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Got back an hour or so ago from seeing the new Star Trek movie. I did like it, but not as much as the first one.
Huge spoilers behind the cut.
Spoiler space for good measure.
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Seriously, don't read this post if you haven't seen the movie and don't want the entire thing spoiled for you.
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Okay, so the movie starts with the freaking Enterprise on the bottom of the ocean (?!!) of an alien planet (why the hell didn't they just, you know, stay in orbit if they wanted to keep the ship hidden? o_O), while Spock is trying to stop a volcano from erupting, and Kirk and McCoy are running away from the natives because Kirk stole something from them... for some reason that might have been explained but which I must have missed in the midst of all the screaming and spear-chucking. I'm guessing they just wanted to get the natives out of the temple that was so close to the volcano or something. So, anyway Spock stops the volcano, they save Spock from getting blown up by the cold fusion bomb he used to stop the volcano, and the Enterprise rises up out of the ocean, giving the natives a new god-figure. Anyway, none of that really matters in the long-run, except that Uhura is pissed off at Spock because Spock was just going to give up and let himself be killed to stop the volcano from erupting. But they make up fairly quickly later on and this sub-plot doesn't really go anywhere, except to reinforce the theme from the first movie that New Spock isn't nearly as in control of his emotions as Old Spock was.
So yeah, back on Earth, Pike tells Kirk that he is stripped of command and busted back down to cadet, because A) he broke the Prime Directive, and B) he lied about it in his captain's log. Yeah, right, like that's going to stick. Kirk is butthurt because Spock sent a full report in without telling him and didn't lie about what happened like Kirk did. Our hero, everyone.
While all that is going on, the big bad, the identity of whom we don't know yet, coerces a dude into blowing up an information archive, by promising to save the dude's dying daughter (see later plot point concerning magical blood). All the top brass at Starfleet, which for some reason includes all the captains and their first officers (which now includes Christopher Pike and Kirk, since Pike convinced Starfleet to go easy on him and let him be Pike's first officer). Kirk realizes that this was all a ploy to get them all in the same room, which is right when the big bad attacks in a giant gunship and kills just about everybody, including Pike. Kirk causes the gunship to crash, but not before getting a good look at the pilot, which is our mysterious big bad.
Later, it turns out that the big bad actually didn't die in the gunship crash (naturally) and has beamed himself from Earth all the way to the Klingon homeworld (?!!) using the new super-transporters that Scotty "invented" in the first movie with knowledge from Spock Prime.
Admiral Marcus tells Kirk that the information archive thing was actually some super-secret Section 31 shit, and, instead of just beaming a bunch of soldiers after the big bad toQo'noSKronos to grab him and then beam back, he sends Kirk in the Enterprise (yeah, Kirk is captain again, shock of shocks) to fling a bunch of special photon torpedoes at the Klingon homeworld from the edge of the Neutral Zone to kill the big bad. Oh, and as they're going back to the ship from Earth, this mysterious blond woman shows up and claims to be assigned to the crew as a new science officer, which makes Spock all butthurt. Scotty resigns and leaves the ship because he doesn't want to deal with this secretive bullshit with the torpedoes that he can't scan.
Kirk changes the mission en route toQo'noSKronos and instead decides to go in and bring in the big bad, rather than nuke him from orbit like he was ordered to do. They go down and meet some stupid looking New-Movie Klingons. The big bad shows up and kills everyone, then surrenders to Kirk for seemingly no apparent reason. From the brig, he cryptically tells Kirk to take a closer look at the torpedoes. Also, Bones is studying Khan's (oops, spoilers) blood because it can apparently bring things back from the dead, and McCoy is testing this on a dead Tribble that he had lying around. I'm sure this plot point won't be mentioned ever again.
They open a torpedo and find someone inside in a state of cryogenic suspension. Ah, it turns out that the big bad was, yes, Khan Noonien Singh, and the people inside the torpedoes are his fellow eugenics experiments.
