On Reflection: Star Trek: Into Darkness

This write up might get me into hot water with certain people. Namely dedicated Star Trek fans, or “Trekkies” as they are sometimes known.

Trekkies are an example of Hardcore Fandom. They know about as much about Star Trek as dedicated football supporter knows about their team. They in turn defend and support Star Trek with the level of dedication and ferocity that an Everton Season Ticket holder who has been in the Lower Gwladys for 20 years would support The Toffees or a Man United who has sat in the Stretford End for a similar period of time.

Hopefully that football analogy will help some people get a handle on how truly dedicated Trekkies are and why they get so into their chosen form of entertainment. A Trekkie knowing how each scene plays out from one episode to another is pretty much on par with a football supporter knowing the score of every game in a particular season.

Trekkies who travel all over the country going to conventions are similar to football fans travelling to away games to support their team. It’s a similar level of dedication and takes up just about as much time in the lives of those people.

So, please excuse me as I retreat into my bunker, as what I’m about to say may in fact generate a similar reaction to standing the middle of the Kop wearing a “Liverpool are right load of pish” T-Shirt.

Ahem, I still kind of like Star Trek: Into Darkness.

*Ducks for Cover as an angry bunch of people wearing Spock Ears set their phasers to “KILL”*

Yes, I still enjoy this film and find it entertaining. This is the same film that most people, either Trekkie or not, seemed to not really like. Trekkies treated it as a giant slap in the face while casuals didn’t really understand why certain characters being certain characters was a big deal and why a certain scene was the way it was (Trekkies who saw the Original Star Trek II will know which scene I’m talking about)

But I feel I fall into a sub category that might be just perfect for what this film was aiming for. In my opinion, there are 3 types of people who you would expect to go and see this film (We’re excluding critics, who will see it because they “have” to and thus the film wouldn’t be targeted to them)

Category One – Trekkies

Category Two – Casual cinema goers who know pretty much next to nothing about Star Trek or its history and want to eat popcorn and watch stuff explode.

Category Three – People who know enough about Star Trek to get the references but who won’t be offended if it’s not a completely favourable and honest adaptation of the material so long as they can be entertained while the film is on.

Seeing as I fall into the third category, I really found myself enjoying this film. It’s not as if the story is anything great, but there’s some brilliant hammy acting and enough exciting action scenes that I was thoroughly entertained throughout.

To me the appeal of Star Trek has always been the over the top acting and ludicrous sci-fi premise. Half the fun is seeing William Shatner ham it up outrageously or Patrick Stewart performing his role like King Lear has accidentally been sucked into an alternative reality and finds himself having to captain a spaceship.

The best acting in a Star Trek film is acting that acknowledges how mad the whole thing is and caters to that madness accordingly. At one point Benedict Cumberbatch, our villain of the piece, delivers the following line “You couldn’t even break a simple rule, how could you be expected to break bone?”, in a stereotypically deep evil voice. What isn’t awesome about that?

Cumberbatch “gets” it in regards to what this film truly is and he’s excellent in it. He affixes other characters with his cold stare and lowers his voice an entire octave to sound as preposterously evil as possible. And I love it! Love, love, LOVE it!

I like all the archetype characters that show up in this film.

Stereotypically evil villain?

Check

Young upstart space captain with a point to prove?

Check

Gruff senior commander?

Check

Always irritated, take no nonsense and never suffer fools gladly ship Doctor?

Check

Wacky comedy character complete with alien sidekick?

Check (And played by Simon Pegg to boot)

Half Alien/Human character struggling to adapt to human life and constantly learning new lessons about what it means to be human?

Check

Gorgeous, intelligent and self-reliant female character who just happens to be slamming the Half Alien/Human character?

Check, Check, Check, Check!

This film doesn’t even need much of a story for me to enjoy it. It has a wacky ensemble of characters, all played by a smorgasbord of actors that I like. It has silly fight scenes and stupid set-pieces followed by explosions. This film knows exactly what it wants to be. It want’s to be your standard sci-fi action movie with just enough Star Trek stuff in it to qualify it as a Star Trek movie, and I’m totally fine with that.

I can completely understand why Star Trek fans don’t like it though. You really get the feeling that the people making the film wrote a sci-fi movie and then tried to force the Star Trek characters into it, rather than developing the characters and then building the story around them.

For a dedicated Star Trek fan, that understands the characters on a level that people like myself don’t, this film is one giant slap in the face. The film makers have condensed the characters down to their most basic of attributes so that there’s very little here that a Hardcore Trekkie could respect or appreciate. If the Trekkies want to argue that the film makers have bastardised an iconic series, I will fully support them in that view point. I just don’t have a stake enough in the argument for it to make me hate the film outright.

Hilariously though, they’ve put just a little bit too much Star Trek in for non-Star Trek fans to really take to the film. So basically, the two biggest groups of people who will view the movie will probably both end up not liking it.

And this isn’t a good film. The story is weak, the characters fall flat and the ending is as cheap and flat as they come. But it really entertained me. What can I say? I got out of this exactly what I wanted.

Star Trek: Into Darkness is a bad film that I enjoyed. That’s the fairest way for me to put it. I can understand why other disliked it and I think they are full justified if they want to feel that way. For me the film resides firmly as a guilty pleasure that I can enjoy for its cheesiness and general stupidity.

