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- Aug 31, 2020
Into Darkness is actually how I found RedLetterMedia. At the time, I was wondering whether to go to the theater after I found diminishing returns remembering the 09 movie and looked for informative, negative reviews as negative reviews often go into the specifics while positive reviews tend to be general. I did see it a year later when I got a DVD gift.
As to Into Darkness itself, even if I didn't watch Wrath of Kahn, it's actually a master class of how NOT to write a screenplay and because we are on an exceptional site, I will try to explain exactly what RLM meant when they said it was a magic trick. I'm actually a little disappointed there was never a real Plinkett review for this movie because it definitely warrants it.
Opening scene
This entire sequence by itself has plotholes coming out of every orifice. So, the plan was for Kirk to lure the white people away from the volcano, but quickly shoots the getaway animal Bones was riding, thus forcing them to run away on foot. On a character level, it establishes Kirk as impulsive and kinda dumb. Meanwhile, Spock is suppose to freeze the volcano with the cold fusion device. Real science aside, I'm not entirely certain of what this thing actually does. Does it just freeze the volcano, which means all the sulfuric gas it was trying to release gets bottled up and transfer to the techtonic plates and cause massive earthquakes under the natives and potentially cause a Fukushima tsunami? Seeing as how the smog and ash would kill all the natives on the planet, I'm going to assume it's the size of Olympus Mons or greater. Or does it freeze all the molten magma down to the core of the planet, which shuts off the magnetosphere and thus all native life dies from solar radiation?
Fuck science, visuals are more important, says the movie. Then Scotty brings the ship out from under the sea even though floating in space is a far better hiding spot so that the natives can see the ship and worship it as its new god. Lulz, I guess. Even though we see that the away team has access to a shuttle that's been flying around since the beginning of this scene.
Act 1
Now, the movie insists that Kirk was right, but he does have to be punished by Admiral Pike, so Pike tells him he has to go back to the Academy, but because Pike is sentimental about Thor Kirk and insists that Kirk has potential, Kirk is merely demoted to commander and Pike's aide to the big meeting. Kirk's punishment is all over the place and only gets lightened because of Pike's nepotism. It isn't that he sympathizes with Kirk's decision making, but because he reminds him of his father. He shouldn't considering just how stupid Kirk is at planning, but Prime Directive strawman that we also see in later Kurtzman productions.
So, the big meeting happens and John Harrison shoots up the admiralty board in a gunship and Spock mind melds with Pike for no reason. Kirk gets to be captain again because of Admiral Robocop. Scotty is freaking out over loading 72 long range torpedoes. The argument gets bad enough for Kirk to fire Scotty and green midget alien over it. Kirk's motivation is to get Harrison, this is important to remember. So, they get to Q'onos and rip off a Millennium Falcon chase sequence and get caught by Klingons, but then Harrison saves the day and they get off-planet. Harrison is now under arrest and tells them that he's really Khan, which only makes the audience go WTF, not the characters and tells them of a secret base Admiral Robocop is running while we see Kirk visibly shaking in rage. Now, because 9/11 allegory, if you personally witness Bin Laden blow up the building you're in, you capture Bin Laden and interrogate him, and then Bin Laden tells you that President Bush is doing some shady shit in Guantanamo Bay, would you listen to Bin Laden or follow the orders you originally had?
Bones needs to have something to do, so he and Carol Marcus open up a torpedo and find a guy inside. I have no fucking clue why Admiral Robocop's plan would involve shooting Khan's people to Q'onos where the whole idea to get Khan to do his bidding is to hold on to these people as collateral. Just load these long range torpedoes with ordinance so that the explosions kill Khan and then dispose of the people back at the Starfleet base. I also wouldn't believe Bin Laden if he told me the reason the ship's engine's don't work is because Bush sabotaged me. The most credence I would give is if Chekov was fucking up, but that's a far cry from sabotage.
Act 2
So Kirk calls Scotty on his vastly outdated Nokia phone to investigate Kahn's lead even though he has no motivation to investigate. Scotty also doesn't have a motivation seeing as how he was fired, but then does anyways. Even though as a private citizen, he could be killed for trying to infiltrate a military base, but he gets in with no problems and sabotages the big black ship. Yes, there is a deleted scene where Scotty bullshits his way to the space traffic controller, but deleted scenes don't count. This sequence of events is an extremely contrived way to put Scotty in a place he shouldn't be narratively. Even though Star Trek III had a vastly superior reason why he was on the Excelsior. Anyways, Admiral Robocop wants Khan in his custody, but Kirk and Khan team up and board the Vengeance. Now, to continue with the 9/11 allegory, would you team up with Bin Laden to get President Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney/any Neo-con asshole when Bush gave you a lawful order to surrender Bin Laden? We call that treason. Also, the subtle threat of the Vengeance blowing up the Enterprise doesn't make sense since the idea was that the Klingons destroy it to create a Gulf of Tonkin situation. Marcus shooting the Enterprise doesn't make sense, but Kirk teaming up with a known terrorist gives him a reason. So, Khan overpowers the Vengeance crew, kills Admiral Robocop, and takes the Vengeance for himself.
