Star Trek Into Darkness: A Khan fan's review

I’ll start by coming right out and saying it: I am a big Wrath of Khan fan. For me it is the only completely satisfying Star Trek film before the 2009 JJ Abrams reboot.

There are other honourable efforts. The Undiscovered Country (Star Trek VI) has a great story, but the cast are so wrinkled and puffy it rather lacks vigour. First Contact, the only good Next Generation movie, is another favourite of mine - but the supporting cast’s performances are a wink away from panto standard and this often causes me to fast-forward entire sections.

So it was that when I saw the first Abrams Star Trek effort, I was rather pleased. It found a simple, elegant way to respect the legacy of the original cast, yet go on to tell its own stories with the same characters.

Of course the actors filling the roles had to be good to pull this off - and Chris Pine as Jim Kirk more than delivered, nodding to the best of Shatner’s outlandish style without descending into outright parody. I was genuinely shocked and delighted by his performance, having been certain that I would loathe any attempt to replicate or replace Shatner.

True, the other parts failed to achieve the same heights - Spock wasn’t quite there for me, while Scotty and Bones produced little more than misfiring impressions – but all in all I was stunned to have found the thing such a pleasant experience, and recognised that there was plenty of space to develop the other characters in future instalments.

The plot was slight, but I could forgive that because the film looked great, barrelled along (which Star Trek rarely achieves), and at least recognised the Kirk/ Spock dynamic as the heart of the piece. It was a decent start. I had big expectations for the next movie.

So it is that I feel a little crushed by Star Trek into Darkness. The movie’s defining image, of the Enterprise hurtling powerless back down to Earth, is an appropriate one. It’s an odd film, because it surrenders all the fresh, virgin territory it fought so hard to win in the first movie - in favour of a creatively bankrupt reheat job.

I had deliberately read nothing about the movie, or even watched more than the original trailer, so what Khan rumours I had heard didn’t concern me when I took my seat in the cinema.

I actually ran with the movie for the entire first half, delighted to see Peter Weller taking up an aggressive bad guy part and intrigued by the possibility of a really strong Klingon based story – perhaps some brilliantly conceived box of tricks that would build to the outbreak of war and set up a third movie.

Then Cummerbach said “Khan” and everything raced off into a shrieking muddle. Suddenly it was grasping at the coat-tails of an illustrious predecessor in a way that the first Abrams movie, whatever you think of it, had made entirely unnecessary.

A performance this big would always
hang over Cummerbach

There is, from a writer’s perspective, no need for the film to become such a deformed and inbred creature. No need at all. Even as it stands the plot is doable without the weird swerve into impersonation and leaden homage.  Cummerbach’s villain could have survived almost unchanged as an entirely new character without affecting the arc of the story.

So what is the purpose of stamping him with the name of a much loved figure from the past? It doesn’t help the story along, only pulls it in several directions – and I assume it can only have made those who know the original cringe.

At its worst, the film’s tribute act is plain embarrassing –witness the switcheroo re-enactment of the conclusion to Wrath of Khan. It plays like a drunken fan fiction experiment, then tosses any trace of impact via a resurrection device worse even than planet Genesis. At its best the film is merely laughable, like some wretched youtube tribute act – just watch Spock’s Shatner howl, if you dare.

The other problem is that the characters simply haven’t progressed. Pine’s Kirk is now so busy running around shouting that he really could be any character in any action movie. Scotty and Bones continue to provide nothing more than weak, weak comedy relief, and Ohura still does nothing but look good and emote – where what is required from the only female crew member is a bit of charisma, a touch of attitude.
 
I don’t think Abrams will make a third Star Trek, and critically at least he seems to have gotten away with this. And I suppose to someone who has never seen Wrath of Khan, Into Darkness might have played well. Perhaps a different director and a whole new set of writers will make a success of a third and we can put this unpleasantness behind us. I do think the cast have a genuinely good film in them.

Abrams belongs with Star Wars. There’s a franchise whose fans are well used to feeling dirty. Kirk, after all,  hasn’t yet trekked into the darkness of a Vodaphone ad campaign.

