Star Trek Into Darkness: Non Spoiler Review

by Stepto
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[NOTE THIS ASSUMES YOU HAVE SEEN 2009’s STAR TREK]

So I’ve seen Star Trek Into Darkness, can’t reveal how or why. But wanted to share some thoughts. There are no spoilers here. This review assumes you have not even seen any trailers or posters. Read ahead with confidence I won’t give away anything. This is my thoughts and feelings about the finished product.

The writing crew of JJ Abrams rebooted Star Trek universe have a hard row to hoe. On the one hand, they rebooted the Star Trek universe pretty completely.

The destruction of the USS Kelvin by Nero 35 years before the 1960’s original timeline in the 2009 film sparked a renewed war with the Romulans (that’s where the fleet is when Vulcan is destroyed, leaving Captain Pike with a mere 8 ship armada and Star Fleet cadets to respond to Vulcan’s distress call). Starfleet ships are now larger and heavily armed, hence the new Enterprise being much larger than the original 1701 from the 60’s TV show. The Klingons lost a significant amount of their own fleet when Nero broke out of Rura Penthe and reclaimed the Narada. James Kirk joins Starfleet much later than in the original show’s timeline, and during a time of crisis is given a Captainship due to performance under battle. (Those that claim a Federation Captain would never be promoted from cadet should study the career of General George Armstrong Custer, promoted to General at the age of 23 during the American Civil War and whose performance in the face of crisis earned him a spot as one of the commanders witnessing the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. Granted, he didn’t end well, but I think we have more faith in James Kirk. Point being, in times of war, yeah stuff like that happens. No spoilers, but Star Trek Into Darkness addresses that complaint somewhat.)

JJ Abrams’ Star Trek universe is in a time of dark conflict. Where the original show’s 5 year exploration mission took place in a time of tense but stable cold war, this new universe might forego five year exploratory science missions because it takes place in an unstable cold war.

Everything I have said so far is canon either explained in the original film or the prequel comic written by the film’s authors. If you didn’t know any of the above, Star Trek Into Darkness doesn’t reveal it, it builds on it.

On the other hand the writers have to deal with Star Trek fans and their accumulated knowledge of decades of Trekdom and canon and their “get off my lawn” expectations thereof. I admit to being in that camp before seeing the film.

When the second Star Trek motion picture was released in 1982 it had approximately two decades of storyline and character development to draw from. Kirk was in his late 40’s. His history with Spock and his crew spanned 20 years. There were 79 hour long episodes and a previous motion picture to draw from. There was a lot of there there. 82 hours to be exact vs…2 for this new universe.

Abrams’ second Star Trek film is very much like the second episode in the first season of an entirely new Star Trek. Not only has the universe been redefined, but the characters are still raw, still like gears grinding together until they mesh more fluidly. This is a baby universe compared to original Trek filmdom.

And it’s awesome. I loved every minute of it. Mainly because I viewed it as a second episode in a completely new series. I went in realizing this is what 1960’s Star Trek fans must have felt like when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out. Some turned it off forever and (thankfully) the vast majority loved it.

Like its predecessor this Star Trek film is not without its flaws. There’s two points in the film where it simply goes a bridge too far in planting its own flag while paying homage to the original timeline. If you love Star Trek in all its forms you will know both moments when you see them.

But in the words of George Takei, “oh my”.  What a ride. This is perhaps the most fun I have had at a movie since The Avengers.

The tagline for the teaser posters for Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier was “This is why movie theaters should have seatbelts.” I think we all remember how that turned out. This movie, that would be a perfect tagline.

Star Trek Into Darkness feels *exactly* like what an original series episode would be like if they just had today’s technology. It’s funny, sad, smartly written, endearing, and even when it tries too hard you want to hug it for even bothering to try at all. There’s one or two moments of actual straight-out-of-the-1960’s show campiness. And when I say that you might crinkle your brow and go “That’s not a good thing”, I will tell you when you see the moments you will laugh like the entire audience did when I saw it. It’s pitch perfect.

This is Trek alive. Don’t get me wrong, I love the big ideas and the deep thinks that TNG and DS9 could bring. But this Trek is hot blooded. The score by the returning Abrams favorite Michael Giacchino is at times stirring and (when it needs to be) heartbreaking.

This is Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek writ large, Horatio Hornblower to the Stars. The film tackles post 9/11 ideas, it questions the concept of loyalty, it applies the very practical point of an enemy of your enemy having to be your friend. It looks great, there’s a fun visual pun on lens flares, and the opening sequence could be an episode all its own.

If you love Star Trek, I mean if you really really love Star Trek, walk into this as if you had the chance to write an episode of the first season of the 1960’s show knowing what you know now about the social messages you want to send.

