Star Trek Into Darkness Review OR Cumberbatch Is King

First off, when I went to see Star Trek Into Darkness tonight there was a dude waiting in line in FULL Klingon makeup and it was so freaking cool.  I thought I was all hip with my classic Star Trek t-shirt (as did he, by the way… he totally said “Nice shirt” as I walked by!), but this guy really went for it.  He had some sweet Klingon robes and everything, and it looked like his lady friend was in a classic Star Trek uniform dress.  I was impressed.  Well done, random stranger!

Anyway, I’ve been a huge Star Trek fan since I was 8 years old, as perhaps evidence by the fact that I have a Star Trek t-shirt and I thought I was super cool wearing it to the theater tonight.  I love the franchise (except Enterprise, but no one likes that), have SO many action figures, and spent significant portions of my childhood coming up with stories for my own Star Trek series.  I love the first Abrams Star Trek, and I came into Star Trek Into Darkness as a big fan all around.

As a fan, this movie is amazing.  It’s almost wall to wall fan service, but in the best way possible.  There are constant references and jokes and nods to the original continuity, but not in a way that feels forced or pulls you out of the story.  I mean, there’s a tribble!  AND it’s important to the plot!

The many references don’t weigh the film down because it moves at a breakneck pace.  This thing is epic, and hurtles from event to event, with things getting crazier by the minute.  The plot starts off simple enough, with a Starfleet officer gone rogue, trying to take out the Starfleet brass, but it escalates from there and for pretty much the entire second half of the movie, everyone is perpetually almost going to die.  It’s very much an action film, more explodey and chaotic than past Trek adventures, but it’s exciting and fun and just ridiculously entertaining.

Despite this summer action film quality, the characters are also well-served.  Chris Pine is great again as Captain Kirk, totally capturing the spirit of Kirk without copying Shatner in a weird way that just works gangbusters for me.  From tiptoeing around the Prime Directive to save a primitive planet to flagrantly violating it to save Spock, Kirk is full-on being Kirk from the get-go.  And, of course, he learns and grows along the way.  My favourite part of Kirk, though, is how Pine plays him as ALMOST dropping the f-bomb several times throughout the movie when he’s frustrated.  We get a hint “f…” and then he just goes on to the next word.  It cracked me up.

Zachary Quinto’s Spock is great as well, and a lot of the movie revolves around his relationship with Kirk.  They aren’t adversaries anymore, but a hotheaded human and a logical Vulcan tend to butt heads.  Nonetheless, the movie does a really wonderful job showing the love and respect they have for each other, and Quinto is excellent at putting just a touch of emotion into Spock’s near perpetual stoicism.

Spock’s relationship with Uhura gets a lot of attention too, and Uhura is far and away the third most prominent of the Enterprise crew, which I thought was cool.  Though off the top of my head, I don’t think she passes the Bechdel Test.  Still, she has way more to do in this movie and gets to kick a lot of ass, and Zoe Saldana does really well with the emotional and action aspects of the character.

The rest of the crew all get decent screentime.  Simon Pegg is again hilarious as Scotty, John Cho gets to make Sulu a total bad ass, and Karl Urban’s DeForest Kelley impression just KILLS me.  Everyone else is making their character their own, but Urban is doing a straight up DeForest Kelley impersonation as McCoy.  Anton Yelchin’s Chekhov is a bit underserved apart from a lot of frazzled running, I suppose.  He could have got a little bit more to do.

But really, Star Trek Into Darkness is all about Benedict Cumberbatch.  I’m not going to tell you who he’s playing (there’ll be a spoiler section at the end), but he just slays it.  He’s fierce and brilliant and fascinating to watch.  He has a monologue in the brig that almost makes you feel bad for him and want to root for him, but then he turns ruthless and brutal and evil.  And even then, you’re still sort of cheering for him because he’s Cumberbatch!  It’s like evil Sherlock in space, and how can you not get behind that?  He’s also surprisingly good at the fight scenes, like impressively so.  For an English theater dandy, the dude is fantastically precise and violent in the action scenes.  He even runs kind of awesomely!  Everyone in the movie is great, but Cumberbatch steals the show for sure.

