Sunday, May 26, 2013

Star Trek Into Darkness movie review by Maja & Bimby



MAJA: Hello Bimby! I said "hello Bimby." Bimby, you lowk at me when I say hello ha?

BIMBY: Sorry ate Maja.

MAJA: Tudey, we are heer to pri-seynt to yew awer rebyu op "Star Trek Into Darkness."

BIMBY: I actually made nood na the movie like twice coz it was sooooo awesome! Caso yaya didn't appreciate it eh.

MAJA: Ahihu. Maybe beekowz she didn't anderstand the mowbie Bimby?

BIMBY: The plot was, like, very easy to make sunod-sunod kaya!

MAJA: It was in English kasi Bimby, kahit me I got nosebleds when watsing it! Pero it was maganda ha.

BIMBY: Of course! You don't even need to be a Trekkie/Trekker to even love the film.

MAJA: Onga Bimby, akala ko I needed to watch yung original films, buti naman hinde! Ang dami nun ha, mga 9 movies yun diba?

BIMBY: Yes! You don't need to be a hardcore Star Trek fan to understand this film. It'd help if you watched the 2009 movie, though, para you make unawa the characters, especially the Spock-Kirk dynamic, and Captain Kirk's relationship with his mentor Christopher Pike, pero even if you didn't watch the 2009 film you can easily understand Into Darkness parin.

MAJA: Yeah! Pero that dasent mean dat da movie is mababaw ha, da story was 'intricate', the plat waz nat prediktabol, at it had enap aksyon to keep you at da edj op yor seet!

BIMBY: Hehehe, ate Maja, spell "intricate" nga?

MAJA: Ahihu, ahhhm, ano na lang, "detailed" na lang Bimby. Ahihihu.

BIMBY: Hehehehe. Anyway, the movie may be about starships and alien civilizations set 300 years or so into the future, pero at its core is a human story. And it helped that Benedict Cumberbatch, the villain, was kinda cute.

MAJA: Kyot, Bimby? You meaned....ahhhhm, conpeermd ka na ba?

BIMBY: What? NO!! Ermagheeeerd, I meant......uhmmm....I meant that girls will find him cute. And also gay peeps like tito John Lapus. Hehehehe.

MAJA: Wateber, Bimby. I smell you na. I smell you! Ahihu.

BIMBY: For those who haven't seen the movie pa, we have super spoilers below. We made a list of references Star Trek Into Darkness made of the original Star Trek for the curious, and also some points that peeps need to make alala so they can understand the film better. Hehehehe.






SPOILER ALERT BELOW!!!!!!


1) Transwarp beaming. In the 2009 film, Spock from the 24th century travelled back through time to help stop the villain of that movie. He helped Montgomery Scott develop the equation for "transwarp beaming", or the ability to teleport to far away places (regular teleporters or "transporters" only have a range of a few kilometers, whereas transwarp beaming will allow you to teleport across lightyears, even between planets!). The older Spock remained behind to serve as a mentor of sorts to the new Spock.

2) In the original Star Trek, Christopher Pike became an invalid due to an accident. In the 2009 film, he was injured but he could otherwise walk. He serves as a father-figure to Captain Kirk, who lost his father (played by Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth), some 28 years prior to the events of the 2009 film. Things didn't go well for Christopher Pike in Star Trek Into Darkness, though.


3) Spock's race, the Vulcans, favor logic above all else. They do not display ANY emotion. Vulcans are said to be 3 or 5 times stronger than humans, which explains how he was able to fight on a more equal footing with the film's primary antagonist. Vulcans are also capable of telepathically reading the thoughts of other people via "mind meld" (a Vulcan touches certain points on another person's face and the meld begins). They are also capable of using a "nerve pinch", wherein they squeeze a point in another person's shoulder and it renders them unconscious.

   The planet Vulcan was destroyed in the previous 2009 movie, and as a result, the Federation is in a heightened state of alert as they're greatly weakened by the loss of such an important member-world.

