The one thing that left me thinking after Star Trek: Into Darkness was over was that of dedication to canon. It stuck in my craw as I left the theatre for a late night venture to the gym: is commitment to the canon of any franchise something that has to be done or is it a sake of convenience? After watching Into Darkness I had one of those internal debates while I attacked the elliptical machine. How do we justify a film’s quality, or lack thereof, in regards to its original canon if it’s a remake, reboot or re-launch of a franchise?

I’m torn so I thought I’d write about it this week. My first thoughts were “who cares” in regards to Star Trek and its sequel pretty much dispelling 90% of the established canon for a new take. It’s easily justifiable, as they create a brand new universe to be able to toy around with the conventions of the old one. Nothing from current Trek canon matters because we’ve got a new universe to play with.

This wouldn’t be comparable to this hypothetical: Christopher Nolan changes up Batman lore by turning Bruce Wayne into a ‘70s club kid who’s parents get shot at Studio 54. Throw in a disco-dancing Robin and this version of Batman Begins would’ve been … interesting, to say the least.

Abrams kept in what worked for his version of Star Trek and tossed out the rest, opting to rework it in his image and nothing else. I admire the courage that takes, to go against the grain. But one thing kept bugging me, even despite my endorsement of being able to craft a new universe given the solid direction Trek has gone: shouldn’t there be more respect to the nature of the franchise than just some token acknowledgements?

That’s the thing that gets me. I’m not a Trekkie, or a Trekker, but I’ve seen enough of the television show (and own the movies) to know that there isn’t a whole lot of Trek in Abrams’s version of the franchise. I can imagine that if you’re a diehard fan of the shows that swallowing this new franchise, which is more action than science fiction, has to be kind of hard. On the one hand it’s more Star Trek; it’s better than none, right?

Thus I leave it up to you, the reader. Is it ok to depart from canon … or would you prefer a more traditional Trek?

A Movie A Week – The Challenge

This Week’s DVD – Trek Nation

What’s it like to grow up in the shoes of a man who created an American institution? That’s what Eugene Roddenberry Jr. had to deal with as a kid, and later as an adult, as he is the son of Gene Roddenberry. Gene was the creator of Star Trek, among others, and he died before they could establish the adult relationship children are supposed to have with their parents. Almost forty years after his death, Eugene Jr. wanted to explore what his father had created as well as the man himself. Thus came Trek Nation in 2010, where the son followed the father’s footprints to learn more about his father as a man and as the myth.

It’s an interesting take on the man from his son as he learns, like every son, that his father was a flawed person among other things. He’s upfront about it all, as well, as we get an interesting viewpoint on the father from his child. It’s loving but honest, exploring the impact of Trek as well as some interesting stories, including Nichelle Nichols detailing one in which she discusses how Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her to stay on the show after the first season.

Lots of cameos, too, as even George Lucas and Stan Lee discuss how Trek influenced their work. They’ve got interviews from the original series, The Next Generation and luminaries from the entertainment field to talk about the show and Roddenberry. It’s a fascinating insight into the man, not all of it good, and you get a well crafted look at Gene Roddenberry as a person (warts and all). There’s a real insightful moment when the son discusses his father with Wil Wheaton and the resulting conversation about the character, and Gene’s take on it.

It’s on Hulu, so you don’t have to pay for it, but it’s worth the view. Recommended.

What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and community college co-eds with low standards at the Alumni Club

Epic – A human gets shrunk and winds up in a war of grasshoppers or something.

Skip it – I don’t know much about this film … but the adage for animation holds: “If it ain’t Pixar it’s probably crap.”

Fast & Furious 6 - The Rock plus Vin Diesel vs. McNulty

See it - It advertises exactly what it delivers, which isn’t the worst thing in the world.

The Hangover Part III - Apparently they don’t go out and party so hard they black out this time.

Skip it - There comes a point when a franchise just exists so people have something to do and nothing more. This is it.

Before Midnight - The cast is back … and now it’s love in their 40s.

See it – This has a chance to be the greatest trilogy ever, regardless of genre.

Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @ScottSawitz .

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Plot Summary: Set in a dystopic present where vigilant gargoyles and ferocious demons rage in a battle for ultimate power, Victor Frankenstein’s creation Adam (Eckhart) finds himself caught in the middle as both sides race to discover the secret to his immortality. From the creators of the hit supernatural saga, Underworld, comes the action thriller ‘I, Frankenstein’, written for the screen and directed by Stuart Beattie based on the graphic novel ‘I, Frankenstein’ by Kevin Grevioux, and brought to life by a cast that includes Aaron Eckhart, Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski, Miranda Otto, Jai Courtney, Socratis Otto, Mahesh Jadu, Caitlin Stasey and Aden Young as Victor Frankenstein.

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Plot Summary: Prepare for the latest chapter of the groundbreaking saga that began with 2000′s hit sci-fi film Pitch Black and 2004′s The Chronicles of Riddick. The infamous Riddick has been left for dead on a sun-scorched planet that appears to be lifeless. Soon, however, he finds himself fighting for survival against alien predators more lethal than any human he’s encountered. The only way off is for Riddick to activate an emergency beacon and alert mercenaries who rapidly descend to the planet in search of their bounty.

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When JJ Abrams relaunched the Star Trek universe he did so by making it so far removed from the television shows and ten film franchise that it was barely recognizable. Abrams decided to take the basic framework of the show and movies, mine them for the recognizable aspects of the franchise and original characters, and then turn it into something wholly different. So far it’s yielded mixed results, as he hasn’t quite hit the high water marks of the series (and either the action or sci-fi genres) but has managed to craft a pair of good, perfectly acceptable action films. Into Darkness follows Star Trek in being a good film that doesn’t quite have that final gear to become a masterpiece.

We follow up the original film at some point in the future as Kirk (Chris Pine) is fully in command of the Enterprise. They’re on an expedition to save a planet with a primitive civilization when Spock (Zachary Quinto) finds himself in a predicament. In order to save this planet he would have to sacrifice himself in the process to prevent the Enterprise from violating the Prime Directive. Kirk opts to save his friend, of course, and in doing so sets up a tremendous action sequence as well as set up the big character arc he’ll be facing in the film: meshing his “devil may care” attitude with the responsibilities of being a starship captain.

It becomes the film’s overreaching story arc as Kirk faces his toughest adversary yet: John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch). He’s a badass special agent type from Starfleet’s super secret special operations division, hell bound to wage a one man war on the Federation. After Harrison engages in some terrorist activities, including killing Kirk’s Mentor Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood), Kirk and the Enterprise are tasked with one mission: run him to ground. But that’ll be easier said than done, of course, as there’s more than meets the eye than a simple mission to capture Harrison.

Abrams has essentially taken the general premise behind Wrath of Khan this time around and reworked it for his vision of the Star Trek universe. That includes bringing into the fold Khan Nonnan Singh, revealed as being the true identity of John Harrison, and giving an early altercation between a less seasoned Kirk & Spock than they would find in the previous franchise. It’s a bold choice to make for Abrams, to bring in the best villain of the entire universe of Trek, and it mainly works because Cumberbatch is an interesting villain as well as Abrams take on the Spock/Kirk relationship.

Cumberbatch was an interesting choice for the franchise, especially with Ricardo Montelban already with a brilliant performance in both the second film of the original franchise and the television episode which originated his character, and chooses to play it differently. He’s much more cerebral in his approach; it’s much less about the physicality of the character and much more about the overwhelming sense of awe around him. Khan may not be comically dressed or over-sized in this universe but he’s all the same in deadliness because there’s a smoldering in Cumberbatch. He knows he’s the baddest man in the universe and so does everyone around him; there’s an aura of menace to him that Montelban never had.

