The End is Here: The Dexter Finale

After 8 years, Dexter's finally been wrapped up for better or worse. 

So, now that the storm has finally passed and I've had some time to process what happened, it's time to talk about the insane series finale of Dexter.  After 8 years of serial killer killing, Dexter finished for good with a finale full of surprises and not particularly good ones.  I might be one of the few people who not only continued to follow the show after Rita was killed off in what is undoubtedly the best season, season 4, but also enjoyed most of the later seasons.  It seems a lot of people felt the writing got really sloppy and repetitive after 4, but for the most part I felt the writers got more daring in the later seasons and I liked to see Dexter's issues become more complex and personal.  Sure, following up a mind blower like season 4 was close to impossible and that's probably why a lot of people didn't like season 5.  I enjoyed it even though it's not my favorite.  What most might've seen as missteps in the later seasons, I looked at as compellingly ambiguous material.  Even subject matter that might've made some uncomfortable, I felt was explored honestly.   In later seasons, as Dexter raised his son Harrison without Rita and tried to balance his killer needs with his cover life, which became all the more real for him, it was great to see him grapple with deeper issues than just his urge to kill.  In just a few seasons, he came a long way from his season 1 self, where his total focus was only satisfying his dark passenger and maintaining his cover in order to blend in.  Once he married Rita and had Harrison, the cover life became real for him and real emotion began to  creep in slowly.  His relationship to his foster sister Deb also deepened as they experienced personal pain and trauma together, which strengthened their bond.   
In season 7, Deb stumbled upon Dexter killing fellow serial killer Travis Marshall and despite Dexter's attempts to throw her off the trail, she ultimately got him to confess his own killer tendencies.  I thought season 7 was one of the best because the writers had the balls to irrevocably shatter what had previously been the most enjoyable relationship of the show, that between Dex and Deb.  Letting her in on the secret threw their relationship into completely unknown territory as Deb (who was Dexter's Lieutenant at the time) grappled with what to do in an impossible situation.  Deb's deep love for her brother not only kept her from arresting Dex but also led her to reluctantly lie for him as she desperately tried to rid him of his urges, convinced that he was essentially a good person.  Deb's belief in Dexter's essential goodness helped Dexter begin to see himself as more than just a monster, as he'd always referred to himself in early seasons.  The writers did a good job preserving Deb's essential goodness even as she compromised many of her values for Dexter.  Deb's love for her brother ultimately leads her to kill her boss, Capt. Laguerta when she discovers that Dexter is the real Bay Harbor Butcher.  At the start of season 8, Deb's guilt over killing Laguerta forces her to leave Miami Metro and fall into an emotional tailspin.  Dexter too is emotionally frazzled after Deb refuses to speak to him and states that she shot the wrong person.  More than any other, season 8 showed the depth of love they share for each other and how even someone like Dexter, who claims to be devoid of emotion, is deeply affected by the situation.  Season 8 may not have had the same intense buildup that some of the early seasons had, but I was captivated just about all the way through.
One of the big subplots that seemed to anger a lot of fans was the decision to bring back Hannah Mckay, Dexter's scorned girlfriend from season 7 who's racked up a decent sized body count of her own.  After Hannah tried to kill Deb, forcing Dex to reluctantly turn her in to protect his sister, Hannah managed to escape prison and inevitably returned in season 8.  Although initially uncertain of her motives, Dexter couldn't help being drawn to her again and soon the two renewed their relationship.  Call me a hopeless romantic, but once it became clear that Hannah was no longer a threat to Deb, I for one hoped that Dexter could truly find love and happiness and put the dark passenger behind him.  Given the nature of the show however, I seriously doubted that he'd get a happy ending like that.  Even so, I really didn't expect the show to end the way it did.  In the final episodes, Dexter and Hannah decide to move to Argentina with Harrison because Hannah's being hunted by a Federal Marshall.  Deb, who's been hiding Hannah in her house until they can leave, tries to help Dexter hunt down a killer named Oliver Saxon, who threatened to kill Dexter's loved ones.  With Deb's help, Dexter subdues Saxon but rather than kill him, he decides to let Deb bring him in and return to Miami Metro a hero while Dexter leaves with Hannah and Harrison.  Dexter's decision to let Saxon lives signified that he let go of the Dark Passenger and no longer felt the need to kill.  I liked how he tried to do what he felt was right by walking away from a kill and letting Deb be the hero.  What neither Dex or Deb could've counted on was that the Marshall hunting Hannah would follow Deb to where Dexter was holding Saxon and while Dex and Deb talked outside, slipped in and released Saxon thinking he was an innocent victim.  Saxon repaid the Marshall by stabbing him, grabbing his gun and shooting Deb as she burst back in.  Deb survived the gunshot but in the final episode, a blood-clot to her brain leaves her in a vegetative state, much to Dex's dismay.  Loving Deb as much as I do, it was awful to see her like that and it felt even worse that it was a random blood-clot that left her in that state.  Still, much as I dreaded it happening, I can't say I was totally surprised that she would die.  I sensed that these characters wouldn't come out of the shit storm unscathed and given the nature of events, I feared it might be Deb. 
What really shocked and disappointed me was what Dexter did after finding out that Deb was vegetative.  Saxon was arrested at the hospital trying to finish off Deb for good and Dexter finds a way to kill him and make it look enough like self-defense.  Dexter then drives his boat to the hospital and, dressed in his kill clothes, tearfully pulls the plug on Deb and wheels her out to his boat as the hospital is being evacuated for the coming hurricane.  He drives his boat to the spot where he dumps his victims and with the storm brewing around him, drops Deb's body in the choppy water and watches her sink to the bottom.  It was almost traumatizing to watch such a beloved character like Deb being thrown in the ocean, even though Dexter did it to honor his sister in his own way. 
After this we hear Dexter's voice over saying that Deb was wrong about him being good.  Despite Deb's final words telling him that it wasn't his fault, Dex blames himself for what happened to her and says that he's poison to everyone he cares about.  With that he decides that he has to protect Hannah and Harrison from himself and drives his boat straight into the storm and disappears.  This I never saw coming.  Even more unexpected were the finals scenes after the storm where they find the wreckage of Dexter's boat but no Dexter and we see Hannah get the news with Harrison at her side somewhere in South America.  Lastly we cut to a lumberyard in what seems like Canada or someplace and see a bearded lumberjack returning to his cabin.  Surprise, Surprise, it's Dexter who somehow survived his suicide attempt and is living in total anonymity.  The episode ends with him sitting down at a table and looking straight at the camera, with a strange look on his face.  Has the dark passenger returned leaving him free to kill again?  Has he resigned himself to the fact that he can never change his nature?  This ending reminded me immediately of The Dark Knight Rises ending, but in that I felt glad that Bruce had finally gotten past the issues that made him need Batman.  Dexter's end didn't give me a sense of resolution or happiness.  Like Bruce, I wanted Dexter to be able to overcome his urge to kill and have a "normalish" life for the sake of his son.  The ending is purposefully vague and interpretive, but I just felt really bad that he simply surrendered to the belief that he's a monster who destroys everyone he loves.  His decision to abandon Hannah and Harrison made me feel that Deb died in vain.  She kept saying near the end that he deserved happiness with Hannah and Harrison and that she didn't want him to feel guilty for everything that happened to her.  I understood why he feels guilty, but feel that he should've honored Deb's wish for him to leave and be with the people who love and need him. 
After making so much progress, it was heartbreaking to see him fall back into believing he's just a monster.  Deb showed him that no matter what, he was always there to make her feel safe and protected, even back when they were kids.  Dexter proved that he had overcome his darkness when he let Saxon live but since he killed him to avenge Deb, he has no other living enemies who could threaten Hannah or Harrison.  Assuming he's able to leave the Dark Passenger behind for good, there's no reason to believe trouble would follow him down to South America.  Rather than protecting them, his abandonment deprives Harrison of his father as well as his mother and leaves everyone left behind, including Hannah, with an unresolved feeling.  I guess Dexter's suicide attempt was a way to show that Dexter can't live without Deb, but I feel the best way to honor Deb was to do as she wished.  Ultimately, this disappointed me most about the finale.  Deb's death was wrenching enough, so I hoped for Dexter to be able to find some kind of contentment at the end.  Despite what he came to believe about himself, Deb was right when she reminisced about Dexter protecting her from imaginary monsters as a child.  In the end, Dexter was never a real monster; he kept the real monsters at bay.                               

