Last week:Chris HemsworthsfirstStar Trekmovie.Later this week: Beyond.
Just think about all that money.Star Trek Into Darknesscost $185 million, that we know of.
In 1979, the firstStar Trekmovie cost $46 million.
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There was nothing runaway aboutInto Darkness.
Paramount got what they paid for; they wanted something that looked like it cost something.
And howawesomewould it be, to spend that kind of money?
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Think of how fun it is to buy things; imagine buyingeverything.
This isnt how were supposed to think not about movies, and maybe not about anything.
(Even religions that preach conspicuous consumption tend to insist on charitable giving.)
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It makes the world go round; its the root of all evil.
No one likes rich people; nobody doesnt want to be rich.
InStar Trek, there is no money.
In real life,Star Treknever had enough money.
Roddenberry invented teleportation because he couldnt afford filming a spaceship landing.
The story goes that, inGenerations, they had to borrow uniforms fromDeep Space Nine.
Can a color be sensual?
Filmmakers used to think so.
(Some 68 years later, Abrams showed up at Pinewood to start making newStar Warsmovies.
(They both won Oscars; we shouldve built them museums.)
The Hollywood blockbuster is too busy to produce something like that, but this opening sequence inInto Darknesscomes close.
Everything about this scene is ludicrous.
But theres something lunatic about every shot in this sequence: cliff, volcano, underwater spaceship.
Its a whole movie in a prologue.
As a cost-cutting move, they built the world on a set.
The film properly opens with an extended, almost wordless sequence, set in London.
(Actually, the last sequence ofThere Will Be Bloodwas shot in the Greystone mansion.)
Bigness is the central world-building idea in this rebootedStar Trekuniverse.
Into Darknessleaves London after that explosion; quite a bit of the movie takes place in San Francisco.
But both cities are played onscreen by Los Angeles.
Getty was J. Paul Getty, another oilman and at one time the richest man in America.
The Center actually opened 20 years after Getty died.
(Into Darknessstarted location scouting in 2011, 20 years after Roddenberry died.)
And the Getty Center makes sense forInto Darkness, which becomes oddly monotone-colored after the burst-of-red opening sequence.
I have no idea if this was intentional, but it creates dissonance you cant fake.
There is something intenselyoffabout this scene.
Lets not talk too much about the story; half the internet exists to accurately nitpickInto Darkness.
A big budget let Abrams shoot at real locations and pretend they are parts of theEnterprise.
He returned to the Budweiser Brewery to shoot scenes in the engine room.
Something to consider here, maybe.
This warp core is a real thing, and it looks like it.
This thing looks real because it is real; no doy.
Theres another part of the commentary where Abrams discusses the big space-jump scene.
The government gave Hughes money to build a plane, and he built the biggest plane ever.
It never saw any action.
It flew only once.
It was pretty much useless, which, per Oscar Wilde, pretty much makes it art.
They show a side-by-side comparison, and I swear to god, I couldnt tell the difference.
But the busy much-ness of the movie is its own reward.
My favorite Bridge character is the Observer-looking bald dude, apparently some sort of cyborg.
All of these people are shot in close-ups.
Abrams loves faces; thats why hes so good at casting, and so bad at action.
(What is your Resolute Self-Sacrifice face?
What is your Betrayed By The People You Trusted face?)
And this unsteadiness is matched by the storytelling, which gets more gaseous throughout the films final act.
TheVengeancecrashes into San Francisco, destroying several skyscrapers… but pedestrians still perambulate a few blocks away.
(Imagine thesoundof a megaship crashing into an entire downtown.)
Maybe you might explain this odd intangibility in some of the filmmaking choices that went into the movie.
I love that, because theres nothing old-school about the films climax.
I kind of love Century City, although its a strange and arguably post-human place.
Then it was the 20th Century Fox backlot.
But I kind of cherish the innocent wayInto Darknessshoots Century City.
InConquest, it symbolized emotionless paranoia; inDie Hard, shameless excess demanding schadenfreudic combustion.
I truly believe thatInto Darknessjust thinks Century City looks cool.
And I kind of love that!
The best shot in the Spock-Khan chase sequence finds Zachary Quinto running alongside of the CAA Building.
Every show filmed there; sets were reused across projects, from generation to generation.
But theres a sense of an ending, here inInto Darkness, and a weird goddamn ending it is.
A year after the devastation of San Francisco, a resurrected Kirk gives a speech to assembled masses.
Hes giving a speech that underlines the movies supposed theme: that reacting to evilwithevil is evil.
But Im obsessed with how Abrams shoots this final scene, with Kirk delivering the speech.
In this weird gray antiseptic context, Chekovs downward stare is positively haunting, RIP Anton Yelchin forever.
The film makes a point of showing off the impressive-looking building behind Kirk.
It looks like a tertiary office building from the Google campus, but its actually a church.
The Crystal Cathedral in Orange County was erected in 1980.
(It cost more thanWrath of Khan.)
It was originally built by the Garden Grove Community Church, led by Robert H. Schuller.
Schuller had a TV show, and started out holding church services in a drive-in movie theater.
One of the complaints you hear aboutInto Darknessis the big crash at the end.
TheVengeancedemolishes Alcatraz before mowing down quite a bit of future San Francisco.
Yet many of the residents in the city dont seem to notice that a whole neighborhood just got demolished.
(I complained about this a second ago, using the word perambulate.)
Toward the end of the chase, Spock chases Khan across an overpass.
Thats in downtown Los Angeles, between California Plaza and the Wells Fargo center.
History was eradicated to make way for the future.
Its a familiar strategy, actually.
That was how they tried to saveStar Trek.
People complained aboutStar Trek Into Darkness; they are still complaining about it today.
Who weeps for Bunker Hill?
Its just a place, I guess.
Its not something important, like a movie.
