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Brainstorming: Star Trek into Darkness
Okay, spoiler warnings apply - like major spoilers.
As you could probably gather from my previous post, I was rather skeptic about the movie but I was glad I went anyway. In fact, I found the movie so entertaining, I am wondering if I should go again while they still air the OT version here. BTW, wow the movie is not rated, not even FSK 6.
Oh, yeah and I started a fanfic ...
.
.
.
.
This time around, they really made Khan dangerous. And yes it is supposed to be the same Khan.
I know, some complain that again a white actor plays a non-white character but it was anyway a lose-lose situation. He does commit a few acts of terror, so if he had been played by a dark-skinned character that would have also created controversy.
Overall, the character was much better written than the original one, we actually saw him use his genetically engineered powers. He was physical menace, he build advanced weapons and a ship for rogue!Admiral and you believed he was smarter than average. Not that this was hard since reboot!Federation is obviously run by a bunch of total morons.
The plot reminded me a lot more of Insurrection, even though they used themes of Wrath of Khan (which were okay, I did not need them ...) Again, there were a lot of convenient oversights and other questionable element that got the plot rolling. It was not that distracting though.
The movie starts with a total unneccessary plot about Kirk disobeying rules, saving Spocks life and then getting demoted for a few minutes of film time ...
We have one act of terror, which by protocol demands all Starfleet captains, first officers and the admiral to gather in one room. Wow, starfleet does not have a lot of star ships to begin with by that sad ensemble. Their security sucks big time, the room gets blasted by Khan with some armed shuttle. Kirk is the only one in the meeting who asks any intelligent questions. He is also the only one who does anything useful about the attack. Even Spock is just doing nothing, except mind melting with the dying Pike (which is all kinds of fishy if you ask me ...)
At this point you already know if you pay attention, that something shady is going on with starfleet command or at least someone. However, Kirk's extraordinary perception and thinking skills are immediately gone once he is overcome with bloodlust and desire for vengeance after Pike dies.
Even though they barely can beam shit from a few feet away all through the movie, our main villain Khan managed to use Scotty's beaming technology (which despite inventing it, Scotty can not access anymore) to go to the Klingon Homeworld. Just go with it. Plot convenience is everything here. Just like they are always unable to communicate when it serves the plot and then are conveniently able to communicate again at long distance when they to call someone.
So, we don't even find if anyone else survived the massacre, we just see Spock, Kirk and the Admiral Marcus (that's the guy who is technically the grandfather of Kirk's son in the prime universe) played by RoboCop. We are told that they can not go after Khan as it would mean war with the Klingons.
Except Kirk totally can, he is the only one, he gets away with shit. And he knows it. No, he totally does, hewatched the other movies mind melted with the original Spock. Or maybe he just thinks he can play rogue!captain. Except he is lousy at it, but luckily it never really becomes an issue.
Admiral Marcus totally has some dubious new super torpedoes. 72 of them. However, when loading them on board, our chief - Scotty - tells Kirk that he won't sign off on them. They are too dangerous, cue techno blabla that sounds as if the warp reactor is short of falling apart any moment. But Kirk is still in full blownmoron revenge mode.
Spock tells him that their orders to fly to the neutral zone and bomb Khan's location from orbit is bullshit. (BTW, Khan is totally conveniently on an absolutely unpopulated area of the planet.) However, shortly after Scotty went off board, Kirk begins to cool down a bit and announces that they are going to bring Khan back for trial.
The crew is also joined by Dr. Wallace / Marcus, who is the admiral's daughter and snook on board to find out what her daddy dearest is up to.
The moment they reach the edge of Klingon space, the Enterprise breaks down. Chekhov now in charge has no clue what is going on and stammers he is going to find out sooner or later. Cute, no really, it's cute, just like Scotty's kicked puppy face after Kirk simply lets him resign.