Suddenly, a gigantic Super-Enterprise shows up (it had a name, like Vengeance or something, but I'm just going to call it Super-Enterprise because it really was just a bigger, blacker version of the Enterprise) and Admiral Marcus says he's going to kill everyone because they talked to Khan. The admiral talks about how war with the Klingons is totally coming (EDIT, years later) (because firing a bunch of torpedoes at the Klingon homeworld like Marcus originally ordered them to do totally wouldn't have jumpstarted all that shit) (/EDIT, years later) and how he needs to be the hard-ass in charge because clearly nobody else besides him can handle the Klingons. The blond woman turns out to be Carol Marcus, his daughter (which Spock had already uncovered way earlier and confronted her about, making this moment have less of an impact). After the Enterprise makes a break for it back to Earth, they're caught by the Super-Enterprise again and Carol is beamed off the ship.
Right before the Super-Enterprise is about to blow up the Regular-Enterprise, all the weapons shut down, and it turns out that Scotty is on board the Super-Enterprise because Kirk had called him on Earth earlier and told him to check out some stuff on Jupiter that Khan had cryptically told them about, which turned out to be the Super-Enterprise that Khan had helped to build.
Kirk and Khan go over to the Super-Enterprise via flying through space (?!!) and take over the ship. While this is going on, Spock calls Spock Prime (Nimoy cameo, yay!) and asks him about Khan. Old Spock tells him that Khan is some serious shit and the real deal and that they better bring their A-game if they're dealing with him. On the Super-Enterprise, surprising nobody (even Kirk, given that Kirk had Scotty preemptively shoot Khan), Khan betrays Kirk and kills Admiral Marcus. Khan threatens Spock and tells him to beam over his buddies, which Spock does, by sending him the torpedoes. Khan beams Kirk, Scotty, and Carol back to the Enterprise and then blows the shit out of it. Spock reveals that he tricked Khan and detonates the torpedoes, but had removed all of Khan's dudes beforehand, leaving them all asleep in Sickbay.
The Enterprise spends the last 30 minutes or so falling toward Earth, but Kirk saves the day by pulling a reverse Wrath of Khan by going inside the (super huge) warp drive and realigning it. Spock shows up and they do the scene from Wrath but with Kirk dying instead of Spock. Yep, Kirk is dead now. Guess that means it's the end of the reboot universe, right?
After the Super-Enterprise crashes into San Francisco, Spock is super-pissed off ("KHHHAAAAAANNNNN!!!!!") and beams down and fights a still living Khan on top of a flying car. (?!!)
McCoy sees the Tribble come back to life and realizes that they need Khan's blood to revive Kirk. Uhura beams down and prevents Spock from killing Khan. They save Kirk, Khan is put back to sleep (and he and his buddies are locked away in the Indiana Jones warehouse they kept the Ark of the Covenant in), and everything's back to normal. Kirk says the whole "Space, the final frontier" speech and they go and explore. Roll credits.
Oh, and the Klingons are totally going to show up and start fucking everybody's shit up in the next movie. No, that's not something revealed in an after-credits stinger like I hoped it would be (because there wasn't an after-credits stinger), it's just something they repeat over and over throughout the movie, that the Klingons are bad news and they're all about to go to war, so it's pretty clear that this is probably what the next movie will be about. (EDIT, years later) And, of course, it turns out that the next movie had nothing whatsoever to do with Klingons at all and pretty much just blatantly ignored the existence of this movie. Go fucking figure. (/EDIT, years later)
So, overall, I liked it, despite riffing the hell out of it above. Still, a lot of the plot points you could see coming from a mile away, and though they did do a fairly decent job of keeping Khan's identity a secret, it was still fairly obvious that was who he was, especially when Kirk just beat the holy hell out of him earlier and he's just standing there taking it like yeah whatever. I figured he had to be Khan or some super-android or something, and given this was Kirk and all, safe money was on Khan. (Nah, I'm just kidding, I actually had it spoiled that it was Khan before I ever saw the movie.) Also, as soon as Kirk was in engineering and they started talking about how Kirk couldn't go in there because of radiation, I started rolling my eyes. I knew they were going to pull an inverse Wrath of Khan situation and then bring Kirk back to life with the magic Khan blood.
Even when compared to the previous movie, this one was way over-the-top action-y, and I didn't like all of that so much. I mean, sure, it was exciting and all, but I just felt burnt out after a while. A lot of it was just too WTF crazy. (That said, this super-action-y approach might be much better suited to the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Wars movies than it is to Star Trek, so maybe it'll work better there.)
