Khan You Feel the Force?

Films of the Year:

Star Trek: Into Darkness

On its initial release, I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness three times at the cinema and scored it a more than solid 9/10. I described it as “an ‘everything-I-could-possibly-have-wanted’ Star Trek movie”. I read several four star reviews and the team at the ‘Empire’ podcast were gushing more than the competition winners whisked backstage at a One Direction concert to meet the band. Then something weird happened. At the time of the DVD/Blu-ray release, there seemed to be a lot of revisionist reviewing going on. The film was suddenly dropping stars from its ratings faster than the stars of The Counsellor were dropping that film from the top of their CV’s. Where there had been endless praise for the pacing and giddy excitement surrounding the casting (and subsequent performance) of Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as uncontainable speculation about whether or not he was or wasn’t Khan, now there was bitching about it being too shallow, a post Fifth Estate Cumberbatch was experiencing a bit of a back-lash (a Batch-lash if you will) and suddenly he was ‘chewing the scenery’ - munching the walls of his ‘Enterprise’ cell as if he was a Hollywood starlet the day after her ‘Vanity Fair’ cover-shoot – and the revelation that Cumberbatch WAS in fact Khan was seen as some sort of a ‘cop-out’ and ‘shitting all over the memory of Wrath of Khan’! Make up your mind guys! First you want it. Then you don’t! It’s Anne Heche and cock all over again!

Seeing the film again, I’m inclined to stick with my initial assessment. I liken the experience of watching it in December, looking all the way back to its release in May, as akin to the ‘space jump’, from the ‘Enterprise’ to the USS Vengeance, undertaken by Kirk and Khan in the film. Like the mine-field of debris and ‘space-junk’ that stands in their way, I can’t help but think of the garbage I should have made more effort to avoid – yes! I’m looking at you Wolverine, Man of Steel and After Earth!

Any criticism of the cast being too ‘pretty’ or lacking the depth of character of any previous ‘Enterprise’ crew is easy to ignore. The 2009 Star Trek introduced Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Karl Urban as Dr ‘Bones’ McCoy, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, John Cho as Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Chekov  – ‘pretty’ they may be, but they are also the best ensemble cast this side of the Avengers being Ensembled...sorry I mean Assembled. It’s the strength of these actors working individually and in different groupings that really shines in Into Darkness. Okay, some of them have less to do than would seem appropriate, but they all get at least one moment to shine – Sulu’s “If you test me...you will fail” threat as he takes the Captain’s chair, Scotty struggling to run, end to end, in the massive cargo bay before delivering two great lines – “Captain, this door is very wee” and “Are you Star Fleet or private security?” Uhura has some great scenes with Spock – best of all being the ‘passive aggressive’ argument on the way to Kronos  and the subtlety of the tiny, tortured cry she emits when Spock forcefully breaks Khan’s arm during their final showdown in San Francisco – Chekov rescuing Kirk and Scotty with a life-saving game of Monkey Barrel, Bones in the torpedo deactivation sequence and in his dead-pan delivery of lines like, “Don’t be so melodramatic...You were barely dead!” and most of all the bantering to-and-fro between Kirk and Spock – best exemplified by the scene where they attempt to outrun the Klingon Warbirds by flying their shuttle into a very small space between two buildings:

Spock: If you are suggesting that we utilise the passage between the approaching structures - this ship will not fit.

Kirk: We’ll fit.

Spock: Captain, we will not fit.

Kirk: I told you we’d fit.

Spock: I am not sure that qualifies.

The deepening friendship and mutual respect that acts as the glue to every Kirk/Spock related Star Trek story is central to Into Darkness and acts as a believable touchstone for the events of the film’s final coda. Don’t get me wrong, I still have problems with that final act – following (but flipping) the final resolution to Wrath of Khan is just the wrong side of ‘affectionate referencing’ for me and I would have been happier if they’d had the confidence in their audience to carry Kirk’s ‘resurrection’ over into film No.3 - or at least end the film with a more subtle shot of the seemingly dead Captain, closing in on his face as his eyes open – but to be honest, that’s a small niggle in a mountain of large gold nuggets. Like Julie Andrews on a dark and stormy night, I’m inclined to think about my favourite things – while Kirk’s non-death might seem like a ‘bee sting’ or a ‘dog bite’, there are too many ‘whiskers on kittens’ and ‘raindrops on roses’ to mention...but I’ll try:

The pre-backlash Benedict Cumberbatch adds real weight to, what might be in another’s hands, some fairly over-wrought dialogue – the first prison-cell scene is pitch-perfect and his delivery of the “I will walk over your cold corpses to recover my people” line is chilling and exhilarating in equal measure.

It’s in the script department that Into Darkness really sets itself apart. Aside from previously mentioned gems there are numerous other grand-standing speeches and some very quotable lines, none more so than this exchange between Spock and McCoy:

McCoy: Tell me this is going to work.

Spock: I have neither the information nor the confidence to do so Doctor.

McCoy: Boy, you’re a real comfort.

There’s no shortage of edge-of-your-seat set pieces either – The ‘cold opening’ / pre-credits mission has JJ written all over it – he was pulling this stunt as far back as season one of Alias and Mission Impossible III - The entire Kronos sequence bodes well for Episode VII, riffing as it does on several key Star Wars moments including the Millennium Falcon escape from the exploding Death Star at the end of The Return of the Jedi and the dog-fight escape from Mos Eisely in Star Wars.

The warp-speed chase between the ‘Enterprise’ and the ‘Vengeance’ is virtually unparalleled in its dazzling visuals and, after the finale free-fall from space, the ‘Enterprise’ rising through the clouds might be the ultimate Star Trek ‘money-shot’.  

Best of all is the aforementioned ‘space jump’ between the two Federation Starships - Exhilarating, tense and a master-class in the use of special effects and sound-design. News of this sequence must have elicited a few beads of cold sweat from Alfonso Cuarón, the director of ‘Gravity’ - considering that his four-years-in-the making, ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘uniquely innovative’ film’s plot hinges on a lengthy sequence that involves his characters ‘space walking’ in a deadly debris field as they try to escape from a destroyed space shuttle to the safety of a nearby space station!

Aside from the broader strokes – original series references including Tribbles and Nurse Chapel – and that much talked about Alice Eve ‘underwear shot’ – in its defence, aside from a similarly unnecessary shot of Kirk in his ‘tidy-whities’ earlier in the movie, there was a similar Uhura scene in the first film and that kind of ‘titillation’ was definitely in keeping with the tone of the original series – the film has some fun with its source material. I especially like the transition shot that fades Scotty’s exclamation of “Holy Shit” with the ‘Shhhh’ swishing sound of the opening door to the bridge of the ‘Enterprise’. I also liked the squashing of the Alcatraz prison by the crash-landing ‘Vengeance’ – a sneaky “F –You” to the Fox Network for cancelling JJ’s ‘Alcatraz’ TV series after one, 13 episode, season?

All in all it stands up to repeated viewing and I maintain that the Star Wars franchise couldn’t really be in safer hands. Now all he has to do is steer clear of anything amphibian with questionably racist undertones and avoid showing his lead actress in any gratuitous bikini shots - because you’d never get THAT in a Star Wars movie...oh! Wait a minute...Who’s that chained to Jabba’s throne?