1)
This is a negative critique of Star Trek:
Into Darkness.
2)
This critique is based on respect for the Star
Trek franchise. I don’t want to drag
down Star Trek, but the flaws in this
movie were major and obvious, with no nitpicking necessary to notice them.
3)
My bona fides is that I have had a short story published by Star Trek. Not fan fiction, but part of the actual Star Trek universe. So in a sense, I’m a part of the Trek universe.
4) Leave comments. Comment only if you can show the same respect
to the franchise, and also yours truly.
5)
Possibly, if enough people comment on this and other social media, the director J.J. Abrams
will notice and not make the same kind of mistakes next time. (Okay, that last sentence pretty much sounds
like science fiction.)
RED ALERT SPOILERS
RED ALERT
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In
the volcano sequence, Spock is suspended by a cable from a shuttlecraft while
the Enterprise hides underwater, to prevent the natives from seeing it. Sulu complains the shuttlecraft can’t take
the heat from hovering over the volcano.
Why is he hovering there in the first place? He could wait until Kirk and McCoy distract
the natives from the volcano, then hover.
Spock’s
cable snaps. No worse for wear, he then
sets up his explosive device on the floor of the volcano’s crater. Why not just set up the device on the Enterprise, then beam it down, instead
of doing the cable act? Oh, that’s
right, the Enterprise is under
water. In Star Trek II, which this movie rips off, transporters can beam people through several meters of solid rock, so beaming Spock
through water should not be a problem.
Spock
sets off a cold fusion device which freezes the lava. Are they kidding? Cold fusion does not make things cold. It is a theoretical means of unleashing
nuclear fusion at room temperature. Cold
fusion would have made the eruption worse!
So
the Enterprise emerges from the water
and beams Spock out before he fries.
They obviously could have avoided all these difficulties by staying in
orbit—out of sight of the natives—then beaming down something to snuff out
the volcano.
Going
to the main story, Kirk is shown in bed with two women who show no concern when
he has to immediately leave. Obviously,
they are prostitutes, not girlfriends or one-night stands. The TV series certainly showed Kirk wooing
attractive women (or being wooed by them), but he wasn’t some disgusting perv
who spent his night with hookers. And the
two women have exotic skin and long tales, which makes it look like
bestiality.
The
character who at this point is called Harrison has some kind of fanny-pack transwarp
transporter that can take him to the Klingon homeworld, light years away. Fine.
But Scotty traces him. Since
Scotty can alter a normal transporter to do the same trick in a matter of minutes,
why don’t they just beam him back? Or
beam a large explosive device into that area?
That would be a lot less traceable than firing photon torpedoes at him.
Going
on to the Enterprise, Scotty objects
to the new torpedoes being brought aboard, saying Starfleet has never been
military. Some may howl at this, but
I’ll give them this one. Gene
Roddenberry insisted that Starfleet was not military. Fans argued otherwise, not just pointing at
the phasers and photon torpedoes, but at the court martials and other things
unique to the military. I favor the idea
that Starfleet is military, but it’s a legitimate argument.
When
the Enterprise gets close to the
Klingon homeworld, they detect an individual life form in the area Harrison
went to. Again, they could just beam him
up, using their transwarp transporting technology. Or, if they really want a fight scene between
Kirk and Harrison, Kirk and company could beam down.
And
if the Enterprise can detect an
individual on the Klingon homeworld, why can’t the Klingon defenses detect a
whole starship? Why isn’t the Enterprise immediately swarmed by
Klingon ships?
The
trio of characters having a dark, high-speed chase from and then a fight
against grotesque, irrational aliens has more of the feel of a Star Wars movie. J.J. Abrams will also be in charge of that
franchise, and it will be a great shame if he makes the two franchises look
alike.
As
a big non-surprise, Harrison turns out to be Khan. (Without doing any investigation, I found out
his identity back in December and e-mailed my friends about it.) But he is a very white Khan. True, people in the Indian subcontinent have
all the skin shades from the lightest light to the darkest dark, but I found it
kind of insulting that they could not find a swarthier actor. This is especially so with the great turn
Ricardo Montalban gave to the character—twice.
I
can guess why they use a really white guy:
They do not want to offend people by showing this most evil nemesis with
a darker skin. And so they do the old
fallback of having a light-skinned Brit be the bad guy, which will play well
when the movie shows in countries that have a lingering resentment of the
British Empire. But they don’t execute
this well. The start of the movie shows
a dark-skinned family whose daughter is sick, and the father decides to set off
a bomb in return for Khan curing his daughter.