And if you’re my age, and grew up with Star Trek The Motion Picture, Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, etc and TNG as your formative Star Trek experiences, I will be shocked if you don’t tear up at least once at how seriously Abrams and crew take their subject matter. I had to say to myself at least once, “God dammit don’t cry.”

Dear JJ Abrams, let’s stop making movies and get me a Star Trek TV show (I’ll settle for 12 episode seasons) ASAP. I love this crew, I love these actors. I love the ship. Take it to the next level.

One very very minor spoiler, well not a spoiler just something to look out for. There’s a Doohan on board the Enterprise. And when I saw him I grinned from ear to ear. Oh and also pay close attention to the ship at the end.

Why that Zachary Quinto/Leonard Nimoy Audi Commercial is Important

by Stepto
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In short, because it’s so well done I wouldn’t want to skip it if it was on TV.

If you have not seen it, watch it now (weirdly embed is broken for me, so you will have to see it at the Youtube link)

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while and needed a good ad to showcase. Ad agencies and Marketing people pay close attention: I won’t skip an ad if you intrigue and entertain me while showcasing your brand or product. I will skip it in a heartbeat if you don’t, because technology has now made it easy for me to do so. The Audi ad hits and hits big.

Here’s why this ad hits on all levels:

1. It’s entertaining.

It takes two paragons of geek culture and puts them in an intriguing rivalry. Shatner/Pine might have worked, but the Spock on Spock action is far funnier because their characters are unemotional. Add to it Nimoy’s Ballad of Bilbo reference and Star Trek 2 nod, and the fact he wins in the end and you have a narrative I didn’t want to end even though I knew full well it was a commercial. This ad was a million times better than the faux Ferris Bueller ad.

2. It’s effective.

In between the dialogue the ad effectively shows compare/contrast between two major brands and models of car. And it doesn’t take a cheap shot either, in the scene where Quinto calls Nimoy I fully expected Nimoy to pick up a cell phone, something as a Mercedes man I know he would not have to do. But the ad doesn’t take a cheap shot and shows the Mercedes has wireless voice activated call answer. It lends a lot of weight to the other scenes comparing the two cars.

3. It’s clever.

While all the shots of the Audi are stylized to make it look more futuristic, the ad carefully and shrewdly evokes JJ Abrams’ Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. Did you notice almost every shot with the Audi has a lens flare in it? Clever stuff.

I abhor ads, unless they are clever. I want this type of advertising. In a world of DVR’s and ad skipping, you have to get good, or go home. Now Audi has me intrigued. That’s effective.

Our Home is Our World

by Stepto
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When Homeworld released in 1999 it was a revelation. A fully 3d real time strategy game of space fleet combat with in incredibly rich backstory, races, ship design, and game mechanics. My even saying the words doesn’t give it justice, just watch the opening few minutes, and the jaw dropping use of a choral version of Adagio for Strings.

Homeworld 1 opening scenes

 

I remember right off the bat sitting in my chair in front of my computer and I did something I don’t think I had ever done before: I exited the game and restarted it solely to watch the opening again. The Homeworld saga (I include its mission pack Cataclysm as well as Homeworld 2 to be one storyline much like Halo) is easily in my top five game experiences of all time. It sits comfortably alongside Half Life, Halo, Mass Effect or Bioshock as richly created alternate realities that, when you weren’t floored by the gameplay, you were gobsmacked by the story.

Which brings me to today’s news that Gearbox software has acquired the rights to the franchise. Homeworld will be coming back.

Right off the bat there was Internet skepticism, due to the recent efforts by Gearbox on Duke Nukem Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines. I played the former, I have not gotten a chance to play the latter between writing and looking for work. DNF’s problem was that it was a perfect sequel to Duke Nukem 3d, had it been released in 2002. Story, and game mechanics, have moved on dramatically from that time. The game that was released was fine for a Duke game, but bringing back a tone and humor from 1997 fifteen years later is tough to pull off when the basis of the tone is around the humor. I remember Leisure Suit Larry fondly, but there’s no way that game is going to work today.

Why wouldn’t the same problem apply to the game mechanics and story of Homeworld, a game from 1999? I’ll answer in two parts.

The gameplay of the original game was ahead of its time, and is seen mimicked today in EVE Online and Sins of a Solar Empire. Designers of modern 3d space tactic games routinely cite Homeworld as their inspiration. The game itself broke stylistic convention with use of wonderful ambient or orchestral music before Halo perfected the formula. The spaceship designs draw obvious influence from famed science fiction artists Chris Foss and Peter Elson. They even contracted with the rock band Yes to make an original song for the game!

