Star Trek Into Darkness review 2013 grade A

Star Trek is about working together to advance society.  In the Abrams era of Star Trek most of this tone has been lost in favor of a more action oriented story telling.  Its brisk it's kinetic its a fresh cote paint of on an old car.  So when I get into my review of Into Darkness I'm focusing on whats under the hood.

The story pulls us in with an Indiana Jones style action sequence where Kirk and Dr McCoy are running from a prehistoric extraterrestrial culture.  The dialogue is snappy and traded via banter in the middle of an action scene.  It seems like these new films are obsessed with entertaining you.   I have no problem with that but I do have an issue with invoking 9/11 like imagery to give the movie modern gravitas.

My issue with 9/11 imagery is that it is beginning to become cliche' with themes of smoking buildings, hunting terrorists, quick retribution this cheapens the events of  that horrible day by using it as an entertainment context.  The antagonist is Khan played marvelously by Benedict Cumberbatch.  Khan is a genetically engineered super human fighting for his people.  After blowing up a Star Fleet building the Enterprise is dispatched to terminate him without trial.  Raising moral and ethical conflicts among the crew.  After Kirk makes the choice not to kill Khan we later learn of a bigger Star Fleet conspiracy.

I love the action and where the story seems to be going and if this is any indication of what the new Star Wars sequels could be then this is a galaxy I want to continue to explore.

Movie grade A.

STAR TREK: TITAN [The televison series that could be]

 

 

Working on a pilot for a new Star Trek series featuring the adventures of the USS Titan under Willam Riker's command who should the antagonist be? The Dominion, Q, Romulans, Klingions, Cardasians the Breen have a killer outline looking for some opinions.

Star Trek 2009 DVD Review

I recently purchased a DVD copy of ST 2009 and it's actually pretty good what I like is that it includes a digital copy for laptop and ipod users very forward thinking. There is a commentary track and pretty good special features. The film itself is presented in anamorphic widescreen with a dolby digital sound mix, excellent picture quality... this film gets watched allot at my job and I dont feel like a geek for bringing it in because it's more of an action flick than a traditional sci-fi film. The story is a prequel that reboots the series and gives it some much needed respectability. I think after ST Insurection I turned in my phaser ST TNG officially sucked okay, I then became a Star Wars fan. Lets face it the Star Wars universe is cooler and more epic than Star Trek and of course it has John William's scoring it... Star Trek was cool because of the characters and the adventure.

The story is about James Tibreious Kirk and how he joined Star Fleet and became Captain of the USS Enterprise. In this version they create a parallel universe and destroy the planet Vulcan changing the entire timeline very ballsy move there but I love it. I especially like the visual style with the light flares who would have known ST would ever be cool again.

This is not a must have but a welcomed editon to your DVD collection
Movie Grade B+