Star Trek Beyond
Aug. 6th, 2016 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcEpic.
We'll start with the one thing I didn't like though; splitting Spock and Uhura up just to get them back together again is cheap. I'd call it a cheap way to increase drama, but it doesn't even do that; they barely spend any time together between the two scenes and Uhura, at least, has more pressing things to worry about. (Spock, on the other hand, gets a whole scene of going on about it to McCoy.)
I was also slightly disconcerted by just how much Chris Pine looks like the young Bill Shatner these days. So much so that I spent half the film worrying that I'd just forgotten what Shatner looked like, and was actually visualising Pine anyway. I'm sure it wasn't this pronounced in the last one. Maybe it's the hair.
Or maybe it's the uniform. Honestly, when he complained the little aliens ripped it, I was three-quarters expecting a big inverted-L tear (I suspect I may have been supposed to, but I'm not certain). It's an interesting amalgamation: the piping and metal insignia pin of the Rebootverse on the non-shiny, ordinary looking fabric of TOS. The other uniforms (the jacket things, the starbase personnel jumpsuits, the "After the NX-1, before the Kelvin" outfits of the Franklin crew) were also neat.
Speaking of the starbase, Yorktown is gorgeous. The design ethos seems to have been "We've got artificial gravity technology, so we can make this thing work however we want it to", And I loved the crowd scenes; lots of random aliens in both Federation civvies and Starfleet uniforms, not Everyone's Human Unless There's A Reason For Them Not To Be. (While it's great to see lots of new aliens, would a couple of Andorians been out of the question? I mean, they namechecked the Xindi War and MACOs, so obviously their wise decision to not base this story on a Preboot Universe one doesn't preclude the occasional background reference.)
Not only did Pine look more like Shatner, he also, IMO, acted more like Shatner's Kirk. I've had some sympathy for the viewpoint that Reboot Kirk isn't actually based on Captain James T. Kirk, as seen in Star Trek: The Original Series, but CAPTAIN KIRK! as seen in countless parodies and popculture osmosis. But this one seems to get it about right, ironically by giving us a Kirk who isn't sure he is the Captain James T. Kirk he's supposed to be. The bit about how he's now older than George was when he died, and isn't sure what happens next was nice, giving us a more subdued Kirk. (I suspect Bones's line about still having his eyesight was a nod to the bit in Wrath of Khan with the glasses. The one about still having his hair couldn't possibly be a reference to anything, obviously.)
The "Sulu and his husband" scene seemed a bit ... perfunctory. I mean, on the one hand, it's great that they don't a big deal out of it and it's just Something That Happens To Be The Case. That's absolutely the right call. But honestly, if they hadn't explained it in the pre-publicity, I'm not sure I'd have been entirely certain that he wasn't meeting his brother and his niece. There's surely a middle ground - straight relationships in films seem to manage it.
SIx paragraphs, and I haven't mentioned the actual plot. I thought it was brilliant All the main crew got something to do, and so did several minor crew (I was mildly disappointed that the young ensign - who had me thinking - "Oh, cool, she's an alien crewmember with a speaking part and there's no plot reason for her to be an alien" - turned out to in fact have a plot reason for being an alien, but it was a very clever one) and, of course, the new alien woman. There was a baddie with an unusual motive - a philosophical objection to the Federation as a concept. (Yes, it turns out this is born from a more conventional "revenge on the people who left me for dead" motive, but still.)
There was a very well choreographed all-in fight scene where half a dozen Chekhov's guns went off (the motorbike, the displacement illusions, the hardening smoke...) There were some great ship effects with the Enterprise crashing and the Franklin un-crashing. There was a suitably tense final confrontation (including one moment when I honestly thought Krall had been reminded of his humanity by Kirk's heroic sacrifice and was going to go the Redemption Equals Death route, but no). And there was a nice scene at the end where everyone reaffirms that they will be sticking together on the Enterprise-A. (In Spock's case, thanks to a photo of the original versions reminding him that that's what Ambassador Spock did.)
And then a joint "Space the final frontier..." and dedications to Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin. Very well done.
We'll start with the one thing I didn't like though; splitting Spock and Uhura up just to get them back together again is cheap. I'd call it a cheap way to increase drama, but it doesn't even do that; they barely spend any time together between the two scenes and Uhura, at least, has more pressing things to worry about. (Spock, on the other hand, gets a whole scene of going on about it to McCoy.)
I was also slightly disconcerted by just how much Chris Pine looks like the young Bill Shatner these days. So much so that I spent half the film worrying that I'd just forgotten what Shatner looked like, and was actually visualising Pine anyway. I'm sure it wasn't this pronounced in the last one. Maybe it's the hair.
