Into Darkness….

So I’ve never really got into the Star Trek thing.  But I saw the last re-vamped film and had to admire the way in which things blew up, people growled and tortured souls battled each other for internal reconciliation and galactic peace.  I mean, who wouldn’t…?

That said, I wasn’t in a huge hurry to see the sequel as sure, it looked loads of fun but you know, it’s been a busy time, it’s stressful, and cinemas in London are STUPIDLY expensive.  I figured… I can wait until it comes into Islington Library rotation stock, right?

Then a friend came to town and said ‘let’s go see!’ and you know, the day was warm and the evening was lazy, so off we trotted.

She’d never seen anything Star Trek ever, but had some quite firm ideas about what to expect.

‘Apparently,’ she explained, ‘it’s not just about things blowing up.  Apparently it’s about colonialism, and society, and what it means to be human, and is arguably a post-modernist take on exploration, evolution and cultural development.’  She thought about it a moment more.  ‘And jumping off things.  There’s a lot of jumping off things.’

‘What?  Simultaneously?’

‘I think so.  I hope so.  Sorta – he’s running he’s running he’s running off a cliff and he’s shouting, ‘I really don’t think we should have violated their social identity, captaaaaaaaiiinnnnn…..!’ type thing.’

‘Or he’s jumping out of a space ship with a cry of ‘let the Klingons construct their own history, rather than inflict our prejudiced viieeeewwwwsssss….’?’

‘Yeah!  Just like that!  It’s gonna be great!’

Bolstered by this thought, into the cinema we went, and as the ads rolled along my friend nudged me in the ribs.

‘Apparently you have to drink whenever there’s lens flare.’

‘Okay.  We don’t have any drinks.’

‘Just imagine you’ve got a drink.’

‘What about when people fall off stuff?’

‘Oh yes, definitely then.  And spaceships crashing – any extreme downward descent, really, that’s fine.’

‘Righto.  What about The Look?’

‘What Look?’

‘Well, in the posters, and in the trailers and that, the villain keeps on having this Look.’

‘What kind of Look?’

‘I dunno.  Sorta a cross between a mad megalomaniac cackle and a triste expression of ‘this will hurt me as much as it hurts you’ kinda look.  I think we’ll know it when we see it.’

Hushed silence as the film began.  We both lent forward expectantly.  How long, we wondered, until people jumped off something?  Not very long, it turned out.  How long, we mused, until lens flare as the camera luxuriously spun round a fraught-looking officer discussing the consequences of interfering with a society’s internal development and really big guns?

Again, not long.

But what about The Look?

We had to wait for a nuclear device to blow up before we got it, but when it came, blimey it was worth the wait.  Even the cameraman seemed riveted by The Look, lingering on it as the pounding music faded to the vacuum silence of space.  Indeed, between a combination of falling off things, lens flare and the Look, I was grateful we didn’t have anything to drink through the course of the movie, as I’m not sure our livers could have handled the toxicity.

‘I don’t see it as a post-colonial deconstruction,’ mused my friend, as we wandered home.  ‘More as an exploration of Nietzsche power politics.’

We both considered this a while.

‘Also,’ she added, ‘I liked the fact that they shot each other with guns while travelling really fast through space.  And the jumping off fast-moving stuff.  And the fighting.  And aliens.  And stuff.  That was awesome.’

So concluded, and having righteously done our critical duty, we went home, happy all the way…