It doesn’t hurt that he has Chris Pine to play off of. Khan and Kirk would define the franchise early on, as Khan would mark the best villain, but it’s Pine’s performance that’s fairly surprising. He doesn’t ape a younger Shatner, like many would, and instead plays him as a leader needing that seasoning to become a great one. It’s awfully similar to how Nathan Fillion played Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly and Serenity: we’re waiting for him to become this man of legend as opposed to seeing him as it. Kirk is flawed, deeply, but we’re seeing him learn from his mistakes and begin to correct them. Shatner’s Kirk was experienced when given the helm, of course, and Pine’s Kirk got it at a significantly younger age. It’s a different experience level going in and as such they have to played differently; Pine does so brilliantly as the cocky leader who doesn’t know the things he doesn’t know he’s supposed to know and such.

The other interesting factor Abrams explores, that never was developed strongly in the original franchise, is the Spock/Kirk friendship. Abrams imagines them as rivals as opposed to contemporaries, bonded by experience and an unstated mutual admiration. They’re more of a traditional action duo as younger men, of course, and it works for the film that Abrams has designed Spock and Kirk this way. Kirk needs Spock to keep him in line, to remind him that there are rules and regulations. Spock needs Kirk to remind him about thinking outside the box, not thinking rigidly all the time. It’s what makes the film’s final act that much stronger; Abrams views their friendship as something that needs a foundation of mutual respect and needed a way to get there. The first two films are like the opening act of a buddy cop film; it’s to establish the rock by which the rest of the franchise will be rooted on.

Unfortunately the film doesn’t have that next gear to go from good to brilliant. Abrams wants this to be his The Dark Knight and he doesn’t quite have that final gear. This is strong genre work but not a pinnacle of it.

Director: J.J Abrams
Writers: Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof, based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry
Notable Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Alice Eve, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Weller, Leonard Nimoy

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The big film this weekend is that of the second film in JJ Abrams quest to relaunch Star Trek with a new generation of fans in tow. It’s almost bittersweet, as well, as Abrams has been tasked with doing the same to Star Wars and as such he will eventually decline to come back for a third film with the new cast of characters in the roles of Kirk, Spock, et al. There hasn’t been anything outright said about it, of course, but Abrams is both a director and a producer on both projects. That’s an exceptional amount of work, especially with Star Wars coming up soon, and as such putting together a pair of $200 million plus films at the same time is a task no director has ever done successfully. Something has to give and Star Wars: Episode 7 will wind up with his services.

It’s a shame, too, because I’ve dug the way Abrams has tackled the project of Star Trek. He took the original franchise points and gave us an alternate reality, so as to not mess with the continuity of everything that’s already happened. It allows for a certain amount of new thinking and new stories by changing up the history behind the show as well as giving us tropes about the characters that make them that much more interesting. Trek has gone from a “Science fiction tackling modern issues” type of film franchise and has become a slimmed-down, ball to the walls action franchise that just happens to take place in space.

Much like how Firefly and Serenity managed to take the western tale of cowboys living on the fringe between criminal pathos and ethos and turn it into a space adventure Abrams has done the same and I’ll be disappointed when he eventually declares publicly that Star Trek III: Electric Bugaloo will go on without him in the director’s chair. Hopefully there will still be plenty of time for keyboard solos though.

As we move into Abrams’ victory lap of launching Star Trek into a franchise more friendly to the masses, instead of the diehard fan base that allowed it to survive and thrive over the years in various forms, we have to look at his contributions to the franchise. And I think we can boil them down to five major ones.

5. Rebranding the franchise from science fiction to science action

Science fiction is a rough thing to do as a film because you’re ceiling is only so high; there’s never been a true science fiction film that’s been superbly popular. They’ve all been blends of something, the most successful having fringe elements of sci-fi in them and latching on to a more successful genre. Star Trek was an action franchise that just happened to be in space and it also managed to be the only film in the franchise to cross $200 million domestically. Abrams tapped into something; there are more people who want to see a kick ass action film with sci-fi elements than a great science fiction film.

