Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch. Dir. JJ Abrams, Paramount, 2013
I do not write up everything I see. Based on the contents of a previous post, I sometimes don't write up ANYthing I see. Some movies don't need another review and inspire no more comment than that. Most of those tend to be bad movies which are simply forgettable, not interestingly bad in some way worthy of a few grafs. Not offensive, not problematical, not colossal flops, just Hollywood product with no apparent reason for existing.
Sometimes, though, the opposite is true. Look at Star Trek Into Darkness. I have no idea what to say about it. I saw it years ago and liked it and snapped it up the other day and enjoyed it just as much. The cast is good, Cumberbatch is a great villain, the action comes at the viewer almost nonstop, there's plenty of laughs, and a tearjerking moment most Trek fans will love. As I said, I liked it a lot.
But so what? Star Trek Into Darkness inspires no journey into memories, no musing on my past, no fresh perspective, no hot takes on - anything. It's a highly enjoyable sequel to a successful reboot, keeping its franchise, the most durable in Hollywood, alive, at least until 2015's Star Trek Beyond brought the series to a temporary halt. (A new instalment, exec produced and possibly written by Quentin Tarantino, is reportedly in the pipeline.) But, again, so what?
Star Trek Into Darkness makes a thoroughly satisfying Saturday night - or Wednesday afternoon - at the movies if a rollicking scifi actioner is your pleasure. And that's it. It takes more grafs to say why the movie's not special enough to write about than to praise.
This concludes my nonexistent writeup for Star Trek Into Darkness.
This is how I feel about Wodehouse novels. I've been keeping a journal of everything I read since 2019 and looking back through it, every time I knock out a quick Wodehouse story I dutifully note it down and the comment is always, "What's there to say? Of course it was fun, of course it was frothy, of course I loved it." (I also liked but barely remember the Star Trek movie. I have a problem with Benedict Cumberbatch which is that I hate his name, and every time I see him I devote a little corner of my brain entirely to turning over the name in my mind and wondering why everybody seems to find him so devastatingly handsome, and another corner wondering why I give a shit since he's a great actor).
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