You know, I really didn't think Nemesis was that bad at the time. Disappointing, maybe, but better than Voyage Home, or Final Frontier. Compared to Into Darkness, it's freakin brilliant....
SPOILER ALERT
Overall it's such a typical, modern action movie, and I don't mean that kindly. They're not badly made, lots of money ia spent on effects and music and shiny lens flare, and audiences eat them up, but somewhere along the line "contrived" and "overly-plotted" got confused for "clever" and "intelligent." It reminded me of a Die Hard movie, and while many of us liked those, even the first one is just a stupid collection of one-liners and flying bullets. Sure, there's a nice moment when McClane is hurt and thinking of his seperated wife, so you feel for him, 'cause there's a swell of music and Bruce Willis is an decent actor, but then there's another bad guy to blast. So, when Khan gets all weepy thinking of his crew popsicles, you can go, "gee, maybe he's not that bad a guy," but it doesn't stick, because Old Spock gets on the horn and reminds nuSpock that Khan is bad.
In regards to Leonard Nimoy, in the words of McCoy, "I liked him better when he was dead."
Speaking of dying... When Pike is laying there in pain and dying, Spock reaches out and mindmelds with him, and I'm thinking, "he's helping Pike with the pain, or Pike has one last inspirational nugget to tell Kirk so he'll stop being a raging dickhead." Later on, we find out, no, it's
THAT SPOCK IS A CREEPY VOYUER WHO JUST WANTS TO FEEL SOMEONE DIE!!
I mean, wtf?? That Pike was feeling alone and confused and disappointed to be dying?? THAT'S not really surprising, is it? And that's his compelling argument to his girlfriend that he's keeping his emotions in check, 'cause, we're all alone you know, and, my planet and Mommy gots blown up, so there, but not because he's a FREAKING VULCAN and that's what they do, right?
Note to JJ: I really don't mind Spock & Uhura hooking up. Neither one seems really able to handle a workplace romance in a professional manner, but a visit from Starfleet Human Resources could clear that up. I mean, it's the 23rd century, right? And sure, JJ, you can rejigger the big E, make it huge and with brewery for and engine room, whatever. But just name-checking "Mudd" and "Gorns" in the script, throwing the odd tribble on screen and making sure the we remember that Kirk is a mac-daddy DOES NOT MAKE IT STAR TREK. Just reversing the whole "who's dying in the radiation chamber and who's on the outside crying over it" does not make us happy. I thought the whole point of this alternate timeline was that you could make your own Trek, not just cherrypick classic moments and reshuffle them around.
True story - when I was 10, my friends and I spent the summer worrying about the "new" Star Trek that was coming. It was 1973 and the animated show was on it's way, and we were all convinced that it was going to be goofy, like "Scooby Doo" or Kirk was going to have a sidekick like Batmite on "The NEw Adventures of Batman." Lo and behold, when the first episode of TAS aired, we were blown away about how smart it was, and how much it just felt like Star Trek. Every time another movie came along, I felt the same pangs of fear, and as TMP through The Voyage Home came out, I nitpicked and carped like a good Trekkie should, but I learned to accept them into the fold. When it started coming back to TV, I really fell in love again, seeing a new version more like the old, and even when Enterprised disappointed me with it's crappy theme song or DS9 added a holographic character that made JarJar look clever, I could hang on to the good I saw.
JJ, you're breaking my heart. You can make a big movie, but you don't get Trek. He recently announced on TDS that he "didn't really like Star Trek."
Yeah, dude, we noticed. Please hand it back over to someone who actually does.
Topic: Star Trek Into Darkness - Review and Discuss (Read 34386 times)