New Releases! Knives Out (2019); Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Knives Out (2019)

Director: Rian Johnson

A ton of fun, for anyone who ever has loved a good murder mystery or loves seeing a somewhat worn-out genre reinvigorated through crackling energy and narrative inventiveness.

Summarizing the tale would defeat a certain amount of its purpose, so I'll use broad strokes. Knives Out tells the story of a wealthy author of murder mystery novels who dies, perhaps under sinister circumstances, and the fallout among his highly dysfunctional progeny. Nearly all of the standard elements of a classic murder mystery are there: greedy, bizarre suspects, a brilliant detective working the case, and multiple twists and turns in the plot as more details are revealed about the death and those involved. If you want your marks hit, director Rian Johnson bullseyes every one of them.

But if Knives Out were just another cookie-cutter, contemporary take on Murder on the Orient Express, it wouldn't especially standout. And standout this movie does, for several reasons. One is that the cast is as brilliant as one could ask for. Whether it's the well-seasoned veterans like Christopher Plummer and Jamie Lee Curtis, relative newcomers like Chris Evans and Lakeith Stanfield, or the bevy of other accomplished actors, there's not one performance that is less than pitch-perfect. They all bring the fun, dark humor into full form with aplomb, and it's a blast to watch them work. And I must point out just what a great job was turned in by Alma de Armas, with whom I was completely unfamiliar before this movie. Daniel Craig is also among the most memorable of the many indelible characters, but de Armas showed exceptional range here.

Of course, no murder mystery is worth its salt if it doesn't have a compelling narrative, plot, or both. Well, true to his risk-taking form, Rian Johnson plays with the genre in several creative ways. Again, I won't spoil them for those who haven't seen it yet, but the story folds out in an unexpected order and resolves in a way which I found uniquely satisfying.

Given just how many sequels, reboots, and adaptation from other media we are offered in the world of film these days, it is wonderfully refreshing to get a completely original story. Yes, it is in a nearly century-old genre, but it is telling its own tale in the novel way that its teller sees fit.

I highly recommend this one.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Director: J.J. Abrams

It was fine. No more, no less. But for an infinite-budget tent-pole movie in one of the largest franchises ever, "fine" can feel like a letdown.

The massive Star Wars franchise is in a strange place these days. In one sense, it's stronger than ever, now that it has the full might of Disney behind it and has broken into previously-untapped, massive and burgeoning markets like China. The toys, shows, and films are as ubiquitous as ever, and the release of a primary film in the main storyline is still as grand an event as one can find in movies.

At the same time, this recent trilogy has taken an odd trajectory. First we had The Force Awakens, in which J.J. Abrams took a ton of elements from the original Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, tweaked a couple of things and gave long-starved devotees a return to form strong enough to give them multiple orgasms. Still, it was treading a lot of the same ground. Curiously, Disney tapped a very different director, Rian Johnson (see review above), for the next chapter, The Last Jedi. Johnson took a lot of admirable risks with his Star Wars film, something that the franchise has never really done at all. As one might expect, this met with incredibly divisive reaction between critics, who lauded the film's attempts to break free from the franchise's conventions, and the hardcore fanbase, who felt like their entire childhood had been obliterated like Alderaan. The swing between these two movies was massive, as one might expect when you give two very different writer and directors full control of movies which are supposed to be two chapters of the same overall tale.

So along comes The Rise of Skywalker. The film had had a somewhat muddled history, in the originally-slated director, Colin Trevorrow, left the project. Rian Johnson was meant to write a treatment for the movie, but never did. And then Carrie Fisher, whose General Leia Organa was supposed to be a central character in the final movie, passed away before production could begin. So Disney calls in J.J. Abrams to save the day.

I guess he did, sort of. At least, in the sense that the movie got its act together enough to not be bad.

What I've learned over the years of seeing several of Abrams' movies (I've never watched any of his TV shows) is that the man is, as John Powers once described him, "brilliantly unoriginal." The guy knows how to tell a story well and make a movie with technical prowess, no question. But he's all too happy to color within the lines drawn by artists and creators who came before him. Sure, he'll throw in a "fun" little curveball to let you know that he's not a total hack, like switching Kirk's and Spock's positions from Wrath of Kahn when he did his reboot Into Darkness several years ago. But he's never going to take any major risks, seemingly terrified of asking too much of his audience. And this is pretty much what he seemed to fall back on when he was asked to "rescue" The Rise of Skywalker.

This is a spoiler-free review, so I won't go over any plot points. But I found the movie decent enough. The first 15 or 20 minutes are annoyingly frenetic, with herky-jerky pacing and new story elements hurled in your face all too quickly. But once you settle in, it becomes a decent enough fantasy-adventure ride. If one is willing to relax a bit, then they'll find a several decent examples of the following: gags, action sequences, set pieces, and Easter eggs for devoted Star Wars fans. And the acting is solid all around, except for a weird return engagement by Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrisean.