Or maybe it's the uniform. Honestly, when he complained the little aliens ripped it, I was three-quarters expecting a big inverted-L tear (I suspect I may have been supposed to, but I'm not certain). It's an interesting amalgamation: the piping and metal insignia pin of the Rebootverse on the non-shiny, ordinary looking fabric of TOS. The other uniforms (the jacket things, the starbase personnel jumpsuits, the "After the NX-1, before the Kelvin" outfits of the Franklin crew) were also neat.
Speaking of the starbase, Yorktown is gorgeous. The design ethos seems to have been "We've got artificial gravity technology, so we can make this thing work however we want it to", And I loved the crowd scenes; lots of random aliens in both Federation civvies and Starfleet uniforms, not Everyone's Human Unless There's A Reason For Them Not To Be. (While it's great to see lots of new aliens, would a couple of Andorians been out of the question? I mean, they namechecked the Xindi War and MACOs, so obviously their wise decision to not base this story on a Preboot Universe one doesn't preclude the occasional background reference.)
Not only did Pine look more like Shatner, he also, IMO, acted more like Shatner's Kirk. I've had some sympathy for the viewpoint that Reboot Kirk isn't actually based on Captain James T. Kirk, as seen in Star Trek: The Original Series, but CAPTAIN KIRK! as seen in countless parodies and popculture osmosis. But this one seems to get it about right, ironically by giving us a Kirk who isn't sure he is the Captain James T. Kirk he's supposed to be. The bit about how he's now older than George was when he died, and isn't sure what happens next was nice, giving us a more subdued Kirk. (I suspect Bones's line about still having his eyesight was a nod to the bit in Wrath of Khan with the glasses. The one about still having his hair couldn't possibly be a reference to anything, obviously.)
The "Sulu and his husband" scene seemed a bit ... perfunctory. I mean, on the one hand, it's great that they don't a big deal out of it and it's just Something That Happens To Be The Case. That's absolutely the right call. But honestly, if they hadn't explained it in the pre-publicity, I'm not sure I'd have been entirely certain that he wasn't meeting his brother and his niece. There's surely a middle ground - straight relationships in films seem to manage it.
SIx paragraphs, and I haven't mentioned the actual plot. I thought it was brilliant All the main crew got something to do, and so did several minor crew (I was mildly disappointed that the young ensign - who had me thinking - "Oh, cool, she's an alien crewmember with a speaking part and there's no plot reason for her to be an alien" - turned out to in fact have a plot reason for being an alien, but it was a very clever one) and, of course, the new alien woman. There was a baddie with an unusual motive - a philosophical objection to the Federation as a concept. (Yes, it turns out this is born from a more conventional "revenge on the people who left me for dead" motive, but still.)
There was a very well choreographed all-in fight scene where half a dozen Chekhov's guns went off (the motorbike, the displacement illusions, the hardening smoke...) There were some great ship effects with the Enterprise crashing and the Franklin un-crashing. There was a suitably tense final confrontation (including one moment when I honestly thought Krall had been reminded of his humanity by Kirk's heroic sacrifice and was going to go the Redemption Equals Death route, but no). And there was a nice scene at the end where everyone reaffirms that they will be sticking together on the Enterprise-A. (In Spock's case, thanks to a photo of the original versions reminding him that that's what Ambassador Spock did.)
And then a joint "Space the final frontier..." and dedications to Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin. Very well done.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 01:03 am (UTC)I thought it was a very organic "revenge on the people who left me for dead" motive. Because it wasn't revenge. He didn't just resent that the Federation had become peaceful after his time, he resented the peace. He wanted to turn back the clock to the old days because he genuinely believed everybody would be better served by the environment that produced him. It was "this is for your own good".
You're right about the breakup. I said in 2009 that in the next one[s] I wanted to see the relationship developed without a breakup threatened. At least Kurtzman and Orci avoided that. The threatened breakup sprung from Spock's subplot, but it didn't have to. Instead of "We're breaking up" it could have been "Are there satisfactory options for you leaving and yet us not breaking up?" After all, the mere existence of Spock as a hybrid pretty much tells us that Spock doesn't have to be anywhere near New Vulcan for Federation reproductive science to help him contribute to the gene pool.
But I'm glad you liked it. So did I.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 10:56 am (UTC)Yeah. I put a spoiler warning in the cut tag, but it wasn't very obvious. I'll fix it now.
"He didn't just resent that the Federation had become peaceful after his time, he resented the peace."
Oh, yes, absolutely. When I said the one was born out of the other, I wasn't implying his belief Federation was weakening its citizens wasn't sincere. It's a very well-done multi-layered motive. And yeah, "revenge" is probably the wrong word.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 09:46 pm (UTC)