John's Got The Hump

Despite ranking a toxically high 9.7 on the geek-o-meter, I've never gotten into the original Star Trek from the 60's. From what I've heard though, the biggest difference between the main series and the new films is the level of action on display. Apparently the show was less about kicking people in the throat and more about philosophising and exploring humanity’s big ideas. Having said that however, there is a clip on YouTube of Shatner's Kirk on all fours pretending to be a horse whilst a dwarf rides on his back. I'm not sure what idea they were exploring here as I'm not sure of the context. Perhaps this is a deep metaphorical investigation into the works of Bertrand Russell or Rene Descartes, however when I see Kirk galloping about all I can think is what a stupid Kant. Having said that there's a part of me that would now like to watch the original show if only for the sake of irony. As though he's a cosmic Roger Moore, the idea of watching Kirk explore a 60's vision of the future and fucking anything with a pair of tits sounds like fun to me.

Released in 2009, the film Star Trek took the series out of the nerds’ bedrooms and made it cool enough for the rest of the world to enjoy. For some reason though, a lot of them seemed to hate it because, “it changed too much from the originals”. But the way I see it, they should be happy because the franchise was successfully rebooted in a way that didn't erase everything that they'd loved from the current cannon. Also by being set in an alternate timeline, these new films also avoided the main prequel problem of there being no real threat because it's obvious the characters will survive into the original films. Maybe I'm not a Trekkie/Trekker but I am a fan of Star Wars and until your franchise is rebooted with a massive fucking racist Jamaican Gungan thing, I've really got no sympathy.

"I knew I shouldn't have studied rocket science..."

Anywho, so Star Trek Into Darkness is all about the story of John Harrison who despite sounding like a fifth member of The Beatles is actually an intergalactic terrorist. Because John is running around blowing shit up like a massive space-twat Kirk is recruited to track him down and kill him. Like Raoul Silva and Loki however, Harrison instead finds himself captured and locked up in one of those giant villain sized fishtanks. The great thing about this film is in just how much of it is an ensemble with almost everybody getting something interesting to do. Kirk and Spock continue their blossoming bromance which involves about the same amount of bickering and sex as a ten year marriage. Scotty gets to run around whilst cracking jokes with his slightly dodgy accent and Uhura continues to prove that the franchise isn't racist. Alice Eve also shows up as Carol Marcus but from what I could gather her only purpose is to flash her pubes for the movie’s trailer and to look pretty. There's also a bit near the end where Carol is put in danger when it looked to me as though someone had just stamped on her vagina.

So before we go any further, I guess I should say that I really loved this film. From the moment it begins to the moment it ends it is just non-stop action. It's as though it was conceived in the racing mind of Oscar Pistorius whilst he enjoys a domestic shoot-out with the missus. However this relentless spectacle, as enjoyable as it is, is possibly one of the movies bigger problems. After watching Iron Man 3 last week I was reminded of just how big a fan of Shane Black I was and so began revisiting his older films. I also slightly lowered my mandatory four hours a day criteria of porn browsing in exchange for finding old interviews with him in which he talks about screenwriting. When asked about the state of the modern action movie he claimed that they were all a bit crap because there's no downtime. Instead, blockbusters these days try to simply deafen the audience by shouting at them for two hours. This is definitely the case with Star Trek Into Darkness which really cuts out the character moments and emotion of its predecessor in exchange for making things go bang a lot of the time. Having said that, there is a slightly hammy but enjoyable little speech by Cumberbatch in which he seems to accidentally morph into Alan Rickman.

In fact, the comparisons to Rickman don't end there with this film also suffering from the same minor problem as Die Hard. Like Hans Gruber, John Harrison is so charismatic and cool that despite the general dickishness, you can't help but find yourself occasionally rooting for them. I know I just criticised the movie for having too much action but the scene in which Harrison shits all over a gang of Klingons is still pretty cool. I also thought that one of the final fights between Harrison and Spock was pretty funny considering the size of their body frame. Back in the 80's action movies were dominated by giant hulk-men whose brains where the size of their steroids-shrunk cocks. Cut to only a few decades later and the beeftards have been replaced by two lanky nerds kicking the shit out of each other. Not only that but the film also features Peter Weller and Karl Urban meaning that director J.J Abrams decided to have his scrawny man-slap instead of a much more epic fight between Robocop and Judge Dredd.