I think what I ultimately come away from Rise of Skywalker with is the larger question of why on Earth Disney didn't show more foresight when diving into this trilogy. It just feels like something which could have been far fresher and more cohesive that it was.

If nothing else, it just solidified my opinion that Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie we've gotten since Empire Strikes Back nearly 40 years ago. And it's not even really close. 

Mission: Impossible series

This is yet another film franchise which I recently felt the urge to work through. I had only ever seen the original, back during its theatrical release in 1996. I remember enjoying it well enough back then, but I never felt the need to see it again. With the positive reviews of the more recent films in the series, I felt like taking them all in. My thoughts:

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Director: Brian De Palma

This one has not aged very well. With espionage suspense thrillers growing smarter and more sophisticated, the original M:I movie seems a bit like a clumsy relic, despite being only 20 years old. 

For those who haven't seen it in a while, here's a quick plot summary: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team of secret agents are sent on a mission that goes horribly wrong. In the middle of the mission, several of the members are killed, seemingly due to a mole within the group. Hunt is blamed and goes on the run. he learns that the betrayal was connected to a furtive deal to sell the list of all M:I agents throughout the world to an outside party. Hunt recruits two discharged agents to help him and the one survivor of his original team to obtain the list and find who killed his team members and set him up.

The basic plot serves well enough for such a movie. The initial betrayal still has some impact, as it is rather dark and sets the stakes high enough to be compelling. And the tale of a highly-trained, highly capable secret agent using his skills to pull off amazing feats is intriguing here. But the moment one looks closely at or thinks a bit about the execution of the plot details, the movie is rather shallow. There are even times when it brushes with being unintentionally campy. 

A good spy thriller needs to have some smarts, especially with its details. With M:I, the plot whisks you along so quickly that you might forget to ask questions like, "Why are Hunt and his entire team so oddly chipper at the beginning? Are they going on a black op or a golf retreat?" Or maybe "How does the CIA headquarters not have a far safer security protocols in the event of a fire?" Or how about "Why the hell did a long-standing fellow member of his team just sell out the entire crew, aside from money (which wasn't really that much, anyway)?" The movie just pulls us along from one sequence and scene to the next, hoping that we won't notice how shoddy several elements of it are. 

The break-in of the C.I.A. headquarters is still the best and
most iconic sequence of the entire film. It's a shame that the
rest of the movie doesn't hold up nearly as well.

I will say that the data heist in the CIA headquarters still has a decent amount of tension. Aside from that 10-odd minutes or so, I now find the movie rather dull. The heroes and villains are all no more than two-dimensional (mostly one-dimensional). And here I must confess that this is one of the more annoying performances Cruise ever turned in. I'm fairly ambivalent about him, finding him to be fine at times, annoying at others, and far from a "great" actor due to a limited range. In M:I, he is at his most smug and condescending, while thinking he's being playful. 

The movie also showed several of director Brian De Palma's hallmarks which I do not appreciate. He uses tilted camera angles in an attempt to make things look different, or perhaps to convey disorientation; really, it just seemed contrived to me. And contrivances were not limited to the camerawork - the plot is filled with them. It is almost as if the writers thought up the stunts and action sequences they wanted to do, and then worked backwards to put together some questionable excuse to get the plot to the necessary set piece. Some of the action sequences are ridiculous enough to fit right in with a Fast and Furious movie. The acting, probably due to both the directing and a weak script, can be painful at times. Most obvious is Emanuelle Bearte, who seems to have been cast almost solely for her pretty face, pouty lips, and French accent. Even established actors like Cruise, Jon Voigt, Ving Rhames, and Jean Reno have more than a few lame lines they have to sell, with very mixed results.

All of my little complaints add up to me seeing the original Mission: Impossible as a rather dated and even ham-fisted spy thriller, masquerading as a slick and cunning movie.

This image sums up a lot of what this movie is about - massive
explosions and Tom Cruise's long hair blowing in the wind.

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

Director: John Woo

Back in the mid and late 1990's, John Woo had finally garnered some serious attention with U.S. audiences. After being an absolute legend of action film directing in his native Hong Kong and China all through the 1980s, he had a few solid commercial, Hollywood hit action movies, including Broken Arrow in '96 and the even bigger Face/Off the following year. I suppose the success of those films is why he was handed the reins on the sequel to the mediocre-but-money-making original M:I film. I will admit to not being much of a John Woo fan. Having seen a few of his Hong Kong movies, as well as the aforementioned Hollywood hits, his style is simply not to my tastes. His skill and technique in his preferred genre are abundantly clear, but I've found his films to heavily favor style over substance. With this in mind, I was not hopeful about enjoying M:I-2.