All of the usual things you’d expect to be great are great.  The special effects are amazing, the score is killer, there are lots of cool and different outfits, the locations are vibrant and diverse.  If, like me, you saw the trailer and thought: “How are they going to jam that many places and fights into one movie in any coherent way?”, don’t worry, they very much do.  The pacing of the movie is smooth and engaging.  Action scenes are peppered with jokes, emotional scenes often lead into increasingly bigger action scenes; the movie is never just one tone.  It constantly cycles through emotions and characters while serving all of them properly.

I will say that I was outraged they labeled the Klingon homeworld as “Kronos” instead of “Qo’noS”.  I’m still pretty irked about that.  And, frankly, the movie is so much fun that it glosses over some not insubstantial plot holes and logic gaps.  I mean, in the 23rd century, the Earth should have some sort of defense mechanism for falling/out of control starships that might crash into things, right?  This has to have come up.  The entire insane last hour of the movie takes place right beside Earth and no other starship pops by to check out the explosions and make sure their flagship is okay.

Still, the movie is so exciting and fun that you don’t even care.  The constantly in flux fate of the Enterprise is much more interesting.  All in all, I enjoyed myself immensely.  The characters were great, the action was huge, Cumberbatch was amazing, and I absolutely loved it all.

 

SPOILER SECTION!!

Seriously, one of these is a DOOZY.

Look away if you haven’t seen the movie!!

 

Here are a few spoiler comments:

• I totally called it with Khan.  And I LOVE that they did Khan.  Cumberbatch’s take on him was so cool and different than Ricardo Montalban, but just as big and evil.  There was a part in the movie where you just KNOW he’s Khan but he hasn’t said it yet, and he’s just monologuing away and I was dying for him to say he’s Khan but he kept skirting around it.  It was frustratingly great.
• Really, the whole inversion of Wrath of Khan was super cool, particularly killing off Kirk instead of Spock.  Well played.
• Though even I knew that they’d use Khan’s blood to bring him back to life, and I am the WORST at movie prediction.
• Killing off Pike seemed a little telegraphed too.  I’ve seen enough J.J. Abrams stuff to know that father figures aren’t going to have a good time of it.
• Leonard Nimoy!!  I had no idea he was going to be in it again.  When new Spock asked old Spock if he’d ever had a run in with someone named Khan, I just roared.
• I didn’t get emotional until the end with “These are the voyages…”, so I was pretty proud of myself.  With the first Star Trek, I was barely keeping it together by the time Thor died five minutes into it!
• So, where do we all think they’re going for the next one?  Based on the accelerated timeline we seem to be seeing here, I think they’re going to go big and do something Borg related.  Maybe something “early days of the Borg”, where the Enterprise wins but a part of it escapes to become the BORG Borg down the road.

Geoff Johns Discusses A Live Action Wonder Woman And Gina Carano

Usually I don’t post much about Wonder Woman movie and TV news because most of it is unsubstantiated rumours, and even when the projects are real and have a shot to happen we still get burned.  The David E. Kelley pilot, the Amazon series, the Justice League movie… it’s been a bad run.  But yesterday in an interview with Collider, DC Comics’ Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns briefly talked about possible Wonder Woman projects.  Johns is pretty much DC’s official liaison to the film/TV departments of Warner Bros., so when he talks we should listen.  Here’s what he had to say:

Wonder Woman.  What is the possibility of something with that ending on TV, the big screen?

JOHNS: Very, very good.

So it’s still something that’s a priority?

JOHNS: Absolutely.

What are your thoughts on Gina Carano?  She’s in Fast & Furious 6, she was in Haywire.

JOHNS: Let’s move on…

So we know that they’re working on something, possibly someTHINGS for Wonder Woman, and that it’s a priority.  That’s rather vague and useless.  That’s true of any time in the past decade or so.  The interesting bit is Johns not answering the Gina Carano question.

Carano, a mixed martial artist and the star of the very underrated Haywire, is a fan favourite to take on the role of Wonder Woman.  Recently she caused a stir when she visited the Man of Steel set, fueling rumours that she was going to appear as Wonder Woman in the movie, but it turns out she was probably just there to visit her boyfriend, Henry Cavill.  Nonetheless, her name is regularly linked with Wonder Woman and Johns’ coyness here is intriguing.

Personally, I’m not sold on her for the role.  The fights would be amazing, but I think she’d need to work on her acting to take on a role like this.  If DC’s learned anything from Marvel, and I sincerely hope they have, it’s that the actors they choose and the personality and charm they bring to the characters are far more important than how they look in the suit and how well they can fight.