Anyway so we're heading into spoilery territory now so it's about time those who are yet to see the film went for a wander. For the rest of us I'm sure it was a huge surprise to discover that Harrison was actually the series’ main villain of Khan all along. Of course though, by ‘huge surprise’ I mean completely fucking obvious thanks to IMDb thoughtlessly listing the name on their bloody cast list. I'm putting it out there that, that may be the most annoying thing since I asked my Dad if Se7en was any good and his response was, (spoiler alert), “Is that the one that ends with Gwyneth Paltrow's decapitated head in a box”. It took me years to get my revenge on him for that but eventually I seized my moment and locked him in our attic without food and only an angry wasp for company. True story.

For those who don't know, Khan is one of the big baddies of the original Star Trek world and was unsurprisingly the villain in the supposedly brilliant Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Personally I've not seen that film but I hear good things about it. From what I do know though, things are the reverse to Into Darkness with the original killing off of Spock instead of Kirk. This of course results in Shatner calling on all of his acting powers to famously scream, “Khaaaaaaaaaaan” with all the anger of man who’s being forced to hold in a particularly rebellious ands jagged shit.  From what I do understand though, the original at least had the balls to kill off Spock and keep him dead until the crappy sequel. In this film sadly, I don't think that anybody is under any illusion that Kirk’s death will be any more permanent than his earlier demotion. Near the start of the film, Kirk is fired, demoted and then promoted back to Captain with so much speed that that if you popped out for a piss you'd have missed it. On the brightside though it's good to know that thanks to Kirks pogo up and down the career ladder that by the year 2259 we'll have finally solved this recession. With all the warring alien races, that's at least something to look forward to.

I heard the supermarket is hiring...

So considering Khan was pretty much new to me, I think, as mentioned earlier that he's probably the best thing in the film. However what did annoy me was that it was his blood that was used to bring Kirk back from the dead. By doing that, there's pretty much no threat now in any future films ever. As soon as anybody dies, all the crew have to do is pop to the fridge, crack open a bottle of Khan juice and generously, drizzle it all over their favourite corpse. In fact the only person who is now in any danger is Bones who I'm assuming will quickly find himself out of a job. It's kind of like how in the original Superman he flies up into space and then backwards around the world to reverse time. From this point on, we've got nothing to worry about at all. Having said that, now people can come back from the dead it's nice to know that the future will be a time in which we can stop banging on about how special Jesus is.

I guess that's pretty much everything I've got to say on Star Trek Into Darkness. I've been writing for too long now and I'm kind of feeling ill after eating an out of date tube of Pringles. Obviously this film gives me even more faith that Star Wars Episode 7 will be great, with Abram’s main skill being to dish out nostalgia for things you're seeing for the first time. Actually if you want a tip, you should go to the bookies and bet money on Benicio Del Toro being the next Star Wars villain. Considering he almost played Khan here and Darth Maul in Episode 1, I reckon he's a dead cert. You heard it here first! Anyway I think I'm going to go and be sick now. Although in case you didn't believe me earlier about Shatner being ridden by a midget then here it is for your viewing pleasure... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avTfiRccYIA

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Super Trooper

Nostalgia is a drug that turns the past into a dream. This world is a shitty place to live but thanks to that rose-tinted antidepressant, we remember things a little bit better than they where. In all honesty I think we can credit it for being the sole reason that people from the 1980's haven't committed suicide yet. If Margaret Thatcher’s reign of terror wasn't enough to be ashamed about there was also AIDs, racist skin-heads and worst of all nobody trimmed their pubes. It was a decade in which John Lennon was shot dead and yet human-gremlin Chris De Burgh was allowed to warble his nauseating cries in a shockingly bullet free environment. However, as well as being a sort of self-prescribed Lithium, nostalgia is also one of the main ingredients in plenty of films. One movie that relied heavily on it that I happen to have recently seen is J.J. Abram's monster movie Super 8.

Super 8 starts in a warm suburban area during the 1970's as a gang of pre-pubescent kids plan to make a short film. These days they'd just record themselves happy slapping and then stick it on Facebook, but this gang have instead bizarrely decided to make something with a story and zombies. As a scene is to be shot at a railway station in the middle of the night, the kids sneak out one evening to get the footage and without telling their parents. Thankfully, the 70's were a time in which paedophiles didn't exist and so the only thing the kids have to worry about is a train being de-railed and an alien escaping from one of the carriages. Unfortunately for our young Ed Woods, this is exactly what happens with the entire crash being captured on their camera.

After that night the kids make the decision to keep the incident to themselves. Partly because they believe they'll get into trouble, partly because the man who caused the crash waved a gun at them and partly because the army is looking to kill any witnesses. Despite this threat however the kids instead decide, “fuck it, let's finish the film”. They grab their parents’ porno camera and continue filming their amateur zombie flick. At this point too, the Alien starts acting like a proper fucking scallywag by playing silly buggers with the locals dogs and stealing car engines. It's basically a thieving Winona Ryder but with six arms and scales.

