what I liked most about J.J. Abrams\u2019s 2009 reboot<\/a> was its impudent intent to make everything new while remaining attentive to the basic enthusiasm for human possibility that made Gene Roddenberry\u2019s franchise linger for so long in the collective unconscious. (From one dedicated, mildly crazed TV show-runner to another\u2026) Abrams\u2019s follow-up, by contrast, seems content to use Kirk, Spock, Scotty and the rest as action figures that serve the corporate model for summer thrillers; most especially, the Great American Multiplex’s persistant yearning for revenge fantasies along with the attendant surges of explosions, kick-boxing, mass carnage and the obligatory, egregious deaths of beloved father figures. (Be warned: I\u2019m going to respect the \u201cNO SPOILERS\u201d mandate only so much. If you care that much about what happens in this movie, you\u2019ve had plenty of time to see for yourselves.)<\/p>\nTrue, I wasn\u2019t bored. Which surprises me since there was so little about In Darkness<\/em> that was new, either in the plot points germane to the Trek<\/em> mythos or in the usual heavy machinery assembled for standard-issue popcorn phantasmagoria. In fact, I bet the hard-core Trekkers (sic) had themselves a fine time pointing out all the scenes, set pieces and dialogue that had some connection with any and all of the varied Star Trek<\/em> TV shows and movies. I bet if they tried really hard — and, trust me, so many of them don\u2019t need to try \u2013 the SF-movie savants could point out references to other big-ticket movies in their favorite genre. Independence Day<\/em> cornered the market on such shamelessness, only no one to this day considers it shameless. (It\u2019s a classic, doncha know?) Whatever you call it, this sampling would be barely tolerable if it weren\u2019t offset by the pleasure you get from watching the cast settle into their retrofitted characters. Chris Pine\u2019s Kirk, though properly brash and impulsive, doesn\u2019t yet have the William Shatner strut, though he seems to be quietly assembling his own brand of hauteur to carry into future episodes. Zachary Quinto\u2019s Spock here shows more of the character\u2019s original diffidence; \u00a0of all the new actors, he’s the most thoroughly comfortable in his (tinted) skin. I still do not buy the office romance between Spock and Zoe Saldana\u2019s Uhura for a nanosecond, but I am loving how she\u2019s taking advantage of Trek<\/em> 2.0\u2019s greater breadth and depth of her character\u2019s conception. I wish there were much more of John Cho\u2019s rigorously circumspect Sulu, Anton Yelchin\u2019s super callow Chekov and Karl Urban\u2019s somewhat constrained Bones McCoy. I can\u2019t yet tell whether Abrams and his team aren\u2019t quite into the idea of McCoy, which would be a fatal mistake, or whether Urban doesn\u2019t yet have a handle on him. The writers do seem very fond of the idea of Scotty rendered by Simon Pegg as a puckish grump with overcompensation issues. The revision plays to Pegg\u2019s strengths and I\u2019m guessing this series has bigger plans for him than they do for Urban \u2013 which would, again, be a big mistake since\u00a0Trek’<\/em>s classic verities are rooted in the tug-of-war between\u00a0the hyper-passionate ship’s doctor and the coolly rational First Officer.<\/p>\nBut\u00a0I\u2019m no longer sure Abrams really cares about the foundations of the old Star Trek<\/em> as he does in critiquing, if not subverting Roddenberry\u2019s vision. Let me put it another way: Why bother doing the Khan story, not once, but twice? Is it just to show how you can build a better Enterprise? As much as we love these characters in action no matter who\u2019s playing them, it wasn\u2019t just who they were or what they did, but what they represented to us back in 1966: Hope for the future. We\u2019ve not only made it further out in space, but we seem to have managed to make ourselves better, smarter, more tolerant people. We figured out how to live together so well that we seem to be able to get along with people from other planets without being freaked out by the shape of their ears. Now what? That\u2019s what we came for every week. What do we do with this wider perception of our own humanity as we head out yonder? Just as important, what DON\u2019T we do? What is it about this expanded knowledge that keeps us from acting as stupid as some of the beings we encountered on this five-year mission, human or extraterrestrial?<\/p>\nThese are the kinds of questions we counted on science fiction to engage, if not necessarily answer. And while we dug watching Kirk and the crew in all those cool martial-arts matches with Klingons and Romulans, the action sequences were access points for the question we knew\u00a0Star Trek<\/em>\u00a0had to ask at some point every week: What does it mean to be human? Into Darkness<\/em> is into the action sequences, but they seem placed there to sustain our thirst for retribution, which the movies seem to have been exploiting ever since (I\u2019m going to say) 9\/11. We no longer seem interested in seeking new life and new civilizations, but in kicking ass and taking names of those bullies who slaughter innocents and blow up our buildings. This yearning for the big win over terror may be who we are. But is it who we want to be? If Abrams and his co-writers are serious about this five-year mission the Enterprise is about to begin, maybe they\u2019ll allow us to find out. But I don\u2019t hold a lot of hope about this. Maybe that\u2019s who I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IMMEDIATE REACTION: I had a good time. I expected to. I needed more. By now, unless you\u2019re sticking your fingers in your ears and going \u201cLa-la-la-la\u201d whenever somebody brings the matter up, you\u2019ve probably heard that Star Trek: Into Darkness is supposed to be a riff on 1982\u2019s The Wrath of Khan. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[235,231,230,233,227,241,226,228,237,234,229,240,232,238,225,239,236],"class_list":["post-711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-anton-yelchin","tag-bones-mccoy","tag-captain-kirk","tag-chris-pine","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-independence-day","tag-into-darkness","tag-j-j-abrams","tag-john-cho","tag-karl-urban","tag-mr-spock","tag-science-fiction","tag-scotty","tag-simon-pegg","tag-star-trek","tag-the-wrath-of-khan","tag-zoe-saldana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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