The Dark Knight: Darkest Before The Dawn

In The Dark Knight, we enter a world without rules courtesy of The Joker. 

We all know that Batman Begins single-handedly brought the Caped Crusader back from the land of dead film franchises, but it was the The Dark Knight which irrevocably changed the way we view "comic book" films, dragging a genre largely considered to be kid's stuff through the gutters of Gotham to a new level of gritty maturity.  After re-envisioning Batman as a serious and believable creature of the night, Chris Nolan set out to push his Dark Knight and the audience into darker and grittier territory where the line between right and wrong is incredibly hazy.  Nolan's mission was to base these iconic characters in a real world that would feel familiar and relevant.  If Begins didn't achieve this, then Dark Knight obliterated every last shred of doubt that a comic book inspired story could feel like it was actually happening.  Never before had the threat felt so real and visceral, never had the stakes seemed so high or the outcome so dire and all this was due to one unstoppable tornado of chaos who, out of nowhere and without any powers or master plan, plunged Gotham into a dark night of anarchy and terror that pushed Batman closer than ever to the razor thin line between hero and vigilante.
Of course I'm talking about Heath Ledger's already legendary take on Batman's (if not comic book's) greatest villain, The Joker.  Nolan cleverly saved The Joker for the second film, unleashing his one man reign of terror on the city just as it's starting to get its act together thanks to The Batman.  At the film's start, Batman with help from his ally Lt. Gordon, have severely crippled organized crime in the city, striking terror in the heart's of Gotham's criminals.  Much of the film's inspiration comes from Jeph Loeb's epic masterpiece The Long Halloween, in which Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent form an uneasy alliance to take down the mob.  Batman's war on crime has left a sudden void in Gotham's underworld.  Exploding out of this chasm like a rogue comet comes the Joker.  More than any other portrayal, Ledger captured the true essence of this most notorious of Batman rogues: utter chaos and destruction for the sheer thrill of it.  Inspired by the challenge presented by Batman, the Joker steps in to prove that order, fairness and justice are merely illusions to which people desperately cling and that all it takes is one bad day to make anyone as crazy as he (or Batman) is.  In their desperation, the mob turns to the Joker hoping that he can kill Batman, but they soon learn, as does Bats, that this is a man who can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with; he simply wants to watch the world burn and once he's let off the leash, he begins a campaign of urban terror that pushes Batman to his breaking point.  Joining Bats and Gordon in their fight is newly elected D.A. Harvey Dent, who becomes the face of Gotham's resilience in the midst of the mayhem wrought by the Joker.  Soon public officials are dropping left and right and people like Dent are being targeted by the Joker.  But that's just the start of his fun.  If he has any plan, it's to push the Batman to his limits to see if he will break his golden rule not to ever take a life.  As Joker's campaign of chaos grows like wildfire, Batman must step up his game and risk crossing moral lines to stop the mad dog.
Unlike Nicholson's Joker, Ledger's version didn't take a plunge into a vat of chemicals, which not only bleached his skin but drove him mad. This Joker simply chooses to paint his face white, smear red lipstick on the creepy scars that curl his mouth into a permanent grin and tint his long greasy hair green.  There's no specific incident that sent him off the deep end; instead it's as if he simply chose to be this crazy, which is even more frightening.  Adding to his scariness is the fact that his origin is never truly explained; he constantly changes the story of how he got those scars, proving that it's all bullshit.  The fact that you can't sympathize with a tragic origin story makes him all the more terrifying.  Like the shark in Jaws, he comes out of nowhere and is nothing but a force of unrelenting destruction.  Where Nicholson's Joker considered himself a homicidal artist, employing classic Joker pranks like acid squirting flowers and electric hand buzzers, Ledger's Clown Prince of Crime is an urban terrorist who uses knives, guns and the occasional bazooka to hold the city in the grip of fear.  Nicholson's Joker was creepy; Ledger's is down right terrifying.  He's what the Joker would be like if he existed in our modern world.  The key to the Joker's effectiveness is that he simply has no fear.  There's nothing anyone, including Batman, can do to frighten him; he's a man who sees death as the greatest joke.  Therefore he can't be threatened because he has nothing to lose; he can't be predicted because he's totally unpredictable; he has no end game and no set goal.  He's also got a Zen-like ability to adapt to any situation that arises because he lives wholly in the moment.  Ledger conveyed this with frightening efficiency, comparing himself to a dog chasing cars who wouldn't know what to do if he caught one.



The legendary foes not quite facing off.

The Dark Knight conveys what makes Batman and Joker perhaps the greatest of hero/villain duos.  As Joker continually points out, he and Batman are insane men who've made insane choices, but they're on opposite sides of the same coin.  Both can not be bought, bullied or negotiated with and both are fiercely (or insanely) dedicated to their principles or lack thereof in the Joker's case.  Joker sees a worthy opponent in Batman, one he continually tries to coerce into breaking his rule, most notably by daring Batman to run him down with his Bat-pod.  That epic scene in which Ledger doesn't even flinch as Batman speeds towards him only to swerve at the last second, defines their legendary relationship.  Neither can bring himself to kill the other, but for different reasons.  It's as if they're dependent on each other for a worthy challenge to give them purpose.  As the chaos escalates, it becomes a game of one-upmanship with each guy trying to outdo the other.  When Joker hijacks an eighteen wheeler and wrecks highway havoc, Batman flips the truck completely over in what is one of the coolest, live action shots in any film.  Although he can't corrupt Batman, the Joker's toxic influence manages to corrupt Gotham's white knight, Harvey Dent.  It might've been the mob's plan to kidnap Dent and his girlfriend Rachael, but it was the Joker who knew their locations and knowing Batman would go for Rachael, switched the addresses so he'd inadvertently save Dent.  Batman saves Dent from the explosion, but can't save half of Dent's face from being burned.  That coupled with news that his beloved Rachael is dead pushes Dent over the edge and he becomes Two-Face, vowing revenge on the mobsters and cops who set him up.  In The Long Halloween, it's acid to the face that transforms Dent into Two Face, but the result's ultimately the same.  Dent's descent in madness mirrors the tragic nature of the character in the comics.  Rather than being a one-dimensional crazy killer, it easy to understand what led Harvey down his dark path.  Joker used Dent to prove to Batman that even good, infallible people can be corrupted.  Although "Two-Face" only appears towards the film's end, his tragic downfall proves to Batman how easy it is to become the very "evil" you swear to combat. 
Though devastated by Rachael's death, Batman musters every last ounce of strength, both physical and mental to confront the Joker one last time as he continues trying to prove that deep down all people are capable of terrible things if their lives are in danger.  For a mass murdering psychopath, you gotta admit that the Joker makes some good points about our capacity for evil.  Even so, Batman continues to believe that people are also capable of tremendous good.  After leaving the Joker hanging upside down from a building, Bats goes to confront Harvey who's taken Gordon's family hostage out of a desire for revenge.  Dent admits that The Joker was right, that the only true fairness is random chance, represented by his famous scarred coin.  He uses the coin to determine if he should kill Gordon's family.  Luckily, before he can carry out these verdicts, Batman knocks him off the building and saves Gordon's young son.  Ironically, the fall or the landing rather, broke Dent's neck, meaning that Batman killed him.  The Joker did far worse stuff, but Batman let him live to prove he wouldn't cross that line.  In this case, Batman did what he had to do to save Gordon's son but it just goes to show that right and wrong are not black and white concepts.  More than any other comic book movie, The Dark Knight explores complex moral issues without giving clear cut answers.  The world of the film feels eerily familiar to our own, one in which we have our own share of Jokers who simply want to watch the world burn. 
                   