All’s Well that ends Wells

The War of the Worlds, Invasion fantasies and Hollywood.

I spend a great deal of time youtube-ing away the small hours, typing in the names of my various heroes and seeing what marvels emerge from the ether. During a recent search I happened upon a radio broadcast from 1940, named “Orson Welles interviews HG Wells” - a recording of the occasion when the two met to discuss Orson’s infamous 1938 radio adaptation of HG’s novel.

It’s a remarkable recording for several reasons.

First there is the pleasure of overhearing the mutual admiration shared by two great men. It runs throughout their conversation as they trip over each other’s grace and modesty, HG’s kindly, croaking voice contrasting with Orson’s refined, rumbling tones.

Then there is the snapshot it provides of an extraordinary moment in history. At the time of the recording Great Britain, once the mightiest empire in the world, was widely viewed as beaten, on the verge of invasion by Nazi Germany. The US stood apart, often sympathetic but unwilling to be embroiled. (HG cites this innocent reluctance as the reason for the success of Orson’s radio play. For most Americans war can still be “Halloween fun”).

Third, it is a fascinating example of Science Fiction’s role as a mirror to powerful nations’ anxieties. Wells’ 1898 book was part of a surge of British “invasion literature”, a string of works imagining the destruction of the British Empire which were produced during or shortly after the severe “Long Depression”. Only Wells’ book, devoid of jingoistic malice, was embraced and retold for a US audience, yet it echoes the genre’s uneasy sense of ebbing power, of imminent decline.

The 1940 interview was made during the realisation of those fears. And listening to it now, during similar troubled times, it’s hard not to note the remarkable surge of invasion narratives bursting out of today’s weakened giant, the United States.

Hollywood has never been so busy imagining attacks on the homeland, either from Earthly powers (White House Down, Olympus Has Fallen, Red Dawn), or from aliens (Battle of LA, Skyline, Cloverfield, Battleship, Pacific Rim).

Perhaps we should expect this new burst of invasion tales to presage a crisis of American power in 30 or 40 years time? More importantly, are any of these films any good?

The Writing of the Wars

It’s interesting to ask if any of today’s invasion tales hold a candle to Wells’ immense storytelling skill. Having dug out my old copy of the novel and reading again I would say the answer is no, they don’t.

The book is so accomplished it’s easy for a modern reader to see Wells as a kind of Nostradamus figure. There’s the spooky similarity of his Martians to the German invaders who would threaten British shores forty years later, their hearts hardened by the “pressure of necessity”, their dreadful technology reminiscent of perverted Nazi science.

Then there’s the novel’s environmental awareness, which also seems well ahead of its time. Wells’ Martians come to Earth because their planet is dying, made cruel conquerors by force of their hostile environment. Yet Wells is at pains to point out that humanity are hardly “apostles of mercy”, having justified the extinction of entire species by invoking divine or genetic destiny.

But I believe it is the sheer quality of the story that truly sets the book apart from our modern alien invasions.

The pace of the Wells work is masterful. It is not until days after their arrival that the Martians leave their pit and begin spreading chaos and destruction. For a time there is some question as to their intentions.

There is something primal in the simple effectiveness of this pause, as boys, maids and Woking locals linger by the capsule, half curious, half distracted by daily concerns. Obviously it is a time before radio, cars, and aviation, and the speed of reaction is necessarily slower - but it is still an effective means of building tension, something Hollywood productions rarely accomplish.

The aliens of Cloverfield, Battle of LA and Skyline are clearly aggressive from the moment they arrive. Only Independence Day emulates Wells’ calm before the storm, the vast alien vessels hanging over the landmarks of the world, their intentions only guessed at - and it was one of the best sections of the film.

That’s not to say the novel is a slow affair. When the Martians do finally let rip, the story accelerates magnificently, the action refreshingly exciting. In Steven Speilberg’s adaptation of the book (which is only very loosely faithful) the tripods have a shield that renders all human weapons ineffective. In Wells’ battles the 19th century armies actually manage to damage a couple of tripods - at Shepperton Lock with artillery pieces, and in the Channel with the heroic action of the Thunderchild. Again, this is considerably more effective at creating suspense and excitement, the reader allowed to cling to the possibility of a turn in human fortunes, no matter how slim.

