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New late report on ST: Into Darkness
The frau is a dear woman, but she has a regrettable tendency to drop in at the local video emporium and make selections unsupervised. Yesterday she brought home Star Trek: Into Darkness even though neither of us had been impressed by the previous entry in the franchise reboot, Star Trek 90210.

I should perhaps mention that I was never a particular fan of the Trek universe. The first iteration was cheesy. I caught several episodes of Rev 2, the one with the bald guy; probably only fractions of episodes of the other dozen spinoffs. So I may be overlooking some critical context here as I make the following random observations:

Executive Summary: The film was not made with the sensibilities of a sixtysomething in mind. I’m aware that there are sound economic/demographic reasons for this, but still...

They’re all so fucking young. I never thought I’d use “gravitas” and “William Shatner” in the same sentence, but most of the cast look like they’re barely out of high school, and it’s difficult to imagine “The Federation” letting them run around a multizillion dollar interstellar spacecraft without an adult monitor. This was a dealbreaker in the previous film as well.

Abuse of suspension of disbelief. Where to begin? Let’s see, “Captain Kirk” makes the equivalent of a cellphone call from another stellar system (hence, a minimum 4.37 light years distant) to his former chief engineer*, who has very sensibly spent most of the film up until this point getting drunk in a San Francisco nightclub. Audio is clear as a bell, and not the least bit of signal lag. Hell, you’d get over a second’s worth talking to the moon. We’re talking a signal strength of, like, five hundred bars here, and apparently really good network coverage. I’d hate to deal with the roaming charges, though.

Suspension of disbelief, con’t. Oh, the usual. The Enterprise displays a remarkable structural integrity as it plunges toward San Francisco. “Caught by earth’s gravity” (from, by the looks of it, something like the distance of the average geostationary orbit) the crippled spacecraft falls toward the planet. The crew are all hurled about hither and thither as though the conventions of “free fall” had been suspended, although whenever the scene requires it, internal circumstances are magically stabilized. And people griped about Gravity?

Scenery chewing. Peter Weller did the best he could, I suppose, with the role as written, but Sterling Hayden was far more fun in Dr. Strangelove.

Oh, puh-leeze. In the middle of potentially lethal action, let’s spend a minute talking about relationships! And spare me the bromance.

CGI fatigue. I contrast the cocktail of visual bombast and brainlessness of productions like this to the low-key but thoughtful approaches taken by some low-budget productions in living memory—I’m thinking Gattaca, Code 46 and even 1980’s The Lathe of Heaven—that contrived to engage the frontal lobes rather than the R-cortex.

These are admittedly none of them particularly profound critiques, and I know that in essaying this review I am rather like a vegan explaining why last night’s serving of steak tartare didn’t work for me. But when I think upon the pains I’m taking, in composing my unpublishable tale, to eliminate gross implausibilities wherever I can, it’s irritating to see these screenwriters and this director piling them on instead. The film is not merely an affront to intelligence, but a gibbering, shit-flinging, insensate display of brainlessness.

cordially,

*Once I recognized the actor I began to think about what a wonderful film Pegg and Edgar Wright might have written and directed in place of this bloated ephemera.
New couple of points
having recently visited an airfarse base with bazillions of dollars of high tech weaponry all being supervised by PFYs who by looks alone I wouldn't trust to get my fast food order correct, your first point is out of order.
2nd point os moot because if you are at point A in the universe and want to call point B in real time, you connect thru a space warp, no lag time needed. Same tech that allows you to transverse space in minutes instead of Light Years see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive
but in general I will agree, for me to watch that movie I would have to be too drunk to read
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New yabut
Them big ol' hulking starships, even with all that Applied Phlebotinum powering their warp engines, still don't get from cosmic point A to cosmic point B instantaneously. But our Federation Cellphone? Nichto problemo. Look, I can accept FTL travel before I'll believe that our carriers will have improved that much in 200 years.

cordially,
New Bzzt! Error 305.
"Failure to enable the Defeat Credibility Analysis Mode."

:)
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."”

-- Isaac Asimov
New Gravitas redshift
"They’re all so fucking young. I never thought I’d use “gravitas” and “William Shatner” in the same sentence, but most of the cast look like they’re barely out of high school, and it’s difficult to imagine “The Federation” letting them run around a multizillion dollar interstellar spacecraft without an adult monitor. This was a dealbreaker in the previous film as well."

Star Trek: the original series
First air date: 1966

Capt. Kirk: William Shatner, b. 1931, age: 35
Mr. Spock: Leonard Nimoy, b. 1931, age: 35
Dr. McCoy: DeForest Kelley, b. 1920, age 46
Mr. Scott: James Doohan, b. 1920, age 46
Lt. Uhura: Nichelle Nichols, b. 1932, age 34
Mr. Sulu: George Takei, b. 1937, age 29
Mr. Chekov: Walter Koenig, b. 1936, age 29 (first appeared in season two)

Average age: 36.48. Age factor relative to rc: 2.6

Star Dreck 90210
Release date: 2009

Capt. Kirk: Chris Pine, b. 1980, age 29
Mr. Spock: Zachary Quinto, b. 1977, age 32
Dr. McCoy: Karl Urban, b. 1972, age 37
Mr. Scott: Simon Pegg, b. 1970, age 39
Lt. Uhura: Zoë Saldana, b. 1978, age 31
Mr. Sulu: John Cho, b. 1972, age 37
Mr. Chekov: Anton Yelchin: b. 1989, age 20

Average age: 32.14

Star Dreck Into Darkness: +4 years all around. The primary actors are almost the same average age as their 1966 counterparts. Age factor relative to rc: 0.6

Sorry, мой брат, it isn't them. It is you.

I have no quibble with your other criticisms.
New rofl.
New Def'n of a Tragedy: a theory killed with a fact; worse than that
is one killed with a fucking-statistical-factoid!
(And everyone's missing the Patrick Stewart admixture of Thucydides and transistors, a delightful concoction wherein bitchin-English ...
successfully helped the medicine go down.) But I digress.

(I can only surmise that--say a score years back?--whenever the Rand clan aggregated, the combined RV (repartee-velocity)
came within (-20 dB?) of George Carlin's *last-rant

* that wherein he began, I'm an alpha male on beta blockers ... ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AoQWBbovQA

;^>
New Re: Gravitas redshift
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
     late report on ST: Into Darkness - (rcareaga) - (7)
         couple of points - (boxley) - (2)
             yabut - (rcareaga) - (1)
                 Bzzt! Error 305. - (a6l6e6x)
         Gravitas redshift - (gcareaga) - (3)
             rofl. -NT - (Another Scott)
             Def'n of a Tragedy: a theory killed with a fact; worse than that - (Ashton)
             Re: Gravitas redshift - (malraux)

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