Thanks for reading

Peace Out

On Reflection: Man of Steel

So, a while back I reviewed Man of Steel in an overly long and rambling review (http://thisandthatmikey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/mike-watches-movie-man-of-steel.html )


To save you a long read, I essentially said that I found the action stuff enough to be entertained but overall I considered the movie to be below average and thought it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the Richard Donner version starring Christopher Reeves and Gene Hackman.

On further reflection, I think I was wrong. I think I may have been a bit too easy on the film and let it off lightly. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re looking for something to do on a quiet afternoon you might as well fill it with super powered aliens smashing up towns and cities in, admittedly exceptionally directed, fight scenes.

Yes, the action in this film is still good, that I will not deny. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are lots of movies that I’ve hated and they also had great action scenes. Attack of the Clones has perhaps one of the most surprising and exciting fight scenes of all time in it but I still consider it one of the very worst films I’ve ever seen.

There is a definite difference between your standard Hollywood Action Film with a cast of generic archetypes blowing stuff up and a movie about one of the most famous fictional characters and a genuine cultural icon like Superman. People will scoff at that comment, but it’s true. Superman is not just a character that’s been around for decades but he’s also an allegory for the very best that we as humanity can attain to. He’s the ultimate good guy who, despite being so much more powerful than humanity, he still wishes to be considered human himself. Despite humanity being a generally flawed and imperfect species, his belief in the very best of us leads him to continue to defend us at every turn.

He is not, however, Jesus. But the fact that every single form of entertainment is doing Jesus analogies now (Even WWE with Roman Reigns at the Payback Pay Per View) is another article for another day.

In the film at one point he even tells one of the stuffy army types that he’s as “American as Apple Pie”. And he says it without a trace of irony, because Superman doesn’t consider it to be ironic.

So yeah, this film needed more than just well shot action scenes to get a passing grade. I had my chance and I fluffed my lines. I undervalued the status of Superman as a character, the status that the Richard Donner film gets so right.

Henry Cavill has all the potential to be an excellent Superman. He rarely gets a good line but, on the one of two occasions he does, he delivers it like how you’d want Superman to deliver it. There is a charming superhero in that chiselled body that’s trying to break out if a good writer will let him.

But the writing in this film is anything but good. The characters are paper thin and as one note as it gets. I know it’s somewhat unfair to keep stressing how much better the Donner film was, but the fact remains that it was much better. Yes, it had silly slapstick at times and yes it’s pretty corny when Superman saves Lois from a crashed helicopter only to deliver the “flying is still statistically the safest way to travel” line.

But you know what? I like that cheesiness and I find the slapstick funny because it’s done with skill and passion. I was shocked to hear that a lot of people don’t like Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor in this as well. Really? The dudes’ brilliant in the role. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as good without him. Compare him to the main villain in Man of Steel and I know who is more memorable and well written.

I think what separates Donner’s Superman from Man of Steel is quite a key factor in why one film is good and why the other isn’t. The people making the Donner one actually set out to make a Superman Film whereas the makers of Man of Steel set out to make Batman Begins if Bruce Wayne could fly.

And why couldn’t we have the original theme in there, if even just a re-mixed version of it? So many bang average scenes would have benefitted from Superman saving the day as the John Williams theme hit at the moment of triumph. I’m all for people doing their own thing, but that’s a no brainer surely? Even Superman Returns had the Williams theme in it. If that atrocity is doing something better than your movie, then I think you need to pull back and take stock.

So yeah, on reflection Man of Steel is worse than I remember. Maybe the backlash from so many other people out there kind of geared me to not liking it as well? Or maybe the countless essays and angry videos made me realise how much I actually liked the character of Superman and how culturally significant he really is?

I think I’d got it into my head that I didn’t like Superman, that the character didn’t interest me. He was just the “Big Blue Boy Scout” and less traditional and darker heroes like Deadpool and Batman were so much cooler and more interesting. I think I’d convinced myself that Superman was dull because he always tried to be so good. I had convinced myself that a man who can fly and can also shoot lasers from his eyes was boring. I officially nominate myself as an idiot.

I had suppressed that in my younger days one of my favourite shows was Lois and Clark. I used to look forward to that with the anticipation I barely have for any episodic television show these days. I had suppressed that the very rare times I would purchase comics in my youth, I’d usually always buy a Superman one. I suppressed watching Superman and Superman II and loving them. I even suppressed playing the Superman game on the Sega Game Gear (Possibly because it was rubbish, but hey ho)

I still think Deadpool is as counter culture and cool as a comic book character can be and I also think Batman is nothing short of brilliant. But hey, I loved Superman! Superman is awesome!

So in a weird roundabout sort of way, I kind of owe Man of Steel a debt of gratitude. If it hadn’t been such an awful film, I may not have been so offended at the treatment of Superman that I realised how much I actually liked him. So thank you Man of Steel, I guess. Thank you for being such a poorly written story with papier-mâché characters and an unnecessary Jesus analogy.

Thank you for angering my blood enough to make me reconcile with one of my childhood favourites.

Next time, I’ll look at another bad movie that I gave a free pass to because it entertained me. Will I stand firm on that one? You’ll have to wait and see

Thanks for reading

Peace Out