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
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