Star Trek Beyond. Justin Lin. 2016. ⚄

I’ve seen this before, but on DVD (I think). Now it’s 4K, so it’s… more…

More.

Oh, this isn’t by JJ Abrams? WILL THERE BE NO HORIZONTAL LENS FLARES?!?!

[half an hour passes]

This started off fun, but then there was fifteen minutes of character development and stuff (zzz), and then…

SO MUCH ACTION

I wonder about the economics of Kraal having a million space ships (I mean, they all presumably have to have a shower and a toilet and a kitchen and stuff) instead of a lesser number of bigger ships, but those swarms sure look cool.

[more time passes]

I’m really enjoying this. It’s a good old-fashioned action slash adventure thing with scrappy girls and guys fighting against the odds. It’s not exactly a Trek movie? But it’s a lot of fun.

I see that the director has done a bunch of Fast & Furious movies, so now I want to see whether those are good, too. I had assumed that they were eh not?

[and now it’s over]

I wondered why there hadn’t been any further Trek movies — this one was so much fun. But it was a very, very expensive movie to make (and it shows), and… well, I don’t know how much money this netted the studio, but I’m guessing it was a wash? The previous Trek movie grossed $470M (which sounds profitable at this budget), but $350M sounds dodgy.

But at least we have TV… with the disappointing Discovery series, and the execrable Picard series. Perhaps the new Pike series will be good.

Star Trek Into Darkness. J.J. Abrams. 2013. ⚄

How odd! This shifts between 16:9 (outside the ship) and … 16:7? I’m eyeballing… on the ship. Oh, it’s 2.4:1, which is like 16:6.6…? Whatevs.

I’ve seen this before, but on DVD, so I’ve barely seen 10% of it. I mean, bitrate wise; this is 4K.

I remember people really hating this when it came out, and I watched it, and I loved it. Perhaps I won’t still be a fan? Perhaps I will? Excitement!

[an hour passes]

Wow. This is like the Platonic ideal of a Star Trek movie. It’s everything I love about Star Trek (a group of people who trust each other and are striving towards a greater goal), but with more action and fun. You still get the discussions about ethics, but there’s so much fun stuff going on.

Oh why did Abrams defect to the more boring Star Wars universe? That’s a universe that’s basically Wagon Trail In Space and isn’t very interesting.

And why didn’t the people who made Picard look at this instead of getting all their impulses from Battlestar Galactica? BSG was brilliant in 2004, but it’s so played out and tired now.

The only thing that’s even remotely annoying here is the way that Abrams keeps shifting focus. I mean, it looks cool, but after a couple of times, it’s enough.

[half an hour more passes]

OK, this may be the best Trek thing ever, and I could watch this forever, but it’s not a perfect movie. It’s pretty flabby in the middle, with a lot of exposition that doesn’t really seem necessary.

View From The Top. Bruno Barreto. 2003.

The reason I’m watching this is complimacated and convoluted.

OK, I was watching Graham Norton, and Richard Ayoade was one of the guests, and he had a book to sell. I liked him in that programme where he was in that basement, and he sounded JUST THE SAME on Norton, so I bought the book:

And I started reading it last night. It’s fascinating, because it’s written in his precise voice. But then there’s this:

“A book about a movie about a journey” is a line from Geoff Dyer’s brilliant book about Tarkovskij’s Stalker, so I’m assuming that this is a parody of Zona? So this book is about View From The Top, which I assume is the worst movie ever:

Which makes sense, because a parody of Zona should definitely be about a horrible movie, for symmetry.

And it’s even more apposite than that, because here’s a line from Zona:

There are more and more things […] from which one has to avert one’s ears and eyes. With television I have my strict rule, a rule applying to Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, Graham Norton and a whole bunch of others whose names I don’t even know; I won’t have these people in the house.

And I bought this book because I saw Ayoade on Graham Norton! I let him into my house! HOW REFERENTIAL IS THAT!!!1!

How meta can you go?

Now.

Let’s watch the movie.

[fifteen minutes pass]

Oh deer. I assumed that this was going to be bad, but it’s… it’s bad. It’s really bad.

I mean, it’s got performers that know how to do comedy, like Christina Applegate. But there’s nothing here. The script is a void. There are no funny lines. It’s structured like they’re saying funny stuff, and they have funny costumes, but there’s… nothing here.

The writer of this hasn’t written any other movie, but he’s apparently showrunning a TV series now.

[half an hour passes]

OK, I can see why Ayoade chose this movie in particular. It’s dire in a kinda interesting way. That is, it’s professionally made — there’s no obvious gaffes, technically. It’s just so in-credibly vapid: Buying into the dominant value system totally, without any critique of anything beyond pointing out that airline passengers are sometimes a handful.

The movie is so close to being a satire of itself.

Now I really want to read the Ayoade book. I hope he’s not just making fun of this horrible movie, but delves into how… how this movie was made. How could that even happen? I’ve seen a lot of horrible movies, but you can usually understand how they got to be made. But I do not grok that at all here.

I almost hesitate to include this gif here because it’s the only scene in the movie that’s even close to being funny:

But that’s the high point! There’s nothing else even close to this!