4. Giving us an alternate reality with which to play with

The one thing that becomes a problem when you want to reboot a franchise like Star Trek is that there’s an insane amount of history you have to deal with. Ignoring it is one thing, of course, but Abrams did something really gutsy by splintering history as it was. Instead of having to deal with the entire history and sculpting a film around it, or ignoring it and doing his own thing, he’s got the best of both worlds by giving us our cake and letting us eat it too. Everything that happened in the original franchise has happened; this is a splinter universe where a key moment has been changed and as such history in this universe has taken a dramatically different turn. It gives him story-telling room, which is never a bad thing, by allowing him to incorporate what’ll work

3. We get to see Khan through a modern set of eyes … or so we think

I have no clue who this Harrison guy in Into Darkness is, as I have avoided spoilers and reviews of Into Darkness like the plague, but everything in the trailers and TV spots suggest that he’s Khan. You don’t bring in a brilliant actor like Benedict Cumberbatch and give him this badass super-villain type without him being Khan Noonien Singh; he was the best villain for James T Kirk and Abrams is an astute director. If this is about young Captain Kirk dealing with things in the universe long before he should’ve then it makes sense. Khan is such a brilliantly written character in Wrath of Khan and makes perfect sense, especially with the trend of bad guys in major action films to do the “intentional capture” bit.

2. Young Kirk and Spock

One of the things I’ve always wanted to see play out was how Kirk and Spock became the combination they became. Shatner and Nimoy weren’t young men during the original series and the original films. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinton are a great combination so far and seeing the two of them developing that bond, and that friendship, is something we never got to see. We saw them advanced and into their careers, after the mistakes and teachable moments they had made as younger men. Seeing them as younger men is something that could be special.

1. A chance to go on that five year mission one more time

Let’s be frank: after dealing with Khan as a young, inexperienced crew the only path forward is one of exploration. And while it probably will be under another director it could be interesting to see what kind of new action the franchise finds.

A Movie A Week – The Challenge

The one thing I think not enough actors get credit for is when they reach and play down the traits that they’re historically known for. Playing against type is one thing but avoiding turning on the well known personality from an actor has to be difficult. Which is why Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher in the same titled film intrigued me: can Cruise turn down the voltage of his rock star personality and be a guy who lurks in the shadows?

Jack Reacher starts with a horrific shooting. Five people are shot, seemingly at random, by James Barr (Joseph Sikora), in Pittsburgh. They’ve got him dead to rites, too, and he requests one thing when asked for a confession against the truckload of evidence against him: Jack Reacher. They’ve got a past with one another from their days in the service, when Reacher was one of the best investigators in the Army’s Military Police. Reacher’s hired by Barr’s attorney (Rosamund Pike) to figure out if he did or not. The evidence looks solid to everyone but us, the viewer, as we know that it’s an elaborate setup. It’s up to Reacher to figure it out, and the end game behind it, while a bad guy (Werner Herzog) and his henchman (Jai Courtney) tries to prevent him from connecting points A to B.

It was one of my Top 10 of 2012, of course, and I enjoyed it just as much on DVD as I did in theatres because it gives us Tom Cruise without the megawatt presence. It’s the one thing I think he doesn’t get enough credit for over the years: his ability to turn down his screen presence and charisma is something we don’t get to see enough. He has this rock star aura to him that makes it impossible for him to take a lot of roles now that he could years ago; Cruise is in that same area that Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington are in that they have to pick and choose their roles carefully.

Which is why Reacher was such an interesting pick for him: Lee Child, who wrote the novel series the film is based on (the film covering “One Shot”), endorsed Cruise and thought what he lacked in the character’s physical presence (Reacher is supposed to be a massive man in the books) he made up for by being the character mentally. Its why you could enjoy the film, and Cruise as Reacher, unless you’re one of the hardcore fans of the novel series: Cruise being a traditional everyman.

This is Cruise being a normal guy, turning down that insane level of charm and presence to its bare minimum, and might be one of my favorite films with him in it. It’s the same way with Collateral; this is Cruise being just a guy, something he can’t do in most films, and it’s pretty darn special.

Strongly recommended

What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and community college co-eds with low standards at the Alumni Club

Star Trek: Into Darkness – J.J Abrams next venture into the Trek world has a new bad guy.

See It – So far so good for J.J.

Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @ScottSawitz .
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