Into Daftness

Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine get Trek-ish in Into Darkness.

««« Star Trek Into Darkness. Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof . Directed by J.J. Abrams. At area theaters.

         

It’s been four long years since J.J. Abrams re-launched the Star Trek movie franchise. This is a gap lengthier than the original TV series lasted on the air. Whatever the reason for the lapse, it had the effect of raising expectations for the follow-up. Trek, after all, was never meant to be just another popcorn actioner. The intelligence of the show’s themes, and how the characters embodied it, has done more than entertain several generations—it’s inspired them. Successful as #1 was in recasting the characters and updating the series’ look, would #2 finally manage to capture the qualities that made it worth reviving?

          In more than a word: no—and yes. Much like the first Abrams Trek, Into Darkness is entertainment at warp speed, a thrill ride with virtually no slack moments. Again, the script by Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof pits the inexperienced Enterprise crew against a powerful madman who presents an existential threat against America…I mean, the Federation. Since it’s impossible to summarize the story without spoiling it, suffice it to say that the villain “John Harrison” (Benedict Cumberbatch) starts out as something like an Oxbridge terrorist, but becomes a threat that is already very familiar to Trek fans. Indeed, the final twenty minutes or so of Into Darkness is outright homage to one of the seminal moments in the show’s history. It hard to see this as anything other than a big juicy bone for the fans, who are likely to watch it in states of transported bliss.

          On The Daily Show last week, Abrams (Lost, Super 8) admitted that he never really liked Star Trek until he was hired to remake it. Though this worried many fans, there’s an argument for entrusting the franchise to someone who won’t approach it in a haze of reverence, but force it to evolve. Whatever Abrams’ strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker, he’s shrewd, and he knows his audience—or in Trek’s case, his two audiences. Into Darkness is more or less engineered to appeal first to the non-fans who will make it a hit, and second to the fans who will make it legit. By these limited standards, mission accomplished. If you’re not a fan of the show, add a half-star to this review and read no further. 
            But all is not fine in the Federation. The problems start with a script that, like a mirage, becomes less solid the more you focus on it. Too often Abrams & Co. opt for the "kinda cool" choice over the sensical one. Have the Enterprise hide out underwater from a planet’s Stone Age natives? That's kinda cool—until you recall that the ship can hide just as well in orbit, as it has for about 50 years of Trek history. Have Harrison escape from Earth by transporting straight to the Klingon home planet? Sounds kinda cool. But why invest in all those costly starships when you can just beam people around the galaxy? Indeed, why send the Enterprise to capture Harrison at all, when you can just beam a posse after him?

          Give Spock (Zachary Quinto) an ongoing love interest with Uhura (Zoe Saldana)? Sounds kinda cool—unless you remember that Spock's sex appeal has always been tied in with his torment, his loneliness among his human crewmates. Having him canoodle on the bridge with his girlfriend is cute, but it leaves him nowhere to go when he finally does break out of his emotional cage (as in the original episodes “The Naked Time,”, "Amok Time" and "This Side of Paradise"). Muddling Spock's character is doubly suspect because it apparently has much to do with giving Saldana's Uhura character more to do than declare "Hailing frequencies open". Since when in the Star Trek universe does Uhura’s love life get more emphasis than the rivalry between Spock and McCoy (played again by a sadly underused Karl Urban)?

          These bits of daftness are in just the first half of the film. The bigger problem is that we really didn’t wait four years for a homage that is merely Trek-ish. The 2009 film was likewise heavy on combat, but light on the humanistic themes that motivated Gene Roddenberry to create the original show. Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk was less a serious soldier-explorer than a jumped-up frat boy way out of his depth in a captain’s chair. We were willing to overlook these flaws, though, because Abrams had a lot on his plate then, making us accept a wholly new cast.

          This installment hardly begins to redeem that promise. Pine brings a whiff of gravitas to Kirk this time, but only a whiff, and never enough to get him ejected from the fraternity. There’s a hint of a serious theme in the way Starfleet responds to terrorism, choosing to take out Harrison by long distance bombardment, Al-Awlaki-style. But the thread is undeveloped, and ends up seeming more symptomatic of our times than reflecting on them.

          In this, Into Darkness is much like the crowd-pleasing but shallow James Franco reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise—the effects are better, but the brains are left behind. And that’s no way to boldly go. 

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro