clutter.

mmpphh.

Sat, 25 May 2013 22:43:35 -0700

mmpphh.

io9 does a funnier job of detailing my issues with the new Star Trek movie

Sat, 25 May 2013 22:00:09 -0700

io9 does a funnier job of detailing my issues with the new Star Trek movie

I like Star Trek. (spoilers ahead) I’ve always liked Star Trek. If you look through old home...

Sat, 25 May 2013 21:11:00 -0700

I like Star Trek.

(spoilers ahead)

I’ve always liked Star Trek. If you look through old home videos my Dad shot you’ll find a short segment in a small apartment in Shafter, California late one night — the room is dark, and I’m sitting on my Mom’s lap, and we’re watching Star Trek: TNG.

If you were to look at my bedroom wall between the ages of 8-10 you’d find three posters: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 3 Ninjas, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

When I was four I forced my parents to plan a trip to San Francisco so I could see the whales from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. My Mom took me to the first screening of Undiscovered Country in theaters. Nichelle Nichols gave me my first butterflies dancing on a sand dune in The Final Frontier.

Suffice to say, Star Trek is something that I cherish. If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time you’ve surely seen any number of posts which focus on the films, TNG, and other aspects of the universe. Now I’m not an encyclopedia of knowledge like some folks, and I haven’t watched the entirety of every series, but since a very early age the stories put forth on film and on television screens have been some of the more important I’ve ever witnessed, and I believe truly shaped part of my moral standing and thinking.

That said, Star Trek Into Darkness is not a Star Trek film. It’s a fun action romp with explosions and some twists that may or may not make sense, but it is not Star Trek.

To illustrate this point, let us look at Star Trek as a delicious meal of homemade tacos. To make this meal we use tortillas, ground beef, seasoning, refried beans, shredded cheese, lettuce, sour cream, tomatoes, and salsa.

Star Trek, the older movies or the shows, are tacos.

Star Trek Into Darkness is nachos.

Now how do we make nachos? Well you use tortilla chips, ground beef, refried beans, shredded cheese, some lettuce, sour cream, and salsa, maybe guacamole, and olives.

Star Trek Into Darkness utilizes many of the same elements that we used to make Star Trek, but Star Trek Into Darkness is not tacos. There is a familiarity, but it is presented in an entirely different way.

The reasons that I do not like Star Trek Into Darkness is because it cannibalizes elements from The Wrath of Khan and other sources for its own use without a similar payoff but instead for the sake of fan service, and its plot is muddled and completely dependent on so many “magical” elements to make any sense (which it doesn’t really in the end).

So here is what I took away from the plot, if I misstep I am more than open to corrections:

RoboCop, an Admiral within the Federation and so obviously the bad guy from the start that it’s painful, wants to incite a war with the Klingons because he needs a reason for Starfleet to become militaristic due to the events of the first movie (I think). He utilizes a genetic superman, John Harrison (not his real name), who he found frozen with 72 of his compatriots adrift in space, to help him devise tactics and ships and weapons for a new era of war in exchange for the unfreezing of his crew. We don’t see any of this onscreen.
Then RoboCop fucks him over, I guess, or doesn’t deliver, and John just goes off somewhere. Or doesn’t, the plot doesn’t tell you, but he does end up at a children’s hospital and gives a Starfleet engineer some of his magic blood to save his daughter in exchange for blowing up the Starfleet secret research center he helped put together with a magic ring that asplodes when it gets dunked in water. Then he tries to kill every high-ranking officer in Starfleet because he’s mad…or because it’s part of the plan? I don’t know, basically everything is a catalyst for this war to get started and Kirk and his crew are the final match — they go to Kronos, the Klingon homeworld, to find John, an act that would in itself start war, but instead of firing missiles (which really contain John’s old crew in cryo, but I guess can still explode) on the planet they take him into custody and now RoboCop uses a hilarious villain ship to destroy the Enterprise and John and cover up the evidence.
Then John (who, bum bum, bum, is KHAN) and Kirk join up to take out the Admiral, but young Spock confers with old Spock about the events which have occurred and old Spock tells young Spock that Khan is bad news and he will murder everyone.
Then Khan starts acting more evil then before, squishes RoboCops head in a disturbing act of violence which felt completely out of place in this movie, double-crosses everyone, and crashes the evil Enterprise into San Francisco and tries to get away I guess. I don’t know what is next move was. He is captured and everyone wins.
Oh and Kirk died but was revived by the magic blood just like the Tribble.

