Monday, June 17, 2013
Comment Archives: stories: Film: Reviews: Last 30 Days
Re: “Star Trek Into Darkness is a brutally brilliant film for our times”
I didn't like this film nearly as much as the first. It was formulated to provide continuous action and any of the character interaction that makes ST special was just incidental during heavy action where it garnered no laughs at all from the early-bird viewers I was with. "Star Trek Into Darkness" was designed to appeal to a mass audience, the lowest common denominator. From my perspective, that was a huge mistake for the future of Star Trek, but not for Abrams wallet.
I really enjoyed the first film because it did a great job at being a classic Star Trek reboot, bringing back the characters, their quirks, and their interrelationships which was a significant and important part of the original series.
This is a Star Trek that apparently needs explosions every ten minutes to keep the audience interested, most of whom are not Trekkers. Hot blonds and Kirk having threesomes and endless "booms, bangs, and pows!" is the equation for getting teen males in the seats and having the ridiculous love story between "NuSpock" and "NuUhura" gets the teen girls in the seats. Having Kirk act like a whiny emo kid keeps all of them in the seats because now they can identify with him. "Parents suck! LOL!"
This is a predictable formula action film with predictable formula dialog utilizing characters and even plot lines that someone else created mixed in with some great special effects. This is 180 degrees from what Roddenberry created: daring ideas, imaginative concepts and innovative characters and dialog with lackluster special effects, the best that they could do. CGI has allowed bubblegum where once intelligent plots were required.
Posted by
Bazinga!
on 05/22/2013 at 7:51 AM
Re: “The Purge confronts American violence, privilege and delusion”
Another plot ripoff (sigh). Remember the popular made-for-TV movie/series, "V?" "V" was just a plot ripoff of the novel, "The Greks Bring Gifts." And now we have "The Purge" - which is nothing more than a plot ripoff of the original series Star Trek episode, "Return Of The Archons." The difference? In the Star Trek episode, they called it "Festival" - and while "Festival" didn't last as long as "The Purge," it did happen more often.