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.

PAUL: I’ve Been Waiting for This Since Mac and Me

Paul (2011) – Directed by Greg Mottola – Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Blythe Danner, Joe Lo Truglio, John Carroll Lynch, Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Sigourney Weaver, Jeffrey Tambor, and Steven Spielberg.

Much like Super 8, PAUL is a love letter to Steven Spielberg, but unlike the J.J. Abrams film, PAUL isn’t a celebration of Spielberg’s films as much as it is a celebration of what the films meant to fans.

We see this in evidence right from the start as Greame (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost) make their first pilgrimage to Sand Diego Comic-Con. These guys are fans and I appreciate how they’re fans without an over-fetishization of geek or nerd culture, which is a trend that has pretty much run its course. They are who they are, definitely fans but also definitely themselves, too. Clive is a writer and Graeme is an artist, and they’re not just visiting from England to experience SDCC, but to take a road trip through some alien hot spots in the American West.

We stay in San Diego just long enough to establish that these two guys love their sci-fi, and then they’re off in an RV. At a roadside diner where Jane Lynch works, Graeme laughs along with two redneck stereotypes (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons), who decide to interpret his joviality as hostile instead of friendly. When Clive comes out of the bathroom, the two rednecks make fun of Graeme and Clive for being gay.

Which they’re not, but which is also a recurring joke in the film.

Graeme and Clive hightail it out of there and accidentally put a dent in the rednecks’ truck on their way out of the parking lot. Later on that night, as they stop to take some pictures at another sight on their stop, they see some approaching headlights and wrongly assume its the rednecks. Fleeing the scene, they are quickly overcome by the headlights, and as the car whizzes past, the car wrecks and the boys stop to have a look.

The rednecks are the worst part of the film because they are never anything but their base stereotypes. Many of PAUL’s conflict are derived from pitting different social groups against each other: nerds, rednecks, the deeply religious, the bad ass Mr. FBI Man, but only the rednecks never reveal themselves to be something more. Luckily, despite their introduction as the film’s first antagonist, they are not major players in the movie.

At the scene of the accident, the two Brits meet Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), who solicits their help in him getting home. Grame proves himself the cooler customer, more willing to accept an actual alien in their presence, while Clive passes out and pees himself. From there on, we’ve got a combo buddy comedy/road trip with Paul the alien as the third wheel tag-along.

Paul is designed to be a mid-sized alien with very human tendencies: he likes to smoke and drink and swear, and there are times where this gets a bit much. There is some over-reliance on the comedy coming simply from Paul doing these things, as if an alien who swears is, in and of itself, inherently funny. Maybe if this film had come out in 1987, this would have worked, but now it already feels kinda stale – if Paul is intended to be funny, he needs to be funny irregardless of being a little grey alien with big blue eyes.

The most interesting aspect of this film is simply watching two different comedy camps come together. Up front is the Pegg and Frost duo as PAUL’s main stars and it’s co-writers, and in less-obvious roles are part of the Arrested Development family in the persons of director Greg Mottola, and actors Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor. It’s a winning combo, with the deadpan-jerk humor of Bateman and Tambor blending nicely with the disbelieving-nice guys style of Pegg and Frost.

There is a third wheel here and that’s the inclusion of Seth Rogen as the voice of Paul. Mottola has a history with the Apatow/Rogen family, too, as he also directed Superbad and was a director on Undeclared, so Rogen isn’t completely alone here. Personally, I’ve had my fill of Rogen’s Big Loud Idiot type, and even though Paul doesn’t entirely fit that mold, Rogen’s voice keeps pushing the character in that direction. It’s hard to think of Paul as either intelligent or likable with that awful voice coming out of his mouth, but it’s certainly not enough to sink the character or the film.

Graeme, Clive, and Paul pull the RV into an RV park for the night, where they meet Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a one-eyed, over-protected daughter of a religious zealot. PAUL takes all kinds of shots at God and religion and Paul becomes the (celebrated) serpent in the Garden. When Ruth starts espousing her faith (and it’s not like she says, “I like Jesus,” because she actually says, “The world is 4,000 years old and God created it in six days.”) Paul loses his marbles and starts debating her from inside the RV’s bathroom, even though he’s supposed to be hiding. Paul ends up getting Ruth to turn away from her faith, in part because he shows her his entire life story through a mind link and in part because he cures her dead eye.

I have some issues with this – not as a Christian, because even though I was raised Catholic I don’t consider myself aligned with any religion these days, but just as a matter of logic. Simply because the Bible does not take aliens into account does not mean that their existence disproves the concepts of God and Creationism. I suppose the point here is that because Ruth is such a strict Christian that Paul’s ability to show her that the world is more than 4,000 years old becomes the crack that breaks the dam. It’s simplistic, but it fits the film’s general theme, which is that the group dynamic is more important than an individual’s personal issues.

I really like how PAUL picks up people as the film moves along. First, the road trip is about Graeme and Clive’s adventure, then it’s folds in the plot in getting Paul home, and then when Ruth is added, it folds in a subplot of self-discovery. It’s a really good script that’s only sidelined (like most comedies) by a weak joke here and there. The nice thing, however, is that PAUL is every bit as interested in telling a story as it is in simply telling jokes.