Learning to Fly: Superman's Wonder Years in Smallville

Clark Kent on the precipice of becoming Superman in Smallville.

It may have taken 12 years, but I finally finished all ten seasons of Smallville, the show about Superman's wonder years in that tiny Kansas town.  You might be asking why it took a Superman fanatic like myself so long to watch the whole series.  It's a question I often asked myself, especially considering that I watched it religiously in the beginning.  The night it aired is still crystal clear in my mind all these years later.  It couldn't have been more than a month after 9/11 and there was a palpable feeling that we needed heroes like Superman more than ever to inspire hope in those dark, uncertain days.  Right from the start I loved the feel of the show, which although inspired by the Chris Reeve films, managed to put it's own spin on many elements of the Superman story.  The first major spin answered the question of how all that damn kryptonite got here by showing a cluster of meteors loaded with the stuff hurtling towards earth along with Kal-El's ship and raining down like hellfire on the unsuspecting town.   In addition to bringing Clark to his knees, all that glowing green stuff helped spawn a slew of often psychotic, super-powered meteor freaks for Clark to battle in the early seasons.   The decision to not only have Lex Luthor in the show but have him be Clark's friend after he accidently hits him with his car and drives off a bridge, only to be rescued by Clark, was another surprising spin.  Lex is grateful to his savior, but can't shake the feeling that there's more to his new friend than meets the eye.  What's cool about this younger Lex, played to perfection by Michael Rosenbaum, is that he begins as a sympathetic character genuinely trying to do the right thing despite being slowly corrupted by his cold father Lionel, a cutthroat businessman who's only a shadow of what Lex will become.  The fact that Clark and Lex are destined to be enemies makes their initial friendship all the more fascinating to watch.  Although young, Rosenbaum's Lex showed hints of the underlying darkness characterizing the power hungry Lex who'll go on to run Lexcorp and most of Metropolis and his transformation from Clark's friend to his enemy is thrilling to watch.        

The first seasons were great because there's so much about Clark's early days that hadn't been seen in great detail.  The writers cleverly introduce Clark's burgeoning powers as if they're results of puberty.  When his heat vision first manifests, it's because he gets turned on and the spot he's looking at suddenly bursts into flames.  It doesn't help that Smallville's full of gorgeous gals, such as Clark's first love, Lana Lang and his girl Friday Chloe Sullivan and it becomes imperative that he learn to control these abilities before he starts lighting loved ones on fire.  With the help of his parents, who have a big role in the early seasons, Clark learns to master each new power.  Clark also struggles to lead a normal life after learning about his alien origins.  The show did a great job conveying Clark's sense of isolation and his strong desire to be normal.  In earlier incarnations, his abilities are seen as a gift, but in Smallville his powers begin as more of a curse making him feel all the more alien among his peers.   Those abilities come in handy when dealing with the crazy meteor freaks always targeting Clark's friends.  The early seasons are loaded with so many of these one-shot villains (dubbed freaks of the week) and after a while it got a little old.  Clark's pinning for Lana and their back and forth got tiring around season 3, crossing into teen romance bullshit because of Clark's inability to tell Lana his secret.  He always claims it's to protect her but since she and all his other friends are always in danger anyway, telling them wouldn't make a huge difference.  With beautiful girls like that around, I'd be able to keep my secret for about 15 seconds, but that's why I'm not Superman.
In season 4, the adorable Chloe Sullivan discovers Clark's secret and becomes one of his closest allies.  Season 4 also introduced Chloe's cousin to the show, a girl named Lois Lane played by the lovely Erica Durance who I had the pleasure of meeting.  Just as with Lex, I wondered how Lois wouldn't instantly recognize Clark as Superman years later if she meets him sans glasses and goofy mannerisms.  I initially expected Clark and Lois to follow the traditional dynamic, but after a while it became clear that wouldn't be the case.  Although Lois is initially dismissive of Clark as he pines for Lana, eventually the two develop deep feelings for each other.  What I came to love about Smallville is that it's a bridge between traditional Superman mythos and current, updated versions such as Man of Steel.  The show honors the past by using familiar elements such as the crystal fortress, a Jor-El based on Brando's and Jonathan Kent's death by heart attack while also introducing updated elements.  Lois and Clark's relationship for example, ultimately becomes like their relationship in Man of Steel, where Lois knows Clark's secret before he's even Superman and that makes for a deeper relationship that's refreshing.  Aside from the ongoing Lana-Clark drama, I began to lose interest when they brought in too many DC characters far too early.  Looking back now, I understand how hard it must've been writing ten seasons worth of compelling stories without falling back into old territory or delving to deeply into Superman's later adventures.  This started to fall apart after season 7, when Lex left the show and they introduced Doomsday, altering his origin to allow him to appear human and blend in only to hulk out and go on rampages.  At the time I thought it was crazy to bring in characters like Doomsday before Clark's Superman and I started to tune out.  Still, when the buzz around Man of Steel started growing, I wanted the pay off of seeing Tom Welling's Clark become Superman as well as finally tell Lois his secret.  The show had initially promised no tights, no flights but I figured after 10 years, they might've lightened up on that front.  So I picked up at season 8 with the mission to see it through to the end.  The thing about Smallville is that, especially in later seasons, it's very hit and miss.  Some episodes are downright ridiculous even for comic book lore while others are spot on and reaffirm all that's great about Superman.  Some episodes are cluttered with too many DC characters and rely too heavily on uninventive quick fixes such as reversals in time and reincarnation.  Clark for instance, dies several times in the show and is usually brought back by Jor-El, who for a dead guy is basically an all powerful god.  I understand that time travel and reincarnation have a place in Sci-Fi/fantasy but they have to be used tastefully, not overused as an easy fix when writers hit a wall.  I was also often frustrated at Clark's inability to take action when the situation called for it.  Often the fights with major villains such as Doomsday and Zod are a bit disappointing considering the buildup to them.  I know that part of what makes him Superman is his diplomacy but there are times in the show when his hesitancy to take action against villains ironically causes more innocent people to die.
I made it through seasons 8 and 9 and watched Clark establish himself in Metropolis as a vigilante dubbed the red-blue blur after appearing in one of Jimmy Olsen's photos while going super-speed.  Yes, Jimmy's in the show for a while and works with Lois and Clark at the planet.  Lois and Clark finally begin dating in season 9 and ultimately she discovers that Clark is the Blur but keeps quiet until Clark, fearing he'll lose her, tells her everything about himself.  This carries their relationship into deeper territory never really explored outside the comics, territory that's more compelling than watching Clark struggle to hide his miraculous saves again and again from those close to him.  I hope to see this deeper relationship explored further in the MOS sequel as well.   Unlike with Lana, Clark is more assertive and expressive with Lois and by season 10, she is his closest confidant and supporter. 
Overall, season 10 is a great wrap up for this early chapter of Clark's life, full of many long awaited milestones as Clark finally lets go of the guilt and darkness of his past and takes his final steps to becoming earth's greatest hero with Lois by his side.  Like Amy Adams, Erica Durance's Lois seems a perfect match for Clark and someone he can truly love.  It's easy to see what she sees in him but hasn't always been easy to understand what he sees in her.  In Smallville, Lois is tough but loving, stubborn yet devoted to protecting Clark's secret and supporting him (not to mention she's believable as a reporter).  Even with occasional blemishes, getting to the finale and watching him finally take to the skies in the iconic red, yellow and blue to confront season 10's villain, Darkseid was a tremendous, bittersweet moment that had me misty eyed.  We see him save Air Force One like he does in Superman: The Movie but this time with Lois on board, beaming as she sees her man flying outside the window.  The moving finale brought back several familiar but long absent faces, most notably Lex, who resurfaces to seize control of his empire and his destiny as Clark's greatest adversary.  After Clark saves earth from Darkseid's wrath, we jump ahead seven years to the Daily Planet where all the legendary characters are in their rightful places and Clark, hearing there's a bomb in an elevator, races up to the roof and with John Williams legendary music swelling triumphantly, rips open his shirt to reveal the S and flies off to save the day.  For Superman fans like myself, this was a beautiful culmination to a legendary hero's journey that began in a little town called Smallville.                                                                                                      

