Ryan McNeil
It’s important to revisit a story every once in a while. The way our lives bring upon new changes every day, it’s entirely possible that we could see something in a story we never saw before. What’s that saying about those that don’t learn from history? Whether a story is a fictional yarn or a historical document, it can illuminate, and can even come with added context after the passing of time. It’s this added context that adds great value to their telling – and retelling.
Fair warning: While I usually try to keep my reviews spoiler-free, the marketing of this film has made that impossible. Proceed with caution.
Our film begins on the planet of Nibiru, where Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), Doctor McCoy (Karl Urban), and Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) are trying to save an indigenous population from a natural disaster. The mission doesn’t quite go as planned, but it teaches Kirk a valuable lesson – one he doesn’t want to learn. When Spock is put in peril, and his rescue sparks consequences, Kirk is taught that the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the one.
Shortly after the crew returns from Nibiru, news of a terrorist attack in London shocks The Star Federation. The target was a Federation archive, and the perpetrator is John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) – a former Starfleet agent. When The Federation gathers to investigate the terrorist act, things go from bad to worse, and The Enterprise quickly finds itself tasked with capturing Harrison and bringing him in. To make sure they do, the starship is quickly outfitted with more than seventy photon torpedoes to give it extra muscle.
When the ship finally catches up with Harrison, news of the torpedoes strikes a chord. He surrenders willingly and is taken prisoner aboard The Enterprise. It’s there that he begins to show his hand. His name isn’t John Harrison after all – it’s Khan.
It would seem that by capturing the one, The Enterprise has provided security for the many…provided they have captured the right one.
What immediately jumps out when watching STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is the way the scale of the film has drastically increased in four years. The obvious starting point is JJ Abrams’ use of IMAX to film sequences like the flight from Nibiru, and the final foot chase in San Francisco (amongst others). The larger palette allows the audience to really feel dwarfed by what they are seeing – apropos for a story about man’s place in the universe. But even when the action is caught on a 35mm frame, everything from the battles, to the sets, to the worlds the film visits feel so much grander than they did in 2009.
It’s as if the previous film had audiences watch a beautiful car get built, and now we’re ready to sit shotgun as it hits the open road.
The opening scene of INTO DARKNESS touches on an interesting theme. The mission is one where direct involvement will have serious repercussions, so the overarching objective is to assist without identifiable involvement. It’s a situation that pops up time and again in our history, where one body helped another because of a greater good. The intention could be monetary, it could be political, sometimes – often actually – it’s both. Even though we have seen time ad again that there is no such thing as “quietly supporting” one side of a situation, we continue to do so.
Where Nibiru is concerned, the fallout is minor – they’ve just had a change in religious dogma. Back on the planet we call home, the fallout can be much greater. It can cost lives, enable tyranny, and cause resentment amongst those who feel they were used. This is the best part of Khan’s whole character.
The saying goes that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Maybe it’s not that simple, nor was it ever that simple. Maybe when people choose a side, they are really looking out for themselves, and thus these uneasy alliances are future battles just waiting to be fought. Khan is not, nor was he ever, someone The Federation should have put any trust in. However, their rising tensions in the face of The Klingons make them put that aside for their own gains. Khan’s involvement has repercussions: ripples caused by the hopes of a greater good, and made all the worse by self-interest.
Where this film lags behind its previous chapter is in inventiveness. While all of its themes are interesting, and every bit of its execution admirable, it is very much a copy of something that has already been done in the Star Trek universe. While it’s not a full-on remake, it might as well be since it touches enough of the bases on the way around. In many ways, it does what it does as well as one could hope. With Hollywood seemingly obsessed with remakes nowadays, many projects could learn from what Star Trek has done here. However, as well as it achieves what it has, it seems curious to retell a previously known chapter in Trek lore when the first film in this series took such pains to re-establish the timeline.
The filmmakers could have done anything, so why do something that’s already been done?
My only guess to that end goes back to my earlier note about scale. Perhaps it wasn’t just that Abrams et al wanted to take their turn telling one of the canon’s most beloved stories, perhaps they wanted to tell it on a larger scale than it was told thirty-one years ago. Admittedly, filmmaking techniques and effects have evolved since then – but perhaps this revisit is about more than that. Perhaps its a way to give the beloved story an added sense of scope, and with that, up the stakes.
To that end – remake or not – this retelling of a particular chapter in the Star Trek legend is a success.
“It’s as if the previous film had audiences watch a beautiful car get built, and now we’re ready to sit shotgun as it hits the open road.” – I really liked that line. That’s a good way to describe this. I had a good time watching this.
Thanks – I *was* pretty proud of that.
I’ll agree that this film introduces some interesting ideas, but I think it squanders most of them before the last act. Also, the whole twist of the last act is cheap, manipulative tool to skirt past the stakes of the film and cheapens the relationship between Kirk and Spock. At least the film it’s remaking had more guts in this category.
I appreciated that this film tried to be more thoughtful than it’s predecessor, but I found it essentially devolved to another mindless popcorn flick masquerading in colors that represent something far more intelligent than Abrams and Crew seem able to bring to the screen.