Well themes and ideas are gone so let's throw logic, creativity, and diversity out the airlock while we're at it.
Five security guards and not one woman in the bunch, yay equal opportunity employment?
You know
instead of kissing in public why couldn’t they have the Vulcan finger kiss here? You know something discreet that would make
me think the guys in charge of this fiasco remember that Spock’s an alien in
more ways than the pointed ears; and my god the jacket he’s wearing is ugly.
Hey look they
do have a brig! Where the hell was this
in the last film?
Okay so Khan
knows about the warp core malfunction which means he had inside information
into Marcus’ plans and that Kirk going to Qo’noS and getting stranded there was
part of the plan, presumably he would take out Khan and then get taken out by
the Klingons. That gets rid of Khan and
his followers and with the Enterprise destroyed Marcus has his excuse to declare
war on the Klingons. Again why he wants
war with the Kilngons considering Starfleet is down several ships and a large
amount of personnel I don’t know, but Marcus is clearly meant to be a moustache
twirling bad guy not a guy with complex motives so who cares. Also since Kirk wanted to go to avenge Pike
Marcus could lie and say it was Kirk going rogue that started the whole situation
not any orders from Starfleet. That all
works expect it begs the question of why Khan attacked HQ. Was that part of Marcus’ plan too to take out
Pike and anyone else who opposed him? If
it was then where does Khan’s revenge fit into all this, and if it wasn’t why
is Khan continuing with a plan set up by the guy he wants revenge on?
How is a
communicator able to reach from the neutral zone to Earth? Do these things not have a range
anymore? If they don’t the end of this
film is going to look really stupid.
I like that
Kirk admits he was wrong about the torpedoes to Scotty. What I don’t like is the bar Scotty is
in. Yes, bars have been used in Star
Trek before lots of times, but to me it comes across as any old bar you would
see in any movie that takes place in our own era. Outside of a couple of aliens there’s nothing
here that screams future to me. I mean
in The Search for Spock there’s the holographic
fighter game, tribbles, and this table lit smoky atmosphere that gives it this
out of this world look if you will. Hell
even Star Trek V tried to be
different with the triple breasted cat dancer and the water logged pool table. In essence I get the feeling that there was
clear effort to try and come up with an alien look and to stand out from just
being any old bar. I get the sense that
was a desire and a creative drive to make the locations match the subject
matter. Here I get the feeling of an
apathetic attitude. Like it’s a bar
scene okay bright lights, pounding music, add in some CGI aliens cause it’s sci-fi
and we’re done. Have some pride in your
goddamn work would you JJ?
“Don’t agree
with me, Spock, it makes me very uncomfortable” is a great line too bad it’s
followed by dialogue that is re-worked from Wrath
of Khan.
“Perhaps you
too should learn to govern your emotions, Doctor. In this situation logic dictates-”
“Really,
Doctor McCoy, you must learn to govern your passions. They will be your undoing. Logic suggests-”
“Logic! My god there’s a manic trying to make us blow
up our own damn ship and you’re talking-”
“Logic! My
god the man’s talking about logic. We’re
talking about universal Armageddon.”
Outside of foreigner
knock offs and The Asylum films I have never seen such a blatant rip off of another
artist’s work.
The Carol
underwear scene will never stop being stupid and insulting. It is gratuitous eye candy that serves no
purpose at all to the plot, the line about Christine Chapel is awful, and it’s
just clumsily written. Also it makes Kirk
look like an idiot. He clearly see’s
Carol take out an article of clothing right after she tells him to turn
around. What the hell did he think she
was doing?!
Why does
Carol even need to get changed? We see
her and McCoy in the uniforms later and they appear to offer no more protection
than the regular uniform, and why can’t Carol just get changed when Kirk goes
to get McCoy? Hell if it’s equal opportunity
as Abrams tried to defend with the shower scene he cut and Kirk sans his shirt
then why not have both McCoy and Carol get changed at the same time so both
genders can show gratuitous skin. But no
this scene is here because the writers wanted to show a women in her bra and
underwear. That’s all this exists for. It
is insulting patronizing and I hate it.
Okay we get
down on the ball of rock to check the torpedo there’s two minutes of fun banter
from McCoy and then it’s right back to the stupid. Now the transporter can’t tell the difference
between a human arm and metal torpedo really?
Also this was your chance to show Carol as a smart and capable character.
Instead you have her saying screw this
and just yanking out the wires why? The
ticking bomb that has to be disarmed is an old cliché so why not have some
character development going on during it?
Carol is supposed to be the weapons expert and you just demonstrated
that she knows nothing about weapons!
Also what happened to the Klingons?
Yes there’s a line about them finding the Enterprise if they stay, but
there’s no urgency at all. How about scan's picking up Klingon ships or Uhura having to talk a Klingon transmission down and be successful for once? Or Carol and McCoy having to rush the torpedo stuff and that's how he gets his arm stuck rather than having to up the fuel through the detonation technobabble stuff?
Meanwhile
Scotty finds the USS Vengeance, yeah real subtle there guys. Also it being behind Jupiter I want to say is
a shout out to 2001: A Space Odyssey,
but more likely it’s in there so we can have a cool effects shot of the giant red
dot. And does this thing not have
sensors? How can Scotty just fly up to
it and join a bunch of other shuttles unnoticed? Yes, there’s a deleted scene that shows him
bluffing his way in, but since it’s on the cutting room floor the stupid must
stand alone.