The novel also has an emotional complexity that is entirely absent from Hollywood invasions. Wells’ narrator is a man of “exceptional moods”, who finds himself at turns unaccountably angry with the wife he presumes dead, captivated by the artilleryman’s Facist fantasies, and homicidal in the company of a weak-minded curate. This makes him all the more believable, and a very far cry from the hollow heroes of Hollywood invasions. These are rarely more than simple cut-outs, whether flag-kissing soldiers, protective fathers, devoted scientists or speechifying leaders (“today we cancel the apocalypse” booms the Pacific Rim trailer - surely one of the weakest lines yet conceived in film history).

Above all, it is the conclusion to Wells’ invasion tale that has yet to be matched. One of the things I have found most frustrating about the recent alien movies is their complete failure to create interesting solutions to the implied technical supremacy of alien invaders.

Each of the recent movies has either lazily chosen to have sheer brute force triumph (Battle of LA) or doesn’t bother to explain how the invasion ends at all (Cloverfield). Independence Day at least makes an attempt to do something more interesting, with the infamous computer virus solution, but as well as being crippled by sheer preposterousness it cannot hope to match the elegance of Wells’ solution - where instead of humanity saving the planet, the planet saves humanity.

This is not to say that Wells is perfect, or above the flaws of Hollywood productions. The novel has an amusingly isolationist viewpoint, with the rest of the world barely mentioned. It is simply taken as read that the Martians would open their invasion in Britain, (which is the best country after all), and go from there. Even if Wells had written the entire globe to be under simultaneous attack, you can imagine him referring to other nations with an Independence Day style: “Paris has been destroyed”, and move on without shedding a tear.

But that doesn’t excuse Hollywood from attempting more thoughtful and inventive storytelling. The Wells novel illustrates that it’s possible to write an alien invasion narrative which sees contemplative scenes complement and even enhance spectacular action sequences.

Now obviously the screenplay is a different kind of writing to the novel, and obviously Hollywood is something of a soft target here. Wells wrote at a different time, when as he slyly notes, “even philosophical writers had many little luxuries”. There also may well be a number of interesting US novels out there which have conjured some ingenious salvation in the face of an alien attack.

The fact remains that Hollywood has yet to conjure a solution to alien invaders as magnificent as Wells' microbial infection. It seems more and more reliant on a rather facist notion of triumphant will for humanity to survive.

That begs a question:

Was Wells blessed to live during a period of scientific wonder, a unique time when man discovered “the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims”, yet was unencumbered by the lifeless reality of Mars? Has our imagination become as stagnant as manned spaceflight, turned in on ourselves by genetics and online connectivity?

Or, even worse, are we simply running out of stories to tell?

Your thoughts welcome below.

Holy Drokk on Toast! Dredd is good!

When I was around 14, I drew my own 2000AD comic. It was called Falk Point, and it was about a group of rebellious British Judges based on the Falkland Islands. In my story the lead character did a “Long Walk’, just like in the comics. Only whereas in 2000AD Judges walk across an entire continent, my judge walked across... a small island. With some argentinian death robots thrown in. It was ludicrous of course, but at the time I thought it was ace.

Still, I think it shows how much 2000AD meant to me. When people at school teased me for reading scifi comics, I was quite content to dismiss them as hopeless fools. Nothing would drag me away from entertainment that good. I was an addict. I lost myself in the boundless worlds and future histories the comics created. They meant infinitely more to me than any of the Marvel or DC titles. They were more believable, more brutal and more fun. 2000AD characters weren’t heroes, they were killers and mutants. They didn’t moan about relationships or morality, they lived and breathed the worlds of their stories. I had my favourites: Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors and Maniac 5 spring to mind - but I also loved the more outlandish stuff.

Harke & Burr by Dean Ormston

Harke and Burr was a brilliantly drawn curiosity by Dean Ormston, my favourite comic artist alongside Carlos Ezquerra. Calhab Justice was a gothic, creepy tale of judges in Scotland. Devlin Waugh “Swimming in Blood” was a stand alone comic that was quite, quite brilliant. And at the centre of it all, of course, was Judge Dredd. There seemed no limit to the inventive fun the writers and artists had.

