STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS: The Bromance of Kirk and Spock

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) – Directed by J.J. Abrams – Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban, John Cho, Alice Eve, Simon Pegg, Peter Weller, Anton Yelchin, and Bruce Greenwood.

Here’s the deal, readers. SPOILERS follow. Lots and lots of spoilers follow. I don’t hold anything back, so don’t read forward if you don’t want to read a full discussion. One last time, SPOILERS AHEAD.

For the love of Odin, will someone give Captain Kirk a man hug?

Because if no one gives him a hug, he’s likely to steal an object of worship from a non-industrialized society, drop his first officer into a volcano, violate the Prime Directive to save said first officer, file a false report, get demoted, get almost instantly promoted, fire his Chief of Engineering, almost start a war with the Klingons, side with a war criminal, put his damaged ship on a collision course with Earth, and then commit certain suicide by sacrificing himself to save said ship just so his best friend in the whole world will confess his bro love for him.

It’s a bit exhausting and STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS gets a bit exhausting in the final act; this is a film that is both highly enjoyable and oddly frustrating, a film that encourages you to not think by giving you a headache whenever you do. INTO DARKNESS comes from the Abrams/Lindelof/Orci/Kurtzman stable and it feels more like a Lindelof film in that narrative logic is sacrificed at the altar of emotional logic. Such a process can work beautifully, but it is storytelling as the mechanism of grand illusion and Damon Lindelof is its Grand Master.

I’m pretty sure you could write the entire screenplay of INTO DARKNESS in an afternoon. This is a film with big CGI pieces, a bit of yelling, and very little story. One of the things I loved about Abrams first STAR TREK film (links to all my STAR TREK reviews can be found at the Star Trek Index page) was how it felt like everyone had a purpose for being there, that every character was an actual person in their own right. I found this to be an immense improvement over the old days, which I have chided for being The Adventures of Kirk, Spock, and the People Who Push Buttons. Unfortunately, we’re right back to the old days. INTO DARKNESS is a movie about the bromance between Kirk and Spock and the People Who Say 4 Things Apiece. Bones, Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu are here either to further the Kirk/Spock bro issues or handle the plot things that Kirk and Spock can’t do in that moment, like handling an engineering crisis or talking to the bad guys on the viewscreen phone or flirting with a new female officer. Only Scotty feels like an actual other character, which has nothing to do with the importance of Scotty and everything to do with the importance of being Simon Pegg.

Lindelof seems to care little for the narrative logic of his stories, and so INTO DARKNESS has little narrative logic. When it’s revealed that the bad guy isn’t actually a guy named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) but a guy named Khan, Spock’s “logical” decision isn’t to check the Enterprise’s data banks, but to call Original Spock (Leonard Nimoy) just to ask him if he’s ever heard of a guy named Khan.

Just so we’re all clear: the Enterprise doesn’t have the internet but it does have a direct line to Spock’s secret hideout.

Just so we’re all clear #2: to get information, Spock’s decision is to call a dude from ANOTHER TIMELINE.

Lindelof’s scripts (and whatever the actual breakdown of writing credit, this feels most like a Lindelof script) tend to favor the emotional logic (and yes, those terms are often at cross purposes). All of this madness and chaos and destruction is a result of Kirk wanting Spock to admit he is, and will always be, his bro. And let me be clear – I know it sounds like I’m dogging Lindelof, but I usually enjoy the movies created around his stories quite a bit. I like INTO DARKNESS, but it’s not a smart movie and it’s not a strong screenplay. Compare INTO DARKNESS against Joss Whedon’s Avengers, and Lindelof comes off like a guy in danger of failing Whedon’s film class. Whedon gave every Avenger an arc in the movie – not huge arcs, necessarily, but everyone had a beginning, middle, and end that was separate from the film’s beginning, middle, and end. Lindelof either isn’t smart enough to do that or doesn’t care to do that or is working for people who don’t want him to do that. Whatever the case, those individual arcs don’t make it into the script. How is Uhura or Scotty or Sulu or Chekov or Bones different at the end of the film than they were at the beginning? They have experiences and they perform admirably, but they are all secondary to Kirk and Spock’s evolving friendship.

