Star Trek (Summer 2016) Oh Dear…
What is it with Hollywood writers today? Have they not watched any films from the last 100 years? Have they not watched any films from the last few years? Wait, have they watched their own films, the ones they made over the last decade? Maybe the team that wrote this disaster of a film (Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof) knows nothing about Star Trek, its history and its extraordinary use of anthropology, linguistics and sociology to explore contemporary society. That's right, I am not saying anything new here, but it seems that the title of the film actually captures its severe problems — Beyond. Indeed. Every possible cliché, every possible overused special effect, everything leads to darkness, nowhere, dark matter. Once again we have an evil man with supreme power out to kill humans. Ah, the one hundredth film on this theme? No, the one thousandth. This film like many others is entirely driven by its special effects and even here, not much. The same crashes, same small models breaking apart, same use of green screens, same artificial use of backgrounds that are supposed to look like space, same, same, same same.
Yet, on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is described this way: "Visually spectacular and suitably action packed, Star Trek Into Darkness is a rock-solid installment in the venerable sci-fi franchise, even if it's not as fresh as its predecessor." Well, notice that nothing is said about the plot, about the story. And, this is the challenge for filmmakers. Can a new generation use special effects in order to promote new types of storytelling? I hope so. Somehow, Hollywood as a whole needs to return to a simpler form of cinema that relies on characters/actors that actually engage with ideas, history and the future.