I found M:I-2 neither better nor worse than the original, but it is certainly very different in ways that make for an interesting contrast.

The story finds Ethan Hunt on a mission to penetrate the circumstances around the death of an eminent biochemist and virologist. Hunt enlists a notorious thief, Naya (Thandie Newton), to help him infiltrate the crew of the key suspect, the former Impossible Mission Force (IMF) operative Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott). Ambrose is a dangerously capable sociopath out for his own gain, even if it puts millions of lives at risk. Along with the wildcard Naya, Hunt re-enlists IMF hacker Luther (Ving Rhames again) and Billy (John Polson) to help him find and stop Ambrose.

The story and unfolding of it are much more in line with a typical James Bond tale - a global threat is posed by a villainous adversary, with the hero using his cunning, gadgetry, and fighting prowess to save the multitudes. The story shows a bit more sophistication than the first tale, and the chess match between Hunt and Ambrose is much more compelling than the confrontation between Hunt and Phelps in the first film. There are a few well-done turns of one-upmanship which keep the narrative from being a one-sided affair in which Hunt is always a step ahead. Rather, the equally clever Ambrose anticipates many of Hunt's moves, adding some intrigue to the proceedings. And Dougray Scott plays the part of the villain quite well.

The character of Naya was an attempt to offer a female
character who had some strength and depth. Epic fail there,
as she is little more than a pawn with a pretty face. 

But here is where the merits of the story end. The movie force-feeds us a romance angle between Naya and Hunt that is laughably rushed. The two see each other once, get caught up in a brief and tense situation, and then they are apparently madly in love. No true reason is given for this, aside from the fact that they are both beautiful people who excite in dangerous situations. Another annoying aspect is that John Woo clearly fell in love with the face-mask gadget. In the original film, it was a relatively cutting-edge prop that added some fun, but Woo uses it no less than 5 times in this movie. By the end, you can see its use coming from a mile away, and it has lost all effect as a surprise. I suppose we should have seen this coming from the director behind Face-Off, which Woo had done a few years earlier.

I must admit that the movie certainly looks far better than the original. In terms of lighting and camerawork, Woo blows De Palma out of the water. M:I-2 looks vastly more polished than the almost hyper-colored work of the first movie. This, at least, makes the movie more pleasurable to take in, for the most part.

But then there is Woo and his action sequences. The man is so enamored of slow-motion and explosions that Michael Bay would probably tell him to tone it down. I haven't done the calculations, but I'm fairly certain that if all of the slow-mo action sequences were sped up to real time, the movie would be reduced by a good 20 to 30 minutes. Fans of that type of action filming would probably enjoy many of these scenes, but they usually bore me. M:I-2 was no exception.

So campared to the first movie, the sequel is a wash. M:I-2 looks better and has a cohesiveness to it that the original lacked, but it's a great example of style over substance. This is great if the style is to your liking, but Woo's style is not for me.

In the very first scene, the villainous Owen Davien shows us
just how little concern he has for human life. Hoffman goes a
long way towards creating a more menacing air in this entry.

Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)

Director: J.J. Abrams

It's not a great movie, but M:I-3 is a noticeable step up from the first two M:I flicks.

Basically following "real" time of the movies, we jump forward five or six years in the life of Ethan Hunt, who has retired from field work and is a trainer for the Impossible Mission Force. He is now engaged to Julia, a nurse with no idea of Hunt's secretive and highly dangerous profession. Just as he begins to feel that he will be able to take on a safer and more comfortable life, one of his trainees is taken by the mysterious and lethal figure Owen Davien (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hunt reluctantly returns to the field to rescue his former pupil, only to have her die just after she reveals Davien's plan to sell some sort of doomsday device, referred to as "The Rabbit's Foot," to the highest bidder. Complicating matters further is the possibility that Davien is receiving help from within IMF. Hunt rapidly pursues and captures Davien, but soon has the tables turned on him when Davien not only escapes but also kidnaps Julia and forces Hunt to retrieve the Rabbit's Foot for him.

Right from the jump, the movie sets a tone that is darker and more consistently intense than the previous two movies. The sly little smiles and one-liners are almost completely absent, which robs the movie of some potential charm but also helps it avoid pitfalls of goofiness or camp. Instead, the stakes are set rather high and remain so throughout. Aside from the placid establishment of Hunt's life in the suburbs early in the picture, the action clicks along at a very brisk pace, with no wasted scenes or slow-motion editing to gum up the flow. These improvements alone make M:I-3 superior to its predecessors.

