Star Trek: Into Darkness - SPOILER WARNING!!!

The more I think about this movie the worse it seems to me. Sure it’s fun enough to watch and the action scenes and special effects are all top notch. But the more thought you put into it, the more you realise that JJ Abrams has no idea what he’s dealing with and through that shows no understanding and more importantly no respect to the original films.

In order to talk about this, I’m gonna have to spoil the major twists of the film, so don't read this if you haven’t seen it. Ok, no bitching about spoilers, I’ve warned you.

So John Harrison is actually Khan. This is the first point at which Abrams pisses all over the fan base. Everyone thought this was going to be Khan and rather than using that as a hook he chose to lie about it, then reveal it almost immediately after the character appears on screen.

Thing is, this isn’t Khan. This man is the Joker, or Loki or Mr Silver. A man with an elaborate plan which involves wanting get caught in order to use his opponents as a way of getting what he wants.

This kind of villain stood up in other films, like the Dark Knight and the Avengers, because the central protagonists had a lot of development to do themselves. The central cast of Into Darkness don’t develop at all.

Closer to home, while Benedict Cumberbatch is doing the best with what he’s given, he only seems to have been hired for the job his voice can score 6.5 Ian McKellens on the awesomeness scale.

Wrath of Khan, showed us a villain who was ten times as intelligent as his adversaries, but massively flawed in regards of his ego. In that respect, this film also repeats the end of Wrath of Khan, word for word, with two of the characters swapped. Mr Abrams, that is not paying homage, that’s just ripping off a far better film.

Wrath of Khan was an inter-textual story about, ego, aging, sacrifice and overall appreciating what you have. Into Darkness doesn’t even compare on this, with a thin story about some crazy admiral in Starfleet and the most important villain of the whole franchise being used as a name-drop.

In conclusion, while I got along just fine with the film while watching it, having thought about it now, I can only see it as an insulting use of a villain, whom the writer/director has no understanding of.

How to make Plot-Holes work - spoiler warning - Dark knight rises & Looper

Every film has plot holes. A gripe of internet folk is to complain to no end about them, making claims that they undermine the whole film. This is not true. It is wholly possible to have a film loaded with plot holes, that’s still a good film.

What’s crucial about whether a plot-hole can destroy a film is how it’s executed. For example in Star Trek: Generations, there’s a bit where basically everyone’s dead, but Picard, has the ability (god knows how) to go back in time, to any point he wants, in order to stop the bad guy killing everyone. He chooses to go back to the point a few minutes before the bad guy kills everyone. This is an example of very poor execution, as the entire outcome of the story pivots on Picard’s decision. There is no explanation for why Picard doesn’t choose to go back to a point several days, or weeks before the bad guy killed everyone and stopped the whole situation from happening.

The key to a plot hole not destroying a film, is it resulting from a more minor part of the film.

During this year, I have seen two films that contain significant plot holes, but that do just this.

The first is the Dark Knight Rises, which has some really big gaps in common sense. The biggest of these is the fact that Miranda Tate, is in fact Talia (one of the baddies) who becomes aware of Bruce Wayne’s return to Gotham before Bane does and (despite tricking Gordon into attacking the wrong bomb truck and informing Bane of the special forces team that got sneaked into the city) doesn’t tell Bane that his nemesis is back.

This significant hole is covered, by the fact that the story remains full enough, for us not to notice it right away. The important issues of the film remain forefront in the audiences’ mind and therefore, Talia suddenly forgetting to tell her friend that his about to get is arse kicked by someone dressed as a bat, gets pushed aside, so that we can enjoy the action and Anne Hatheway in a catsuit.

The second film I’ve seen that has a truly huge plot hole, is Looper. Time travel stories especially have the major problems with plot holes, as the only way to really do much with them is to construct paradoxes, which (in the majority of cases) don't ever fully make sense.

To this effect, the first time that the nasty plot hole in this film shows it’s head, is when we get our first example of what happens when you “let your loop run.”

This is shown through Seth, when is older self starts to lose body parts as a result of Abe cutting bits of his younger self off. This doesn’t work. If we are to assume that the injuries of younger Seth can affect older Seth, then we have to assume that cause and effect is the driving force behind it. We are saying here, that younger Seth is the beginning of the line and that older Seth is the end. Changes made to the beginning affect the end. But they don't just affect the end. Every part of the line would have been changed, by any changes to the beginning, therefore older Seth wouldn’t just lose body parts, he never would have had them; his younger self would have lived the rest of the line, without them. Given the amount of damage that is done younger Seth, older Seth would probably never even have been there, given that he would have been in no condition to have been sent back.

This same plot hole exists at the end of the film, as when young Joe figures out that he’s responsible for creating the Rainmaker, his older self’s entire perception of the events should have changed. As a HISHE parody as already said, the very knowledge should have been enough to alter the time lines, without him having to kill himself.

In a similar way to the TDKR, this film remains interesting enough for us to really be bothered, by this gaping inconsistency in the time travel rules. The differences in the priorities of the two Joes’ is the primary focus, making the holes in logic a secondary concern.

Err…so that’s how to make plot holes work.

Merry Christmas!!!