Batman Begins: The Resuscitation of a Franchise



Like those Bats are really going to believe he's one of the gang. 

Since I only began blogging this summer, I haven't gotten a chance to write about the excellent films that make up Chris Nolan's epic Dark Knight Trilogy, which concluded last year with Dark Knight Rises.  Except for Man of Steel, I can't think of another film I looked forward to with as much anticipation as Dark Knight Rises, even more so than Dark Knight because I was dying to see how in the hell they'd be able to follow up that masterpiece.  In the cinema world, lightning rarely strikes three consecutive times and as far as the comic book genre is concerned, sequels are usually never as great the first.  If the second manages to be a worthy follow-up, then the third has historically been the killer of the franchise.  Case in point: Superman III, Batman Forever, Spiderman III, just to name a few.  In the face of this, having three Batman films that maintain the same level of epic quality and internal consistency is an unprecedented feat indeed.  Even so, I'm not going to talk about all three Nolan films in this post.  Instead, I'm going back to the beginning with Batman Begins, the film that resurrected a dead franchise that had sunk to the deepest level of campy hell with the hilariously awful Batman and Robin. 
After that neon paint splattered and bat-nippled holocaust, Batman was in serious need of a complete makeover that would return him to his roots as a dark and determined creature of night.  Chris Nolan and screenwriter David Goyer were just the men needed to reimagine a grounded Batman in a believable world.  As far as Superheroes go, Batman is by far the most plausible and therefore demands plausibility in his motivations as well as how he goes about waging his crusade against injustice.  To do this, Nolan took us back to the beginning, showing us slices of Bruce's childhood and infusing his fated relationship to the Bat with a depth it never had before.  Nolan and Goyer pulled fundamental elements of Batman's origin right from the comics.  I love how we see that Bruce's connection to the winged creatures stems from his childhood fear, when he falls down a well and is attacked by a swarm of startled bats before being rescued by his father.  Later, this pathologic fear of bats becomes indelibly linked to his parent's murder when young Bruce gets scared at an opera featuring bat-like creatures and pleads with his father to leave, whereupon they exit into the dark alley and right into the gunman's path.  Bruce is haunted by feelings of guilt at having gotten scared and it's this guilt, along with his rage, that ultimately leads him on his path to becoming Batman. 
Flash-forward several years and Bruce is in a Bhutanese prison, which is where the film actually begins, as part of his seven year training in just about every form of combat.  Flashbacks help fill in crucial moments of his childhood, including his parent's murder, and much like Man of Steel, I find this non-linearity refreshing.  Begins takes the time to cover what no other Batman film ever touched upon; those crucial, in-between years when Bruce molded himself from a man into a legend.  Not only does Begins show us in detail the events that drove him down his legendary path, it also shows us precisely how he goes about doing it.  

Batman crouching like a boss in Batman Begins.

One of the many things I love about Bale's Batman is that he had the look and physicality of Batman from the comics and conveyed the idea of Batman as a stealthy, ninja-like warrior capable of disappearing in a flash.  We get to see his intensive training under the guidance of the League of Shadows and his mentor, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) who turns out to be Ra's Al Ghul.  When Bruce finally returns to Gotham after having been declared dead by Alfred, he uses his resources to create a persona that he can unleash upon a corrupt city.  The film is like a step by step guide to Bruce becoming Batman. The inclusion of Lucius Fox, played of course by Morgan Freeman, helps to show specifically how Bruce utilized his company's resources, namely the Applied Sciences department, to aid his cause.  We see him acquire a (mostly) bulletproof survival suit which he paints black, a lightweight gliding fabric that becomes rigid when charged, and of course the tank-like Tumbler vehicle which luckily for Bruce, comes in black and becomes his Batmobile.  Nolan emphasized practicality and plausibility for the film and therefore all the tools Bruce utilizes are grounded in realistic concepts.  This serves to make the world of the film that much more believable and therefore more relevant.  When Bruce finally hits the streets as Batman and begins his one man war on crime, it's the Batman I always imagined seeing on screen.  Everything about the suit, especially in the first film, perfectly conveys the sleek but fierce animalistic quality of Batman, from the simple matte black color to the length of the ears and the expression on the cowl, which rather than masking his fierce determination, channels it into the frighteningly intimidating persona he unleashes with a vengeance on unsuspecting criminals.
Another great aspect of the film is that supporting characters such as Alfred and Jim Gordon, who were pretty useless in past films (especially Gordon, who was about as efficient as Barney Fife), actually help Batman in the film.  Michael Caine's Alfred not only lends support and advice to Bruce as he creates the Batman persona, he also saves his life towards the end of the film.  Gordon, played by that chameleon Gary Oldman, is actually a useful ally of Batman even though he's supposed to be arresting the Batman as a vigilante.  Gordon believes the Batman is genuinely trying to change things in a town full of corrupt cops on the take.  Just as in Frank Miller's groundbreaking Year One, much of Gotham's police force is dirty, creating the need for someone like Batman and a good cop like Gordon to step in.  Soon, Batman begins cleaning up the streets, putting notorious mob boss Carmine Falcone behind bars and crippling his drug operation in one fell swoop.  The choice to use lesser known villains such as Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul rather than using the Joker right away was a brilliant choice.  Going with Joker in the first would've warranted comparisons to the 1989 Batman and just as in that one, the Joker would've overshadowed Batman in a film about his origins.  Using these less mainstream Batman villains and doing them justice was smart because it kept the focus on Batman while still giving him worthy villains to fight.  Some might argue that Scarecrow could've been used more, but the film's ultimate villain is Ra's Al Ghul; Scarecrow's just a pawn and he's not a big enough threat on his own. The revelation of Bruce's mentor Ducard being Ra's Al Ghul and his plan to destroy Gotham by gassing the city with Scarecrow's fear toxin is a great twist.  Batman facing off against his teacher and friend adds depth and ups the stakes in what could've been a typical hero/villain face off.  Bruce doesn't share Ra's' conviction that one must do all that is necessary to defeat evil and corruption including killing and that's what makes Batman who he is.  His unwillingness to cross that line and stoop to that level is what elevates him from a vigilante seeking personal vengeance to an incorruptible symbol of justice. 
As Batman and Al Ghul duke it out in a train racing towards Wayne Tower, Gordon drives the Batmobile in an attempt to derail the train before it reaches the tower and Ra's is able to complete his plan.  Again, it's great that Gordon plays a crucial role in stopping Ra's and doesn't just sit on the sidelines.  In the end, Batman and his allies are able to stop the plan from coming to fruition and Ra's is killed in the process.  I'm sure Batman fans were initially upset that the film got rid of the Lazarus pit angle that gives Ra's Al Ghul eternal life, but in keeping with the realistic feel of the film, they kept him a mortal who's really skilled in combat.
Ultimately, Gordon ends up installing the famous Bat-signal atop Gotham's Major Crimes Unit building and Batman visits him on the roof.  The film's instantly classic ending scene is reminiscent of the ending of Year One, which Nolan and crew were heavily inspired by.  Gordon tells Batman that his appearance in Gotham will lead criminals to step up their game and retaliate in deadlier ways.  This threat of escalation is a realistic but often overlooked concept in the world of superheroes.  It's natural that if someone with the resources and abilities of Batman (or Superman) showed up, their enemies would have to upgrade their weapons and tactics.  It's not simply enough to rob a bank with a handgun anymore.  All this leads Gordon to mention a guy with a flair for the theatrical like Batman who leaves a calling card after committing armed robbery and double homicide.  He hands Batman an evidence bag which Batman turns over to reveal a Joker card.  I read that the filmmakers were initially hesitant to foreshadow the Joker at the end because they were unsure how the film would do, but ultimately they decided to go for it and I'm glad they did.  It gave fan-boys like m'self something to insanely babble on about for the next year or so.  Just this tease of Joker being in the sequel was enough to blow everyone away and as we all know, once we finally got a load of the new Joker updated for Nolan's gritty Batman world, comic book films would never be the same again.  Who would've known that Batman Begins would be the first of three films that would not only restore Batman to the big screen with a vengeance but would almost singlehandedly flip the superhero genre on it's head for all time.                                       