I must admit, though, that while the movie doesn't make any crucial errors, there is not enough there for me to consider it anything but a solid action movie. Yes, the acting is quality, but only one role called for anything beyond panic and determination - that of Owen Davien, played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman. But even Davien was surprisingly one-dimensional. He is certainly imposing in his menacing drive to crush anyone who gets in the way of his plans, and he is played with chilling effect by the ever-amazing Hoffman. But just like previous M:I villains, there is no exploration of his character beyond the fact that he is evil and must be stopped. The same goes for nearly every other character. We do see Hunt far more vulnerable than he was in the first two movies, which is welcome. It would have been nicer to see this depth applied to at least one or two other characters, though.

The M:I movies have, up to this point, been action movies. And M:I-3 has some outstanding action sequences. Instead of relying mostly on wildly conceived fight choreography, endless massive explosions, or slow-motion, director J.J. Abrams went for more wide shots of lighting-speed exchanges. It works really well, in many instances. Davien getting dangled from a plane in the air. Hunt getting blasted into a car by an missile explosion behind him. Hunt having to lean low out of a speeding car to get off some well-placed pistol shots. These scenes could very easily have been filmed in dull ways, but Abrams used clever angles and expert filming to add some serious thrill to them. I will say that Abrams's use of a shaky cam during many of the scenes, both action sequences and others, got on my nerves (see my complaints about this in my reviews of the Bourne series of movies by Paul Greengrass), but it wasn't overly distracting. I also felt that the non-reveal of the Rabbit's Foot was a cheeky cop-out way of admitting to the use of a McGuffin.

Of the first three movies I've watched so far, this is the first that I would actually watch again. Maybe not right away or even more than a second viewing, but it was good enough for a re-watch. This is one of the better things that I can say about any film.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Director: Brad Bird

A very strange viewing experience, in that Ghost Protocol exhibits the veneer of an action-adventure movie that's doing many of the right things for the genre, and yet somehow left me feeling that it fell well short of its potential.

Following the continuity set in place by M:I-3, we start with Ethan Hunt being broken out of a Russian prison by a few I.M.F. agents. Although Hunt had been considered disavowed by the agency, he has been brought back in order to track down and put a stop to Hendricks, a doomsday fanatic on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon and starting a global war. No sooner is Hunt made aware of the severity of the threat Hendricks poses than his small team is blamed for an explosion near the Kremlin. The I.M.F. is completely disavowed, cut off, and Hunt's crew must try to stop the frighteningly intelligent Hendricks with only a small cache of gadgets and their wits.

So many great things are in place for a brilliant story that I'm still somewhat surprised that I didn't like this movie more. This movie had a much more James Bond tone than any previous M:I film, and this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. There were gadgets, a megalomanical villain with world-wide terror on the brain, and globe trotting galore. And yet the details and cohesion came up short a little too often for me to feel like this movie was anything more than a missed opportunity. It reminds me that, if you're going to try and update or build upon the James Bond template, you do it the way that Matthew Vaughan did it in Kingsman: The Secret Service a few years ago. Ghost Protocol just lacked a consistent tone that weakened it noticeably.

Like much of this movie, the "Spider-Man" gloves set up the
stunning visuals of Hunt climbing a massive tower in Dubai.
But their existence and usage don't hold up very well under
intelligent scrutiny.

The tale itself is actually fine. I'm alright with the standard "nutjob wants to kill most of the known world" storyline as an excuse to watched badass agents go to work. But the actual methods and tools employed left a few things to be desired. Some of the gadgets were actually interesting, like the optical illusion screen, which provided for some fun visuals. But others seemed contrived or half-baked. The "Spider-Man" gloves were clearly a silly idea that were a thin excuse to create almost-literal cliffhanger scenarios, and something like a balloon camera seems a bit unimaginative for a film like this.

More than the tech, though, was a general lack of consistency with the characters and the mood of the film. It seemed as if director Brad Bird didn't have a tight grasp on who he wanted the characters to be or how he wanted audiences to feel about them. The almost-always brilliant Simon Pegg gets a solid secondary role as a field agent, but he often acts like a dopey, jittery clown. More painfully obvious, though, is the Ethan Hunt character. In his opening scenes, he's depicted as a steely-eyed, nigh-invincible tactician and combatant, single-handedly fighting his way through a horde or Russian prison inmates and guards. Later, though, he shows signs of anxiety and uncertainty in ways that were clearly meant for comic effect. And towards the end, Hunt somehow has trouble besting the aged statistician villain in a hand-to-hand fight. Such lack of integrity takes me out of movies, and this was the case with Ghost Protocol.