They take a captured shuttle from some other fraction and then go on board sans uniforms and fly to Khan's location. (Except the two red-shirts on board totally don't have time to change anywhere but on the shuttle.) They are met by several Klingon ships and are forced to surrender.
But not before Uhura and Spock have it out on their current relationship troubles with Kirk chiming in. It actually is rather funny, even though considering Spock is reflecting upon the destruction of Vulcan is rather serious topic.
Just as our heroes seem to be really neck deep in trouble (Uhura is even neck-gripped by a Klingon) our villain swoops in and saves everyone's asses. That is a scene worth watching. This time around Khan is really superior. He mows down a bunch of Klingons, once he hears about the number of torpedoes, he surrenders to Kirk, Spock and Uhura. Which leads to another probably unintentionally funny scene when Kirk tries to beat the shit out of Khan.
Khan is barely phased by the blows and Kirk looks like he is going to pass out from exhaustion.
On the ship, Khan is not the least bit surprised that the ship is non functional. In fact, he confirms viewer's suspicions on something shady going on. He tells Kirk to have some coordinates checked out and to take a look at the torpedoes. With Kirk's brain functions kicking back in, the slowly begins to realise that something is not right when he does not get a reply about the capture of Khan.
So he phones Scotty who hangs out in some bar on earth. After telling him that Scotty was right, he gets him to check out the coordinates from Khan. Which lead him later to some space hangar around Saturn or some other planet in our system.
Anyway back on board, we get a strip scene from Carol Marcus. She and Bones go planet/asteroid side and open a torpedo. First it activates and then when Carol pulls out something it opens - revealing : guess what? Yep, one of Khan's genetically engineered war criminal buddies.
Note: These cryotubes are totally awesome - they still work after centuries, they are not close to breaking down and they are reusable!
So back to questioning Khan, who reveals that Admiral Marcus found the Botany Bay and resurrected Khan so he could build weapons for him. Using Khan's crew to blackmail him. Except Khan tricked him by putting his buddies in the torpedoes. The story gets a bit iffy there, as you wonder why he did not ressurrect them then and tried to get away. Maybe thawing up would have taken too long.
After he was found out, for reason's unknown, he was afraid that maybe Marcus had killed all of his crew. Hence the retaliation against the assembly earlier on - I call bullshit on this one. Then again, Khan wanted to get Kirk to trust him enough for phase 2 (or is already 3) of his plan so telling him that he wanted to take out starfleet's command structure was probably not a good idea. That aspect of the story remains pretty questionable (starfleet's incompetence there bothering me more than shady or not fully explained motives on Khan's side.)
Then Admiral RoboCop shows up and the viewer immediately knows he is totally going to kill everyone to cover up his shady warmongering business. He comes with his new ship, that is a totally bad ass warship. Again, convenient plot is convenient, when his daugther gets him to stop firing for a second, he beams her off the Enterprise through the shields.
But as the enterprise is about to get blasted out of space, the ship powers down. It's Scotty, he snuck on board and disabled the ship! Yeah! Aren't we glad that Admiral Moron employs only intellectually stunned steroid abusers? Believe me, the fact that his crewmen are idiots becomes relevant again.
Kirk realises he needs to get aboard the ship but the transporter banks are down for the time being. Even worse, they are out of coffee. No just kidding. Since Khan built the ship, he takes him along for the ride. They jump in space suits out of the ship and propell themselves through a field of debris to an airlock of the other ship.
Scotty is kind enough to let them in. At the last second, for drama's sake he has a discussion with steroid!guard about what he is doing in the hangar. When he is clearly an intruder, who is at the air lock controls, having wrapped a fire-hose around his arm that is tied to the console. The guard is sucked out of the ship while Kirk and Khan crash land into the hangar.
More cute fight scenes later, they reach the bridge. After they take out the admiral's evil minions, Scotty stuns Khan as ordered by Kirk. "And keep an eye on him" but the discussion between the Admiral, his daugther and Kirk is too fascinating. Scotty gets overpowered by Khan who was of course not stunned at all. Jim and Carol are beaten up pretty fast as well and Admiral Marcus gets his skull crushed.