Also, I really don't like the continuing Spock/Uhura relationship, even if there was some small precedent for it in the Prime universe.
As for the whole big Khan "reveal," I don't think it was really necessary to keep it such a big secret, both in the movie and outside of it. Khan didn't mean jack to Kirk in this movie, aside from being just another villain to go defeat. This was more "Space Seed" (i.e. Kirk's first encounter with Khan) than Wrath of Khan, despite them lifting characters and some scenes directly from Wrath in this one.
So, yeah, in the end, Star Trek 2009 > Star Trek Into Darkness, in my opinion. And Wrath of Khan >>>>>> both of them put together, by far.
Huge spoilers behind the cut.
Spoiler space for good measure.
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Seriously, don't read this post if you haven't seen the movie and don't want the entire thing spoiled for you.
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Okay, so the movie starts with the freaking Enterprise on the bottom of the ocean (?!!) of an alien planet (why the hell didn't they just, you know, stay in orbit if they wanted to keep the ship hidden? o_O), while Spock is trying to stop a volcano from erupting, and Kirk and McCoy are running away from the natives because Kirk stole something from them... for some reason that might have been explained but which I must have missed in the midst of all the screaming and spear-chucking. I'm guessing they just wanted to get the natives out of the temple that was so close to the volcano or something. So, anyway Spock stops the volcano, they save Spock from getting blown up by the cold fusion bomb he used to stop the volcano, and the Enterprise rises up out of the ocean, giving the natives a new god-figure. Anyway, none of that really matters in the long-run, except that Uhura is pissed off at Spock because Spock was just going to give up and let himself be killed to stop the volcano from erupting. But they make up fairly quickly later on and this sub-plot doesn't really go anywhere, except to reinforce the theme from the first movie that New Spock isn't nearly as in control of his emotions as Old Spock was.
So yeah, back on Earth, Pike tells Kirk that he is stripped of command and busted back down to cadet, because A) he broke the Prime Directive, and B) he lied about it in his captain's log. Yeah, right, like that's going to stick. Kirk is butthurt because Spock sent a full report in without telling him and didn't lie about what happened like Kirk did. Our hero, everyone.
While all that is going on, the big bad, the identity of whom we don't know yet, coerces a dude into blowing up an information archive, by promising to save the dude's dying daughter (see later plot point concerning magical blood). All the top brass at Starfleet, which for some reason includes all the captains and their first officers (which now includes Christopher Pike and Kirk, since Pike convinced Starfleet to go easy on him and let him be Pike's first officer). Kirk realizes that this was all a ploy to get them all in the same room, which is right when the big bad attacks in a giant gunship and kills just about everybody, including Pike. Kirk causes the gunship to crash, but not before getting a good look at the pilot, which is our mysterious big bad.
Later, it turns out that the big bad actually didn't die in the gunship crash (naturally) and has beamed himself from Earth all the way to the Klingon homeworld (?!!) using the new super-transporters that Scotty "invented" in the first movie with knowledge from Spock Prime.
Admiral Marcus tells Kirk that the information archive thing was actually some super-secret Section 31 shit, and, instead of just beaming a bunch of soldiers after the big bad to
Kirk changes the mission en route to
They open a torpedo and find someone inside in a state of cryogenic suspension. Ah, it turns out that the big bad was, yes, Khan Noonien Singh, and the people inside the torpedoes are his fellow eugenics experiments.
Suddenly, a gigantic Super-Enterprise shows up (it had a name, like Vengeance or something, but I'm just going to call it Super-Enterprise because it really was just a bigger, blacker version of the Enterprise) and Admiral Marcus says he's going to kill everyone because they talked to Khan. The admiral talks about how war with the Klingons is totally coming (EDIT, years later) (because firing a bunch of torpedoes at the Klingon homeworld like Marcus originally ordered them to do totally wouldn't have jumpstarted all that shit) (/EDIT, years later) and how he needs to be the hard-ass in charge because clearly nobody else besides him can handle the Klingons. The blond woman turns out to be Carol Marcus, his daughter (which Spock had already uncovered way earlier and confronted her about, making this moment have less of an impact). After the Enterprise makes a break for it back to Earth, they're caught by the Super-Enterprise again and Carol is beamed off the ship.