I was always bewildered that nobody was making movies based on these extraordinary stories. When Stallone’s abysmal Judge Dredd movie came along in 1995, I was certain that its hideous failure would simply mean that a good Director would take over, dump Stallone and create an amazing second film. If they didn’t, I would do it for them. (My brother thought when I did I should cast Dolph Lundgren, as he was the only one out there with the requisite chin). Then, over time, it became clear no movie was coming. Furthermore, I wasn’t a famous director. I put my comics to one side and forgot about it.

Then, last year, came the new movie. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t go and see it. Perhaps I was worried about it stamping on my childhood the way its predeccesor had. Or maybe I was just too lazy. Whatever the case, I think my 15 year old self would have been quite disgusted if he found out I hadn’t gone to see it several times in the cinema. It was, after all, up to fanatics like me to ensure it got the audience it deserved. Now I learn that while it topped the UK Box Office, it tanked in the States.

And I feel terrible. I should have been there for the film. I have friends in the States and I should have hassled them all to go, and take five friends too. Because from what I read online, the outlook for a second installment doesn’t look good.

That’s a shame. It stands up really well. Penned by Alex Garland and directed by Pete Travis, it does just about everything right that the Stallone abomination did wrong, and proves that actually, it ain’t that hard to make a decent 2000AD movie.

Devlin Waugh, swimming in blood

First off, it doesn’t try to do too much - it puts Dredd in a kind of day-in-the-life-of-a-judge situation, introducing the character, without trying to cram in ten different stories at the same time. It has a good strong support cast as well. Olivia Thirlby is great as the psychic Judge Anderson, which is quite an achievement. Psychics are not easy to play - witness Diana Troy, by far the most irritating character in Star Trek TNG. Lena Hedley, of whom I am not normally a fan, also turns in a good performance as the crime boss, Mama. It even has The Wire’s Wood Harris in a major role.

Secondly it evidently has too small a budget to splash CGI all over the shop. When I saw the way the film presented Mega City One I could have kissed the screen. Instead of drowning everything in a mess of swirling CGI noise, Travis adds a dash of effects to augment very recognisable urban settings. He takes great pleasure in panning over an East Coast city, before revealing a huge Mega Block looming massively over everything around it. Dredd’s opening line has the feel the film is going for: “800 million people living in the ruin of the old world, and the mega structures of the new one”. Even when the perps are driving knackered VW vans it helps to ground the story, and give you the sense, just like 2000AD did, that this kind of lawless dystopia might not be too far away.

Thirdly, it takes itself seriously. It’s not garish or cartoonish, recognising that any Dredd film shouldn’t try to replicate the comic look but interpret it. Stallone’s Dredd wore an outfit so shiny he might have been a circus act. This Dredd wears body armour, with the eagle realistically moulded onto a shoulder pad.

Dredd also went to the States with an R rating, being true to the brutality of the comic books. That’s not just brutality in terms of bodycount, but of society in general. Judges order the mangled bodies of the just murdered to be recycled. A homeless man sits outside a mega block with a sign on his lap reading: “Will debase self for credits”. Mega City One is a terrible, frightening place. As one character says: “this city is a meat grinder. All we do is turn the handle.” Unfortunately the commitment to making an R Rated movie evidently helped to sink Dredd’s opening weekend in the US.

Finally, and most importantly, Karl Urban does a great job as Dredd. He has a few killer lines (“It’s all a deep end”) moulds his chin into a suitably preposterous appendage, wields the famous Lawgiver pistol expertly, and plays it with a certain ruthless cool that genuinely surprised me.

I could watch twenty more of these films, just like I read the comics. There is simply a limitless seam of stories waiting to be mined. Yes it’s not groundbreaking, yes it’s a bit like “the Raid”, but it tells an exciting story well, and lays the groundwork brilliantly for what could be an extended franchise. But after doing some reading, I’m afraid it seems that might well be it for Dredd.

