{"id":11168,"date":"2013-05-17T19:16:38","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T09:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11168"},"modified":"2015-02-15T11:44:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T01:44:34","slug":"star-trek-ii-into-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11168","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek II: Into Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"startrekintodarknessposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>JJ Abrams
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana<\/p>\n

J<\/span>J Abram’s Star Trek<\/em> in 2009 was a successful rebooting<\/a> of a dormant franchise that was ripe for revival.\u00a0 Abrams astutely brought Star Trek<\/em> back from the dead by injecting the film with youth, shedding the lore of over four decades of material and keeping diehards happy with spades of fan service.\u00a0 It was a recipe for success that won over a new audience and made the film a box office success.<\/p>\n

With Into Darkness<\/em>, Abrams returns for a second bite at the cherry.\u00a0 This time, he delivers his own take on Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan<\/em>, one of the most critically acclaimed and well loved installments of the original series.<\/p>\n

Taking the mantle of the genetically superior space nazi Khan is Benedict Cumberbatch.\u00a0 Cumberbatch is a worthy actor who has an intense screen presence and he needs none of Ricardo Montalban’s flamboyant costumes or ridiculous accent to hold your attention.\u00a0 His motives are tweaked from Wrath of Khan<\/em> but he is still driven by a single minded thirst for vengeance.<\/p>\n

As for the crew of the Enterprise, all the familiar faces are back again.\u00a0 Spock is dating Uhura, Scotty still plays the part of comic relief and Kirk is the lovable womanizing scamp that William Shatner made so famous.<\/p>\n

When Khan orchestrates a terrorist attack on Earth and kills a handful of Starfleet captains, Kirk and his team are tasked with chasing Khan to the edge of the Neutral Zone and into Klingon territory, in order to wipe him out.\u00a0 It is a difficult assignment and failure to carry out the mission with great discression risks starting a war with the hostile Klingons.<\/p>\n

\"startrek22\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What follows is an exhaustive two hour action film.\u00a0 There are plenty of fire fights, explosions, chase sequences and space battles.\u00a0 In between, we are fed plenty of famous Star Trek<\/em> one-liners (“Dammit Jim”) and in-jokes (I liked the reluctance of unnamed crew to wear red shirts).<\/p>\n

Ultimately, when the credits rolled, I felt a sense of diminishing returns and mild disappointment.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong: this is not a bad<\/em> film.<\/p>\n

It is however, starting to get away from what I think should differentiate Star Trek<\/em> from the rest of the sci-fi genre.\u00a0 I thought the first film did a good job of modernizing McCoy, Spock, Uhura and Scotty whilst still being faithful to the original characters.\u00a0 With\u00a0Into Darkness<\/em>, they are reduced to being caricatures with very little to do.\u00a0 Only Kirk is allowed an ounce of character development.<\/p>\n

Without necessarily being a big fan of the original series, I could still identify that its most distinctive and laudable themes were those of intellectual curiousity, optimism and open mindedness.\u00a0 Abram’s Star Trek<\/em> universe on the other hand is louder, brasher and dumber.\u00a0 The climactic sequence in this film features Spock, famous for his impassive emotion and calculating logic, chasing down Khan and engaging in him in a ten minute long fist fight<\/em>.\u00a0 If JJ Abrams is going to direct Star Wars<\/em> in a couple of years times, why does this film need to be Die Hard<\/em> In Space?<\/p>\n

Star Trek II: Into Darkness<\/em> is a pretty good action film.\u00a0 I just don’t think it’s a very good Star Trek<\/em> film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Khan Do<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[963,1625,194,1626,193,1623,1624,2171,2170],"class_list":["post-11168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-chris-pine","tag-into-darkness","tag-jj-abrams","tag-spock","tag-star-trek","tag-star-trek-ii","tag-wrath-of-khan","tag-zachary-quinto","tag-zoe-saldana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11168"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17124,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11168\/revisions\/17124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}