Then with Jim as hostage, Khan demands that his crew is beamed on board his ship. Spocks bickers a bit about what guarantee they have that Khan will spare them. Khan simply says that he can also blast the ship so they lose the air while his people are protected. So Spock lowers the shields and Khan beams his people over and then Carol, Scotty and Jim back on the Enterprise.
Just as he is about to destroy the enterprise, the torpedoes self-destruct and Khan's ship gets severely damaged as well. But the Enterprise is for the garbage bin as well. Kirk remarks that killing all of Khan's people is a bit much but heh, in a few minutes they extracted all tubes from the torpedoes and everyone is still alive, just kind of frozen solid. You see Spock was conveniently able to contact his older self who told himself what treacherous, backstabbing maniac Khan is ...
Then we have the Enterprise pummeling down to earth, forcing Kirk to do the switcheroo and get radiation poison instead of Spock saving the Enterprise by fixing the core. Oh, yeah Kirk dies, Spock goes into berserk move. Guess what Khan is back, his ships dives into federation headquarters (nobody has any defense system there to shoot down ships, you known ... total lack of security wtf!)
Once the ship has crashed Khan jumps down. But they can not beam him up, so Spock goes after him because beaming down works. Fighting ensues, Khan conveniently not throws Spock off the moving transporter ships they fight on.
Anyway back on board the enterprise, not to anyone's suprise in the audience, the dead tribble injected with Khan's blood starts purring and they realise OMG, with Khan's blood we can totally revive Kirk! But Spock means business and they can not reach him. Yeah, they can phone from the klingon homeworld to earth but they can not reach Spock. Those TNG communicators are super awesome in hindsight, aren't they?
Uhura stops him from killing Khan, well after stopping Khan from killing Spock actually.
So in the end, Kirk is fine, Khan gets refrozen (thanks no AU!fanfic needed) and I keep thinking- what does that mean now Kirk is the highest ranking starfleet officer?)
As you could probably gather from my previous post, I was rather skeptic about the movie but I was glad I went anyway. In fact, I found the movie so entertaining, I am wondering if I should go again while they still air the OT version here. BTW, wow the movie is not rated, not even FSK 6.
Oh, yeah and I started a fanfic ...
.
.
.
.
This time around, they really made Khan dangerous. And yes it is supposed to be the same Khan.
I know, some complain that again a white actor plays a non-white character but it was anyway a lose-lose situation. He does commit a few acts of terror, so if he had been played by a dark-skinned character that would have also created controversy.
Overall, the character was much better written than the original one, we actually saw him use his genetically engineered powers. He was physical menace, he build advanced weapons and a ship for rogue!Admiral and you believed he was smarter than average. Not that this was hard since reboot!Federation is obviously run by a bunch of total morons.
The plot reminded me a lot more of Insurrection, even though they used themes of Wrath of Khan (which were okay, I did not need them ...) Again, there were a lot of convenient oversights and other questionable element that got the plot rolling. It was not that distracting though.
The movie starts with a total unneccessary plot about Kirk disobeying rules, saving Spocks life and then getting demoted for a few minutes of film time ...
We have one act of terror, which by protocol demands all Starfleet captains, first officers and the admiral to gather in one room. Wow, starfleet does not have a lot of star ships to begin with by that sad ensemble. Their security sucks big time, the room gets blasted by Khan with some armed shuttle. Kirk is the only one in the meeting who asks any intelligent questions. He is also the only one who does anything useful about the attack. Even Spock is just doing nothing, except mind melting with the dying Pike (which is all kinds of fishy if you ask me ...)
At this point you already know if you pay attention, that something shady is going on with starfleet command or at least someone. However, Kirk's extraordinary perception and thinking skills are immediately gone once he is overcome with bloodlust and desire for vengeance after Pike dies.