And that’s a shame. Because the greatest accolade I can give it is that it made me remember my long lost love for 2000AD, that old friend that I somehow forgot.

If you haven’t seen it, buy the DVD or Blu-Ray and maybe it will help push through a second movie. Garland apparently started with a storyline about Judge Death, one of the spookiest and far-out ideas there ever was. Lets help him make that happen.

Now where have I put those comics?

2012 showed that while history is written by the winners, in Britain it’s barely written at all. We can't understand our past or plan for our future until we acknowledge the full story of World War Two.

The British Surrender in Singapore, February 1942

In Britain we do like our World War Two anniversaries. We enjoy revisiting and celebrating our role in that conflict more than any other. It helps us to define our place in history as a plucky island race, a nation that fought alone when it saw freedom threatened. But this is a fraction of the story.

The British are still encouraged to view the six year conflict through a prism of triumph, fed a diet of notable victories: Battle of Britain, El Alamein, Dambusters, D-Day, VE Day, interspersed with ‘noble failures’ like Dunkirk and Operation Market Garden (plus the occasional exciting, Boys Own Commando raid or spy story). The rest of the war fades for most to a grey unknown, a background noise.

This means that British people, even those who express a real interest in history, often grow up with no understanding of the vast, destructive war their country fought on the other side of the world in defence of an Empire. Most importantly it is all too easy to forget that this was a war that Britain lost.

To be clear: there’s no debate that there is a lot to be proud of in Britain’s role in World War Two. Simply by surviving the perilous summer of 1940, when the threat of invasion was very real, Britain helped ensure the eventual destruction of Nazi power, condemning Germany to fight on two fronts. The Battle really was, as Churchill said, our “finest hour” - an example to generations that endures today.

But the full extract from Churchill’s speech is rarely printed. It reads: “Even if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: this was their finest hour.”

Make no mistake, Churchill believed that Britain was fighting to defend its Empire, a vast hegemony that extended British privilege over almost a third of the world’s land mass. Yet the war that was fought to preserve that Empire plays little or no part in the narrative we have assembled around the World War. We quite naturally prefer to re-experience the conflict as a European one, fought by Britain in the face of rampant Nazi evil.

So it is that in 2012 we celebrated the 70th anniversary of Battle of El Alamein - the sole land victory won by a western power against the German army before the entry of the United States. Everything about the Battle actually should remind us of Empire: troops from India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa made up a great proportion of the force that won the victory.

The Battle was undoubtedly an achievement - but what of the other anniversaries we might have marked last year? 1942 was, more than any other year of World War Two, the one that guaranteed the end of the Empire.

The greatest military disaster in the history of the British Army took place at Singapore on February 15th, when around 100,000 men (of whom only around 33,000 were British) surrendered to the Japanese Army. Defeat followed in Burma, as Empire forces withdrew from Rangoon in March. In April Britain lost control of the Indian Ocean, the myth of the all powerful Royal Navy being swept away by a determined Japanese raid led by Admiral Nagumo. India teetered on the brink of outright rebellion against the exploitative British Raj. In May Ghandi said: “The presence of the British in India is an invitation to the Japanese to invade India. Their withdrawal would remove the bait.”

The only real victory in the first half of that miserable year was the successful invasion of Madagascar. Madagascar! a French Imperial possession that Britain needed to preserve a foothold in the Indian Ocean.

How incredible it seems now that a small country like Britain should presume to fight one war against Nazi Germany, and another on the other side of the world. How brazen for one Island race to presume superiority over an entire subcontinent, and expect its people to fight in the name of their own subjugation. How inevitable that Britain swiftly lost its Empire, with India achieving independence in 1947, Burma in 1948, and Singapore in 1963.

It can’t be argued that Britain should simply not have fought to defend its Eastern possessions - this would have surrendered vast areas to Japan, with huge implications for Australia and the United States. But the true motives behind the fight - of which the wish to preserve imperial dominance over almost a third of the world’s population was key - can be easily understood, and should be plainly spoken.

Thousands of British troops were lost in these death throws of Empire. Their sacrifice should be remembered as much as any Battle of Britain pilot. Without reminding themselves of their lost war the British will never understand their changed position in the world, or live in it in peace.