That’s the basic overview, I think. The problem is that the script is so poorly pieced together that you cannot know what is purposeful and what is supposed to be purely coincidental in the story. The point of RoboCop’s actions is to start a war with the Klingons so Starfleet can become a militarized body after the events of the first movie, so he uses Khan to make weapons and ships and then tosses him away…but did he still intend for him to blow up the library? It all worked in his favor but the plot is presented in a way that states otherwise, the only part that seemed certain to not be in the Admiral’s favor was Kirk and company not killing Khan on Kronos, they were supposed to fire missiles that would in turn start a war.

This movie was written by the people who make those “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB” stickers.

All of this supposedly happenstance shit happens that all works in the cog of the machine and it’s just really, really bad storytelling. They plot can’t decide who it really wants to make the bad guy, so in the end everyone but the Enterprise crew is the bad guy: Khan, RoboCop, all those folks.

And why the fuck is it even Khan to begin with? The movie tries to keep the wool pulled over everyone’s eyes by calling him John Harrison, but then he reveals his true name to be Khan…but it DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER. Why is him being Khan important at all in this movie?! And why is he a white British man?

Do you know why Khan was relevant in Star Trek II? Because he was IN THE FUCKING TELEVISION SERIES AND THE CREW HAD ENGAGED HIM BEFORE, and he was EXILED on a planet with his crew. That was his relevance, they had history, so in the film his appearance as a villain had merit and weight.

But this is the new Trek universe and the crew has never, ever met him before, but when it’s dropped that he is Khan we’re supposed to get some “oomph” from that. But we’re not supposed to feel it because he is an integral character to the backstory of the ship and its crew, but because he is from the old series and movie — that is shit storytelling, and one of the reasons that this new series is starting to piss me off — it is still acting as though elements from the television show happened in the new universe, or at least relies on their relevance when in fact everything should be different.

Look, you want to reboot Star Trek, have at it. But stop picking from the old content to make your big reveals and plot points relevant, write your own goddamned adventures. It’s all of these winks at the audience but it’s just pointless and not even fan service, it’s almost like they have a board with all of the Trek tropes taped to it and they just fling a few darts to figure out which will be shoved into the script: Gorn, Tribbles, Khan, Kronos, Praxis, McCoy performing surgery on a missile, Carol Marcus.

Here are some more pointed issues I had with the movie:

So Kirk and the gang are on a distant planet saying “fuck you” to the Prime Directive, at which time Spock almost dies but is saved when the Enterprise dramatically lifts out of the ocean to booming music and beams him aboard. Spock filed a truthful report of the situation and Kirk is reprimanded and is relieved of command of the Enterprise, Pike becomes the acting Captain again (I guess he was just hanging around doing nothing of importance) and takes Kirk on as his First Officer, while Spock is reassigned and everyone else who knows because they don’t matter.
But they were already violating the Prime Directive by stopping the volcano, yet Spock didn’t seem to have an issue with that. I mean, I know in the old series the Prime Directive was never something that was taken super seriously, but retain some consistency in how you view it. Also, they stop the volcano from detonating by using a Cold Fusion bomb that freezes the lava.
Cold Fusion isn’t fucking cold. It…it doesn’t make things freeze, I mean yes the word ‘cold’ is in the name but jesus christ do some research and don’t just use scientific terms willy-nilly.

The only reason that Kirk gets command of the Enterprise again is because Pike dies. The only reason that Kirk took command of the Enterprise in the first movie was because Pike was captured and Kirk made Spock lash out. I don’t like how Kirk’s rise to power seems to come not from his merit as a Captain but other people’s misfortune.

Uhura and Spock’s relationship is completely pointless now. In the first movie it was used as a fun sort of “WE’RE SWITCHING THINGS UP NOW” but there isn’t any development of it in this movie — instead we get a stupid little spat for the sake of comic relief, and aside from the smidgen of emotion present there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate reason for those two characters to be romantically involved.

So they go to Kronos, which…I guess its moon Praxis has already exploded? Like…30 years early? Are they still mining there? I guess that’s an Easter Egg but Praxis exploding was a big fucking deal in Undiscovered Country and basically led the Klingons to treaty with the Federation because their people wouldn’t survive another 50 years without aid. I guess that doesn’t matter now.

Anyway Khan is on Kronos because apparently the Federation won’t go there because it’s the Klingon homeworld in Klingon territory, but whoops they do anyway because of feelings and they’re going with the original intent to fire MISSILES onto the planet, which in any case would start war because even if the missiles were to be fired on an abandoned part of the city it’s still fucking noticeable, but I suppose that’s the whole point. Also, the Klingons I guess don’t have scanners or radar.