I can't say that the movie is terrible by any means - it just didn't all come together. Despite some decent visuals, ideas, and performances, this was was actually less than the sum of its parts. Knowing that Brad Bird is the man behind The Incredibles (my favorite of the many great Pixar movies, it should be noted), I can't help but think that ideas which would work in the medium of animated family films didn't translate into live action the way that he was hoping.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

In my eyes, Rogue Nation is easily the best of the series. It finally gets the entire balance right and gives us a solid espionage action-thriller with some smarts and cohesive characters, narrative, and tone.

In keeping with the "real time" continuity set up in the previous few movies, Rogue Nation takes place about four years after the events of Ghost Protocol. Ethan Hunt is on the trail of a shadowy group he refers to as The Syndicate, which he believes is an organization bent on creating chaos throughout the world. His superiors doubt the existence of the group, and Hunt is forced to flee from them when he is blamed for the death of a field agent and the I.M.F. is absorbed by the C.I.A. Hunt then recruits a few former colleagues to help him find and stop The Syndicate, which is a very real group comprised of former black operative spies from governments around the world. As if finding and taking down The Syndicate weren't difficult enough, Hunt and his team must also evade the C.I.A., who has declared them enemies of the state.

More than any of the previous M:I movie, Rogue Nation sets up and maintains an excellent balance between intensity and fun, with the emphasis on the former. The intrigue is laid out rather quickly, with Hunt being captured by The Syndicate, only to be set free by Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) - a member of the Syndicate who has an unknown agenda. Far more dangerous than Faust is Lane, the former British MI6 agent who founded the Syndicate and is now using his resources to cause global unrest to enrich himself and bring down a system which he despises. The cat-and-mouse game between Lane and Faust is the best of the M:I movies. While M:I-3 had a solid villain in Owen Davien, the character was never quite the force that Lane is in Rogue Nation. The final showdown is very tense in a somewhat unconventional way, which was very welcome.

The action is extremely effective. While there may not be quite as many clever shots or sequences as M:I-3, the stunt scenes are well-done and entertaining. There are also several great set pieces, my favorite probably being the water tank security system break-in. Sure, it's contrived, but it's a fun contrivance that I found engaging. And I fully appreciate the movie thumbing its nose at the mere suggestion of using the face-mask gadget yet again. That little prop's time has clearly come and gone, and Rogue Nation tosses it aside in humorous fashion.

Ilsa Faust gets on top of the situation. Yes, Rebecca Ferguson
is sexy as hell, but Faust is written and played with a tough-
ness and depth that are far more genuine and compelling
than any previous female character in the M:I series. 

The characters are handled very well in this entry, as well. Unlike Ghost Protocol, every character shows ability and stays in his or her lane. Simon Pegg's Benji is funny but not goofy. Ethan Hunt is highly capable but never a superman. And I loved Rebecca Ferguson's turn as Ilsa Faust, while Sean Harris exudes all of the iciness that the Lane character requires. If I had to gripe about anything, it is that I felt Jeremy Renner's William Brandt character a tad underutilized, but only since it was established in the previous film that he is a skilled field agent. Only for this reason was it a little disappointing to see him almost exclusively in a suit and tie, having verbal tete-a-tetes in Washington D.C. through most of the picture.

I really enjoyed this one, which was a bit surprising, despite all of the hype around it. Given my general dislike of most Hollywood action flicks and the spotty history of this franchise, it was a very pleasant surprise to find an espionage thriller that is of a quality of the very best of its kind.


Franchise Roundup

I rank the five Mission: Impossible movies thus:

1. Rogue Nation
2. M:I-3
3. Ghost Protocol
4. Mission Impossible
5. M:I-2

I'll note that there is a pretty steep dropoff between M:I-3 and Ghost Protocol. The two best films in this series are, to me, noticeably superior to all of the others. The others were commercially successful and had a few merits, but I have no reason to ever watch them again.

The Mission: Impossible series is very unique. I can't think of another large-scale, big-budget movie series that has spanned 20 years, with five movies helmed by five different directors, all starring the same leading actor. This is one thing, but the fact that the series has generally gotten better over the years is truly remarkable. While there are only two of the series that I would watch again, they are both two of the most recent three to be released. And with Rogue Nation director Christopher McQuarrie tapped to direct the next one, I will likely go to see it in the theater - a first for me since the original movie was released back in 1996. 

Trekking, the modern way: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) & Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Director: J.J. Abrams

I had only seen this one once before, when it was released in the theaters three years ago. My feelings are the same now as then - it's a fun, fairly engaging action ride that was bound to appeal to the masses more than the hard-core Star Trek or science-fiction fans.