Watching the Watchmen

The Heroes of Watchmen: Comedian, Silk Specter, Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias, Nite Owl, Rorschach. 

In keeping with my love of Watchmen, it's only natural to talk about Zack Snyder's 2009 film adaptation (spoilers will abound).  For years this holy grail of Graphic Novel's was considered to be un-filmable.  Apparently, a few directors tried to bring it to the big screen and failed for one reason or another.  One thing I've learned about Zack Snyder's films is that they're very polarizing.  I've seen 300, Watchmen and most recently, Man of Steel and thoroughly enjoyed them all, particularly the last two.  I think the guy's a good director and pretty great at adapting comic book material and giving it dimensionality.  As far as polarizing fans, Watchmen is no exception; some fans undoubtedly hated it while others, like myself, love it for what it is.  Then there are others who still don't know what it is.  Some people have to accept that comic books and film are two distinct mediums and there are some things that just don't translate well from one to the other.  As I mentioned in my last post, I think the book's main theme is whether or not people should trust self-appointed heroes who in reality are just as suspectible to the same issues and flaws, if not more so, than the rest of us.  What's to stop these people from imposing their own brand of "order" on the world or taking drastic steps to do what they deem right?  Are they ultimately as insane and single-minded as the villains they battle again and again and do their efforts really help or hurt the world around them?  These are a few of the simple questions lacking simple answers that abound in the world of Watchmen.        
I think the film effectively conveys this theme and does a great job of grounding the characters and situations in a larger historical context that people can both recognize and be surprised by, given that it's an alternate history in which America and Russia are inching ever closer to nuclear war.  You can tell that Snyder and company did their homework, precisely and lovingly plucking scenes right from the book and bringing them to life.  The film's opening, in which Edward Blake, formerly The Comedian, is attacked in his apartment by a masked assailant and thrown through a plate glass window to his death on the street below, so closely resembles those panels in the book, complete with the famous yellow smiley face button streaked with Blake's blood.  Soon we meet Rorschach who, just as in the comic, finds the blood stained button and discovers that the victim was The Comedian.  Rorschach has a gravely, monotone voice reminiscent of Bale's Batman, which makes sense given that he has the personality of Batman.  I can't read his dialogue in the book without hearing his voice from the film.  Just like in the book, we hear snippets of dialogue ripped right from Rorschach's journal as he prowls the dark city streets.   We soon meet other former heroes, namely the first and second Nite Owl as they reminisce about old times and later Dr. Manhattan and his girlfriend Laurie a.k.a Silk Specter as Rorschach comes to tell them of Blake's death and warn them that they may be next.  The scene in which Rorschach warns Dan Drieberg/Nite Owl by breaking into his place and helping himself to some beans is verbatim.  Considering the multitude of flashbacks and subplots in the book, the film does a good job of balancing all this while highlighting the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate events over several decades.  During Blake's funeral, Dr. Manhattan, Dan Drieberg and Adrian Veidt a.k.a Ozymandias separately flashback to not so fond memories of Blake during their Watchmen days.  We see the Dr. and Blake fighting together in Vietnam and celebrating the victory in a bar where Blake guns down a Vietnamese woman pregnant with his child.  Dan and Adrian both see Blake being the hard ass he was during their last days as costumed crime fighters. 
Perhaps my favorite part is Dr. Manhattan's exile to Mars after Laurie leaves him and he comes to believe he has given cancer to people he loved.  On Mars he contemplates the role of fate in his life as he jumps back and forth between moments in his past.  Manhattan is a being who experiences time simultaneously and sees his life (and all lives) as having already happened, in which case we're all just going through the motions.  We get to see him at various point before his accident: as a child learning how to reassemble the components of a watch, meeting his girlfriend Janie Slater, working as a physicist before getting caught in the Intrinsic Field chamber that de-materialized him, and reappearing after learning how to reassemble himself as a glowing blue demi-god, whom the military names Dr. Manhattan to inspire fear in America's enemies.  Many of his memories overlap with famous moments in history and flashbacks earlier in the film and all of this helps add depth to the shared history of the Watchmen.  All this is covered in the book in greater detail, but in the film, with the addition of music and Dr. M's uninflected voice over narration, it becomes a powerful and moving sequence of events.  Dr. M brings his troubled girlfriend Laurie to Mars to show her how Mars gets along perfectly without life, which he considers to be a highly overrated phenomenon.  It's on Mars that Laurie, with the help of Manhattan, discovers that Blake, a man she always hated because he tried to rape her mother years before, is in fact her father.  This scene is faithfully captured in the film with the same emotional impact when Manhattan tells her he was wrong to say life's overrated and that miracles, which he claimed don't exist, occur constantly, as in someone like Laurie being born against all odds from the contradiction of her parents union.  Manhattan shares this revelation with Laurie that life is full of miracles just as it is, yet we overlook them in our desire to make the world conform to our ideal of perfection.  If we realize that paradise already exists beneath our feet and that all we're doing is destroying it and ourselves, it may not be too late to be worthy of it again.  Like Dr. Manhattan says, perhaps the world as it is, unencumbered by us, is already a perfect machine; a clock without a craftsman.                  
The story of Rorschach's early days that he relates to a prison shrink during his brief incarceration before Nite Owl and Silk Specter break him out is also in the film .  There may be some minor changes, such as his using a butcher's knife to brutally kill a child murderer rather than burning him alive, but the essence is still there: the story represents Rorschach's transformation into the uncompromising, remorseless defender of all he considers absolutely "good."  Some may argue the film's unnecessarily gory at times, chiefly those including Rorschach, and although this isn't untrue, given the gritty nature of the story, it sort of comes with the territory.  Kick Ass is a pretty gory film as well even though it's supposed to be lighter and more comedic, but since it's also grounded in the real world, blood and dismemberment is often part of the deal these days.      
If Snyder included every single aspect which gives Watchmen its fully formed verisimilitude, the film would probably be over four hours long (not to say that'd be a bad thing).  Instead, he focused on faithfully translating the book's most crucial aspects in order to convey the full range of themes.  The film's ending, in which we discover Adrian Veidt murdered Blake, orchestrated Manhattan's exile and framed Rorschach for murder in order to go forward with a plot to unite the world by replicating Manhattan's power and killing millions of people, retains the same devastating effect even though it differs slightly.  In the book, Adrian's plot is much more elaborate but the basics are as follows: For over a decade, Veidt works to replicate Dr. M's teleportation ability as well as study genetic engineering to create a giant squid-like creature with a brain cloned from a dead psychic that's full of strange, nightmarish imagery.  The imagery is supplied by a group of writers and artists that Veidt recruited and brought to a secret island years earlier to conceptualize the creature.   Ultimately, Veidt teleports the being to New York where, due to imprecise teleportation, it explodes upon arrival, unleashing a blast of psychic energy that kills everyone in the immediate area and gives survivors nightmares for years.  Veidt's intent is to trick the world into peace and unity by making them think it's an alien invasion.  Another element missing from the film is the comic book story within the comic called "Tales of the Black Freighter", written by one of the writers recruited for Veidt's plan, chapters of which are sprinkled throughout Watchmen as the comic's being read by a kid at a corner newsstand.  This is one of the ways Watchmen is self-referential; telling a comic book story within a comic book story that parallels the themes of the larger story.   