James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) love each other deeply, but while Kirk is willing to commit to Spock, Spock keeps getting cold feet. He loves Kirk back, but he loves him so much that he can’t allow himself to love him or else he might hurt his wittle feewings. (This is the way I feel about Hostess Fruit Pies.) What we have in STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is two immature dudes involved in a serious enough bromance that they prove they’re bro love to each other by adopting the other’s main attribute: the emotional bro (Kirk) is willing to think logically and the logical bro (Spock) is compelled to act emotionally: Kirk’s act of bro love is to not fire any of the Enterprise‘s 72 missiles in order to kill one dude, while Spock’s act of devotion is to try and kill that same dude all by himself. For Kirk and Spock to come to a mutually contented location of bro love, all we have to experience is lots and lots of mass destruction.

To the disappointment of slashers and shippers everywhere, Kirk and Spock’s relationship contains none of the homoerotic playfulness of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law’s Sherlock and Watson. It’s just an actual, if emotionally disconnected friendship. In the service of telling this story, however, the women in their lives are pushed to the background. While Kirk is shown in bed with a pair of “cat women,” he shows nothing more than a passing interest in Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve). I don’t know which is the bigger surprise – that Kirk barely looks at her when she strips down to her undies or that he completely misses the fact she bluffs her way onto the ship for the uber-important mission to kill John Harrison, who’s hiding out on a Klingon planet.

That’s right – on a hugely important mission, Carol Marcus sneaks aboard the Enterprise by calling herself Carol Wallace and hitching a ride in Kirk and Spock’s shuttle. Later, Spock realizes this but doesn’t say anything because in a Lindelof script, even the most logical of characters is a f*cking moron forced to adhere to the needs to the script.

Carol is a new character and the script gives her some things to do, and there’s no reason why it has to put her and Kirk into a flirtatious relationship, but she doesn’t do much of anything else, either. Her whole reason for being here is the “big” reveal that she’s the daughter of Starfleet Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller). She gets a nice scene with Bones (Karl Urban) but that’s what INTO DARKNESS does instead of giving people an actual arc – they get a scene so people leave the theater going, “Oh yes, Carol had a scene with Bones and the missle and Sulu got to sit in the captain’s chair and Chekov said funny words in engineering and Bones did a, ‘I’m a Doctor’ line and Uhura got emotional over Spock 17 times.” But little of it means anything.

It’s a grand illusion – there’s little story, little movement, little nuance. INTO DARKNESS is bright and loud and fun and the cast gives great performances in nothing roles. Everyone, in fact, is good at their job: the cast, the crew, the effects people, the director, and even the writers, but the sum of their talents is far inferior to their last effort with the TREK franchise. If the goal is to give you two hours of fun at the movie theater, they succeeded, but almost all of it (and definitely everything non-Kirk and Spock related) is just done to hit you in the eyeballs and then move on to the next thing: Kirk disobeys the Prime Directive! Kirk is demoted! Robocop! Pike is killed! Kirk is promoted! Mickey! Sherlock! Kirk is going to kill Harrison! Tribble! Harrison is Khan! Nimoy! Super Big Enterprise painted black! Spock yells, “Khan!” instead of Kirk! Kirk dies instead of Spock!

In fact, when Khan is Harrison, he’s psychologically interesting. When Khan is Khan, he just punches and kicks people. Blah.

If I think about this movie as a story, it’s a wreck, but if I just want escapism, it’s a pretty good time. But just pretty good. It’s not a great time because so many of the character moments that I loved about the first movie are completely missing here. The best parts of INTO DARKNESS are the small moments when Kirk and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) commiserating over Spock. I would understand (but not agree) with the decision to make this the Kirk and Spock Bromance Show if Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto had become major stars over the past few years but they haven’t. They’re no more famous than Pegg or Saldana, and for my money Karl Urban is the best acting/star combo on the Enterprise, but his great performance is wasted because it’s so small and so insignificant. I like Chris Pine and he does a great job playing the bullheaded Jim Kirk, but put Urban in that role and there’s way more nuance and complexity to the character.

Nuance and complexity … two things that aren’t welcome in INTO DARKNESS.