Even though they barely can beam shit from a few feet away all through the movie, our main villain Khan managed to use Scotty's beaming technology (which despite inventing it, Scotty can not access anymore) to go to the Klingon Homeworld. Just go with it. Plot convenience is everything here. Just like they are always unable to communicate when it serves the plot and then are conveniently able to communicate again at long distance when they to call someone.
So, we don't even find if anyone else survived the massacre, we just see Spock, Kirk and the Admiral Marcus (that's the guy who is technically the grandfather of Kirk's son in the prime universe) played by RoboCop. We are told that they can not go after Khan as it would mean war with the Klingons.
Except Kirk totally can, he is the only one, he gets away with shit. And he knows it. No, he totally does, he
Admiral Marcus totally has some dubious new super torpedoes. 72 of them. However, when loading them on board, our chief - Scotty - tells Kirk that he won't sign off on them. They are too dangerous, cue techno blabla that sounds as if the warp reactor is short of falling apart any moment. But Kirk is still in full blown
Spock tells him that their orders to fly to the neutral zone and bomb Khan's location from orbit is bullshit. (BTW, Khan is totally conveniently on an absolutely unpopulated area of the planet.) However, shortly after Scotty went off board, Kirk begins to cool down a bit and announces that they are going to bring Khan back for trial.
The crew is also joined by Dr. Wallace / Marcus, who is the admiral's daughter and snook on board to find out what her daddy dearest is up to.
The moment they reach the edge of Klingon space, the Enterprise breaks down. Chekhov now in charge has no clue what is going on and stammers he is going to find out sooner or later. Cute, no really, it's cute, just like Scotty's kicked puppy face after Kirk simply lets him resign.
They take a captured shuttle from some other fraction and then go on board sans uniforms and fly to Khan's location. (Except the two red-shirts on board totally don't have time to change anywhere but on the shuttle.) They are met by several Klingon ships and are forced to surrender.
But not before Uhura and Spock have it out on their current relationship troubles with Kirk chiming in. It actually is rather funny, even though considering Spock is reflecting upon the destruction of Vulcan is rather serious topic.
Just as our heroes seem to be really neck deep in trouble (Uhura is even neck-gripped by a Klingon) our villain swoops in and saves everyone's asses. That is a scene worth watching. This time around Khan is really superior. He mows down a bunch of Klingons, once he hears about the number of torpedoes, he surrenders to Kirk, Spock and Uhura. Which leads to another probably unintentionally funny scene when Kirk tries to beat the shit out of Khan.
Khan is barely phased by the blows and Kirk looks like he is going to pass out from exhaustion.
On the ship, Khan is not the least bit surprised that the ship is non functional. In fact, he confirms viewer's suspicions on something shady going on. He tells Kirk to have some coordinates checked out and to take a look at the torpedoes. With Kirk's brain functions kicking back in, the slowly begins to realise that something is not right when he does not get a reply about the capture of Khan.
So he phones Scotty who hangs out in some bar on earth. After telling him that Scotty was right, he gets him to check out the coordinates from Khan. Which lead him later to some space hangar around Saturn or some other planet in our system.
Anyway back on board, we get a strip scene from Carol Marcus. She and Bones go planet/asteroid side and open a torpedo. First it activates and then when Carol pulls out something it opens - revealing : guess what? Yep, one of Khan's genetically engineered war criminal buddies.
Note: These cryotubes are totally awesome - they still work after centuries, they are not close to breaking down and they are reusable!
So back to questioning Khan, who reveals that Admiral Marcus found the Botany Bay and resurrected Khan so he could build weapons for him. Using Khan's crew to blackmail him. Except Khan tricked him by putting his buddies in the torpedoes. The story gets a bit iffy there, as you wonder why he did not ressurrect them then and tried to get away. Maybe thawing up would have taken too long.
