"KHAAAANN!!!"

Yes, by now everyone knows who the villain is in J.J.Abrams’ latest TREK reboot, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS:  Khan Noonian Singh, the 20^th Century superman first immortalized on the screen by Ricardo Montalban in TOS episode “The Space Seed” and STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.  Khan, Kirk’s nemesis of many years, the Moriarty to Kirk’s Holmes (and a fitting piece of reverse casting there, too, for the man chosen to play him in this new version).  A man supposedly superior in every way to our hero, and yet, a man lacking in those qualities which define Kirk and ensure that Kirk will ultimately defeat him—compassion, intuition, resourcefulness.

"From Hell's heart I stab at thee!"

The original cinematic version of Khan’s story, STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, was an epic tale of good and evil, of guilt and revenge, almost Shakespearean in scope.  Shatner’s Kirk and Montalban’s Khan gobbled scenery with abandon as Khan chased his version of the white whale “around perdition’s flames.”  At the same time, Kirk’s own past came back to haunt him, even as his confinement to a desk job in Starfleet put his future (and his self-worth) in doubt.  The battle between these Titans culminated, of course, in Spock’s sacrifice to save the Enterprise, a death the loss-averse Kirk was not prepared to accept.  (And, luckily, didn’t have to.  This is STAR TREK, after all.)

There is little of the broad scope and classic literary feel to Abrams’ retelling of the Khan tale.  His Kirk is younger, brasher and not much given to introspection.  His Khan is likewise younger, just awakened from his 300-year sleep, and doesn’t have a personal grudge against the captain who marooned him on a planet which then was knocked from its orbit and turned into a dustball.  The story loses something with the lack of that personal element, which it doesn’t regain with the addition of the war-mongering Admiral Marcus.  That part of the plot seems reminiscent of STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, though the Klingons just seem to be Marcus’s pet whipping aliens.  No one else seems to be worried about them.

Other elements of the Khan story are in place, however. Carol Marcus. A perilously out-of-sync warp drive on the Enterprise demanding the ultimate sacrifice from a senior officer. Kirk in limbo, this time having lost command of the Enterprise over a violation of the Prime Directive. (In STII:TWOK, Kirk had been “kicked upstairs”—forced into a desk job he’s not suited for and doesn’t want.)  In both films, a crisis puts Kirk back in the captain’s chair of the Enterprise and sends him off in search of the man behind an attack on the Federation.

Benedict Cumberbatch (SHERLOCK) plays this man, who is revealed to be Khan, in Abrams’ universe.  With all the other TREK characters, Abrams was careful to be true to the physicality, the mannerisms and the underlying nature of the people he was recreating.  We can forgive Chris Pine’s blue eyes, because he embodies Jim Kirk’s energy, enthusiasm, courage and intuition.  Not to mention his grin.  Simon Pegg doesn’t exactly look like Scotty, but he is Scotty, somehow.  My God, the rest of them—Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, John Cho, Zoe Soldana—are just channeling their counterparts.  And, personally, I like Anton Yelchin better than the original. (Sorry, Chekov fans.)

Khan, is that you?

But Cumberbatch’s Khan cannot be said to be anything like Montalban’s.  You cannot imagine that even if he were left to struggle for survival on a hostile world with his vulnerable human wife and his beloved superhuman followers that he would ever develop the twisted passion that marked Montalban’s every word and movement.  Even Cumberbatch's arrogance is muted and refined, where Montalban’s was haughty, nose-in-the-air and overdeveloped-chest-in-your-chest.

Now some people prefer their villains cool and restrained like this.  The story demands that Khan be somewhat reasonable at first, as does “The Space Seed”, you may recall. (Though, even then, Montalban was obnoxious as hell.)  And, granted, in the end, the new Khan does lose his cool a little bit.  But we never get a real sense of obsession or madness from him, and because we’re given few details of his past as a leader of a genocidal regime, we have little idea of the true trouble he could cause.  Perhaps, sadly, it’s because we’re too inured to terrorism in the real world and extreme violence in the film world.  Oh, he’s a bomber.  So?  He shoots a bunch of Starfleet officers?  Why does that make him special?  

We actually saw nothing of what Khan did in the original episode and yet we knew him to be a mass murderer on the order of Hitler.  He killed only six people in STII:TWOK before Kirk found him, and we knew him to be insane, obsessed and absolutely ruthless.  Most of it was because of that glint of madness in Montalban’s eye. 

 

Montalban-and-Shatner was a match made in Hollywood Heaven. Two hammy heavyweights vying for screen energy meant the sparks flew in their scenes together, both in the original episode and in the movie sequel.  Cumberbatch and Pine don’t quite make the same movie magic.  Cumberbatch is too cool; Pine is too hot.  They end up canceling each other out.  Part of it is the way Khan is written.  Part of it is that Khan has no real reason to hate Kirk and, though Kirk has plenty of reason to hate Khan, he already has enough fire.  With nothing equally passionate in Cumberbatch to meet Pine's emotion, the scenes between them tend to go flat.