Continuing J.J, Abrams reboot of the original TV series started with 2009's Star Trek, Into Darkness sees the further development of the young crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. After briefly losing command of the starship, James Kirk (Chris Pine) is quickly thrust back into the command seat in order to hunt down a murderous fugitive - John Harrison. Harrison has bombed a Starfleet archive and personally launched an assault on Kirk and his commanding officers, only to flee into a Klingon-controlled part of the galaxy. Kirk is ordered by his commanding officer to not only track down but also kill Harrison, an order seemingly at odds with the passive mission statement of the Enterprise and its crew. Once Kirk finds Harrison, the tables are turned a bit, as Harrison actually saves Kirk and several of his crew, and allows himself to be taken prisoner. It is soon revealed that Harrison is actually Kahn Singh Noonian, a powerful character deeply entrenched in the mythos of Star Trek, dating back to the original TV series and the outstanding film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Kahn is on a mission to recover his fellow genetically-enhanced "superhumans", who were created centuries before during a rather dark period on Earth. The ruthless and powerful Kahn's goals lead him into direct confrontation with the crew of the Enterprise.

As an action adventure story, the movie is decent enough. The plot takes a few curious twists and turns, and there are some fun sequences and set pieces. It can certainly satisfy many an itch for an escapist, popcorn movie. Alas, I'm sure many a hardcore Star Trek fan had issues with the movie. Even as a person with a mere passing knowledge of the Trek mythology, I had to raise an eyebrow here and there, thanks to some of director and writer J.J. Abrams choices regarding the use of characters and storylines. As the excellent film and TV critic David Edelstein once referred to Abrams's Star Wars: The Force Awakens as "brilliantly unoriginal," I can't avoid similar feelings about Into Darkness. It's not that the story is a ripoff, but many of the details smack of some clumsy pandering to the fans. "Let's have Spock fall in love with Uhura!" "Let's reenact the famous scene from Star Trek II where Kirk dies saving everyone, only this time, it's Kirk who dies while Spock looks on!" "Let's have Spock get really angry and nearly beat Kahn to death!" These are ideas that I think were meant to get serious Trek fans excited, but I found them rather contrived and running a bit too counter to the spirit of some of the characters.

There is also an issue regarding the revelations and development of the characters. Not long ago, I went back and watched many of the original Star Trek TV series episodes, as well as the first three feature films. Because of this, I know the entire backstory of Kahn, which is one of the very best tales within the Trek mythology. If you know it, then Into Darkness can feel like it doesn't fully capitalize on who Kahn is and what he represents. If you don't know it, then you are likely to be rather lost as to the character's potential depth and power.

Of course, Abrams is a solid enough director to avoid any major "movie" mistakes. The performances are all strong (though I've never enjoyed the usually great Karl Urban's over-channeling of Deforest Kelley), the narrative clicks along at a nice pace, and the sequences are executed well. For these reasons, it's hard to be terribly critical of it. Several details might frustrate, but the movie is still decent fun.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Director: Justin Lin

It's a decent entry into the movie series, but one that realized some of my worries about handing the directing reins over to the man behind the recent Fast and Furious movies.

Beyond flashes forward three years from Into Darkness, with the crew of the Enterprise over halfway into their five-year mission of exploration. Captain Kirk is suffering from a crisis of purpose, losing his certainty as to whether he is meant to be an explorer. No sooner does he submit a request to transfer to work on a massive space station than a desperate scientist emerges from the far reaches of the galaxy, desperately asking for help in finding her abducted crew. Kirk and the Enterprise crew suit up and head out. Shortly after they arrive within a distant asteroid belt, they are aggressively taken when the the Enterprise is shot down over a nearby planet. The surviving crew members are scattered about, and they must work to find each other and the person responsible for their dire predicament.

I certainly appreciate what the story does, plot-wise. Seemingly drawing from its roots in the original TV series, we get the crew stuck on an unknown planet with a mysterious aggressor. We get to see some fun dynamics in pairings like McCoy and Spock, and we get some intriguing new characters for the mainstays to deal with. For much of the movie, I wasn't sure if the story was holding together very well, but things coalesce fairly well by the end. I felt that the entire tale captured many of the best aspects of the spirit of Star Trek, while not relying overly on the successful plotlines or character tropes of past entries. The latter is something that J.J. Abrams' movies, fun as they are, failed to avoid.

I also thought that the characters were handled a bit more deftly in Beyond than with the previous two movies. While the characteristics which make them distinct are still wholly intact, we aren't beaten over the head with not-too-subtle "twists" on their personalities, like Spock kissing Uhura or nearly killing a man. There is a rather organic struggle in both Kirk and Spock regarding their respective commitments to the mission of Star Fleet, which adds a touch more legitimate depth to their development. On a lighter note, I was also glad to see Karl Urban dial down his Deforest Kelly impersonation just a hair. He's still channeling the original, but not quite as heavily as before, which I was glad to see. The introduction of a strong and capable new character, Jaylah, was a welcome sight, as well.