Anyway, we didn’t get a lot of information from Johns, but at least we know that it’s from a reliable source and, at the very least, that DC hasn’t forgotten they have this great character called Wonder Woman that they should really do something with.  Johns’ Carano sidestep probably doesn’t mean anything, though he did say to expect some announcements more generally at San Diego Comic Con this summer, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled for that.  It’ll be lots of fun to have some news to excite us and then inevitably disappoint us when it doesn’t pan out.

The First Trailer for Thor: The Dark World Debuts!

The Marvel movie franchise is remarkably impressive, churning out hit after hit and then bringing everyone together for an epic Avengers film.  Now with Phase Two about to begin, I am far and away the most excited for Thor: The Dark World.  I love all of the movies, but Thor is my favourite thus far.  It’s Norse gods AND superheroes.  What more could you possibly want from a film?  There’s a reason Loki was the villain in The Avengers: Because Thor was such a super cool movie.

Iron Man 3 is out soon, and I’m sure that’ll be fun, but Marvel’s just released the first teaser trailer for Thor: The Dark World!!  Give it a look:

Jane in Asgard!  Evil dark elves! Long haired Loki!  It looks like so much fun.  Plus it’s directed by Alan Taylor, who did an amazing job with so many episodes of Game of Thrones.  This movie is going to be a spectacular mélange of awesomeness.  I loved the style of the first movie, and I’m hoping it gets blended with the more down to earth fantasy that characterizes Game of Thrones.  From this trailer, it looks like a good mix.

Unfortunately, we have to wait until November to see it.  There are several superhero flicks to tide us over until then, but man oh man I want to see Thor: The Dark World most of all.  Mark November 8 on your calendar… draw a big hammer on it or something.

Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines Review OR An Excellent, Inspiring Documentary

Last night, PBS’ “Independent Lens” documentary series aired Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines, a film by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan.  I’ve been looking forward to the films since it premiered last year to rave reviews at the SXSW film festival, and after more than a year of waiting to check it out I’m very glad to say that it didn’t disappoint.  I was really impressed with it.

The history of Wonder Woman is often told in reductive and somewhat inaccurate ways.  Particularly with the original Golden Age Wonder Woman, people tend to see the character through their own modern lens, and her message of superiority is swapped for equality while the more problematic aspects of the character, like her pervasive bondage imagery, are simply brushed aside.  Wonder Women! does an excellent job of portraying every side of each incarnation of Wonder Woman, avoiding the idealization that so often simplifies the character.  For a brief rundown of a lengthy career, it touches on all of the major facets of Wonder Woman over the decades and presents a very accurate and engaging version of her history.

There are a few bits where Wonder Woman! could have delved a little deeper, but this was essentially Wonder Woman 101.  More on Marston’s psychological theories would have been interesting, and they missed an excellent opportunity to dig into the lesbian subtext of the Golden AND Silver Age Wonder Woman (“Suffering Sappho!”), but that level of detail wasn’t the purpose of the documentary.  It’s a well rounded introduction to Wonder Woman’s history that serves as a launching pad into a discussion of female heroes generally.

This was an interesting transition, because after the heavy focus on Wonder Woman in the first half of the film, she disappears almost entirely after the TV show is examined.  The focus turns to Ripley, riot grrrls, and Buffy as we move toward the modern day.  It’s a somewhat jarring change, and the viewer is left to wonder “Hey, where did Wonder Woman go?” but I think that might’ve been the point.  After the TV show in the 1970s, Wonder Woman disappeared as anything other than an iconic figure.  She had her monthly comic book, a perennial poor seller, but didn’t do much else while other heroes like Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man had multiple film franchises and TV shows.  Wonder Woman was a forerunner who paved the way for modern female heroes like Charlie’s Angels and Xena, but Wonder Woman herself has fallen by the wayside.  Wonder Women! later addresses this, taking the entertainment industry to task for its lack of strong heroines in movies and TV, particularly its lack of Wonder Woman.

The film is well put together from a technical standpoint, with lots of great visuals, a good score, and a very clear style and tone.  While I’m sure it was edited down to fit the one-hour time slot, it moved along smoothly, with one topic naturally leading into the next.  There were some great interviews, including big names like Lynda Carter, Gloria Steinem, and Lindsay Wagner.  Comic creators Trina Robbins and Gail Simone also appeared, as well as noted Wonder Woman fan Andy Mangels and writers like Mike Madrid.  To me, the star of the interviews was Jennifer K. Stuller, the author of Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, who went through many of the more complex components of Wonder Woman’s history with ease and clarity. 

