Star Trek Into Suckness (Wasted Potential: the movie)

The Visuals/The Music/The Majority of the Acting: Yes the things that were good in the first movie are still good in this one. The first film's visuals were pretty but not exactly living up their potential. The visuals in this movie are even better, and the camerawork during the space battles is slower, which makes the damage feel more visceral. The music continues to be quite good. My mother has listened to the soundtrack from the first one all the way through more times than I can count and she'll have a new one to play quite soon. And yes the acting is pretty good. All the people who were good in the first are good here, and the new additions do a pretty good job. With those few points in the film's favor out of the way, let's go on to how this film sucks.

Characters/Sub-plots: Yes I am going to list the sub-plots different from the overall story, because I hate how lazy they are. There are a couple of sub-plots introduced in the first act that don't affect the story in the slightest, mostly because they are forgotten well before the end of the second act. There is a sub-plot about Spock and Uhura's relationship, which seems to be building to some interesting character interplay... but is resolved within ten minutes of its introduction. No seriously they introduce a conflict at the end of the first act, have it take shape on the actual plot within five minutes, then resolve it. This is terrible screenwriting, and I mean worse than the dumbness of the first film, which at least knew how structure worked.

But worse is how none of these little pieces affect the story in the slightest. There is another one that also is brought up in the first act involving Kirk that I won't spoil, but God is it stupid. And the best part is that it barely registers in his character, mostly because it feels like a retread of his character arc from the first one. Scottie is the only one who's character arc actually has any real bearing on the plot, until you find out that its just a cheap ploy to get him off of the ship in the first act, so that they can use the "its malfunctioning" excuse of generating tension. Hell it probably needed it though considering how bad the film is at generating tension. In the beginning Kirk does something that gets his Captains license revoked. You want to know how long it takes them to resolve that? One scene before he's back on a ship, Three before he's captain of the Enterprise again.

Story (More specifically the references to previous Star Trek continuity): The story and writing in this film are atrocious. The first film was largely let down by a general sense that the filmmakers didn't like or respect the original source material outside of its Wikipedia entry. Turns out, I really should've counted my blessings. It turns out that the only thing thats worse than J.J. Abrams not even trying to please Trekkies, is him trying to pander to them. I'm only a casual Trekkie, but I did see this with two hardcores who have been going to the films on opening day since Wrath of Khan. For the last film they were kind to it, accepting of the ways that it was trying to be more of an action film than a Star Trek film, even they didn't like this one. The problem with the references though is how they are used. X-Men making references to the more outlandish costumes of the original was short and sweet, even though post-Avengers it seems insufferable. The references in Star Trek into Darkness are plot points or even entire scenes.

Direction/Action: This is just inexcusable. The first film's action scenes, while stupid, were at least exciting and actually engaging on a "Woo this is fun" aspect. The action in this movie is just plain badly filmed. This is entirely Abram's fault, as the choreography seems lame and stiff, the sets look more like a Video Game than a movie, and the editing is crap. There is a fight scene pretty early on when the group gets to Kronos that is literally populated by Cover Walls straight from the awful Video Game, and it even spawns new bad guys constantly. Don't even bother trying to follow any of the fight scenes on the Dreadnought, it is literally one of the most confusing fights scenes I have seen in quite a while. The camera zooms in and out, cuts last barely a few seconds, you can't tell who anyone is let alone where they are. Eventually you just give up, and treat the action scenes as a snooze break.

The last thirty minutes: I AM NOT SPOILING THE TWIST. It would be easy to do so, since I literally scoped out the twist from the first ten minutes, but I will not. Instead I will simply say this, it is the stupidest thing that this entire franchise has ever done. Not even because it does't work because of the stupid way it gets resolved. Not just because the pacing grinds to a halt, making thirty minutes seem like seventy. Not simply because of the fact that it misuses potentially interesting characters and plot elements from the old continuity. No, it is stupid because the twist is poorly written, just like everything else it really comes down to the fact that the writers at work here are just awful at their chosen profession.

Conclusion: I absolutely loathe this movie. I waited nine hours after watching it to write this critique, discussing it with several others to iron out my opinions. What began, as the film started, as annoyed indifference turned into seething agony, prolonged by an atrocious third act with terrible action scene after terrible action scene and shitty writing. When I left the theater I was angry, confused, and sad, tenfold than I had been at the last movie. I like Star Trek V: The final frontier better than this, I like Star Trek Nemesis better than this. I like Star Trek Insurrection better than this. And yes, I like Star Trek: the motion picture better than this. This is my most hated Star Trek film. And I apologize for all that I disliked about the first one, I didn't know what my alternative was, and I'm sorry. God I hated this movie.

1/5

Sleeping Dogs needs to be put down...

(Okay so the way that these reviews will work is I will list five things that I think are important about the game and whether they are good or bad. Basically its an out-of-five but where you know exactly what makes up those five stars, or lack thereof.)

Sleeping Dogs

Combat: The combat in this game reminds me of the Yakuza series, in a good way. The fisticuffs require a decent amount of skill and is actually pretty damn fun. This engine is pretty much just Arkham Asylum but frankly I can't say that I don't enjoy that engine and anything that rips it off, so far. The only real new addition is the environmental kills. If you grab an enemy, and some enemies can't be grabbed for precisely this reason, then you can bring them over to certain objects and instigate an auto kill. These are pretty fun, despite the fact that they basically just delete an enemy. 

The ending: I'm not going to spoil this one, even though this game came out a while ago and I probably could, but I don't like the ending. Why? Simple, it's too clean. Throughout the game characters are constantly double crossing one another, lines are being crossed, people die. And yet there are no consequences faced, not even a little. The bad guys are taken down, and one of them completely out of the main characters hands so that he doesn't need to dirty himself even a little. The criminal organization that he worked for throughout the game is perfectly fine, and not in the control of any of the evil masters that we met throughout the game. Even the main characters buddy is given a pardon, or at least its assumed. 

Story: The story actually starts a lot better than most GTA clones. Most of the GTA games turn me off because the story is really slow, and this is coming from someone who likes JRPGs. But the storyline in Sleeping Dogs is much better in terms of pacing... sort of. From a relatively good starting position the plot gets really unfocused after a wedding scene at around the mid-point. From there the main character just sort of wanders around until the story has set up the remaining characters and can lurch towards the boring final mission and way to easy final confrontation. Not terrible, since the beginning is still pretty good, but pretty bad by the end.

Music: The music in this game ranges from dull as The Cutting Crew to just weird. Most of the general in-game music is fairly forgettable, largely just what you would expect from a GTA clone with a china theme. But the in-game radio stations are pretty weird... I can't even really describe what it is that weirds me out, but its just odd, and unsettling. 

Graphics: The graphics in the game are pretty gorgeous, very realistic looking while at the same time being quite stylish. The stylishness is largely due to the location being more interesting to walk around than New York, so the game really shouldn't earn points for that, but screw it, I will anyway. The character models are what I would particularly like to give attention to. The characters actually look pretty realistic looking, albeit only during cutscene, as during gameplay they look like they came from Mortal Kombat, and their death animation is literally just 'you fall down'. 

Overall recommendation: I wish I could recommend this game, I really do. With so many god-awful generic sandbox games like Mafia, and Grand Theft Auto 4 I really wish that I could say that this one is great. It does do quite a bit different from the rest of the market, but not enough. Overall if you want to see it and judge for yourself I would rent it, see if you like it, feel free to argue with me in the comments section.