I felt that there were too many scenes that looked like this -
tons of junk zipping around the screen, blowing other junk up
or being blown up by other junk. Not terribly interesting.

Were the movie comprised almost wholly of story and character, I probably would have loved it. Alas, it is a Justin Lin movie, and that means action. And explosions. Lots of them. And while I will give him credit for not going the John Woo/Michael Bay route of using slow motion, I have to say that I didn't particularly enjoy Lin's large-scale action scenes. In fact, I thought they were rather dull. Yes, the CGI is very well done, and there are some interesting visuals turns here and there. But I found too many of the action sequences overly long, to the point that I was zoning out while waiting for the next meaningful interaction between characters. Even action scenes when large objects weren't attacking each other or bursting into flames, such as the motorcycle rescue mission, didn't offer much sense of wonder, thanks to some convenient but flat out dumb oversight of basic questions (how, exactly, do hologram duplicates manage to affect their physical environment, pray tell?). If it's one thing I want my science fiction not to do, is not to ignore basic physics and science.

And oh by the way, can we stop having the Enterprise get shot down? This is no longer the shocking image that it once was, before it happened I don't know how many times in the various TV shows and films (including Into Darkness). Please go to something else if you want to give Trek fans a "devastating" turn of events.

I will say that the movie did surprise me a bit by the end, in terms of giving us a villain with some depth. And the reveal of his identity and nature was spun out at a nice pace. This did redeem it to the point that I would probably watch Beyond again. I do hope future entries in the series look to this one in terms of drawing from the very best spiritual roots of Star Trek, and they continue to capitalize more on them. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) [Spoiler Free first section]

I did a long review of A New Hope several years ago here, during my trip through the "All-TIME 100" great movies list. 

[Spoiler Free Section]

Director: J.J. Abrams

Extremely satisfying for fans of all types, if not exactly a life-changing experience of adventure movie viewing.

I am of the generation that first fell in absolute love with the Star Wars movies as only Generation X could have. The original trilogy came out when I was between the ages of two and eight, which are almost exactly the ages when colorful fantasy movies involving space travel, robots, and strange creatures were likely to firmly imprint themselves on a person's brain. It did for me.

Like a lot of people, I found the second trilogy a nearly-traumatic disappointment. Yes, there are a few redeeming qualities to them, but I agree with the many who feel that George Lucas completely lost touch with what made his originals so iconic.

As the hype for The Force Awakens mounted to unprecedented levels, I refused to see or watch any trailers or listen to or read any criticism. I knew that J.J. Abrams was directing it, and I had mixed feelings about this. I appreciated his Star Trek reboots, but I wasn't crazy about his heavy leaning on the earlier TV shows and movies. There were far too many coy "homages" to characters, creatures, and plotlines which were familiar to Trekkies from the decades-old classic stories. My fear was that Abrams would do the same thing with The Force Awakens.

Fortunately, my fears were (almost) completely unrealized. The Force Awakens does certainly take several key parts of the templates used in the original trilogy as its materials. The very basic plotline will be one that is extremely familiar to devotees of the Episodes IV, V, and VI, and there are certainly landscapes and scenarios that are equally familiar. However, Abrams and co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) injected enough new material to make the story feel adequately fresh.

An early scene with Rey and the droid BB8 on the planet 
Jakku. If this seems an awful lot like early moments in 
A New Hope, then your head's right in the place that 
director J.J. Abrams wants it.

The familiar faces are all good to see again. Blessedly, the story does not rely too much on older characters or nostalgia for their past exploits. Characters like Han Solo and others serve nicely to bridge the gap into a new tale with new players. And the new blood looks great. The handful of new, young characters all had me itching to see more of them in future installments of the series. These were not just retreads of our old favorites. While there may be a few superficial similarities here or there, characters like Rey, Finn, and Poe are novel enough that they should be more than capable of putting their stamp on this new trilogy in the epic series. Abrams made some great casting choices as well, selecting actors who are not only talented but also relatively unknown.

Another extremely gratifying part of the experience is how Abrams returned to the look and feel of the original trilogy. Rather than the horrendous, A.D.D., hyper-polished, CGI video game aesthetic prevalent in Episodes I through III, The Force Awakens revives Lucas's original vision of a "worn down universe," where many buildings and machines look decades or even millenia old. There are also many expansive long shots with negative space, and the general pacing is more measured than the often frenetic speed of the prequel trilogy. With more time and physical space to take things in, we viewers get a chance to drink in the world and truly escape to it, rather than constantly trying to catch up with an overload of visuals moving at breakneck speed.

I really enjoyed this movie, and it's clear that Disney handed this beloved tale to the right director. It's not flawless, but given the insanely high amount of things that could have gone wrong (as George Lucas himself fell prey to), the movie is a great entry. I do have my little gripes (detailed below, along with spoilers), but I plan to see it at least once more in the theaters, and I will eagerly await the next two episodes.

