The Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek Into Drakness Part 4

Is it over yet?

“Run with minimal crew, one if necessary.”

If it can be run with one person why does Marcus have anyone else on this ship?  It seems he have far fewer loose ends to tie up if he just did this all himself, and how has the ship managed to stay a secret anyway?   

Again there should be ships all over the solar system, along with highly sophisticated scanning equipment.  And there had to be people who constructed this ship and mined the dilithium for the warp core.  How the hell has no one blabbed about this to someone?

Hey Kirk finally got good in fight!  Too bad Khan didn’t, Cumberbatch just doesn’t have the frame for me to think of him as a super strong individual.  Montalban on the other hand had the chest to pull off this role.  

So power has come back for the Vengeance 10 minutes after we were told it would be back up in 3 minutes.  Welcome to the film that time forgot.

How the hell does Marcus know what Kirk did to the Klingon patrol?  How does he even know they encountered a patrol?

Man I hate the blinking light walls of the Vengeance what the hell are they there to do besides distract me from what’s going on in the frame?

And Khan crushes Marcus’s head like a grape in what is supposed to be a badass moment, but all I can do is wonder he didn’t just do this earlier at HQ.  What was stopping him from flying that ship right through the window getting out the ship and squishing Marcus right then?  We’re about to see that he survives the Vengeance crashing to Earth so the man is clearly indestructible.

“Involves the mass genocide of any being you find less than superior.”

No it doesn’t!  It involves conquering and you can’t rule over the dead!

“We have no transporter capabilities.”

Okay now they’re just broken which I would buy considering the damage they took, but with the very next line we learn the shields have somehow magically come back even though no one had been shown to be doing any repairs and I thought a bunch of engineering people were off working on Spock’s plan.  Also the Vengeance has already been shown to be able to fire clean through the shields so Khan should skip the negotiating and go straight to the weapons firing.

Why are life support systems located behind the aft nacelle?  How is anyone supposed to reach that area in an emergency?  Also which aft nacelle there’s two of them. 

Why is Khan only scanning the Enterprise now?  Marcus was able to do it when the shields were up.  Also the Enterprise has exactly 72 torpedo bays?  What are the odds of that.

“Shields at 6%!”

When did they go back up after being dropped?  And since the hull is being breached again there obviously still useless against the Vengeance’s weapons.

What the hell is Uhura doing in the medbay?  Yes Spock told her to get the senior medical and engineering staff in the medbay, but that was something she should have been able to do from her station on the bridge she’s the communications officer!

Why are you wasting bed space on the cryotubes?  Shouldn’t they be being used for the injured crew?  Especially since the ship was just fired on again?

How is the ship caught in Earth’s gravity?  There were right next to the moon they should have an orbit! 

How are they going to evacuate?  I presume you need either the mains or auxiliary power to launch the escapes pods and it was just established that both have failed.  Oh now the restraints come out and Spock is going to divert power to life support and the evacuation shuttles, but what power? 

Scotty and Kirk running through the corridors as the ship tilts should be really thrilling, but between the Kilingons, Marcus shooting at the ship, Khan shooting at the ship and various other fist fights I’ve found the amount of action so heavy as to become boring.  Also I believe centrifugal force does not work that way.

You reused the brewery location? Why?!  And now with it being tilted all I can think about is the scene in Titanic where the boat goes sideways as it sinks.  Quick tip guys, I should not being thinking of better movies I could be watching while watching your movie.

Yay Chekov gets to do something that doesn’t involve running around uselessly in googles.

"The ship’s dead, sir.  She’s gone.”

And here we go with Kirk pulling the Spock from Wrath of Khan and going into be a hero and die.  Except that Spock went in because his Vulcan physiology would allow him to live just long enough to make the repairs.  Also they needed the main warp drive online so they could travel fast enough to escape the Genesis wave Khan set off.  Scotty yells about needing to divert power from the core to use for other areas, but the wrap core is just that it powers warp drive that’s it that’s all.  And even within this universe we know that because in the last film they ejected said warp core and nobody batted an eye about it affecting anything else on the ship.  Finally Spock didn’t punch out the chief engineer who is kind of the guy you wanting helping you fix things in this crisis.

Why is there so much empty fricking space in this core?  And why does the core seem to shrink in size by the time Kirk reaches it?  In the establishing shot it’s clearly taller than he is yet now he can grab the top and kick the bottom easily.  Although I have no idea how kicking down is going to get the housing to shift to the side, but clearly it works.      

Okay Sulu said they would burn up on re-entry without shields or power and yet the Enterprise in its glory shot is shown coming up through the clouds meaning they’ve already entered Earth’s atmosphere and-oh forget it.  Clearly no one writing this gave a crap so why should I?  

“You’d better get down here, better here.”

Oh fuck you!

Fuck you guys for thinking you could take the most iconic scene in all the Star Trek movies switch the characters and think you were doing something remotely clever when all you’re doing is stealing someone else’s hard work. 

I care nothing for what’s here.  I don’t care about Kirk sacrificing himself, and they couldn’t even put him in radiation burn make-up, because as I said in my other review it doesn’t flow from his character development.  He was already self-sacrificing the circumstances of the movie didn’t change that about him.  These two guys have spent most of the film being snippy at each other so I don’t feel the weighty loss as I do for Spock and Kirk in the original where they are saying goodbye to 20 years of valued friendship.  And even if I did care the moment Spock does the Khan scream any pathos that might have been here is gone. The scream is stupid and Quinto looks stupid doing it.  I mean Khan has only really been a villain for the last like 20 minutes.  Spock should be screaming Marcus because he is the one that set all this in motion by waking Khan up in the first place.        