Contrary to what it may sound like, I had a good time. I even went and bought a $4 commemorative cup after the movie, even though I had already bought a $4 commemorative cup for the superior Iron Man 3. I watched it at a drive-in, I had good popcorn, and I was entertained, although the drive-in experience, the popcorn, and the film all deteriorated as they went. About 30 minutes into the film I was already trying to figure out when I could see it again, but by the time the Super Big Enterprise appeared and Spock calls Spock on the phone … I was ready for the movie to be over.

That’s the thing about illusions – they’re showy and they’re fun, but their entertainment value is brief and fleeting and I end up appreciating the skill in pulling it off more than the illusion itself.

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When he’s not using a tribble a dead tribble as a lab rat, Mark Bousquet is doing some writing himself. He is the author of multiple novels and collections, including the recently released The Haunting of Kraken Moor, Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.

IDENTITY THIEF: That’s a Terrible F*cking Name

Identity Thief (2013) – Directed by Seth Gordon – Starring Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Robert Patrick, John Cho, Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, Genesis Rodríguez, T.I., Morris Chestnut, Eric Stonestreet, and Maggie Elizabeth Jones.

It was an afternoon of pleasant surprises: the weather was nicer than I thought it would be, IDENTITY THIEF is funnier than I thought it would be, and when I turned my iPhone back on after the movie, all of my contacts were mysteriously erased.

Okay, so that last one isn’t a pleasant surprise, but I was able to take Darwin for a long walk this morning before the movie and I was constantly amused by IDENTITY THIEF throughout the film. The film contains a handful of laugh out loud moments and if you like Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy (as I do), then there’s no reason you won’t like IDENTITY THIEF.

Directed by Seth Gordon (who directed the excellent documentary The King of Kong and the very funny Horrible Bosses), THIEF is a standard anti-buddy road comedy. Diana (McCarthy) is the titular identity thief, and when she steals the identity of Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Bateman), he takes the law into his own hands and flies from Colorado to Florida in order to bring her back to Denver to put everything right and allow him to keep his new job.

When Patterson gets to Florida he quickly finds Diana, but then criminals Marisol and Julian (Genesis Rodríguez and T.I.) show up for retribution for bad deeds Diana has enacted on them, and a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) joins the mix, adding a small element of a chase film into the mix.

The focus is on Bateman and McCarthy, though, and the success of the film is thanks to their interaction. Sandy is the do-gooder and Diana is the shady con artist and the film does an excellent job both playing their differences off one another and then showing them growing together. THIEF is running the same ground as a film like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, in that these two characters are definitely not pals at the start of the film but come to truly like one another as the story unfolds. Sandy is a nice guy but he’s not a total schlub who lets the world walk all over him. He’s understandably upset at Diana and doesn’t let her forget it for a good long while.

Critically, it’s Diana who first acts on his behalf. In a very funny sequence where Diana spins a lie at a bar to Big Chuck (Eric Stonestreet) about how Sandy likes to watch her with other men, Sandy ends up locking himself in the bathroom as Diana and Chuck have sex. It’s funny but there’s a really deep undertone to the scene – Diana’s actions are motivated by her own loneliness. We see this at the beginning of the movie when a bartender tells her no one in the bar actually likes her, they just like buying her drinks, and it runs through the movie until Diana comes clean about her origins of being abandoned by her parents and running through multiple foster homes. Here in the hotel room, once Sandy shuts himself in the bathroom, Diana intends to drug Chuck and abscond with Chuck and Sandy’s wallets and valuables. Instead of drugging Chuck, however, she ends up being moved by his story of not having been with anyone since his wife (she initially thinks he’s rejecting her, with gives the scene some gravitas), and decides to have sex with him.

McCarthy does a fantastic job here balancing Diana’s cons with her real emotions and I’m often left momentarily wondering whether we’re seeing the real Diana or the fake Diana. While she’s moved enough to have sex with Chuck, she has not undergone the full conversion, yet, as after he passes out she locks Sandy in the bathroom, takes Chuck and Sandy’s stuff, and leaves. When she hits the car, however, a phone call from Sandy’s family catches her off guard. She looks at the photo of his kids and has a change of heart. She returns to the room just as Sandy breaks the door down, and she tells him she was just out checking on the ice, and then crawls pathetically into bed.