Adrian Veidt L&R: Killing for Peace?

Although these elements work to engross the reader in the world of the book, I for one don't think the squid plot fits into the grittier world of the film and, along with the "Black Freighter" story, would've made the film feel cluttered.  Veidt's plot in the book has so many aspects, you'd almost need another film to explain them all thoroughly.  It also would've seemed random and confusing to the average viewer.  I think Veidt mimicking Manhattan's power and framing him for it to unite a world on the brink of war makes more sense and is ultimately as effective.   In the film, Veidt replicates Manhattan's own energy to attack cities worldwide, including New York and Moscow, whereas in the book, only New York is attacked.  By making it look as though Manhattan attacked the world, including his own country, it creates a stronger sense of solidarity between the afflicted countries.  Both endings demonstrate a major theme of Watchmen:  that perhaps the only way to save us from our own savage nature is to trick us into thinking we have a common enemy, one that we'll never have to fight.  That's what I love about the ending, it's tremendously ambiguous and there's no clear cut hero or villain.  Veidt is not a comic book villain intent on conquering the world;  he does what he thinks is the only way to avoid nuclear war and unite the world in peace, even though it's based on a lie; he deliberately kills millions but claims it's to save billions.  As easy as it is to judge what Veidt did as wrong, you also have to judge the situation that led him down that path and the sheer insanity of two governments risking the lives of every citizens by trying to one up each other out of paranoia and insecurity.  Veidt's actions are somewhat comparable with Truman's decision to drop not one but two A-bombs on Japan to end WWII.  Truman did what he felt was needed to swiftly end the war, but like Veidt's attack, it was regular citizens who died.  In the book, Rorschach ironically praises Truman's decision to drop the bomb(s) while swiftly condemning Veidt's actions, which although horrible, did avert coming nuclear holocaust.  This is why Manhattan, in both versions, understands why Veidt did what he did, without condoning or condemning him.  The circumstances of the situation are too complex to be judged according to narrow conceptions of right and wrong.  As much as Rorschach likes to see the world in black and white, the truth is that in the Watchmen world, which resembles our world more than ever, things are almost never that cut and dry and often the motives of so called heroes and villains are hard to distinguish.  In both versions, Veidt has no illusions about what he's done and understands the horror it, but still asserts that it was a necessary crime.  In order to not undo the sudden peace that so many died for, Veidt convinces the other heroes to keep quiet, all except for Rorschach who, in keeping with his uncompromising character, sets out to reveal the truth to the world.  Manhattan tries to convince him to stop, but Rorschach, unwilling to budge, tells Manhattan that he'll have to kill him, which he does.  The death of Rorschach is also the symbolic death of his simplistic, morally absolute viewpoint.  In Veidt's new world, things are no longer black and white, assuming they ever really were.  The question becomes, will the sudden peace last?  As Dr. Manhattan says, "Nothing ends...nothing ever ends."  Both versions imply that the truth may be revealed by Rorschach's journal which he dropped in the mailbox of the New Frontiersman paper before going to confront Veidt.  The possibility of Veidt's deception being exposed and the world returning to the brink of war proves that indeed nothing truly ends; instead humanity goes around and around in circles, never truly learning essential lessons until it's too late.  Watchmen demonstrates that there is no easy, one size fits all solution for humanity's problems and that no one has all the answers regardless of how powerful they seem to be.  If we want to avoid having to be tricked into getting along with one another, we better start listening and trying to work together for a stronger, more loving world without needing a giant exploding psychic squid to force us there.                                                      

Watchmen: Waiting for the End of the World

The Watchmen: Silk Specter II, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, Comedian, Ozymandias, Rorschach. 