After he was found out, for reason's unknown, he was afraid that maybe Marcus had killed all of his crew. Hence the retaliation against the assembly earlier on - I call bullshit on this one. Then again, Khan wanted to get Kirk to trust him enough for phase 2 (or is already 3) of his plan so telling him that he wanted to take out starfleet's command structure was probably not a good idea. That aspect of the story remains pretty questionable (starfleet's incompetence there bothering me more than shady or not fully explained motives on Khan's side.)
Then Admiral RoboCop shows up and the viewer immediately knows he is totally going to kill everyone to cover up his shady warmongering business. He comes with his new ship, that is a totally bad ass warship. Again, convenient plot is convenient, when his daugther gets him to stop firing for a second, he beams her off the Enterprise through the shields.
But as the enterprise is about to get blasted out of space, the ship powers down. It's Scotty, he snuck on board and disabled the ship! Yeah! Aren't we glad that Admiral Moron employs only intellectually stunned steroid abusers? Believe me, the fact that his crewmen are idiots becomes relevant again.
Kirk realises he needs to get aboard the ship but the transporter banks are down for the time being. Even worse, they are out of coffee. No just kidding. Since Khan built the ship, he takes him along for the ride. They jump in space suits out of the ship and propell themselves through a field of debris to an airlock of the other ship.
Scotty is kind enough to let them in. At the last second, for drama's sake he has a discussion with steroid!guard about what he is doing in the hangar. When he is clearly an intruder, who is at the air lock controls, having wrapped a fire-hose around his arm that is tied to the console. The guard is sucked out of the ship while Kirk and Khan crash land into the hangar.
More cute fight scenes later, they reach the bridge. After they take out the admiral's evil minions, Scotty stuns Khan as ordered by Kirk. "And keep an eye on him" but the discussion between the Admiral, his daugther and Kirk is too fascinating. Scotty gets overpowered by Khan who was of course not stunned at all. Jim and Carol are beaten up pretty fast as well and Admiral Marcus gets his skull crushed.
Then with Jim as hostage, Khan demands that his crew is beamed on board his ship. Spocks bickers a bit about what guarantee they have that Khan will spare them. Khan simply says that he can also blast the ship so they lose the air while his people are protected. So Spock lowers the shields and Khan beams his people over and then Carol, Scotty and Jim back on the Enterprise.
Just as he is about to destroy the enterprise, the torpedoes self-destruct and Khan's ship gets severely damaged as well. But the Enterprise is for the garbage bin as well. Kirk remarks that killing all of Khan's people is a bit much but heh, in a few minutes they extracted all tubes from the torpedoes and everyone is still alive, just kind of frozen solid. You see Spock was conveniently able to contact his older self who told himself what treacherous, backstabbing maniac Khan is ...
Then we have the Enterprise pummeling down to earth, forcing Kirk to do the switcheroo and get radiation poison instead of Spock saving the Enterprise by fixing the core. Oh, yeah Kirk dies, Spock goes into berserk move. Guess what Khan is back, his ships dives into federation headquarters (nobody has any defense system there to shoot down ships, you known ... total lack of security wtf!)
Once the ship has crashed Khan jumps down. But they can not beam him up, so Spock goes after him because beaming down works. Fighting ensues, Khan conveniently not throws Spock off the moving transporter ships they fight on.
Anyway back on board the enterprise, not to anyone's suprise in the audience, the dead tribble injected with Khan's blood starts purring and they realise OMG, with Khan's blood we can totally revive Kirk! But Spock means business and they can not reach him. Yeah, they can phone from the klingon homeworld to earth but they can not reach Spock. Those TNG communicators are super awesome in hindsight, aren't they?
Uhura stops him from killing Khan, well after stopping Khan from killing Spock actually.
So in the end, Kirk is fine, Khan gets refrozen (thanks no AU!fanfic needed) and I keep thinking- what does that mean now Kirk is the highest ranking starfleet officer?)