Yes: Homeworld (The Ladder)

 

Second, the universe laid down in the story is rich and deep. Prophecies are described and fulfilled. Alien races are interesting and their politics are intricate. The first time you encounter the Bentusi is one of my favorite moments in any video game ever. You play the role of a race who never knew they had been subjugated thousands of years before, and that your world is actually not your home. And even that that plotline is resolved you pivot to play along the (reformed) antagonist in an add-on set fifteen years later. Homeworld 2 advances the story to a galactic one, and at the conclusion it is revealed we have entered the age of Karan S’Jet, the scientist who melded her body to the mothership and the Pride of Hiigara. The prophecy of the Sajuuk is revealed to be completely different than what was expected, and the ending is satisfying and makes you want more of this universe.

It’s safe to say that outside of triumvirate universes of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Halo, I know more about the Homeworld universe as presented through the games than just about any other sci fi video game, even Mass Effect.

I’m to understand that this was a personal mission on the part of Brian Martel, the Chief Creative Officer of Gearbox, to secure this for Gearbox. I want to see a whole new generation get introduced to the Homeworld story and universe on iOS, PC, Android, Mac, whatever. I want to see comics, web episodes, and all the things Gearbox has been doing with Borderlands.

I want to see prequel games about the Taiidan Empire, or the original war with the Hiigarans, or even the formation of the Taiidan Republic just before Cataclysm.

More than anything, I want to see a Homeworld 3. Will the Bentusi return? Do the events at the end of Homeworld 2 bode well or ill for the Hiigarans? And what of the Galactic Council? What if the Sajuuk-Khar is attacked or destroyed, what does that do to the hyperspace gates?

There’s so much there. I can’t wait to see what they do with it.

So color me more than pleased.

Poignance.

by Stepto
2 Comments

It’s well past four in the morning. I hear the ticking of a clock I never really heard before. It’s on the kitchen wall and it’s loud.

Gosh, I’ve been sick, sicker than I have been in 15 years. Food poisoning from some bad vegetables. Better now, but bad enough I’m having to miss my grandmother’s funeral because I could not fly. Better now, but wow was that horrible. Better now, and also worse.

I’m coming to grips with the fact there has never been a time I looked at the home I live in when Buddy wasn’t alive. No wall, no ceiling, no anything in this house we’ve made our home for ten years that I didn’t see through these eyes without him being around somewhere.  But he wasn’t ripped from us. He gave us the gift of his life long after we had any reason to expect it.

We’ve been given permission to spread his ashes at his favorite places on earth. (By the way, here’s one of them: Chevy Chase Beach Cabins. A place we go to vacation and heal, and they deserve your business.)

I would have liked my Mee Maw to see Discovery Bay from the cabins too, but that’s not to be.

We have pink flowers for Buddy, a gift from close friends. We had yellow for Remy. My grandmother is gone and thanks to incredible bad luck I cannot be there to say goodbye.

These are things in various lenses everyone deals with. For certain there are worse lenses, and better. We wish we could change them. I mean, certainly I wish I could, not just for me but for anyone who runs into that buzz-saw of circumstance that provokes sorrow. It is what it is.

I don’t know what makes me think of all this, I’ve written parts of it already.

I suppose it’s the fact I’m no longer sad, at least for now. There’s these pink flowers on the table that smell so good, and I can keep a meal down. We’re dog sitting an 8 month old border collie who has infused our routine with peeing to mark his territory, energy, life.

I try to remind myself I live a first world life, all of it every bit of it. I remember to try and make things better for others.

So! Be excellent to each other for starters. I’ll try and help with the rest.

Why Bioshock Infinite Probably Isn’t As Good As We Think It Is

by Stepto
4 Comments

My mind’s bouncing a bit around the Buddy shaped hole in our lives. But I wanted to say this about Bioshock Infinite since I finished it last week.

Let me state right off the bat, Bioshock Infinite is a must play game. It’s worth your money and you should play it. No, really I’m dead serious. Stop reading this and go play it then come back so we can talk about it. I’ll wait.

Second point, this post is going to be more spoilery than that sandwich the creepy eye transplant doctor fooled Tom Cruise into eating in Minority Report.

I mean it, I am going to spoil the living hell out of Bioshock Infinite if you keep reading.

Ok?

Ok.

I’m serious though.

Ok.

Endings are tough. As a writer they are incredibly daunting. Sometimes you get lucky and you come up with an ending before you even have a story. That’s the best scenario from a work perspective because you already understand how things turn out. Working backwards is just a matter of giving your ending some justice.

Then sometimes you come up with an ending in the middle of the story, which is harder but also a bit of a relief.

The absolute worst is starting off without an ending. Because holy shit, where is this all going?

And yet the best stories, at least in my mind, are the latter ones. Sometimes when you start off with an ending, you often can’t do it justice because in the working backwards you concentrate too much on that wonderful ending.

Bioshock Infinite has, in my opinion, a bad ending. One that it feels like someone thought was a wonderful ending.

Now, I don’t mean that the ending is cheap, or that it didn’t involve a lot of thought, or that it’s a cop out or anything.