As I mentioned, the movie relies heavily on nostalgia. Nostalgia for the 70's and nostalgia for the childhood that we all wish we'd had. The decade is lovingly recreated with old cars, disco music and not a mention of the Bond movie Moonraker. I don't care how bad Idi Amin's dictatorship got, it can't have been worse than watching a bird do a double take as Roger Moore rides a boat through the streets of Venice…

In regards to childhood, this movie takes the Stand By Me approach. It shows being young as such an independent, adventurous time that I wish I'd occasionally ventured into the mythical land of ‘outdoors’ and gone exploring myself. In reality I would go out occasionally but only if my Mum had spitefully hidden the Nintendo hand-controller. The closest I got to a nostalgic childhood adventure was watching a young girl from my road doing a shit under a slide. She told me it was “our secret and if anybody asks we should say it was a dog”. I informed her that as far as I was concerned, “it was done by a dog” and we never played out together again. Hardly the fucking Goonies was it?

Abrams has made no secret of the fact that this film is a love letter to the works of Steven Spielberg. As such it contains elements of everything from Close Encounters, E.T., Jaws and even Jurassic Park. It's kind of an odd film in that way as by being intentionally derivative of Spielberg it contains everything that is great about his films but in a way that is not quite as good. It's the equivalent of somebody now going around Whitechapel to chop up some whores but wearing a Jack the Ripper costume. On the one hand you can see the loving references to everything you enjoyed the first time round but on the other you can't help but wish that it was a little more original. Maybe instead of boiling their organs he could deep fry them or eat them with a Pot Noodle? The point is you can't do better than the things you're replicating so rather than carbon-copying them, why not do something a little different? If it was me I'd probably stick the whore’s heart in the microwave and then have it with a cup of tea and some chocolate hobnobs. But that's just me...

The other problem with Super 8 is that you don't see the alien for the majority of the film. Generally that's not a problem as in the case of 2010's Monsters. In that film, the beasts were just slime-ing around in the background doing their best to avoid the plot. Here though the creature is sort of forgotten about and then returns as the centre piece of the movie. The only problem is that by the time he comes back I've already lost interest in him. It's a little bit like having a respectable dinner party and just before dessert, Mr. Blobby runs in, smashes the place up and has a wank. It's not that we don't like Mr. Blobby but rather that things were going really rather well until he ruined it by spraying the post-meal trifle with his presumably pink spunk.

I guess the issue is that the film is composed of two genres. Half of it is a sci-fi movie and the other a coming of age drama, however by being so character heavy, it's the latter aspect that works the best. A relationship starts to blossom between two of the kids however they conclude the film by going alien hunting. A more natural progression of their story arch would obviously be a disastrous attempt at finger banging each other followed by estrangement and then probably suicide. With its Stand By Me cast of kids trying to make a movie- one of the films that this closely resembles is Garth Jennings Son Of Rambow. Super 8's last act becoming The Goonies from Space is a little bit like if Stallone had turned up as Rambo in that other film, slit the two kids’ throats and then skinned them. Obviously Stallone murdering two children in order to wrap up a family movie would be a disastrous decision. He's an awful actor and would no doubt ruin it with his post-stroke, gorilla grunting.

Despite that, in my humble opinion, Super 8 is still a really good film. If you want to celebrate everything that is great about Spielberg without watching any of his work then this is the DVD for you. I'll definitely be watching it again simply because of how much I enjoyed the company of those characters. They were brilliantly acted, realistically written and for kids, they were unrealistically likeable. Where child actors are generally concerned I think most people start praying their film’s plot is about to incorporate infanticide. Even as a kid, my thoughts when seeing the young Anakin were, “what an irritating twat”.

There's only one point in which the Sci-fi and the “coming of age” combine and that's in the magnetic jewellery conclusion. I know it's the sweet music and the manipulatively sentimental imagery, but fuck it- I enjoyed that too! Perhaps this film is in too much of a debt to Spielberg but at least it's not a franchise. In a land of sequels, prequels and remakes, anything even close to new should be celebrated. It's made by a phenomenal film-maker who will do even better when one day working with his own material. One of the best things about Spielberg’s films is the fact that they're clearly made by a man full of love. Like the boiling pot in Jack the Rippers final murder, plenty of heart is definitely what this film contains. If anybody deserves a nostalgic letter of admiration for their work then one to Spielberg from JJ Abrams is the one I want to see. Having said that, one to Ken Loach from Michael Bay might be fun too. Who wouldn't pay to see the bird explode at the end of Kes 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

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