4) Earth belongs to an interstellar alliance of worlds known as "the Federation." Starfleet is its military branch. Starfleet's primary mandate is exploration and conducting humanitarian efforts for other races. When encountering primitive life (as seen at the start of the movie), Starfleet officers are required to uphold the "Prime Directive", which prohibits Starfleet from exposing the primitive cultures to the anything that will interfere with their natural evolution.


5) The Federation is engaged in a long cold war with its neighbor, the Klingon Empire. Earth is the center of government of the Federation, while Kronos (spelled Qo'nos in the Klingon language) is the Klingon homeworld. In Into Darkness, it can be seen that the moon orbiting Kronos looked shattered. This could be a reference to the old Star Trek film "Star Trek 6: the Undiscovered Country", wherein the Klingon moon, Praxis, exploded due to overmining. Indeed, in Into Darkness, the planet surface appeared to be experiencing what could be a nuclear winter--or the place was just simply in a colder region of the planet.

6) The Klingons were "altered" for this film. See the comparison below.


7) Klingons loved bird-shaped ships. Although re-designed, the Klingon Bird of Prey retained much of the elements of the original. See below.


8) This film borrows heavily from the second original Star Trek movie, "Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Khan." The villain in "Into Darkness" is also Khan Noonien Singh (or Khan for short) but he looks different, somewhat.


Khan is a product of genetic engineering during the late 90s and he and his followers were cryogenically frozen after being defeated in a war. In the original, Khan was found by Captain Kirk asleep aboard his ship, the "Botany Bay", and he tried to take over the Enterprise but was defeated by Kirk and marooned onto a planet. Later, Khan came back, stole a Starfleet ship, and fought Kirk. The new Khan shares the same background but this time, it was not Kirk who found him but the "evil" Admiral Marcus (played by Peter Weller of Robocop fame), and it occurred offscreen. Khan in Into Darkness is somewhat stronger than the original Khan, and he also has a "healing factor"  capable of reversing even death. The original Khan didn't display such extensive regenerative abilities.

9) In the original universe, Uhura wasn't well versed in the Klingon language (written as "tlhIngan Hol" or simply "Klingon"), which was for comedic effect back in the day. In Into Darkness, it's shown that Uhura is now well versed in Klingon (probably as a result of Starfleet's heightened paranoia perhaps?).

10) Also borrowing from "Star Trek 2: the Wrath of Khan" was the scene where Kirk, Spock, and Montgomery Scott were in engineering. However, they were reversed for Into Darkness.

  • In the original, it was Spock who entered the radiation-filled area to fix the warp core and save the ship. In Into Darkness, it was Kirk who did it.
  • In the original, when Kirk came to Engineering, Scott told him to not open the door or "(he) will flood the whole compartment." In Into Darkness, Scott said pretty much the same thing to Spock when he came in.
  • In the original, a dying Spock (while inside the irradiated area and behind the glass door) asked Kirk "Ship....out of danger?" In Into Darkness, Kirk asks "How's the ship?" to which Spock responded "Out of danger."
  • In the original and Into Darkness, Spock and Kirk were separated by a glass door that kept radiation from spreading across the ship. Kirk also laid out his hand on the glass door, while Spock did the Vulcan salute.
  • In the original, when Kirk was dealt a blow by Khan, Kirk yelled the iconic "Khaaaaaaan!" very angrily. In Into Darkness, it was Spock who yelled "Khaaaaaan!", this time in anguish after Kirk is killed.



11) The desk of Admiral Marcus contains models of starships, including the NX-01 Enterprise (Star Trek: Enterprise), and the USS Phoenix (Star Trek: First Contact).

12) The museum that was bombed in London is supposedly a secret office for Section 31, a black ops branch of Starfleet Intelligence. The concept of section 31 was introduced in the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Starfleet Command (where that ginormous black Starship crashed onto) is located in San Francisco. You can see the black starship smash onto Alcatraz island, among others.

13) During the closing credits, the names of the actors were listed alphabetically...in keeping with Star Trek tradition.



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