If anything, it’s just a bridge too far. The story builds up to it backwards in a way.

Let me explain, and here is where I will TOTALLY GO INTO SPOILERS.

During the third act of the game it’s beating you over the head that all this time you are Father Comstock. They even mix Dewitt’s voice into Comstock’s voice at a couple of intervals. The Voxaphone extras are equally blunt. As I was playing, I actually said out loud once “Ok I get it I’m Comstock. Jesus, stop already.”

Then at the end, Elizabeth takes your hand and shows you the lighthouses. I was a bit annoyed because at this point I was waiting for her to just go “SURPRISE YOU’RE COMSTOCK!”

But that didn’t happen. That didn’t happen at all. Instead I spent the next few minutes gobsmacked as the game walked me through the alternate worlds and the fact that Elizabeth was my daughter, a daughter I had sold to Comstock years ago to erase my debt. What debt? Well it could have been my debt of guilt over Dewitt’s participation at Wounded Knee, or a financial debt, or perhaps even a dimensional debt required to balance the alternate universes.

I was floored, here I thought it was just going to be this cheap twist ending that I was the bad guy the whole time (which didn’t make sense that Dewitt was Comstock given his guilt over Wounded Knee but ok whatever) and instead I was offered this amazing tantalizing ending that would leave me with philosophical questions and something to ponder. What debt was I paying? The emotional payoff of Elizabeth losing her finger was deep and satisfying. The idea of the amorphous debt, the twins’ manipulations, the baptism metaphor, Dewitt killing Comstock in a rage, and the thrilling final battle sequence before the game’s end reveal left me reeling and thinking I had just played one of the best games ever written.

They had head faked me into thinking I was Comstock with the obvious voice tricks and dialogue and the baptism metaphor etc etc. I mentally congratulated the writers in their ingenuity at giving me a much more satisfying ending than just making me the villain all along and fooling me into thinking they were taking the easy way out.

Then the game continued and NOPE! SUPER DOUBLE TWIST YOU WERE COMSTOCK ALL ALONG!

I don’t think I’ve ever been more let down in a game in a long time in just a few minutes, which is a testament by the way to how good the vast vast majority of the game is.

It just makes no sense that Dewitt is Comstock, even in the multi-universe sense. It’s deeply unsatisfying. Guilt ridden Dewitt over his massacre of innocent Indians at Wounded Knee is, in an alternate universe (or maybe even the same one), racist Hitler-esque Comstock? Comstock who in at least one universe is sterile yet still Elizabeth’s father? Or bounces around dimensions made him sterile but Dewitt isn’t, so what’s the point of that except to make you think you’re not Comstock? I….there’s so much…what? Yes the baptism created a different person yet the drowning at the end…makes Comstock? Or not?

I’ve now played the ending two or three times over again and tried to make sense of it and sorry, it doesn’t work. And what’s worse is that it’s constructed in such a way that it’s somehow proud of its insights. And what are we to make of the coda at the end of the game’s credits? Dewitt is alive? Elizabeth is in the crib? I…what?

Dewitt being Comstock robs the game of some emotion and, I think, is a bridge too far. The coda at the end of the game’s credits compounds the issue.

I hate the ending of the movie Wall-E. It’s one of the best films I think I have ever seen but its ending is a cop out. When Wall-E suddenly for no reason regains his memory it negates the emotional impact of his previous sacrifice for Eve. What would have been a better ending? He loses his memory and then during the credits sequence (which features the story of humanity reclaiming the Earth), we see Wall-E slowly becoming who he was again over time and with Eve’s help. Wall-E is probably the best example I have of a movie that faltered fatally in its ending, for the payoff of not wanting to make the audience work too much. It’s almost like Bioshock Infinite failed in the same way, because the writers felt like the dimensions, the lighthouses, and how Elizabeth lost her finger just wasn’t enough twist.

I’m no expert on ending stories. I have taken that tone here I know. But at the end sequence of Bioshock Infinite when the multiple versions of Elizabeth kill Dewitt through the baptism metaphor I rolled my eyes and put my controller down.

So let me stop and remind you that if you made it this far and yet have not played the game GO PLAY IT. I might hate the ending, but I love the care that went into the game and it is, above all else, fun and beautiful and a piece of art that deserves support.

But having talked to a number of friends who have played it and were blown away by the ending I just wanted to express I think it would have been cleaner and more satisfying to stick solely with the Elizabeth emotional payoff. It feels very much that since Bioshock had a wonderful twist, they needed to one up themselves. Like a third movie from M. Night Shyamalan.

I’m saying all this only because I care about it. For sure if you hate the endings of my own stories please feel free to tell me how I don’t actually get endings at all.  Open-mouthed smile

Oh and one more time, yeah buy this game. I do want to see more like it.