Star Trek, meme

[petronia]

Went to see it twice: once with group of friends (Trekkie), once with sororial unit (non-Trekkie). Will write it up for the weekly read/watch meme, probably.

I hate to be that Internet fan, but it's difficult to watch Cumberbatch and Quinto glare at each other without being like, damn, Sherlock Holmes' genetic material really has seen some interesting vagaries in Trek canon.

...What? It wouldn't make the fanfic they did write any more awkward. XD; BC executes wonderfully, but he's not doing Montalban** and the character might as well not be Khan, so what's the point. (Lindelof couldn't resist the ghei angst is the point, yes, I know. But guys, seriously: there's whitewashing, and then there's "I call BS on this dude's name being 'Singh'.")

** Can't pull off the pecs so wise decision. But for one hot second I feared I was going to watch a movie in which le Cumberbatch puts the 1960s Latin lover/masterful dom whammy on Alice Eve's Carol Marcus.

OK, there is this (seen in various places):

I have 32 works archived at AO3. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 32 (the first thing I posted there), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it.

Comments

[sub_divided]

Yup, it was exactly like watching a two-hour fanfiction XD complete with "action scenes" so the real story of how Kirk and Khan are similar but different, and Spock and Khan are similar but different, all in the name of ultimately developing the Kirk-Spock relationship, can play out lolol.

I enjoyed the way the movie emphasized that humans in the "utopian" society of the Federation are not less inclined toward violence than humans of today, but they've built the society they wanted to build with different values and rules that guard against indulging those instincts. Which is why the scene where Kirk tries to beat Khan up after he's surrendered - and then the scene where Spock pounds Khan after he's knocked out - even more disturbing. And no one even calls Kirk out on it afterward! You'd think Spock would at least have something to say about Federation rules for handling an unarmed prisoner after he's surrendered.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie, which apart from above didn't make any obvious missteps. But there was a weird lack of tension to it. Not just because you already know all of the main characters are going to live: also because in every action sequence you know exactly how they're going to live. The scene at the very beginning with the volcano was actually the most tense, because there was an actual choice to make there. In every other scene the choice was obvious and it was just a matter of controling nerves and keeping steady until the last moment.

Maybe I'd have a different opinion if we'd gone to the 3D showing, XD.

[sub_divided]

Oh yeah, and then after Kirk gets dressed-down by Pike for the way he acted in the volcano scene, the movie spends the next hour+ validating his choice in every possible way, so the whole "Captains frequently have to weigh equally bad choices and make difficult decisions under pressure" theme gets kind of lost.

[petronia]

Well -- Kirk's poor life choices (as Pike correctly identified, but Spock did not) were 1) interfering with the planet, even to save lives, and 2) lying about it in the report. Saving Spock was not the bad decision in and of itself, it was putting Spock in the situation in the first place and then not taking responsibility for it.

The Prime Directive bit sort of gets set aside, because that's a real point of philosophical/scientific debate JJ's movies aren't interested in. XD Spock gets a lesson in Bros Before Principles, and Kirk gets a lesson in Sometimes Your Choices WILL Get Your People Killed, And That Is On You -- whether or not it was the 'right' choice. Kirk's reaction to this is then to throw himself down on the wire, Avengers Tony Stark style. >_>

I always find ppl's reactions to nu!Kirk in these movies fascinating. XD (Old!Kirk too, but nu!Kirk even more so.) I have friends who watch them and think it baffling that dude gets put in charge of anything, let alone other ppl's lives. My sister thought he was smart and didn't make any bad decisions at all.

(My view of it tends to be that Kirk is a good leader precisely because he allows the people around him to temper his obvious weaknesses. He's not as much of a cowboy as he looks.)

[petronia]

I have heard ppl say this but it wasn't the case for me -- I was surprised! by all! the plot twists! XD Even Kirk dying, because I was totally wrongfooted by the fact that Spock actually had died in STII and had to be brought back by a movieful of mystical mumbo-jumbo. So I was sitting there in confusion like, But I don't think Kirk's consciousness is backed up in Bones? Wait, is Kirk's consciousness backed up in Bones? is Bones going to start jumping off the Golden State Bridge and hitting on women in bars half his age?

Anyway, I thought it was really tense. Too tense, possibly; I don't think all modern action movies are full-on assaults that leave you no room to breathe for two hours straight, but this one kind of was.

The IMAX 3D was really good! The second time I went to see it was AVX, and it was less impressive.

[sub_divided]

I specifically avoided seeing it in 3D because me and Chrissie caught a trailer preview in 3D and it was too much XD Like even the close up shots of people's faces were highly three-dimensional. But maybe it would have added drama to the action set-pieces.

Maybe it's because I didn't watch the original Wrath of Khan, but everything in the movie was very predictable for me. I don't mean that in a bad way, necessarily - like your sister I saw Kirk and others making the best most logical smartest choice every time. The kind of ironic thing about making a "superhuman" the villain is that the crew of the enterprise are superior humans, too.

Chrissie agrees with you re: Kirk. She thinks Spock would be a bad captain because he'd just override Kirk every ride, whereas sometimes Kirk listens to Spock. He's a smart guy but because he doesn't have a specialty, he lets other people on the ship do their jobs. And he cares a lot about them, obviously.

But yes, Pike was spot-on in his critique XD. I don't think Kirk is a bad captain, I think he's a potentially good captain, but only a good captain when he has a good crew, and being willing to argue with him (like Spock and McCoy and Uhara and Scotty do), go behind his back (like Spock did), and resign if necessary (like Scotty did) is a key quality of being a good crew member.

[whatistigerbalm]

This post has made my morning brighter. Also, 17!

[petronia]

Glad you enjoyed. XD

17 is, uhh, the fake poems from Lien's POV post-Black Powder War (Temeraire). I still quite like these!

1) There are maybe 1 1/2 poems' worth of actually successful translations of Li Qingzhao in there.

2) The mythological allusions in #5. The idea behind these was, yanno, what would Chinese literature be like if dragons actually existed and could write from their own perspective. But I remember this being quite easy -- I didn't have to work it out painstakingly or anything.

3) I think #4 is an actual proper poem.

[maeran.livejournal.com]

26 because one-track mind never did get another track, couldn't afford the down payment. (Also hoping my counter ain't broken, cannot afford replacement and warranty expired like 20 years ago. XD)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

26 is "Private Beach," which is pretty short to have three separate things. XD Some of it I like less now than I used to -- a lot of the stuff I wrote in my early 20s feels off to me now realism-wise (not style-wise).

1) Ryoma's Michael Jordan-style star athlete trappings: the Ponta commercial, Yuuta dining out on having played him.

2) The actual visual of Fuji on the beach, with the massive telescope lens.

3) "I'm the nice one."