Strawberry Quik in powder form. I drank the hell out of this stuff as a kid, even though I never understood why that pink bunny is wearing a strawberry for a hat.

Now that Diana has earned some sympathy points with the viewers, the film then immediately allows Sandy to have both a jerk and redemption moment. At checkout the next morning, he’s on edge and engages in a really funny exchange with a bored clerk. (“Did you enjoy your stay?” “No.”) A hungover Diana has asked him to get her some Strawberry Quik. Sandy asks the clerk if they have any and she says yes, but he doesn’t buy her any. When he’s getting himself some coffee, however, Robert Patrick kidnaps her and Sandy is quick to run after them. Now, yes, he needs her to get his good name back, but as she rightly points out later, he calls her his friend during his verbal exchange with Patrick, and his actions seem to be partially motivated out of genuine concern.

Sandy ends up crashing Patrick’s van and after he pulls Diana from the wreckage, there’s a small back and forthe between the two of them. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but what I do remember is that it was both quickly the exchange transpired and how none of it was all that important. It was a genuine exchange, though, that felt very conversational and real, and not just a set-up and punch line. I like that – Sandy and Diana are well-rounded characters, and maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but in comedies now I’m much more interested in movies with good characters in a good story that’s amusing than I am in watching a film that is constantly going for the quick hit-and-run jokefest approach.

The ending of IDENTITY THIEF is really something fantastic, and had me leaving the theater feeling up. From the moment Sandy takes Diana to his house and through to Sandy’s family visiting Diana in jail, the film has an almost perfect mix of being funny, touching, and even a little sad. The resolution of Diana going to jail, but Sandy and his family visiting her hit a perfect note, and the funniest line of the movie (the title of this review) comes right at the end.

IDENTITY THIEF isn’t quite as funny as either of Bateman or McCarthy’s best efforts, but it is a really good film. I only went to see it because I was in the mood for some popcorn, but I had a smile on my face from start to finish.

TOTAL RECALL (2012): I Give Good Wife

Total Recall (2012) – Directed by Len Wiseman – Starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho, and Bill Nighy.

Are you new here – then be aware, SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS, so if you don’t want the movie SPOILED, stop reading.

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Len Wiseman’s TOTAL RECALL is one of those films that just sort of exists.

It is not a bad movie, but it is not a great movie, either, and the result is a film that’s technically proficient without ever being spectacularly memorable. Wiseman directs a decent action sequence, but RECALL is a joyless chase film that’s mildly entertaining without being the least bit engaging.

I feel a bit bad bagging on a film like TOTAL RECALL because I paid my money, ate my popcorn, and for the most part enjoyed what I was watching. There’s a few times when the film lags, but I was largely impressed with how the film looked and moved. I just wanted more. I wanted to be drawn into this world and drawn into this story and these characters and I just wasn’t. The narrative is very robotic and predictable, and not predictable because this is a remake of the original TOTAL RECALL, but predictable because I’ve seen action movies before.

I wish Wiseman would get handed a great script because I think he could deliver a really great action film, but all of his previous action films are really just okay and nothing more. Technically, they’re fine, but emotionally, they’re flat.

One big problem with this movie is that, much like the original RECALL, the narrative wants the audience to be thinking, “Is what I’m watching real, or is it all a Rekall fantasy?” and just like the original RECALL the answer is obvious moments after Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell here, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original) sits in the chair and gets his injection. In the original, Quaid gets a scratch on his neck that disappears once the injection goes wrong, and here Quaid gets a stamp put on his arm that disappears just as fast.

How fast? We see the stamp, the injection goes wrong, a bunch of officers show up with guns, Quaid puts his arms up behind his head and … no stamp.

Making it completely obvious right up front does take a bit away from the rest of the movie. It’s not enough to ruin it – I can still watch The Wizard of Oz and The Usual Suspects after learning at the end of those films that most of what we’ve just seen is a made up story inside the story – but it does make all of the “stop the action so we can debate the authenticity of this experience” moments a bit tedious. Paul Verhoeven had the decency to make his movie fun, but Wiseman has no desire to include humor. There’s literally only one moment in the whole film where I chuckled. It’s in the middle of one of the 857 big action sequences and Quaid and Melina (Jessica Biel) have just dropped into an elevator.

