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This came out in Korea yesterday so I've had a bit of time to think about it. I really liked it until the 3rd act. Khan was an interesting, menacing villain and even though it moved along at a lightning pace there were still plenty of decent character scenes dropped in. My main problem is with the pacing. The film ends really abruptly where it seemed, to me, that it was just getting going, specifically The death of Marcus and Khan revealing his true plan/character to Kirk. At that point I was thinking "Yeah, we're going to have an awesome final act where the hero and villain really get to face off and try to outmaneuver each other!" Instead we got a clever-clever reverse reference to a film I've seen enough times already, a lot of explosions and fisticuffs but nothing that I really cared about, especially when the consequences of Kirk's death are handwaved away in the time it takes to write "One year later" on the screen. It seemed like they spent more screen time with Khan as a pseudo-ally than an true enemy and that retroactively spoiled the rest of the film for me. Just like all of Damon Lindelof's work, the film is carried on the strength of its set-up and then totally fails to deliver anything satisfying before it ends. You don't spend your entire movie going "Oooooooh, isn't this guy scary and dangerous, what's he up to then eh?" Without giving him at least a few scenes where he's shown to be capable of doing what he intended. If you give him a victory first, his eventual defeat is much more dramatic and satisfying. Khan doesn't "achieve" anything beyond the first 5 minutes of the movie. There really needed to be a full act between the "reveal" and the "downfall" scene, more character work, more tension, more plot. I was really hyped to see what Khan was going to do next but then it turned out that he was just going to be crashing his ship and having a punch up on top of a speeding vehicle, which I found rather disappoining. I guess when the biggest complaint you have about a film is that it was too short, it can't be all bad, but, honestly it felt like a really bad script given to a very capable cast and crew.
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May 27, 2013 12:47
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 17:01 |
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Phylodox posted:Your problem was that you were expecting Khan to be the villain. While he does end up being an antagonistic force at the end, the film never portrays him as a straight cackling bad guy. He's as much a wronged party as anyone else in the film; imprisoned, his "family" held hostage, forced to work for a covert government organization towards nefarious ends. He's almost (but not quite) a sympathetic character. The real villain of the film, personified by Admiral Marcus, is jingoistic and reactionary militarism. Are we not spoilering Khan anymore? The only reason Khan appears even remotely sympathetic is because the film basically shows him during his down time between mass genocides. He's still Space Hitler. The film just lies by omission to make Marcus the greater evil with regard to the human conflict. In broader terms Marcus IS the greater evil because, like you said, represents violent, reactionary corruption. I don't really see much to link Marcus and Khan thematically. Sure they represent the evils of the past and future but I'm specifically talking about the way the film represents threat; we just kind of waver between villains until we finally settle on Khan as being the transgressor deserving of the final, cathartic punishment. They really messed up by not making the interpersonal conflict between Khan and Kirk emblematic of a greater effort to protect the future of the Federation. Instead they just buddy up like the super heroes do on Saturday morning cartoons. In fact I'd say the central conflict is between Khan and Marcus's overt militarism and Kirk/Spock's hypocritical repression of violence. Spock learns to lie, rage and break bones by the end of the movie. Kirk beats the poo poo out of his captive even though his professed intent is to take the moral high ground. The film also ends with space 9/11 which apparently causes enlightened future people to abandon their fear and paranoia and embark on optimistic voyages of discovery. As opposed ... well, what has happened for the last 12 years. It's like the film is suggesting that militarism exists in a vacuum . The fantasy is that the reaction to 9/11 preceded the actual event, and that it's occurrence is some kind of moral purge, which allows us to return to our peace loving ways. Spermanent Record fucked around with this message at 14:52 on May 27, 2013 |
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May 27, 2013 14:46
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