Right before the Super-Enterprise is about to blow up the Regular-Enterprise, all the weapons shut down, and it turns out that Scotty is on board the Super-Enterprise because Kirk had called him on Earth earlier and told him to check out some stuff on Jupiter that Khan had cryptically told them about, which turned out to be the Super-Enterprise that Khan had helped to build.
Kirk and Khan go over to the Super-Enterprise via flying through space (?!!) and take over the ship. While this is going on, Spock calls Spock Prime (Nimoy cameo, yay!) and asks him about Khan. Old Spock tells him that Khan is some serious shit and the real deal and that they better bring their A-game if they're dealing with him. On the Super-Enterprise, surprising nobody (even Kirk, given that Kirk had Scotty preemptively shoot Khan), Khan betrays Kirk and kills Admiral Marcus. Khan threatens Spock and tells him to beam over his buddies, which Spock does, by sending him the torpedoes. Khan beams Kirk, Scotty, and Carol back to the Enterprise and then blows the shit out of it. Spock reveals that he tricked Khan and detonates the torpedoes, but had removed all of Khan's dudes beforehand, leaving them all asleep in Sickbay.
The Enterprise spends the last 30 minutes or so falling toward Earth, but Kirk saves the day by pulling a reverse Wrath of Khan by going inside the (super huge) warp drive and realigning it. Spock shows up and they do the scene from Wrath but with Kirk dying instead of Spock. Yep, Kirk is dead now. Guess that means it's the end of the reboot universe, right?
After the Super-Enterprise crashes into San Francisco, Spock is super-pissed off ("KHHHAAAAAANNNNN!!!!!") and beams down and fights a still living Khan on top of a flying car. (?!!)
McCoy sees the Tribble come back to life and realizes that they need Khan's blood to revive Kirk. Uhura beams down and prevents Spock from killing Khan. They save Kirk, Khan is put back to sleep (and he and his buddies are locked away in the Indiana Jones warehouse they kept the Ark of the Covenant in), and everything's back to normal. Kirk says the whole "Space, the final frontier" speech and they go and explore. Roll credits.
Oh, and the Klingons are totally going to show up and start fucking everybody's shit up in the next movie. No, that's not something revealed in an after-credits stinger like I hoped it would be (because there wasn't an after-credits stinger), it's just something they repeat over and over throughout the movie, that the Klingons are bad news and they're all about to go to war, so it's pretty clear that this is probably what the next movie will be about. (EDIT, years later) And, of course, it turns out that the next movie had nothing whatsoever to do with Klingons at all and pretty much just blatantly ignored the existence of this movie. Go fucking figure. (/EDIT, years later)
So, overall, I liked it, despite riffing the hell out of it above. Still, a lot of the plot points you could see coming from a mile away, and though they did do a fairly decent job of keeping Khan's identity a secret, it was still fairly obvious that was who he was, especially when Kirk just beat the holy hell out of him earlier and he's just standing there taking it like yeah whatever. I figured he had to be Khan or some super-android or something, and given this was Kirk and all, safe money was on Khan. (Nah, I'm just kidding, I actually had it spoiled that it was Khan before I ever saw the movie.) Also, as soon as Kirk was in engineering and they started talking about how Kirk couldn't go in there because of radiation, I started rolling my eyes. I knew they were going to pull an inverse Wrath of Khan situation and then bring Kirk back to life with the magic Khan blood.
Even when compared to the previous movie, this one was way over-the-top action-y, and I didn't like all of that so much. I mean, sure, it was exciting and all, but I just felt burnt out after a while. A lot of it was just too WTF crazy. (That said, this super-action-y approach might be much better suited to the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Wars movies than it is to Star Trek, so maybe it'll work better there.)
Also, I really don't like the continuing Spock/Uhura relationship, even if there was some small precedent for it in the Prime universe.
As for the whole big Khan "reveal," I don't think it was really necessary to keep it such a big secret, both in the movie and outside of it. Khan didn't mean jack to Kirk in this movie, aside from being just another villain to go defeat. This was more "Space Seed" (i.e. Kirk's first encounter with Khan) than Wrath of Khan, despite them lifting characters and some scenes directly from Wrath in this one.
So, yeah, in the end, Star Trek 2009 > Star Trek Into Darkness, in my opinion. And Wrath of Khan >>>>>> both of them put together, by far.