There’s plenty of nods to Spielberg (and the director’s voice even makes an appearance), but the funniest reference is when Clive (who feels like he’s blown it by passing out and peeing himself when he first met Paul) is trying to explain his actions to Paul and he says, “I’ve been waiting for this since Mac and Me and I feel like I’ve blown it!”

Mac and Me.

It’s a great reference because Mac and Me is widely recognized as a cheap E.T. knock off, yet that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who like the movie, which furthers strengthens the idea that Graeme and Clive are just regular fans.

It’s the combination of sci-fi love, camaraderie, and jokes that work better because they’re amusing rather than because they’re laugh out loud funny. I mean, how can you not like a movie that sees Clive referring to Paul as Short Round? PAUL hits all the right notes for a good time. It’s not hysterical (except for Jason Bateman, who’s very, very funny here), but it is constantly amusing.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: I’ll Not Be Doubted by Some Pipsqueak Tuft of Ginger and His Irritating Dog

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) – Directed by Steven Spielberg – Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Tony Curran, and Toby Jones.

I don’t have much history with Hergé’s Tintin, so I come to this movie rather clean – no preconceived notions, no emotional history, no expectations of any kind. I have so little history with the character that if you had shown me a picture of Tintin, I could have told you his name, I could have told you he was a Hergé creation, and … that’s it. I knew so little about Tintin that I didn’t know the name of his dog. I didn’t even know Tintin was a journalist. Heck, I didn’t even know he was an adult; I thought he was a 15-year old kid or something.

So, yeah. I’m rather blank on this topic.

That said, it’s hard not to get excited about a project that features the combined talents of Steven Spielberg (director), Peter Jackson (producer), and Steven Moffat (co-writer), especially when all three men have plenty of other projects on their creative plates. Since they’re working with an established property, it’s a pretty easy leap to see that this project must have been a labor of love for them.

And that’s really what ADVENTURES OF TINTIN feels like to me – a love letter to a character and series. (Hergé and his drawing of Tintin even make an appearance in the film’s opening scene.) TINTIN is a beautifully rendered film and a completely satisfying adventure about a journalist (Jamie Bell) and his sidekick dog (his name is Snowy) who track down a missing treasure. What I love about the movie is how it manages to feel both large and small at the same time. For all of the globe-trotting and treasure hunting, it’s also a simple story about a dude and his dog who get caught up in something beyond what they had ever anticipated would come from buying a model of a 17th century ship at an outdoor market.

Tintin buys the model of the Unicorn and instantly one man (Barnaby, an FBI agent is disguise) tells him to get rid of it and another man, Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig), offers to buy it from him at any price. There’s no reason for Tintin to keep the model other than he likes it, but the efforts of these two men make him realize there’s something unique about the model. He takes it home to study it, but the ship is broken when Snowy and an interloping cat get in a tussle and tear through the apartment. A small metal cylinder falls out of one of the broken masts, but Snowy isn’t able to get Tintin to see it and it slides under a dresser.

After heading to the library to do research (with Snowy in tow) on the ship, Tintin returns home to find the model stolen and his apartment ransacked. Tintin’s response is to do the pure boy adventurer move – he goes to Marlinspike Hall, the country estate of Captain Haddock, the former captain of the Unicorn. There’s a great bonding scene between Snowy and the estate’s guard dog which allows Tintin to break into the estate, and once inside he is set upon by the estate’s butler and Sakharine. Tintin sees a model of the Unicorn and assumes it’s his, but then Sakharine reminds him that his model was broken, while the one before him is in perfect condition.

Upon returning home, Snowy is finally able to get Tintin to look under the dresser, where he finds the cylinder. Inside the cylinder is an actually a rolled-up parchment that contains a clue to a missing treasure. The FBI agent returns but gets shot by unseen assailants, and Tintin gets kidnapped and brought about Sakharine’s ship. The best part of this sequence is Snowy’s determination to not let the kidnappers get out of sight, and the loyal dog ends up sneaking about the ship and helping Tintin escape and partaking in the adventure.

On the ship, Tintin meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), who’s kept in a state of permanent drunkeness in order to all Sakharine full run of the ship. A whole slew of adventures happen after this – on the ship, in a boat, on a plane, in the desert, on the docks … it all moves swiftly and effortlessly as Sakharine and Tintin compete to find the third model of the Unicorn for the final piece of the riddle. There’s an historical parallel at play in TINTIN: Haddock is the descendant of the original Captain Haddock, who sunk his ship so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of Red Rackham, who just so happens to be Sakharine’s ancestor. Eventually, Sakharine is captured and Tintin and Haddock find a part of the sunken treasure in Marlinspike Hall, and agree to keep looking for the rest, setting up a sequel that Peter Jackson has said he wants to direct.

ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is a wonderful film, fun and fanciful, full of life, energy, and brilliant color. TINTIN is Spielberg’s first animated movie (though he shot much of the film using motion capture), but the world he (and the digital artists at WETA) create is alive and beautiful. While I didn’t read the TINTIN stories as a kid, it feels familiar to the stories I did read. The adventure narrative is preposterous but the characters are grounded, and because they feel real it’s easy to follow along with them on this crazy ride. Despite all the darkness at play in the film with the near-constant threat of violence, a wondrous sense of optimism and permeates the movie.

I’ll be buying TINTIN for the collection and I’m already looking forward to Jackson’s sequel.