Moon Drome in Interzone 243

Really pleased to say that "Moon Drome", a story set in my Fear universe, has been published in Interzone 243 as a novelette. It's the second story published in this series, the first being "The Triangular Trade", which appeared in Jupiter Science Fiction.  I have lots more to come from this part of my mind, as I do like a bit of space. Oh yes. Might even publish one of the stories as an exclusive here soon enough.

This also features some more amazing artwork by Richard Wagner. It's an honour to be published in a cracking publication like Interzone - especially when they print an image of an exploding moon to go with my story.

A couple of nice reviews have been posted and can be found here and here. You can buy a copy of the magazine here.

Gone Antiquing published in Jupiter Science Fiction

Very pleased to say that my story "Gone Antiquing" is in this month's Jupiter Science Fiction, the Pasithee edition (Pasithee is a retrograde satellite of Jupiter, named after one of the goddesses of human creativity and beauty - which is nice).

I am really fond of the characters and set up in this story - Achille the Rat is one of my best ever, I think. You can buy the mag for Kindle and find out about this cracking magazine by going here

Force Fed: George Lucas’ Halloween Trick

George Lucas has announced the sale of the Star Wars franchise to Disney – on Halloween no less. New movies are promised, and lots of them.

The timing suggests something of a self-satisfied wink from those involved in the deal. Was this was mocking recognition that for many eye-twitching, obsessive Star Wars fans Lucas has become more a master of horror than of fantasy, a Dr. Frankenstein bent on debasing the power of creation? Disney coupled to Lucasfilm is certainly one hell of a monster.

Many fans are surprised by the deal - when Yoda began flogging Vodaphones (“how strong with them the force must be”) most naturally assumed that the franchise had become an un-dead beast, only to be resurrected as and when Lucas’ voodoo finances demanded it.

Yet here are Disney committing to a new trilogy (7,8 and 9) and then after that, a new movie every few years. According to their press release, Star Wars “…offers a virtually limitless universe of characters and stories” creating “the opportunity to blaze new trails in film, television, interactive media, theme parks, live entertainment, and consumer products.” A dispassionate observer has to ask: is there really an appetite out there for all this stuff? Doesn’t such excess run the risk of bloating fans, like the “greed” victim in David Fincher’s 7even, force fed until he bursts?

Well, reading the press release is instructive: Lucas frames the transaction as handing over the franchise for a new generation, but there is a strong hint that he is simply disgusted by what it has become – witness the image at the top of the release: those eyes speak of a man asking: “what have I created?”

Disney, on the other hand, can barely contain their bloodthirsty glee in acquiring Lucas’ much-deformed child. The release doesn’t say much about the artistic merit of the films, but does openly drool over Star Wars’ $4.4 billion in box office. It also can’t stop saying the word ‘global’: global leader, global growth, global portfolio, global business, global box office, global franchise, global demand, global appeal. Evidently Disney feel the franchise will be a great way of reaching audiences in other countries – like oh, say China – with the vampiric intent it does those in the USA.

The language really is creepy as hell. Listen to them, the children of the night:

“In addition to returning capital to shareholders, we have invested, both organically and through acquisitions, in high quality, branded content that can be seamlessly leveraged across our businesses. Our acquisition of Lucasfilm is entirely consistent with this strategy, and we're incredibly excited by the prospect of building on Lucasfilm's successful legacy to create significant value for our shareholders.”

It’s no real revelation that Disney enjoy making money. In the end, fans old and new will not mind who finances the films as long as they are entertaining. Perhaps some true creatives with a real affection for the characters will get hold of it and take it somewhere we can all enjoy.

George should be wary though. Selling Star Wars doesn’t absolve him of blame if things go wrong. He’s still ‘creative consultant’, still eminently blameable for any prequel-style disasters. Hurt those old fans again and it won’t take Halloween for a fan in a Hockey mask to turn up at his door seeking revenge - “with nothing left, no reason, no conscience, no understanding of good or evil, just a pale, blank face.”

Happy Halloween, George. Here’s hoping this is a treat, not a trick.