Kirk is not a smart man.
Act 3
So Spock calls Old Spock even though he could be exchanging fire with the Vengeance for no reason and Old Spock doesn't have anything to say anyways. He does a switcheroo with the cryogenically frozen people and loads warheads onto the torpedoes instead of doing the more obvious hostage negotiation ploy. So both ships blow up and cause even more 9/11 damage to the city, but Kirk keeps the warp drive from blowing up by kicking it. Now, I have to talk about Wrath of Khan because Kirk's death scene here apes it with absolutely no understanding of how it functions. In WoK, the death scene is the falling action to the climax of that movie. The purpose of falling action is to slow the movie down and tie up loose ends. That's why WoK ends on a funeral and Kirk says he feels young again. Movie over. What happens in Into Darkness? Spock wants revenge and proceeds to chase Khan down. This movie is giving me a post-orgasm torture by ramping the pacing back up.* S&M fans might be down for that, but most people aren't. He doesn't get it because Uhura tells him that Khan's blood is needed to bring Kirk back to life because Bones was experimenting on Khan's blood with a tribble and it brings it back to life. Also, they got the bodies of Khan's people that also have magic blood. But no, it's got to be Khan's blood for no reason. So, instead of having the balls to kill off a lead character, this movie brings him back to life with the worst Orci/Kurtzman writing trope.
So, the big takeaway I got out of this movie other than rampant stupidity was JJ Abrams cuts necessary expository scenes that serve as connective tissue in favor of breakneck pacing. The cuts are so rampant that characters don't have the motivation necessary to do the things they need to do. Which TFA also suffers from to a lesser extent and TRoS... well that doesn't even qualify as a movie. That's why he's a hack fraud.
*This is also the reason why Lord of the Rings movies doesn't have the Scouring of the Shire. Having the hobbits fight of Saurman's remnants would have fucked with the pacing of Return of the King.
As to Into Darkness itself, even if I didn't watch Wrath of Kahn, it's actually a master class of how NOT to write a screenplay and because we are on an exceptional site, I will try to explain exactly what RLM meant when they said it was a magic trick. I'm actually a little disappointed there was never a real Plinkett review for this movie because it definitely warrants it.
Opening scene
This entire sequence by itself has plotholes coming out of every orifice. So, the plan was for Kirk to lure the white people away from the volcano, but quickly shoots the getaway animal Bones was riding, thus forcing them to run away on foot. On a character level, it establishes Kirk as impulsive and kinda dumb. Meanwhile, Spock is suppose to freeze the volcano with the cold fusion device. Real science aside, I'm not entirely certain of what this thing actually does. Does it just freeze the volcano, which means all the sulfuric gas it was trying to release gets bottled up and transfer to the techtonic plates and cause massive earthquakes under the natives and potentially cause a Fukushima tsunami? Seeing as how the smog and ash would kill all the natives on the planet, I'm going to assume it's the size of Olympus Mons or greater. Or does it freeze all the molten magma down to the core of the planet, which shuts off the magnetosphere and thus all native life dies from solar radiation?
Fuck science, visuals are more important, says the movie. Then Scotty brings the ship out from under the sea even though floating in space is a far better hiding spot so that the natives can see the ship and worship it as its new god. Lulz, I guess. Even though we see that the away team has access to a shuttle that's been flying around since the beginning of this scene.
Act 1
Now, the movie insists that Kirk was right, but he does have to be punished by Admiral Pike, so Pike tells him he has to go back to the Academy, but because Pike is sentimental about Thor Kirk and insists that Kirk has potential, Kirk is merely demoted to commander and Pike's aide to the big meeting. Kirk's punishment is all over the place and only gets lightened because of Pike's nepotism. It isn't that he sympathizes with Kirk's decision making, but because he reminds him of his father. He shouldn't considering just how stupid Kirk is at planning, but Prime Directive strawman that we also see in later Kurtzman productions.