[Spoiler Section. Be Warned!!!]

Getting into the story allows me to get into the details and a few of the little issues I have with the movie. 

I could accuse Abrams and Kasdan of playing it safe by using the basic stories from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi to form the plot. A young orphan of mysterious origins on a desert planet is brought into the machinations of forces battling for galactic supremacy. Said orphan is forced to uncover and face her history with an evil overlord to whom she may be related. She is forced to make several new friends who will help cripple a planet-destroying base used by an oppressive army seeking to wipe out all forms of resistance. This is all well-worn territory, to be sure. I can mostly excuse it because this movie is clearly meant as a transition from the original trilogy, but I still think that the story could have been a little more daring and creative.

The new faces of the Star Wars series: Poe, Rey, and Finn.
I definitely think they can make this new trilogy a
worthwhile addition to the grand series.

I was, however, happy that the details were fresh enough to keep the movie from seeming dull. The new "Luke," the young scrap collector Rey, is a really strong character. In fact, she immediately shows an authentic grit which Luke took much longer to acquire. The other two primary new characters, Finn and Poe, are more original. Finn, a defected stormtrooper from the Empire holdover group The First Order, is a completely new idea for the film series. Poe, though not garnering a tremendous amount of screen time, has a genuinely warm and humane feeling about him. None of these three feels like a cut-out, and the first two show a nice amount of depth, which I sense that Poe will also exhibit if he becomes more integral in future episodes.

I'm not yet completely sold on Kylo Ren as a menacing villain, but there is promise that he may very well become one. With the Supreme Leader Snoke (awful name, by the way) stating that he will "complete Ren's training," there is potential for Ren to become a true menace on par with past Sith Lords like Vader and Sidious. I was pleased with the turn of having him reveal his face in the middle of the picture, rather than use the mask and his identity as a tired device of mystery to be dragged along for two or three movies. We do still have the McGuffin of Rey's parentage to wonder over until the release of Episode VIII, and that is plenty.

One aspect of Finn's character that does nag me is how well-adjusted he is. According to his story, he was kidnapped by the First Order as a young child and forced into stormtrooper training. He was even stripped of a name and given a mere alpha-numeric designation, including the "FN" from which his human name is derived. If this is the case, then he has been part of a machine-like system whereby almost all sense of individuality is wiped out. Given that Finn has been a part of this system for nearly his entire life, I found his light sense of humor a bit out of keeping with his background. The First Order didn't strike me as very fertile soil for light-hearted jokes. Fortunately, the humor itself is effective, and it makes for a far better prospect than attempting to make him some sort of dark, brooding character whose inner turmoil defines him. We have Kylo Ren for that.

I was very impressed with the handling of the old guard. Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Leia are a part of the story, but they are fortunately not the story. It would have been far too easy for Abrams and Kasdan to showcase the old, familiar faces in order to stroke the nostalgia of old fans. They didn't. Their parts in the greater framework of the new characters' tales feels mostly organic and blessedly understated, especially in the case of Leia.

Old favorites like these two pirates are handled very well.
Their measured presence serves to enhance rather than
overtake the story from the new, young protagonists. 

I found a lot of the humor very solid and in sync with the light tone of the original trilogy. There are some solid sight gags and little one-liners that would have been right at home in any of Episodes IV through VI. I did, however, feel that there were a few lines that had a slightly more modern feel which were a tad off-beat. Finn's quick probing to see if Rey has "a boyfriend? A cute boyfriend?" is funny, but I can't shake the sense that the word "cute" has no place in the Star Wars universe. This was one of a few moments of such banter. Fortunately, there were no serious breaks of tone or context, and the lines themselves were always amusing, thanks mostly to actor John Boyega's deliveries and timing.

(Double-Major Spoiler Alert!!) I was satisfied with Han Solo's ultimate fate. It's never fun to see a beloved character die, but Solo's death at the hands of his son is another turn which invigorates the Star Wars epic. My hope is that this is the first major step towards Ren becoming a truly and unrepentantly evil Sith Lord. We've already seen the "redemption" storyline with Anakin/Darth Vader. It would seem more than a little tired to simply retell that story.

Going Forward

I am very excited about the next installment. Abrams did such a quality job, that I am disappointed that he won't be returning. However, I am excited that Rian Johnson is directing Episodes VIII and IX. Johnson has given us some great modern films, including Brick and Looper. He's a highly skilled director who I feel is unlikely to make a hash of this major project. I can't be sure that he will approach these movies with the same passion and affection that a devoted fan like Abrams did, but I'll be very happy to pay up and find out.