“He’s 300
years old.”
Okay since
according to memory alpha this film takes place in 2259 that means Khan and his
crew escaped into exile in…1959? Did
anyone edit this script?
And oh boy
now we get the reveal of Khan that’s no reveal at all, because when Kirk
punched him and he didn’t go down I immediately knew who he was. Ugh words cannot fully describe how much I
hate this supposed twist, but let’s try.
Khan is only
in this movie for nostalgia nothing more. There is no need for him to be anything other
than John Harrison. Why
would you wake up a 300 year old guy to build weapons? There is nothing he would know about your
technology that would help at all. Yes
Khan is genetically engineered to be intelligent, though we never get to see that
in this film, but Thomas Edison was smart too and if he came back to life
tomorrow I don’t expect him to build a movie camera that outshines IMAX. Khan’s answer is that Marcus woke him up for
his savage nature, but Marcus is ready to go to war for no good reason and is
willing to send innocent people to their death’s to achieve his ends. His savagery is well in place already. Also Khan says Spock can’t even break a rule,
but how does he know that? Did Marcus let
Khan have access to Starfleet personnel files?
And then
Kirk throws the attack on HQ in Khan’s face and he goes on about trying to
protect those he holds most dear, I’ll get to that in a minute, but Khan says
he escaped alone so the attack was only his doing and not Marcus’ but then why
did he beam to Qu’noS when that has been firmly established to be part of Marcus’
plan? What did going to Qu’noS achieve
for Khan?
Khan’s goes
on about how they were genetically engineered to lead people to peace in a
world at war…uh no they weren’t. The
supermen were the one’s looking to grab power and to control and fought amongst
themselves. They were not condemned as criminals
and put into exile where they hoped of a better future they did that themselves,
presumably to find a new world to conquer. Also Khan’s followers are loyal to
him he isn’t necessarily loyal to them so this whole family thing just comes
out of nowhere. Yes, it’s supposed to be
a parallel to Kirk and his family of Enterprise shipmates, but I’d by more
invested in the whole family dynamic if Kirk hadn’t been spending the movie being
mad at Spock, Chekov wasn’t off screen in engineering being forgotten by the audience,
and if we hadn’t had that stupid, stupid joke about a former crewmember Christine
Chapel.
Most of all though this
entire thing about Khan and his family of peacekeepers but not really
pisses me off because it breaks the rules of this new universe. The
writers were too lazy to deal with the parameters they set for themselves so
they tossed them out the window and hoped we wouldn’t notice.
“Nero’s very
presence has altered the flow of history beginning with the attack on the USS
Kelvin culminating in the actions of today thereby creating an entire new chain
of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party.”
“An
alternate reality.”
“Preciously. Whatever our lives might have been if the
timeline was disrupted our destinies have changed.”
“Going back
in time you changed all our lives.”
“Coming back
in time changing history that’s cheating.”
These were
the guidelines they set out for their own continuity. As I’ve said before it doesn’t bother me that
they set this outside of the prime timeline and I don’t care about the debates
of the temporal Prime Directive or any of that.
Yes, it was established in canon that changing the past alters the
future, but with the existence of the mirror universe we also know that at some
point the timeline can differ enough that it becomes its own entity along with
the existing timeline. So I think the
rebootverse exists in that grey area of how much the timeline can change and
that’s fine. The sticking point for me
is that if you establish your rules as such you can’t ignore them when it
becomes inconvenient. You established that
everything before Nero’s incursion matches the original timeline therefore you
can’t change backstory or appearance of a character that existed before Nero
blew everything to hell. Certain
liberties like eye colour are fine you’re recasting it’s inevitable that not
every last detail can match. But here
not only do they mangle the backstory of Khan so much that again he might as
well have just stayed John Harrison, but they made it worse, by casting a white
British man to play him.
And yes
given all the information available this was a casting decision. It wasn’t an open call where everybody
auditioned and the best actor won.
Benedict Cumberbatch was specifically chosen for the role after it was
turned down by others and was given no information about the character before
hand to preserve the stupid twist. Sure
in the 60’s Montalban was put in brownface to play Khan, but Montalban was not
white and was not seen as white by Hollywood.
Also having a genetically engineered person not be white was a slap in
the face to the whole idea of white supremacy.
And it’s my understanding that the character of Khan was in fact changed
when Monalban auditioned and got the part so even there, there was an open call
and the best actor won and the part was changed accordingly. So as I said before I should not be looking
at two castings made nearly 50 years apart and finding the one made in the 60’s
to be better.
Having Khan
being played by a white British actor doesn’t work within the context of the
universe because Khan as he was originally conceived was Indian and a dictator
where under his rule there was peace, but no freedom. It doesn’t work in the larger context of Star
Trek because it throws sand in the face of its message of diversity. Again Orci attempted a defense of this by
saying that they didn’t want to present a person of colour as a terrorist, but
making him a terrorist was their idea.
It didn’t come from the backstory so that’s bullshit. If you wanted to have a bad guy in your film
that was white and a terrorist and not get flak all you had to do was not make
him Khan.
Continued in Part 3
Continued in Part 3
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