Also, these Klingons look like a combination of the original Klingons and Ferengi. And they fly tiny versions of Birds of Preys.

Apparently Khan is literally Superman in this movie, whereas Khan in the original series and movie wasn’t actually indestructible. Khan was brilliant but egotistical, and sure he was stronger than most, but his strength as a villain wasn’t physical. Into Darkness keeps pushing his physical feats and his savage behavior — they basically dumb him down into this raving lunatic with a creepy voice.
And I love Benedict Cumberbatch, and he did alright as Khan, but it wasn’t a well-written part and it didn’t play to his strengths.
Also, his blood (and I assume the blood of his crew) can basically bring people back from the dead. Is this just going to be ignored? It’s a stupid deux ex machina in order to have Kirk not really die in the film and it’s mind-boggling.

How many times are they going to have a scene where the Enterprise rises out of something? It’s becoming pretty fucking noticeable.
Oh, and the parallels to Wrath of Khan regarding Kirk’s death. I…I literally groaned out loud when that segment started, because I knew that the outcome wouldn’t have any of the weight that the original did, and it was only being plugged into the movie because it was in Wrath of Khan. It was the only reason Khan had magic life-saving blood. And when those same lines were said and Spock screamed Khan I just sank into my chair because I could picture the writers sitting at their desks saying “yeah, yeah, they’ll love this, it was in the other thing”. It stank of all the stupid parallels that Lucas plugged into the new Star Wars trilogy in order to get older fans to notice, but like everything else in the movie it didn’t fucking matter because Kirk didn’t stay dead 15 minutes before being revived by a goofy gimmick. We literally move to an action scene and Kirk being alive again.
And you can argue that Spock was revived the same way but it was two more movies of a weird rebirth and re-learning of himself, whereas Kirk literally wakes up in a hospital bed like “hey I died, magic blood? Rad, let’s go fuck some alien bitches”. It was the re-dressing of this massive pop-culture moment in the shallowest of ways — I understand the underlying theme which was to show Kirk’s growth and his sense of responsibility, but fucking write your own goddamn plot points.

I want Star Trek exist, I don’t want all of this re-tread into the old content for the sake of connecting this high-budget action movie to a more socially and politically-themed franchise that many folks find “boring”. It’s fucking Transformers with less fart jokes and better acting.

So if you want a big, loud action movie with some comedy see Star Trek Into Darkness.

I’m having a hard time writing this Star Trek Into Darkness piece because I’ll start a...

Sat, 25 May 2013 20:28:57 -0700

I’m having a hard time writing this Star Trek Into Darkness piece because I’ll start a paragraph with a well thought-out criticism and then it just turns into a lot of cursing and caps locks.

Star Trek Into Darkness.

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:43:07 -0700

The dumb movie-goer in me thought it was entertaining.

The Star Trek fan in me didn’t like it.

The fan of well-written plots in me hated it.

More thoughts to come.

Hey I just biked 20 miles. My penis is numb.

Sat, 25 May 2013 15:29:00 -0700

Hey I just biked 20 miles.

My penis is numb.

I’m going to go on a really long bike ride, then I’m going to go and see Star Trek Into...

Sat, 25 May 2013 12:07:00 -0700

I’m going to go on a really long bike ride, then I’m going to go and see Star Trek Into Darkness with a co-worker.

But first I’m going to poop.

The most unintentionally hilarious part of...

Sat, 25 May 2013 11:42:08 -0700

The most unintentionally hilarious part of Injustice:

“BABY KENT”

Sexually attracted to every female character on Archer.

Fri, 24 May 2013 23:22:18 -0700

Sexually attracted to every female character on Archer.

hekturr replied to your photo: Full of it. how is it? beer review please! :D I give it a B. It...

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:49:37 -0700

hekturr replied to your photo: Full of it.

how is it? beer review please! :D

I give it a B.

It lacks the heft of a lot of stouts, and is just a tiny bit bitter for my tastes, but it has a good start — unfortunately unless you get the perfect temperature it has sort of a watery finish.

Drink just above room temperature. It’s a nice try but there are far superior stouts, even chocolate-tinged, that go down a bit easier.

Full of it.

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:40:36 -0700

Full of it.

chzzzzz.

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:44:40 -0700

chzzzzz.

