procrastination

all right, so, it came up in conversation today, and i thought, i'm going to go write down a quick review of the 'new' star trek movie. i gave it a C below. it was barely a C.

the new star trek is not star trek at all, for one thing. i like the characters. it's a movie series with star trek characters in it, except that spock is not really spock anymore. kirk is good. spock has spock's mannerisms i guess, but he's like a punching machine. his biggest scene in the whole movie is jumping around punching another guy in the head, dozens of times. punch punch punch. it's like the end of an MMA fight where you're so relieved the ref comes in to put an end to it, except there it's really punching and it looks painful. in this movie, the endless head punching looks like a guy with a foam rubber fist punching a guy with a stone face. if you want to illustrate brutality, why make it so breezy?

earlier in the movie, the same guy, Khan, gets punched in the head dozens of times by kirk. in multiple other places that same guy murders a bunch of security guards or klingons or other people by hand. and there are bombs that go off and kill lots of people, and airship attacks on buildings that kill lots of people. and a starship crashes into a city and kills lots of people. half of the movie is explosions and punching and murdering. star trek!

so, really, that's my review of Star Trek Into Darkness. endless punches in the head and explosions.

you might say, hey, other star trek movies are full of the same stuff! and yeah, the last episode of TOS i watched ('Court Martial') ended with kirk wrestling with a jealous crewmate; the one before that (they show TOS episodes on saturday nights on a local broadcast) was 'Arena', which has plenty of brutality. but the movies on average have been much less violent than the violent series episodes, especially the best movies. a list:

The Motion Picture: very little violence, except for the introduction of V'ger, where some klingon ships are destroyed. sets up V'ger as very dangerous, and that's it.
Wrath of Khan: notably no repeated head punching. most violent scene is a starship battle.
Search for Spock: murder of David, which is played up as an actual *death*. klingons portrayed as brutal murderers, mostly by dialogue.
Journey Home: my favorite. not one head punch, not one murder. some whalers attempt to murder a whale, and are stopped by a klingon battleship manned by Kirk and co.
The Final Frontier: honestly don't remember... i don't think it had much violence, at least not prominently.
The Undiscovered Country: okay, here's where it started to go downhill. lots of assassination and space battle, some of which is very reminiscent of ...Into Darkness (or serves as fodder for reminiscence upon... you know). i always liked this one, but watching it years later the main thing that bothered me was how *old* they all look. it seems kind of ridiculous, watching a much of old people running around shooting phasers at eachother. anyways.

Generations: ends with a fistfight (and wreck of the enterprise), terrible, terrible movie. the fistfight ending is the model for the two New Star Treks.
First Contact: everyone loves this one, but it ruined the borg. Picard's big brutal borg-slaying scene where he gets all emotional is the worst part of the movie, in combination with alfre woodard who just doesn't belong. aside from that it was okay.

The last two TNG movies i barely remember, neither were very good.

To sum up, we have ST movies that ended with (categories are not mutually exclusive):
Communication: The Motion Picture; The Journey Home
An Act of Violence: Wrath of Khan; Search for Spock; The Final Frontier; The Undiscovered Country; all the rest....
Preventing an Act of Violence: The Journey Home
A Sacrifice: Wrath of Khan; Generations; Nemesis (these latter two are sacrifice gambits to destroy enemies)
Fist Fight (subtype of AoV): Generations; (Insurrection? not sure..); New Star Trek; Into Darkness

The TV show was always better. Should get some violence stats on the shows...