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Saturday 15 June 2013

Star Trek: Into Darkness - A 6/10 Review

I have just returned from the cinema after watching the new Star Trek film.


If you have not watched it yet and don’t want to know any spoilers …. GO AWAY.

As long term readers will know, I always give film reviews a healthy 6 out of 10.

The reasons for this are simple.

If anyone gives a film 9 out of ten or even 10 out of ten, you leave other films nowhere to go. The makers of these films will think they have reached the pinnacle of their career and never try any harder meaning that we will be forced to watch nothing but subpar films for the rest of our days.

Nobody wants that.

So I will usually nit-pick and find some reason to offer a lower score than film may deserve.

This review is a little different.

I am genuinely going to struggle to give this film anything more than a three or four.

It really is that bad.

But a six I must give, those are the rules.

Here goes.

Let me start proper by saying that I am a Star Trek fan. I am not a Trekkie or a Trekker. I do not dress up or own any action figures of the Star Trek genre. I do enjoy the shows and will quite happily sit through a full season of Deep Space nine or Voyager without any moaning whatsoever.

Star Trek films have always been rubbish. Bearable at best.

Even when the God of Geeks JJ Abrahams took on the mission of re-booting the franchise, I little hope that Star Trek would make a good film.

The first film was okay. Not brilliant but probably the pick of the bunch so far.

Four years or so later and the new comes out.

There has been much said about this film before it was released. Benedict Cumberbum was in it and was Mickey from Doctor Who and the sky line of London is there as well.

There as space ships, explosions and true to Abrahams form, lots and lots and LOTS of lens flare – just so you know that this is the future and you are in space.

This is because in the future everyone will be wearing dirty glasses that have been smudged by mucky finger marks…

I digress.

This film is not suitable for vegetarians. The acting by some is so ham fisted that I have put of bacon for a week!

Sherlock Holmes acts so much like a bloody pantomime villain it’s a wonder Christopher Biggins didn’t stand in for him as an understudy.

That being said the first hour of this film is quite good. It has a bit of humour, some action and lots of special effects.

But then it all goes a bit tits up.

PROPER SPOILER S FORM HERE:



First up is the Klingons. They are in the film but might as well not have been. For all the woo haa about Klingons being the big enemy in Star Trek these guys are just there to get shot at and beaten up dead easily. 

RUBBISH.

They also looked wrong. In star trek the Klingons are not supposed to have ridges in their heads because of some kind of ecological disaster, but in this new time line they do. It is not explained why but they do. It’s this kind of silly wishy washy half arsed research that makes this blog look bloody professional.

Not only is this a rip off of the original 2nd star trek film, Wrath of Khan, but it also a rip of the first new movie as they have a scene where Kirk has to fly through space outside of the ship in order to reach another thing (last time it was a platform, this time it’s another spaceship) only this time it wasn’t as clever or dramatic.

Then there’s the bit where original Spock makes an appearance for no reason at all and adds nothing to the plot as by this point all hell as broken loose and everything has gone to hell in a hand cart…. In space.
Tribbles made an appearance and I thought there might be a reference to the fact they are the only creatures the Klingons are afraid of… but this little ball of fur is only there as a piss weak excuse to bring Kirk back to life.

Oh yes. Captain Kirk dies. But thanks to some bullshit about cloned blood bringing things back to life, a Tribble and Kirk are both brought back to life after being dead for ages.

Even in the film, Kirk has been dead for a while. It is not said exactly how long he has been dead for but it is roughly the same time it takes and room full of radiation to be cleared, a door unlocked, a gurney brought down to pick him and moved to sick bay and put into a stasis chamber so that all the cast can stand around looking sad while the Starship enterprise plummets toward the Earth.

Brain dead. That what is was and that is what the writers think the audience are as well.

FUCK YOU ABRAHAMS.

He has done the same with the Avengers. Agent Coulson died by have a great big hole shot through his middle. We even saw him die. His eyes closed and he stopped talking half way through a sentence. That is how you die properly on a film. FACT.

However.

Neither of these characters has stayed dead and kirk wakes up in hospi-cul without a scratch or any signs of the radiation that killed him to death.

Sherlock Holmes is put into a frozen pod and locked away, but because his blood was used to save Kirk in the first place, this now means that in any future film they make about Star Trek, they will not be allowed to kill anyone off because they have an unlimited supply of anti-death medicine at hand and everyone will live forever.

I’m not making this up.

This is the sort of crap an 8 year would right. An Idiot 8 year old at that.

This is the sort of writing that is one step up from “It was all a dream… or was it”

This is the sort of shite I have come to expect from anything that has Damon Lindelof (has anyone seen the end of lost?)

I would love to love this film.

But I don’t. I actually hate it.

As I said before the special effects are good. The acting is not. The story is insulting. The plot is pathetic.
Somehow this adds upto 6 out of 10.

I didn’t pay and the popcorn was okay. There was only one little shit running up and down the aisle this time, but I was far enough away that it didn’t spoil my none enjoyment of the film.

That’s all I have for now. I feel a little bit better about this.


Thanks for reading and allowing me to share my anger.

2 comments:

  1. Hello Mr H I was not planning to go and see the film as I rarely go to see films; there are loads of folk there eating stuff and the like and queues.

    Loved they way you started and then slowly made it sound worse as you went on, and from what you say this is what the film did. I think film companies just think sequels now so you cant kill the main characters either good or bad, it is like that East Enders on the tele (I dont watch it by the way this is an educated guess).

    These film folk are getting lazy these days its all flashy effects and stuff and not good scripts. What they need is a brilliant tale of an eccentric who writes his diary in the grey voids of cyberspace, sharing a bit of witty banter with a small elitist group of folk who are super cool and available at competitive hourly rates for modest walk on parts.

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  2. Yes, that did annoy me, the way in which they bought him back to life with magic blood. However, one plot point got me goat even more.

    The torpedoes that had Khan's crew inside them. Kirk is told to take these torpedoes to go and kill Khan with. Why did they have to be the torpedoes that had Khan's crew in them? Why couldn't they use old fashioned regular torpedoes? It just seems that taking the one thing Khan wants halfway across the galaxy to Khan's doorstep is a big mistake. The potential for something to go wrong and Khan to get his hands on his crew again is astronomical. They might as well have renamed the Enterprise to Fed Ex.

    Then there's the bit where Spock holds his own in a fistfight with Khan, despite the fact Khan has basically destroyed armies on his own with ease by this point in the film. It's a cool fight, but difficult to let go of the fact that Khan probably should have snapped him in two ten seconds in.

    Also, I thought the Cumberbatch was pretty good. I would argue that his performance was too good for the rest of the film, which probably made it seem a bit out of place. Besides, we all know he's better at acting like an otter:

    http://redscharlach.tumblr.com/post/19565284869/otters-who-look-like-benedict-cumberbatch-a

    Overall, I'd give it a genuine 6. It's fine if you disengage your brain, which kind of isn't the point of Star Trek, but there you.

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