Star Trek: Into Dumbness

Every time I watch either of the new Star Trek movies, I find more and more things I don’t like about them. The first time I see them I don’t mind them too much. They’re entertaining enough, and they look good (despite JJ Abram’s lens flare fetish). But after watching either one, a few days late I start to actually think about them and realise I don’t actually like them that much. It’s not hate, I can still sit through the movies, but each time I find more problems and niggling issues with them. Things from the script, the acting, the general look of the film – every time I revisit these movies I find more and more things I don’t like. And I’ve found a major one with Into Darkness.

The first reboot was a strange beast that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a fresh new spin on the Star Trek universe, or if it just wanted to rely on referencing the original series. In the end it didn’t bother choosing, it flitted between trying to change things up while still refusing to move on from the established universe.

Even worse, instead of simply rebooting the universe, the film had to come up with a convoluted reason as to why Kirk and Spock had different personalities. Using time travel and alternate timelines, they made the original Star Trek universe and the reboot one actually both exist in parallel. That way they could shove Leonard Nemoy in there as Spock and have him talk to angsty Spock. In that regard it was basically Star Trek fanfiction (which explains the whole Spock/Uhura romance thing).

Now while I have a lot of problems with that first movie, it’s the sequel that has me, due to how freaking stupid it is. Into Darkness, not content to even bothering to try new things, simply remakes ‘The Wrath of Khan’, and does a worse job of it. Once again instead of using the Star Trek universe as a springboard for new storylines, they retread old ground and rely on referencing and paying extensive homage (is it homage if you just downright copy something from the source material?) to the original film.

Benedict Cumberbatch is revealed to actually be Khan, a genetically engineered supersoldier. He’s out to kill the military leaders for holding his people, other supersoldiers, hostage. Kirk is sent to kill Khan, and is given a shipload of torpedoes to do the job. It’s revealed that the military leader is evil and torpedoes are actually filled with Khan’s people, cryogenically frozen. They team up with Khan, who then turns against them and all sorts of other nonsense. It doesn’t matter much, the characters spend most of the film in a stationary ship not knowing what they’re doing.

In a painfully stupid scene, Kirk and co are having a heated discussion about their impending doom and what choices they have left. Things are dire and serious…and then Kirk suddenly gets distracted by Karl Urban, who is injecting some fuzzy blob thing with blood. Kirk asks what the hell he’s doing, and he says he’s injecting Khan’s blood into a dead thing to see what happens. This entire scene comes out of nowhere and exists solely, painfully, to foreshadow how the film is going to end. Once this scene happens, you know that somebody is going to die, but they’ll get Khan’s blood and they’ll be fine.  And, if you’ve seen the original Wrath of Khan, some people will know exactly how this death will come about.

After some action, Kirk enters the dangerous radioactive core of the ship to save everybody on board and ends up with massive radiation poisoning and dies while Spock watches on (a reverse of the same situation in Wrath of Khan). So now Kirk is dead, but not for too long. Karl Urban reveals that if they have Khan’s genetically engineered blood, they can bring Kirk back to life…somehow, despite the massive radiation poisoning that would have invaded all of his cells, and the fact that, in death, blood flow stops entirely, and brain death occurs in a matter of minutes, and that psychologically he’d never be the same. Anyway now Spock needs to capture Khan and save his buddy.

And here it is. The dumbest part of the story, the niggling issue I noticed this time around. My issue with this is a big, obvious one; they need Khan’s bio-engineered blood to save Kirk, right? Well they have, in cryo storage, over seventy other people with the exact same super-blood as Khan. Why didn’t they just take some blood from one of them? Like seriously, why? Khan was just one of dozens of super soldiers, and the rest are frozen, thereby unable to fight back. They could thaw one out, tie them to a chair with space lasers or whatever then take the blood they need to bring Kirk back to life. But no, instead the whole ‘bring him back alive’ thing is used to up stakes for some reason, since stakes are already pretty raised to begin with. What the hell? I’d accuse lazy writing, and with Damon Lindelof (who wrote Prometheus, World War Z and the vast majority of the tv series Lost) I think I’d be right.