Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Indiana

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
directed by J.J. Abrams
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Waterfront 22

So Star Trek Into Darkness has little in common with anything Gene Roddenberry ever imagined or hoped for in a television show about mankind's dignity and potential. A ham-fisted allegory about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and extralegal military strikes only reinforces how violent and destructive the movie is. Every actor tacked towards parody this time around (Simon Pegg is the worst/best offender), and the street style of future San Francisco looks embarrassingly uncool.

I'm not even an Abrams fan! If Starfleet can design a gigantic battleship capable of full operation under a crew of a half-dozen men, why do thousands of people work and die on the Enterprise? Why isn't the Enterprise--an elegant tribute to the art of production design--ever impressive enough on its own? Why bring in an attractive, albeit very British, blonde? Will underwear look the same forever?

Eh, probably. But Abrams didn't call the movie Star Trek 2, and he could have. And when was the last time Peter Weller was in anything? Has any modern American cultural phenomenon had a longer, better run than Star Trek?  Does anything come close for consistent quality? If Star Trek Into Darkness is Star Trek in name only, can't we let it go?

"Junior, give me your other hand! I can't hold on!"

Wrath of Khan is on Netflix, a login away. If Kirk, Spock, and everyone else in Star Trek Into Darkness is a shorthand and a caricature, isn't everyone, at the very least, a character who feels? The screenplay is eloquent, if not profound, about loss. When Spock says matter-of-factly that there is no such thing as a miracle, he's right, and the movie reinforces that idea. Whatever else, God is still absent in this universe. I certainly don't remember The Avengers saying anything so pithy.

Or maybe it's the uniforms. The uniforms look good!