Does this make STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS a bad film?  Not at all.  Taken on its own merits Abrams’ film is highly entertaining, emotionally satisfying and true to the spirit of the STAR TREK universe.  Just don’t expect the new vision of Khan to include flowing hair, bare pecs and a penchant for quoting Melville.  Can’t have everything, I guess.

Cheers, Donna

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS SHINES

Spock and Kirk re-imagined by J.J. Abrams.

In 2009, J.J. Abrams did the impossible.  He re-imagined one of the most iconic of science fiction universes for the blockbuster screen triumph STAR TREK.  He took a huge risk in recasting the characters we had all grown up with and millions had a fierce allegiance to: Captain James T. Kirk, First Officer Spock, Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy and the others of the crew of the starship Enterprise. But not only did the old fans love his new TREK, thousands of new fans flocked to his banner.

This weekend Abrams sets himself an even greater challenge with the opening of STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, the second in his re-envisioned series.  With this film he’s forced to develop the characters he merely introduced in his first outing; he has to create a story that is fresh and relevant to our time, but which uses elements of the original series and movies; and he still has to please his divided audience of old and new fans.

I’m happy—no, I’m ecstatic—to say he’s succeeded by a lightyear!  STID has no shortage of pulse-pounding action, eye-popping special effects, beautiful space shots, cool unidentifiable technology and random aliens. In fact, there is enough of those things to keep any SF geek happy sorting them out for years.  But the real beauty of this film is in the emotion it so willingly offers as a legitimate part of the story.  The heart of STAR TREK has always been the relationships between Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and secondarily between them and Uhura, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov.  This film understands that and doesn’t shy away from it at crucial moments.

The genius of Abrams’ approach to the new TREK was in developing the alternate universe concept from the very beginning of the story in his first movie.  That allows for differences in history and slight differences in personality, but allows us to see that Kirk, Spock and the others retain the same basic character in this new timeline.  Their reactions to their new situations are the same—they’d give their lives for each other, even if the outward circumstances are reversed, for example.  

But Kirk and Spock are younger in this universe, and they have some growing to do.  The process is fascinating.  They misunderstand and lose faith in one another, have flashes of insight about each other, come to rely on each other and eventually bond in ways only brothers-in-arms can know.  In the original series, McCoy was much more a part of this process and this film misses that a bit, but there will be other opportunities in the future to make up for it, I’m sure.

That Abrams (and his co-writers, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelhof) let us see this character growth is an indication of the respect they have for the TREK franchise and its fans.  Abrams has admitted he is NOT a TREK fan (he’s a STAR WARS fan, and, back in the day, TREK and WARS fans just didn’t get along), but he has at least been wise enough to pay homage to the original in his work.  This film, in particular, is full of references to TOS (as one reviewer said, scattered like Easter eggs throughout for fans to find).  

Things look bad for our side: the Enterprise falls to Earth!

Even the story is drawn from an iconic episode of TOS.  Unlike many reviewers, I refuse to give away the “secret” of the plot or the identity of the villain.  I’ll talk about that in next week’s post, when more folks will have had a chance to see the film.  The “reveal” is made well into the film and provides a distinctly “aahh!” moment, so I won’t be the one to ruin it for you.  The wonderful thing about it is the way Abrams and his co-writers braid the elements of the old story into the new one, twisting the events of the old timeline to fit this new, alternate universe.  (And because this is a new universe, there can be no endless arguing about, “Well, that didn’t happen in the original series”.) Not surprisingly for the creator of such intricate storylines as Lost and Fringe,  foreshadowing is used to great effect here, with random scenes coming back to take on meaning as things come together later in the film.

If I have one criticism, it would be of Benedict Cumberbatch, who underplays his villain almost to the point of blandness.  Chris Pine’s Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock are formidable acting opponents, filling the screen with charisma.  And their crew members—Karl Urban as McCoy (perfect!), Simon Pegg as Scotty (hilarious!), John Cho as Sulu (a captain in the making), Zoe Soldana as Uhura (saving the day, while giving Spock hell) Anton Yelchin as Chekov—are no slouches, either.  You need some big teeth to chew the scenery with that lot.  But more about that next week, too.

After the mixed reaction to Tom Cruise’s OBLIVION, and the fun, but brainless, IRONMAN 3, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS leads off what looks to be a terrific summer science fiction movie season with a bang.  Go!  Go twice!  Pay extra for 3D if you can tolerate it, but don’t wait for this to shrink to the size of your home screen.  It’s too much big fun in outer space.  And meet me here next week to talk about who that bad guy really is and what he’s up to!

Cheers, Donna