All together, I really enjoyed it.  It was a great runthrough of the history of Wonder Woman, and also a very inspiring and impactful story of the importance of female characters and role models generally.  I think the most affecting part of the film was when the many accomplished women interviewed for the movie talked about their own heroines, in that it really hammered home how valuable strong women, real and fictional, are for young girls as they grow up.  Wonder Women! is a blatantly feminist film without ever having to say it’s a blatantly feminist film.  There are no discussions of the patriarchy and the need for equality and the like; that’s all just assumed.  It’s a movie about strong women inspiring future generations of strong women, and how that is an incredibly good and important thing.  I thought it was great, and I hope that even more people are able to see it soon on DVD and other platforms.

Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines Documentary Airs TONIGHT On PBS

Everyone be sure to tune into PBS tonight because Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines is being shown as part of the “Independent Lens” documentary series.  Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, this documentary has been getting tons of press since it debuted, and it features interviews with big names like Gloria Steinem and Lynda Carter.  Here’s a preview from PBS:

I’m very excited to check it out!  So far, it’s been shown only at screenings at conventions and festivals, so it’s great that it’s making it to a wider audience.  You should check your local listings to make sure you don’t miss it.  My closest PBS station (I’m in Nova Scotia, but I get a feed from New England) has it on at 10pm EST, and it’s titled “Independent Lens” on my telecaster.  Your local PBS station may be different, but you can stick in your zip code here and find out when the documentary is airing near you.

So check out Wonder Women! The Untold Story Of American Superheroines tonight on PBS, and come back here tomorrow, where I’ll have a full review of the film.  It should be a very fun show!  And possibly the only Wonder Woman we’ll see on TV for a while.

We’ll See Flashpoint Wonder Woman Again In DC’s New Animated Movie Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox

DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation have just revealed their new animated feature out on July 30: Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.  It’s based on the Flashpoint mini-series by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert that launched the New 52 back in 2011.  While I didn’t much care for Flashpoint as a comic, I can see it making for a decent animated movie.  Plus we’ll get to see Wonder Woman in this cool outfit again:

I’m all about variant outfits and alternate realities.  The Flashpoint: Wonder Woman and the Furies series was a disappointment, suffering from some obviously rushed artwork and a story that tied into a bunch of other books I didn’t want to buy, but the idea itself was sort of interesting.  The Atlantean/Themysciran alliance and subsequent war, with the Amazons taking over the United Kingdom, is a crazy, cool idea that could be a lot of fun in animated form.

The press release announcing the movie revealed that Vanessa Marshall will be the voice of Wonder Woman.  She’s played Wonder Woman before in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and has also starred as Black Canary in Young Justice, Poison Ivy in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and several other comic-related roles.  Also, Dana Delany is back as Lois Lane, reprising her role from Superman: The Animated Series, and the legendary voice of Batman Kevin Conroy will play the Dark Knight once again.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is out on Blu Ray/DVD/digital download/etc. this summer, and it looks like it could be a lot of fun.  I don’t think it worked so well as a comic, but one movie combining the best of the innumerable mini-series with the main plot might be really cool.  I’m definitely going to check it out.

This Picture From A Wonder Woman Porn Parody Is Sadly The Best Live Action Wonder Woman I’ve Ever Seen

In what is sure to be a first for this site, I’m about to praise a Wonder Woman porn movie.  This picture from the upcoming Wonder Woman XXX: An Axel Braun Parody starring Kimberly Kane as Wonder Woman is pretty much the best live action Wonder Woman costume I’ve ever seen:

It’s based on the New 52 Wonder Woman, and seems to have more in common with Cliff Chiang’s version than Jim Lee’s.  And it’s VERY good.  It blows that terrible costume from the David E. Kelly pilot right out of the water, and captures the style of the comics while still looking cool and workable in real life.  I’m really quite impressed with it.  I hate Wonder Woman porn because UGH have we not objectified the character enough, but this costume is extremely well done.

Also, how sad is it that the best live action Wonder Woman we’ve seen since Lynda Carter comes from a porn parody?  Get it together, Warner Bros.  Make a Wonder Woman movie, and maybe talk to Axel Braun’s costume designer.  It’s a sad, sad day for Wonder Woman when a porn director is more committed to getting the character right than the company that actually owns her.