Star Trekking (across the universe)

With Benedict Cumberbatch in Japan to further promote Star Trek Into Darkness that he was in, it’s probably about time I got it off my chest (or at least the handwritten A4 note that I wrote in Mongolia when absent from an Internet connection.  In fact, not just English understatement ‘probably, but definitely.  As always there are spoilers.

The latest edition (albeit canonically in a parallel universe) starts off with Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) rescuing Mr Spock (Zachary Quinto – still nothing on Leonard Nimoy) and violating the Prime Directive in the process, albeit saving an entire planet as well.  It is a very clever way to introduce the main characters quickly e.g. Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Karl Urban as Bones and Simon Pegg as Scotty.  Following this feel-good entrance, after the opening credits it gets darker.  We cut to what one thinks is a standard American family before the reveal that this is London.  I was a little tickled to see St. Paul’s Cathedral surrounded by vertiginous skyscrapers - obviously the restrictions on sightlines have been removed and the project to transform London’s skyline by Ken Livingstone at the beginning of the 21^st century has reached its apotheosis.  The couple we see with their dog are parents and their little girl is slowly dying.  The father is offered a cruel deal, essentially becoming a suicide bomber after his daughter revives.  For the sake of my own child’s life and not having to make a split-second decision, I do not think I could kill 41 other people and inflict wanton misery on their families, though this man could not understand he would be putting their blood on his daughter’s head.  So begins the many faceless deaths of the movie.

Cumberbatch is the principal bad guy and after he shoots up a meeting of Star Fleet chiefs (I was sad that Pike’s duration in this parallel universe was cut short), he flees to the Klingon homeworld.  Kirk is ordered by Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), after some initial hesitation, to pursue Cumberbatch and fire off some photon torpedoes in the ‘uninhabited’ part of the planet where Cumberbatch is in hiding.  That he was initially called just John Harrison was a nice touch, meaning the speculation about him being Khan was neatly deferred.  This was quite a political moment in the plot, implicitly criticising drone strikes with their collateral damage when killing one terrorist.  Kirk disobeys his orders (after counsel by Spock) and arrests Khan.

That Admiral Marcus was the secret villain was signposted long in advance by the presence of his daughter Carol (Alice Eve) abroad the Enterprise - though she turns out to be less of a red herring than an ordinary one.  Weller suffers a scarcely worse fate than that in Robocop but I did like his character’s model-illustrated history of powered flight, specifically rocketry, on his desk.

A secret warship built by Marcus from instructions by Khan to be used to engineer war between the Klingons and Starfleet is commandeered by Khan for his own ends of being betrayed by Marcus (this makes it unclear if this is ‘the wrath of Khan’ or if that is to follow in a sequel).  Spock and Bones, however, manage to cripple the spaceship.  Nevertheless, Khan heads for Earth and crashes it into San Francisco Bay in a bid to annihilate Starfleet Headquarters but narrowly fails (despite tremendous urban destruction).  After Kirk falls unconscious after restarting the Enterprise’s engine power source, it is left to Spock and Uhura to capture a fleeing Khan.

As Kirk slips away (a role reversal from Star Trek II, with Spock’s ‘death’), amusingly, it seems Pine can’t part his fingers like a Vuclan and so the shot of him conversing with Spock through the decontamination chamber glass cuts to a hand that could belong to any film extra with special joints.  Like with Marcus’ ‘surprise’, it’s also abundantly clear how Kirk will be saved.  For the religious set in America, it is made clear that Kirk does not die to be resurrected by Khan’s blood (as was the little girl in London and unlike the Tribble, which was clinically dead), but almost died.  Clever.

Already there is a merging of the two biggest space franchises as SkywalkerSound played a big part in this.  Obama’s Jedi mind-meld gaffe just put him in the vanguard as JJ Abrams will helm Star Wars: Episode VII.  Moreover, many of the cast have fantasy links: Simon Pegg in the Mission: Impossible series, Zachary Quinto from Heroes, Zoe Saldana from Avatar, Peter Weller from Robocop and Robocop 2, Alice Eve in Men in Black 3, Benedict Cumberbatch from Sherlock (which is played hyper-real) and of course Leonard Nimoy, not only from the original Star Trek seasons, cartoons and films, but also the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Of Eve, either she sacn’t do an American accent, Weller can’t do an English voice or neither can do a ‘trans-Atlantic’ (Azores? Bermuda?) dialect.

Coincidentally, given Abrams forthcoming link with a galaxy far, far away, in their official grey suits, Starfleet look like the evil Galactic Empire’s high command or at least like the officer corps in Starship Troopers.  There are other things that don’t make sense on a level other aesthetic.  Despite being in cryogenic storage for 300 years, in the space of 12 months, Khan knows how to build a bigger, better starship than all the combined talents since he was frozen and can remember the entire schematics.  He may have been genetically enhanced in both in physical attributes and intelligence but it’s a bit of  a stretch.  Likewise, his strength varies.  At one point he is knocked out by one stun blast from a phaser, yet towards the end and even accounting for adrenalin it takes several to floor him.

So Abrams does it again with an enjoyable blockbuster.  He’s getting a little cocky though, dicking around with the end credits as if he’s some sort of auteur who makes his own rules.  I stayed till it finally finished and right to the very close he was messing with the traditional ordering.  Also, it’s a bit rich to call Khan a genocidal maniac when tens of thousands die in San Francisco, following on from the destruction of Vulcan in the first film, all to satisfy the actionlust of Abrams and his team.  It appears that Hollywood has truly recovered from the events of 11^th September 2001.  The victory achieved by the crew of the Enterprise is kind of hollow (instead of the Klingon homeworld being trashed, Earth is instead, all for one person) and this is not resolved by a trite speech warning against the evil in others awakening evil in ourselves.

On a side note, I can understand why Mark Kermode dislikes 3D so much – when one already wears spectacles to gain focus, 3D glasses sit awkwardly on top of these and, more importantly, with one visual removes between the eyes and the £D specs, the experience becomes slightly disorientating, thus detracting from the pleasure.  Here, the 3D only really was effective at the start, with spears coming out of the screen at you.

Overall Star Trek Into Darkness is a bundle of fun. It’s not lost in space but don’t expect it to make much sense.