It's crazy that I've gone this long without writing about what is probably the most influential Graphic Novel of all time: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's seminal Watchmen.  The 1980's were a great decade for epic comic books if not for particularly epic music.  Among other works, that decade
gave us masterpieces such as Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns as well as his and Chris Claremont's four issue miniseries Wolverine.  Yet, amidst all the revolutionary books that were coming out in that decade, one of them still seems to rise above all others.  Watchmen may well be the comic book equivalent of Punk Rock; a book that shattered just about all of the pre-established conventions that had rigidly defined comics up until that point.  Watchmen was one of the first self-aware, self-referential comic book series, at once paying tribute to the rich legacy of the genre while also unapologetically deconstructing the entire format by giving us deeply flawed characters grappling with real world issues.   The Watchmen world is essentially an altered version of our world, complete with it's problems and grim realities, but with the addition of real masked vigilantes inspired by comic book heroes such as Superman and Batman.  Watchmen asks a crucial question: what would the world be like if costumed heroes really existed?  How would their presence change our world?  Watchmen take place in 1985, when costumed heroes who first appeared around WWII have been outlawed under the Keene Act.  Those who were active at the time were forced to retire or else work for the government.   
Many of the Watchmen heroes embody archetypal superhero qualities.  Even so, these characters are far from flawless.  In fact, most of them are defined exclusively by their flaws.  Characters such as the Comedian, one of the first masked heroes, are shown to be sadistic, amoral sociopaths who reflect the dark underbelly of humanity's nature.  The Comedian has no problem killing, not only criminals but just about anyone who gets in his way.  Back when he was part of the first group of heroes, the Minutemen, he tried to rape the first Silk Specter.  Later heroes like Nite Owl, are essentially failures stuck in the past, dried up and useless after retiring.  Even Dr. Manhattan, a physicist who is granted god-like powers due to a freak accident, is apathetic to the human condition.  The only one who profited from retirement is Adrian Veidt a.ka. Ozymandias, who runs a billion dollar company.  What Alan Moore sought to do was examine the true motives of so called superheroes and challenged the notion that people who feel compelled to dress up and go around beating up thugs were well adjusted, grounded people.  If anything, the fact that ordinary people would trust their safety to these self-appointed protectors is pretty insane, hence the book's memorable tagline: Who watches the Watchmen?  What's to stop these people from enforcing their own brand of "justice" upon whomever they deem deserving?     
Undoubtedly, the book's most popular hero has always been Rorschach, the gruff, trench coat and fedora wearing vigilante with Batman's personality and a shape shifting ink blot mask.  Unlike the others, Rorschach refused to retire when President Nixon (now in his fifth term after America won the Vietnam War thanks to Dr. Manhattan), outlawed vigilantes.  Rorschach's worldview mirrors his ink blot mask: black and white, no shades of gray.  He carves the world up into two categories; good and evil.  This is a reflection of the simplistic world outlook of most early superhero stories; Lex Luthor's evil, Superman's good, case closed.  Even so, Rorschach has a touch of sociopath.  He's seemingly devoid of empathy, is self-righteous and plays judge, jury and executioner when he deems it necessary.  In a way similar to the Comedian, Rorschach is a by-product of our cruel and vicious world.  Rorschach's interesting because while he seems to be morally clear-cut, he does have some contradictions.  He despises people on welfare who don't make what he considers an honest living, but he works no job, has no legitimate source of income and lives off people such as his ex-partner Nite Owl.  Rorschach is a vestige of an old worldview in a world of increasing ambiguity and confusion, one on the verge of nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. which makes these former heroes feel just as useless as everyone else.
The book's Superman is Dr. Manhattan, the only one with superpowers who can bend matter to his will, among other things, but is apathetic to the seemingly inevitable war.  He demonstrates how even someone with god-like power can't be relied upon to fix everything and shouldn't be seen as a deterrent to war.  Even with tremendous power at your disposal, whether a Dr. Manhattan or the atomic bomb, it's not a means to safety or peace, not as long as there's darkness in men's hearts.  Dr. Manhattan says towards the end of the series that although he can do almost anything, he can't change human nature.  Given that he can travel anywhere in the universe or walk across the sun, Dr. M grows tired of the petty squabbles and tangled issues plaguing humanity and spends much of the series in self-imposed exiled on Mars, contemplating the nature of existence and the role of fate in his life. 
Aside from focusing on superheroes, Watchmen explores deep concepts such as the relativity of time, the nature of physics, memory and consciousness and how they relate to the interconnected lives of our heroes.  As the world inches closer to annihilation, symbolized by the doomsday clock, one of the book's many recurring visual motifs moving closer to midnight, the retired heroes are reunited by the murder of the Comedian, leading Rorschach to believe someone's out to kill former vigilantes.  Portions of the story are told through Rorschach's journal as he tirelessly investigates his mask killer theory.  The rest of the story jumps from past to present, showing the long and connected history of the characters as well as the larger social and political climates in which they operated.  What stands out in the Watchmen world is how these costumed heroes didn't really make the world a better place, despite their good intentions.  The world is still barreling full steam into oblivion while the heroes keep playing cowboys and Indians, as the Comedian once said.  Years before his death,  he says that once the nukes start flying, it won't matter what side you're on or whether you're just or unjust; everyone's going to be dust.  This sentiment is echoed many times in the book; the fact is clear that it doesn't matter what kind of weapons, technology or superheroes people have at their disposal; these will not solve the essential problems continually plaguing humanity because the problem lies within our hearts.  Whether they fight with sticks or bombs, unless people are willing to fundamentally change their hearts and minds to root out the darkness that dwells within, there will always be conflict.   
Dr. Manhattan expresses this idea, believing that it's too late for humanity to avoid its own destruction.  Without giving away the book's ending, Rorschach and Nite Owl, who ultimately suits up again, find out who killed The Comedian and discover a larger and much more terrifying plot orchestrated by one of their own that'll change the world forever.  The conclusion is epic because it defies just about every formulaic comic book ending that preceded it.  For a story about the lives of comic book heroes, Watchmen doesn't read like a comic book and that's what's so refreshing.  It's more a commentary on how superheroes influence our view of real world issues, painting an honest picture of heroes as real, multi-dimensional people by lovingly deconstructing them and taking a close look at the facets that make them up (much like Dr. Manhattan does).  The irony is that Watchmen's deconstruction and re-assemblage of basic superhero archetypes makes you appreciate Superheroes even more when they suddenly seem all too complex and human.  I believe Alan Moore's mission in Watchmen was to show that people, both in our world and the comic book world, shouldn't look exclusively to so called saviors to fix their problems.  No one man, even a Superman or one group of people can do that, they can only attack the symptoms, not the cause of these problems.  To do that, all people must find the potential for goodness in themselves and share it with others, not look towards others with fear and hatred.  Watchmen illustrates that fixing the problems of our ravaged world doesn't require the power of Superman or Dr. Manhattan, but demands the efforts of regular people taking decisive steps and working together to make a stronger, loving world...even though having Superman around would still be pretty cool.                                               
   

A Trek into the Dark Side

Benny Cumberbatch as the Sinister Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. 

Continuing my Star Trek train of thought, we come to this summer's epic sequel to 2009's Star Trek reboot: Star Trek Into Darkness.  After Man of Steel, Darkness was the film I most looked forward to this summer and I was not disappointed.  The film picks up pretty much right after the events of the first, as Kirk and crew attempt to stop an active volcano from threatening the primitive alien inhabitants on the planet Nibiru without interfering with their way of life.  This means the Enterprise must remain hidden deep beneath the planet's ocean while Spock is lowered into the volcano with a cold fusion device that will render it inert.  In order to distract the planet's inhabitants, Kirk and Bones (but Kirk mostly), end up stealing a sacred scroll and are chased through the forest by the spear wielding indigenous people.  In typical fashion, Kirk disregards the prime directive by having the Enterprise rise from the depths in front of the mystified inhabitants and get close enough to the volcano to beam Spock out, against his wishes, right before the volcano becomes inert. 
The film explores the friendship between Kirk and Spock established at the end of Star Trek, showing how Spock's strict adherence to rules of conduct often clashes with Kirk's rule-bending creative problem solving.  Kirk violates the orders of the mission, but does so to save Spock, even though Spock is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.  As a result of Kirk's defiance and Spock's inability to cover for him, Kirk loses the Enterprise.  It's at this point that we're introduced to the film's chief antagonist, a former Starfleet officer turned terrorist named John Harrison, played by the mesmerizing Benedict Cumberbatch.  I love Cumberbatch on Sherlock, but as good as he is at playing someone on the side of the angels, he's even better at playing villains.  Harrison soon begins a one man war against the Federation, attacking a meeting of Starfleet commanders, including Kirk, Spock and Pike, who sadly, is killed in the battle.  After the attack, Kirk, who was close to Pike, gets the Enterprise back and gets permission from Admiral Marcus to travel near the Klingon home-world, Kronos, where Harrison teleported after the attack.  Rather than venture into Klingon territory and risk starting a war with them, Marcus has the Enterprise loaded with 72 proton torpedoes and orders them to get as close as possible, take out Harrison with the full payload and then haul ass. 
This is where the plot gets really interesting.  Rather than fire the missiles and kill Harrison, Spock convinces Kirk that they should take a shuttle down to the planet to retrieve Harrison so he can stand trial.  Of course, they're intercepted by Klingon war birds and a battle ensues, in which Harrison reveals himself, kills about twenty Klingons singlehandedly and then surrenders to Kirk after learning about the torpedoes on board.  Once onboard, Kirk grills Harrison as to why he attacked the Federation, to which Harrison explains that he is a genetically enhanced super soldier who was awoken from suspended animation by none other than Admiral Marcus to fight in a war with the Klingon's that Marcus plans on initiating.  Harrison reveals that he is one of 73 super soldiers, the other 72 of whom are still asleep and were put inside the photon missiles by Marcus in an attempt to blackmail Harrison into developing weapons for Marcus's war.  Harrison then reveals that his real name is Khan...DUH, DUH, DUHHH!  Khan is arguably the most well known of Trek villains so it seemed obvious that he would be in the film, but they still did a good job hiding it until that point.  All I really knew about Khan was his legendary Wrath that led to Spock's death and made Kirk famously scream "KHAN!!"

Kirk and Spock in a contemplative moment.

