altair III and still rescue the colonists from the asteroid before it hits, without violating the prime directive? Sure, there's some of that old "Kobayashi Maru" outside-the-box thinking we've come to expect from Kirk, but in the end, the day was won by shooting guns and punching people, and how sophisticated is that?
NITPICK POINT: So, in the future they can invent a device that prevents a volcano from blowing up, but they can't invent a robot or drone to deliver it - it has to be brought in by hand? That's some lame future... and why create a timer on the device that takes so friggin' long? Wouldn't a 10-second timer get the job done more quickly?
All other NITPICK POINTS put on hold to avoid spoilers....
This marks my third time going to the movie theater this year, which for me is a lot, and the year's not even half over. I would still like to see "Iron Man 3" on the big screen, as well as the new "Superman" film - I'm holding places for them in my line-up, when I watch my other outstanding superhero films in July. We saw about 7 or 8 previews (I don't call them "trailers" since they're never shown after the film anymore - why does that name persist?) which seemed like a lot - 20 min. of my time watching commercials for films I'm either already aware of, or not going to watch. But no less than THREE were for futuristic apocalyptic sci-fi disaster films - "World War Z", "Ender's Game" and "Elysium". Isn't that a bit much, Hollywood?
We went to the same theater we saw "Star Trek" in, which was also on Memorial Day, four years ago. This only enhanced the "deja vu" nature of the film - the feeling that this has all happened before, just in a slightly different way.
Also starring Zachary Quinto (last seen in "Star Trek", duh), Zoe Saldana (last seen in "The Losers"), Simon Pegg (last seen in "Paul"), John Cho (last seen in "Down to Earth"), Bruce Greenwood (last seen in "Barney's Version"), Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "Creation"), Anton Yelchin (last heard in "The Smurfs"), Peter Weller (last seen in "Leviathan"), Alice Eve (last seen in "The Raven"),
RATING: 8 out of 10 airlocks
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