Review of Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) by Mcparadigm — 18 May 2013

JJ Abrams continues to be the quintessential factory-farm movie guy. He doesn't want to create his own voice, so much as he wants to show you how remarkably well he can mimicking Spielberg at his mid-80's peak.

It's a different era, though, and the attention spans aren't what they were, so no plot point is considered too significant to interrupt the action for more than one or two minutes.

Basically, this is a fun movie that has nothing to do with what Star Trek was. It's a mindless summer thrill ride in every sense of the word but one...the actors are seriously in it to win it this time around (and good for them...they shine). There's nothing wrong with being a mindless thrill ride, of course. My only real complaint is that I miss, beyond any hope of communication, the days before CGI.

This isn't because I think effects looked better, back then, but because creating special effects within the primary filming process required directors to think about something other than "How cool can you make it look, my software junky slave labor crew?" These days, the characters can destroy an entire city center, wiping out innumerable lives, and then sprint barely half a city block over to continue the fight in a place where the populace is still casually strolling to work and where the glass isn't even cracked. It separates you from the film.

And why do lazy mistakes like this happen? Because the director thinks you're an idiot? No....because the special effects are a far greater and more invasive component to the film than they ever could have been twenty-five years ago, but they are often no more a part of the discussion when plotting out the story than they were at that time.

The other thing that struck me is that Abrams tried to engage Star Trek in this movie simply by using sense memory (visuals and audio reminiscent of the past) and by copy-pasting text from older movies. That's fine, when you're making a reboot movie that can easily be deleted from the "fan canon" later on and carries no franchisal threat....but I sure hope he doesn't take the same approach when he makes Star Wars. That brand may be at the point where anything is up, but if Abrams brings it up from prequel level to "Into Darkness" level, then he's missed a real opportunity.