Why didn’t he transport his family to safety, then turn Khan in? In other words, to show some diversity (to
make up for Khan being light-skinned) they showed a dark-skinned man having no
sense of morality.
(Sorry
for this long comment about race, but racial identity is a tricky part of
writing, requiring some thought. Star Trek: Into Darkness fails in
this.)
Scotty
travels near Jupiter and discovers something mysterious being built. His casual ability to rent or requisition a
craft and travel out there shows it would be hard to keep this project a
secret. People would be traveling around
the solar system on a regular basis, given how casual space travel is shown to
be.
Dr.
Carol Marcus reveals she slipped onto the ship with an assumed name, so Kirk
wouldn’t know who she was. Why? Did she think he would show her favoritism? It’s not explained. This seems like another surprise revelation
for the audience, but it’s contrived and underwhelming.
The
arrival of Admiral Marcus’ much larger starship should really alert the
Klingons. But again, they stay ignorant
of these two starships.
The
airlock that Scotty operates on the larger starship is no such thing. It is simply a door in the side of the ship,
with no chamber to allow people to go in or out without catastrophically
emptying all the air in that large area.
And there is a long, clear floor space leading away from it, clear of
any consoles or equipment. This is
obviously just designed so Kirk and Khan can zip in and slide to a halt. No realistic purpose to it.
Both
the Enterprise and the larger
starship fall towards Earth because of Earth’s gravity well. But they were much closer to the moon. They should fall towards the moon because of
the moon’s gravity well. But that
wouldn’t allow them to make their analogy to current-day terrorism when the larger
starship crashes into San Francisco.
Khan’s
fight scenes on the Klingon world and on the starship were impressive. The fight between Spock and Khan is less
so. Instead of the incredible martial
arts style of fighting that Khan had used before, they mostly try to pound each
other, with Spock especially throwing haymakers.
Uhura
shoots Khan several times with a phaser, and they seem to affect him as much as
throwing whiteboard erasers at him. I know
Khan was genetically engineered to be strong, but the movie shows strong
fighters, including Klingons, going down after a single shot. How can Khan be so tough without weighing ten
times as much as a normal man, or having skin as hard as diamond?
McCoy
realizes that Khan’s blood can revive the dead Kirk. But can’t he use the blood from any of Khan’s
seventy-two genetically engineered followers?
And once McCoy uses the blood to derive a cure, why doesn’t he
synthesize it to help anyone who dies?
At
the end, Kirk’s speech is a watered-down version of Obama’s real life speech
renouncing previous ways of dealing with terrorism. Whether you liked or hated Obama’s speech,
Kirk’s speech should be puzzling to his audience. Since they knew nothing of Admiral Marcus’
plan, why should Kirk talk down to them?
The
most serious flaw in Star Trek: Into
Darkness is the shallowness of the characters. Kirk is the most well-developed, as the
former townie who leaps before he looks and often succeeds by sheer luck. But Spock is simply a guy who follows
regulations and does not express emotions well.
Absent is his ability to do massive calculations inside his head, his
being a repository of scientific knowledge, and his devotion to
discipline. McCoy is emotional and yells
a lot, but he never shows deep insights into Kirk and Spock, and so never gives
any wise, personal advice.
And
there is no theme to this movie. The
2009 Star Trek had the theme of
fathers. Kirk didn’t know his father, so
he grew up a townie. Captain Pike became
his surrogate father and talked him into joining Starfleet. When Kirk meets Spock from the other
universe, the first non-practical question he asks is whether he knew his
father in the other universe, and he becomes uncharacteristically quiet at the
answer. Spock’s father Sarek gives him a
heart-to-heart after Spock gets angry at being teased over his mother. And when Spock goes berserk after Kirk taunts
him over the loss of his mother, Sarek gives him another heart-to-heart. When Sarek reveals that he loved Spock’s
mother, that frees Spock to become an even more capable person. (While Spock was devoted to his mother, it’s
his father who is shown to give him guidance.)
Star Trek: Into
Darkness
has Khan refer to his followers as his family, but he doesn’t interact with
them that way—even though they’re in cryostasis, he could have been shown
talking to their inert bodies or to images of them. No, Khan is just a maniac, and the movie has
no theme. It’s just a lot of nonsensical
action, then they rip off scenes from the old Star Trek episode “Space Seed” and the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
It is so much less than it could have been. But to be a good movie, it would need good
ideas and good writing, which the best of Trek
was known for.
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RED ALERT SPOILERS
RED ALERT
