Star Trek: Into Darkness

[redbrunja]

Okay, before we get to the movie, why do people hate Benedict Cumberbatch? I know I am not a fan because I hate Sherlock but am pretty sure that's not why other people dislike him. That said,he was a terrible choice for Khan because even leaving aside the racism of white-washing the character, he does not have anything near the charisma needed to play off of Chris Pine.

My other two nit-picks are the the opening was both funny and skeevy as hell (I don't know how to articulate it and I might be being over-sensitive, but... I was skeeved out), the movie did not do a great job with the ladies, and I didn't understand how the Enterprise and Khan's ship could be the only two space ships in orbit around freaking EARTH.

Other than that, the movie was quippy, I really enjoyed Kirk's relationships with everyone. I definitely wanted more Kirk/Uhura BFF-ery and more Uhura/Spock in general (I feel liked that relationship needed one more really strong character beat, right at the end). I thought everyone got a chance to shine, I really liked the reversal of Kirk and Spock's roles from the original movies, and I greatly appreciate that the next movie isn't going to be 'Search for Kirk.'

Two additional thoughts:

1. In retrospect, I really dislike the time-travel element. I wish that they would have just done a clean reboot with this series and just given Leonard Nimoy a reoccuring cameo to show his support for the new films.


2. Goddamn, was there a lot of collateral/civilian deaths in this movie. Like, I was watching those buildings go down when Khan's ship crashed into buildings in the end, I was trying to figure out how many people must have been in them. And Kirk's 'no crewmembers dead' streak has been smashed to bits

Now I want to read ALL the Spock/Uhura.

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

What annoys me about mainstream cinema is that it sometimes has a tendency to cast brown actors as villains who are mindless thugs, whereas a lot of the white actors get roles where the villains are much more complex.

This is exactly why I would have really wanted to see an POC in Khan's role, and have them bump up the complexities and motivations of that character. Both the audience and Kirk are supposed to actually really like this guy.