So, the big meeting happens and John Harrison shoots up the admiralty board in a gunship and Spock mind melds with Pike for no reason. Kirk gets to be captain again because of Admiral Robocop. Scotty is freaking out over loading 72 long range torpedoes. The argument gets bad enough for Kirk to fire Scotty and green midget alien over it. Kirk's motivation is to get Harrison, this is important to remember. So, they get to Q'onos and rip off a Millennium Falcon chase sequence and get caught by Klingons, but then Harrison saves the day and they get off-planet. Harrison is now under arrest and tells them that he's really Khan, which only makes the audience go WTF, not the characters and tells them of a secret base Admiral Robocop is running while we see Kirk visibly shaking in rage. Now, because 9/11 allegory, if you personally witness Bin Laden blow up the building you're in, you capture Bin Laden and interrogate him, and then Bin Laden tells you that President Bush is doing some shady shit in Guantanamo Bay, would you listen to Bin Laden or follow the orders you originally had?
Bones needs to have something to do, so he and Carol Marcus open up a torpedo and find a guy inside. I have no fucking clue why Admiral Robocop's plan would involve shooting Khan's people to Q'onos where the whole idea to get Khan to do his bidding is to hold on to these people as collateral. Just load these long range torpedoes with ordinance so that the explosions kill Khan and then dispose of the people back at the Starfleet base. I also wouldn't believe Bin Laden if he told me the reason the ship's engine's don't work is because Bush sabotaged me. The most credence I would give is if Chekov was fucking up, but that's a far cry from sabotage.
Act 2
So Kirk calls Scotty on his vastly outdated Nokia phone to investigate Kahn's lead even though he has no motivation to investigate. Scotty also doesn't have a motivation seeing as how he was fired, but then does anyways. Even though as a private citizen, he could be killed for trying to infiltrate a military base, but he gets in with no problems and sabotages the big black ship. Yes, there is a deleted scene where Scotty bullshits his way to the space traffic controller, but deleted scenes don't count. This sequence of events is an extremely contrived way to put Scotty in a place he shouldn't be narratively. Even though Star Trek III had a vastly superior reason why he was on the Excelsior. Anyways, Admiral Robocop wants Khan in his custody, but Kirk and Khan team up and board the Vengeance. Now, to continue with the 9/11 allegory, would you team up with Bin Laden to get President Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney/any Neo-con asshole when Bush gave you a lawful order to surrender Bin Laden? We call that treason. Also, the subtle threat of the Vengeance blowing up the Enterprise doesn't make sense since the idea was that the Klingons destroy it to create a Gulf of Tonkin situation. Marcus shooting the Enterprise doesn't make sense, but Kirk teaming up with a known terrorist gives him a reason. So, Khan overpowers the Vengeance crew, kills Admiral Robocop, and takes the Vengeance for himself.
Kirk is not a smart man.
Act 3
So Spock calls Old Spock even though he could be exchanging fire with the Vengeance for no reason and Old Spock doesn't have anything to say anyways. He does a switcheroo with the cryogenically frozen people and loads warheads onto the torpedoes instead of doing the more obvious hostage negotiation ploy. So both ships blow up and cause even more 9/11 damage to the city, but Kirk keeps the warp drive from blowing up by kicking it. Now, I have to talk about Wrath of Khan because Kirk's death scene here apes it with absolutely no understanding of how it functions. In WoK, the death scene is the falling action to the climax of that movie. The purpose of falling action is to slow the movie down and tie up loose ends. That's why WoK ends on a funeral and Kirk says he feels young again. Movie over. What happens in Into Darkness? Spock wants revenge and proceeds to chase Khan down. This movie is giving me a post-orgasm torture by ramping the pacing back up.* S&M fans might be down for that, but most people aren't. He doesn't get it because Uhura tells him that Khan's blood is needed to bring Kirk back to life because Bones was experimenting on Khan's blood with a tribble and it brings it back to life. Also, they got the bodies of Khan's people that also have magic blood. But no, it's got to be Khan's blood for no reason. So, instead of having the balls to kill off a lead character, this movie brings him back to life with the worst Orci/Kurtzman writing trope.
So, the big takeaway I got out of this movie other than rampant stupidity was JJ Abrams cuts necessary expository scenes that serve as connective tissue in favor of breakneck pacing. The cuts are so rampant that characters don't have the motivation necessary to do the things they need to do. Which TFA also suffers from to a lesser extent and TRoS... well that doesn't even qualify as a movie. That's why he's a hack fraud.
*This is also the reason why Lord of the Rings movies doesn't have the Scouring of the Shire. Having the hobbits fight of Saurman's remnants would have fucked with the pacing of Return of the King.
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