Io9’s Rob Bricken offers a much-deserved evisceration of Star Trek: Into Darkness (and he doesn’t even bring up the “why Khan’s blood but not one of the other 71 guys” problem.) The first one had a number of egregious plot holes too, of course, but it at least had a charming cast and the benefit of novelty. The charming cast remains, but since Into Darkness is otherwise just a lousy and ultimately insulting remix of Wrath of Khan with a frisson of 9/11, the extreme dumbness here is even more aggravating.
I would say this does not bode well at all for the upcoming Star Wars films, but it seems pretty obvious the main problem here was the writing. Star Trek: Into Darkness is the most blatantly nonsensical film since Prometheus, which I called the most disappointing film of 2012. The most disappointing film of 2011? Cowboys & Aliens. All three were co-penned by Damon Lindelof, who’s clearly supplanted Akiva Goldsman as the hackiest hack in Hollywood. He’s like franchise kryptonite.
So you’re just spoiling movies without any warning now?
SK, I’m not sure what spoiler you’re talking about, although I guess I did spoil that ST:ID was disappointing and not very well thought out.
The stuff about Spock and the volcano bomb occurs in the first five minutes of the movie.
As for Khan being Khan, that’s been known by everybody for months, was mentioned in reviews upon release, and is a dumb second-act reveal anyway.
Mentioning it — almost a fortnight after the movie is out, and after box office has diminished considerably — hardly seems like it warrants a spoiler tag.
Yep, I was talking about the Khan thing, which I hadn’t heard before reading it here, since none of the several reviews I read decided to reveal it. I appreciate that you didn’t enjoy the movie, but while I’ve enjoyed your movie commentary, I’m not going to assume that just because you didn’t like something, I won’t either.
Given your last sentence, I take it your blog assumes people go see every movie they’re interested in within the first couple of weekends (opened May 16 in the US). I’ve been a fan for years, but apparently your blog actually isn’t for people like me, so I won’t be visiting anymore. Cheers!
Calling the widely-telegraphed (and, it must be said, very dumb) Khan reveal — which is even in the press kit — a “spoiler” is like complaining if someone tells you Senator Palpatine in The Phantom Menace is the Emperor.
But, oh well, so be it. Best of luck to you.
I decided to stop back and clarify because I decided I was being kind of snippy.
In terms of the press kit and such, I think it’s an unreasonable standard to assume everyone is going to have gone through prerelease materials to that extent. There’s extraordinarily few movies where you can’t, by diving deep enough, find out the entire plot. What’s in the trailer is a more typical standard for general knowledge.
My primary issue comes out of the fact that I don’t read your movie commentary because I usually agree with you – I usually don’t – but because you’re an interesting writer to disagree with. You often have an interesting perspective. So I don’t want to be spoiled on, say, Man of Steel just because you’re not into the sort of movies that Zach Snyder makes.
Things like mouse-over-text, comments after the jump, etc. are so easy to do that I don’t get why you wouldn’t allow a reader to make the decision for themselves. It allows you to have readers who enjoy your writing and perspective without having to trust you on what is and isn’t an important detail that may have been buried in the sort of prerelease materials that most people don’t read. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s weirdly unfriendly to the reader when the alternative takes almost no additional effort.
Just as an example, Prometheus was one of my favorite movies of last year since it was absolutely beautiful, richly symbolic, and I couldn’t give two shits about plot consistency. If I want a good plot, I’ll read a book (not a slam on you, I know you’re a reader). Movies are about a visual experience, the richness of the material presented, and so forth. Just a difference in what we go to the movies for.
SK, usually I use mouse-over text for spoilers here, even for spoilers in lousy movies. (See for example, The Island.)
I didn’t post this with the intention of ruining ST:ID for anyone — that’s why I chose a paragraph from the article talking about the opening sequence of the film.
In all honesty, I’d completely forgotten that the Khan reveal could be considered a spoiler. It’s been discussed everywhere, it’s been telegraphed often, and, quite frankly, it carries no weight in the story.
To take a counter-point from the other 9/11 tinged action sequel of the summer, [vague spoiler below]Iron Man 3 also has a second act identity twist — but that one sticks in the brain because it’s clever, cart-upsetting (and very funny.)
Here: Yes, Cumberbatch tells us he’s Khan midway through, but he could be Harry Mudd or Locutus of Borg for all the importance it makes in the film.
I’d skip over the linked article until you see the film, but it nails the whole Khan thing (no spoilers below):
“When the movie was announced, Abrams and whoever clearly stated that Cumberbatch would be playing a canon Trek character, and everybody guessed it was Khan. Then they promised he wasn’t playing Khan. And then they said Cumberbatch’s character’s name was John Harrison, even though there’s no previous Trek character named John Harrison, and again we knew it was Khan. And they tried to make it this whole big mystery as if we were all morons who had some how forgotten a classic Trek character named John Harrison, like they were actually going to pull one over on us when we were telling them over an over again that we knew it was Khan and the only thing they were accomplishing by denying it was 1) being assholes and 2) insulting our intelligence.
And furthermore, using Khan just proves that nu-Trek is going to be nothing more than the greatest hits version of Star Trek, and not even the original hits — some new band covering the old hits. It means that Abrams doesn’t have any original ideas for Star Trek, and is content to rehash the shit people enjoyed the first time. Of all the classic Trek characters to bring back, of all the classic stories they could have brought to mass audiences for the first time, or even bad stories that they could have improved, they go with the one character everybody already fucking knows because they think all we want to see is the same old shit.”
Anyway, when I put this post up, I’d quite forgotten that Khan was meant to be “secret” to anybody — the film had far too many other problems on my mind. Sorry if that ruins the movie for you, but if it wasn’t that, it would likely have been something else.
Okay, wow, that’s obnoxiously stupid. I withdraw my complaint.
Makes me a little worried for the new Star Wars too.