 

You cut the Scotty and Uhura hug thanks for taking away the one shipping moment I got in this film.

Okay the Vengeance continues to fall so Khan has been doing nothing this entire time?  Mr. I’m better at everything can’t fix his ship better than Kirk the self-sacrificing asshole?  His ship shouldn’t even be as badly damaged considering no one sabotaged the engine outside of Scotty and that’s fixed.  He only has damage from the torpedo blasts instead of two close range direct hits the Enterprise has and he can still command the ship to crash into Starfleet HQ.

Wow 9/11 imagery how nice.

How are you going to scan the ship that’s now rubble among more rubble?  There should be human bodies everywhere and when did Sulu get scanning capabilities back anyway?  It was down when Kirk and Scotty were over on the Vengeance and so busted before the central console failed and they started crashing.  Kirk kicking the wrap core back into place shouldn’t have fixed it.

So we can’t beam Khan up because there’s too much damage, but maybe we could beam Spock down, are the transporters only half damaged now? Also if it is possible to beam down how about sending people to help the injured and the dead?

Why is Khan stealing a coat?  It’s a piss poor disguise.

Wait who are the two people behind McCoy and Scotty?  Did they get Kirk’s body while in radiation suits?  You mean Kirk could have had protection in the core and he simply didn’t use it?       

Wonderful acting from Karl Urban as he reacts to seeing Jim’s body, but how is that tribble still on his desk after the ship has gone ass over tea kettle several times?  And why does Khan’s blood work on a species several orders away from his own?

How is Khan able to fight the nerve pinch?  It works just fine on the other augments in the prime!verse. 

“Enterprise to Spock!”

That should be sickbay to Spock since McCoy shouldn’t be aware that Spock beamed down to have a fist fight with Khan.

Spock why are you trying to mind meld with this guy?  Just loop your arms under his to break his hold and then smash his head against your knee.

How does Carol know how to use the cryotube now?

Why does McCoy need Khan’s blood, what about the other 72 popsicles currently sitting in his sickbay?  Remember Marcus’ line about what would happen if they woke up the rest of them implies that they too are supermen and women.  In fact them being with Khan implies that as well, because if they were all regular humans you could just punish them on Earth you wouldn’t have to send them away, because the risk of them escaping is too great.    

You can’t get a lock on them because they keep moving?!  So in the last film when Kirk and Sulu were falling at terminal velocity it was all “I can do that!” Now you can’t lock on to two guys fighting on a tiny moving platform?  Why not just beam up the platform too?  You can do that or at least the original miracle worker could. “Well it’s not just the whales, sir, it’s the water.” Or I know how about you keep your story straight for once and just say there’s too much damage you can’t beam up.  That’s what was wrong with the damn transporter 5 minutes ago.

Kick him in the groin Spock he’s not even using his own weight to immobilize you.

Why would you beam down Uhura?  This is what you have security officers for. 

You know the final punch out brawl would have been cool if you had used anyone, but Spock for it.  I don’t feel that Spock has shown loyalty to Kirk by doing this I feel he is unstable and has no business being on a starship.

So did McCoy do a transfusion or did he make a serum from Khan’s ‘superblood’?  Why would you need a serum when we were already shown that plain blood fixes things just fine, and why would the transfusion take a toll on Kirk?  It didn’t on the little girl.  Also McCoy’s uniform is ugly as sin can we have the open collar one De Kelley got in The Motion Picture?      

Yeah Kirk you thank Spock who punched Khan and not the man who saved your brain and performed necromancy.

Okay so Khan and his followers are simply refrozen and left in storage, but was there a trial to determine this outcome?  I mean at one point we almost had a theme about morally questionable actions where Kirk decided it was wrong to kill Khan outright and instead decided to bring him back for due process.  And since that ended with hundreds of people dead and a huge chunk of the city destroyed are we supposed to take away the idea that shoot first ask questions later is the way to go?

“Our first instinct is to seek revenge when those we love are harmed, but that’s not who we are.”

Yes it is.  You went to Qu’noS to get revenge for Pike’s death, and even though you didn’t kill Khan you wailed on an unarmed prisoner.  Khan got his revenge on Marcus by killing him and on Starfleet by crashing the ship, and Spock only stopped getting revenge on Khan because they needed him alive.  Also did McCoy get Khan’s consent to use his blood or did he just take it and say screw medical ethics?

The opening monologue is not a captain’s oath goddammit!  It even mentions the five year mission that the Enterprise hasn’t even been so why the hell is this here?!  Yes I know it’s more referencing so we can all connect with that wonderful show we could all be watching right now instead.

And then it is finally, finally over.

Wow that sucked.  We have characters with no growth and regressive growth.  Referencing that makes no sense.  A villain that spits in the face of one of the core messages of the franchise and doesn’t even add anything by being here expect nostalgia.  A hint of themes and moral questions that get totally forgotten about, technology that gets broken and unbroken depending on the needs of the plot, and giving the middle finger to every field of science just so we can have action sequences that are so numerous I just grow bored and numb.

You know I was disappointed in the first film because I thought it had a lot of potential that wasn’t fully realized.  I flat out hate this film.  I know that has become the trendy word to label people who criticize the film and you know what I’m going to take that moniker and wear it with pride.  I hate this movie.  I hate that its story is derivative and empty.  I hate how it treats women.  I hate how it treats the characters.  I hate how it treats the audience both in and out of the context of the film.  I hate that this wonderful cast is being wasted on blow’em up summer blockbuster shlock.  I mean you were never going to find another set of 7 actors that had the chemistry and charisma of the original cast, but boy did they come close! And right now I’m crossing my fingers that Star Trek Beyond can finally bring us something interesting for them and their universe.