Talking with Joe about the Xbox One just makes me more upset with what Microsoft has so far...

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:19:00 -0700

Talking with Joe about the Xbox One just makes me more upset with what Microsoft has so far announced.

Here is my go (again): Their showing earlier this week was specifically to showcase the system, not games, and yet there were still all these questions at the end because Microsoft chose to willfully remain vague on the most interesting and polarizing bits.

Is it online always or not? It requires a connection every 24 hours otherwise you can’t play games, or can you? What if the servers go down? You say they “probably” won’t?

And what about the fee for playing used games? Is that a thing or isn’t it? And what about the news that the fee will be basically the same as MSRP?

My issue is that there was a lot of disappointing news announced and there wasn’t anything new and exciting to make it sting less. And according to most of the gaming journalists that have attended both that event and follow-up events there is a lot of different, conflicting information from Microsoft’s PR and developers.

It just seems like Microsoft is trying really, really hard to not deliver the shitty news regarding it’s online-only and used games policies that are obviously coming, and have been for ages. It’s an awkward break-up conversation, and instead of just outright ending it they’re dancing around the issue with placating with “maybes” and “possibly”.

If you’re going the route you’re going then just fucking own it, because you’re just pissing people off with your half-answers and pussy-footing.

It’s time. Hur. Hurr.

Fri, 24 May 2013 20:47:00 -0700

It’s time.

Hur.

Hurr.

I do really like this game, but it suffers from the same glaring...

Fri, 24 May 2013 20:06:43 -0700

I do really like this game, but it suffers from the same glaring problem I’ve found with a lot of modern fighting games:

No good reason to continue playing single player mode.

There isn’t any incentive, or at least the incentive isn’t a big enough draw to actually make me play through an entire battle mode with a character I don’t like. I don’t like playing with Solomon Grundy, Bane, or any of the heavy hitters. I don’t like playing with Flash or Cyborg. And the individual battle mode endings for each character aren’t nearly interesting enough for me to sit through ten battles, and you can pretty much unlock 90% of the costumes in one go of the story mode (not counting the costumes that are only available through preordering as specific outlets).

Mortal Kombat had a fun time of it by giving you this massive graveyard to sift through and find goodies in using koins, but most items unlocked fall into that “okay that’s worthless” category: concept art, music tracks, etc. I can’t think of a single piece of background artwork I’ve ever been interested in, which in turn takes whatever currency a game is using and flushes it down the drain when I spend it on unlocking the “mystery” item that I don’t care about.

I like that story is becoming more important in these games, but after a single 4-hour romp you’re done, there isn’t anything new there, and the side-mission modes are fun for a second but mostly rely on mechanics that don’t fit with the game’s control scheme (half of the S.T.A.R. missions are frustrating beyond belief due to this issue).

Fighting games need an overhaul and unfortunately DLC has taken costumes and characters out of the unlockables and made them purchases. Give me something to EARN, I can’t remember how many hours I plugged into Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and yet I STILL never unlocked every character.

Give me some fucking FINISHERS to unlock! Every character in Injustice has a single super move, that’s it — give me some variety! Make these sorts of things elements to work toward! Make the fights themselves more reliant on style and storyline — one of the best fighters I ever played was Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3, because you were rewarded for completing story matches along the same lines as the show: In the cartoon Goku beat Freiza with a spirit bomb, if you manage to do so in that actual fight in-game you get awesome unlockables related to the act!

I love fighters but I never have anyone to spar against so I’m stuck with sad single player modes, and I want these games to take some hints from RPGs and give me long-term goals to work toward.

There just is never any longevity.

Dammit Onyx.

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:37:02 -0700

Dammit Onyx.

keeping in line with hollywood’s take on classic films, i will soon be rebooting my life with...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:16:17 -0700

keeping in line with hollywood’s take on classic films, i will soon be rebooting my life with a more talented and attractive cast.

tehjeff: More. From that short period of time two years ago...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:04:30 -0700

tehjeff:

More.

From that short period of time two years ago where I tried to make video reviews of things.

And in world medical news, the new Man of Steel trailer has been found to cure...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:22:31 -0700

And in world medical news, the new Man of Steel trailer has been found to cure erectile dysfunction.

If I had the power to predict earthquakes I’d use it to time all of my sexual interactions to...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:03:00 -0700

If I had the power to predict earthquakes I’d use it to time all of my sexual interactions to the shifting plates so I could be like “hay did u feel teh earth move” and then they fucking have to say yes.

Haha just kidding I haven’t had sex in over six months.