“Is this going down?” Quaid asks of the stunned riders.

One chuckle.

One.

I’m not going to spend much time discussing the differences between the Wiseman and Verhoeven films because the amount of fun generated in both films is the biggest difference. Let’s focus on the Wiseman film:

Doug Quaid lives in Australia (The Colony) and works in a factory in England (The United Federation of Britain). The rest of the world is a poisoned wasteland. How does Quaid get to work every day? Via the Fall, a big, honking gravity elevator that cuts through the planet. Doug has dreams about running away from cops with Jessica Biel. (Fittingly, these dreams are nightmares.) Doug is married to Lori (Kate Beckinsale), who tries to convince him that he should be happy. Even though their life together hasn’t turned out exactly as they dreamed, she’s still the most gorgeous woman on the planet and that has to count for something, right? (Note – that may not be exactly what she said, but that’s what I heard.) I’m not sure why it makes sense for Doug to visit Rekall and have fake memories implanted in his head when he’s having nightmares, except that these dreams leave him with the feeling that he should be doing something more with his life.

His work pal Harry (Bokeem Woodbine) plays the class card and wants to know if Doug thinks being a factory worker is something to be ashamed of, and Doug says No (though he means Yes), and then goes and visits Rekall, where John Cho implants the spy program in his body. Then everything goes “wrong,” meaning that Doug gets the exact experience he’s paying for, but he doesn’t have any fun because he decided to be a double spy instead of being a guy married to Kate Beckinsale.

Once things start to go bad, TOTALL RECALL simply becomes a lesser version of The Bourne Identity. Doug is on the run, trying to figure out what’s going on and who he really is, and he teams up with one woman as the government chases him. It’s not as skillfully made as Bourne is, and there’s a real herky-jerky quality to the film: everybody hurries up to do a bunch of shooting and running, then the narrative stops so Doug can find something that advances the plot, then everyone hurries back to the running and shooting.

After things go wrong at Rekall and Doug returns home, Lori decides it’s time to attack him and bring him in. So they fight. And fight. And run. And fight. And jump. And shoot. And fight. It’s a very good action sequence, first in their apartment and then through the rooftop streets of the Colony. (The Colony and UFB are elevated regions, so there’s multiple layers to the city’s layout.) I do feel it goes on a bit too long – in an action sequence you should never be wondering, “When is this going to end?” – but it’s good stuff.

None of the actors here have an abundance of personality and that hurts the film, too. Farrell, Beckinsale, and Biel are all good, but they don’t move me. I’m never on Doug’s side here. I’m not rooting for him. And not just because I’m rooting for Beckinsale, either, but because I just don’t care about Doug’s plight. One, I know that within the confines to the story his experience is a fake, and two, he’s a nice guy but not a compelling guy. Farrell has a sense of humor and I would have liked to see more of that put into the film.

And by “more,” I mean, “any.”

The best chemistry in the film comes between Beckinsale and Biel, and I wish we would have gotten more with the two of them going at it instead of Doug serving as the meddling third wheel. Farrell is a much better actor than Schwarzenegger, but he’s not a more fun actor to watch, and the script here doesn’t take advantage of Farrell’s talents. I think RECALL perhaps reveals why it will be so hard to reboot Scwarzenneger’s films – the man might not be a good actor, but he’s a huge personality. It’s tough to find actors who can shine that brightly

RECALL isn’t a very deep film. There’s a decent backdrop of politics, with the rich UFB government manipulating a war against the poor Colony workforce, but it’s all handled with the skill of a butcher using a chainsaw. There’s a good visual look to the cities, and plenty of well-executed action sequences (especially the magnetic car chase). All the actors do what they can with the roles they’ve been given, but the roles are all rather simple.

TOTAL RECALL can never escape that sense that it’s just a poor copy of other films and stories.

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And if you like good sci-fi action stories with strong female leads, please check out my 2011 novel,HARPSICHORD AND THE WORMHOLE WITCHES.

Harpsichord & the Wormhole Witches. The First Novel of the Deep. Now Available at Amazon.com in Paperback. From Atomic Anxiety Press.