The altered timeline allowed the writers to change elements of the Khan story, therefore managing to surprise even diehard fans.  In some ways Marcus is the film's real antagonist; he sabotages the Enterprise's warp core so that after firing the missiles, which will kill the rest of Khan's crew, which is what Marcus wanted, the Enterprise will be stranded, thus starting war with the Klingon's.  What's interesting is how Khan is kind of a sympathetic character.  He wishes he'd never been woken up and simply wants to rescue his crew from the wrath of Marcus.  Once Marcus's treachery is revealed, he demands Kirk turn Khan over to him and when Kirk refuses, Marcus remorselessly attacks the Enterprise with a much larger ship.  Ultimately, Khan gets control of Marcus's ship, but not before crushing Marcus's skull and proceeds to attack the Enterprise in order to get his slumbering crew members back.  In an awesome reversal of events, it's Kirk who sacrifices his life by exposing himself to lethal radiation to get the warp core back online rather than Spock.  It's fitting that Kirk should sacrifice his life, because it shows that, like Spock, he too is ultimately willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, in this case his crew.  In Star Trek, Kirk gets the Captain's chair; in Into Darkness, we see him earn it and live up to his father's legacy of selflessness.  There's a nice moment between a dying Kirk and a crying Spock and it's Spock this time(line) who gets to shout "KHAN!"  The fact that they play around with the original storyline is what makes it so captivating.  Leonard Nimoy returns as the older Spock from the original timeline, this time with a smaller but still crucial part as he tells the younger Spock about the version of Khan from his timeline, while leaving out the part where he dies.  Abrams' timeline switcheroo allows Nimoy to continue appearing in the films as part of the story as well as a bridge between the older generation of Trekkies and a newer one being indoctrinated by these films.   
Although Benedict plays a really chilling and intense villain, his Khan is by no means a one dimension villain.  His motivation of revenge (especially against Marcus), mirrors Kirk's own desire for revenge against Khan for killing Pike.  You can't judge Khan as a villain who simply wants to do bad and those are always the most interesting antagonists.  The film reunites the same cast from the first and adds some new faces, such as weapons expert Carol Marcus (turns out she's Marcus's daughter), played by the beautiful Alice Eve.  Into Darkness is a more than worthy follow up to Star Trek, maintaining the humor and heart of the first while deepening the relationships between the main characters and placing them in increasingly complex and difficult situations.  Even more than in the first, we see how these legendary characters work off each other and depend on each other, even when they don't see eye to eye.  I for one, can't wait to see where Abrams' take the story in the in inevitable sequel, but given his involvement with Star Wars VII, he may not be directing the next film.  We'll have to wait and see.  Who knows, perhaps Abrams will be able to pull off the unimaginable and find a way to unite Trekkies and Star Wars fans alike.  We'll see what the future holds for both Star Wars and Star Trek.                              

How J.J. Abrams Made Me a Star Trek Fan

The legendary U.S.S. Enterprise as it's portrayed in J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot.

This is way overdue, but since Star Trek Into Darkness was out this summer, I felt it was time to write about the new Star Trek films and how I was turned into a fan practically overnight.  Yea, I wasn't a Trekkie growing up; I was more into Star Wars during my formative years, probably because it was easier to watch three films than sit through an entire series as a restless child.  The Star Trek universe just seemed too vast; I never knew where to start.  My brothers were Trekkies growing up, so perhaps I felt I should balance things out by being a fan of the Wars.  I've seen a few stray episodes of "Next Generation" here and there and feel like I could get into that more than the original series, but for a Trek newbie like me, J.J. Abrams' films are a great place to start, appealing to both hardcore fans and newcomers alike.   
I saw Star Trek in theaters and immediately got sucked into the story.  I was familiar enough with Kirk and Spock, but didn't know a whole lot about the rest of the crew.  Because Abrams' film features an alternate version of the origin rather than being a straight retelling, I was able to dive into the story from a fresh place rather than having to familiarize myself with all the pre-established elements.  The film's alternate timeline results when, more than 100 years after the original exploits of Kirk and crew, a ship captained by a Romulan named Nero, gets pulled into a black hole created by an elderly Spock (played by the legendary Leonard Nimoy) in an attempt to consume a supernova that ends up destroying Nero's home world, Romulus. After traversing the black hole, Nero's ship emerges 129 years in the past, at which point he and his crew, furious at their planet's destruction, attack a Federation ship, the U.S.S. Kelvin, which happens to contain James T. Kirk's father and mother, who's pregnant with him.  Kirk's father sacrifices his own life to ensure his wife and unborn son escape the ship.  The untimely demise of Kirk's father is one of the first altered details of the new timeline. 
In the altered timeline, we meet a young Spock on Vulcan who feels alienated from his own people because of his half human side.  He battles to keep his emotions in check and considers following the Vulcan discipline of Kolinahr to purge all remaining emotion.  Ultimately though, Spock turns down acceptance into the Vulcan Science Academy in favor of joining Starfleet.  Meanwhile on Earth, we meet young Kirk, who is a brash and cocky daredevil even as a kid.  Once he's grown up, he's persuaded to join Starfleet where he meets Captain Pike, who challenges him to live up to his father's legacy.  Soon, we meet all the key members of the famous Enterprise crew: Lieutenant Uhura, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Hikara Sulu and Pavel Chekov.  All the actors seem tailor made for their legendary roles and it's a thrill to see how they all meet each other in the film; Kirk starts out by repeatedly hitting on Uhura to no avail.  Kirk and Bones first meet while first entering Starfleet in a humorous scene in which a washed up McCoy runs through all the terrible things that can happen to a person in space.  The dialogue gives you a clear insight into the personalities of these famous characters.   
This version of Kirk has a chip on his shoulder because he never knew his father and therefore he gets off to a bad start with a few of the characters.  Him and Spock, for example, start out as rivals after Kirk manages to beat the "unwinnable" Kobayashi-Maru simulation, which Spock designed.  It's fascinating to see two people who are destined to be friends start out more as foes.  So, we find out that Nero and his crew, still stranded 129 years in their past, have been waiting over twenty years for the elderly Spock, who was also pulled into the hole, to emerge back in time.  Once he does, Nero captures Spock's ship and strands him on the Hoth-like planet Delta Vega to watch helplessly as Nero uses Spock's own red matter to create a black hole that consumes Vulcan.  Before this however, Nero goes on a mission of revenge against the Federation, taking out all ships except for The Enterprise.  When the Enterprise arrives at Vulcan, young Spock beams down in an attempt to retrieve as many Vulcans as he can from his quickly crumbling planet.  He manages to escape with his father and a small group of others, but is unable to beam his mother back and she falls to her death into the planet's center.   
Because he was accused of cheating on the Kobayashi exam, Kirk is suspended from duty aboard any ship, but is reluctantly snuck onto the Enterprise by Bones, who pretends that Kirk's a sick patient.  Once on board, Kirk recognizes that the ship attacking Vulcan is the same one that attacked the U.S.S. Kelvin on the day of his birth.  It's awesome to watch Kirk go from being suspended to ultimately winning the Captain's chair after Pike is taken hostage by Nero.  Although Kirk and Spock start out as rivals, with the latter ultimately marooning Kirk on Delta Vega where he meets the future Spock, they eventually work together with the rest of the crew to rescue Pike and save Earth from suffering the same fate as Vulcan.  On Delta Vega, the future Spock, who has been Kirk's lifelong friend, tells Kirk that in order to get control of his ship he must show that the younger Spock has been emotionally compromised by losing his mother and therefore is unfit for duty.  It's also on Delta Vega that we meet "Scotty", played wonderfully by Simon Pegg, who uses his future equation for trans-warp beaming to beam Kirk and himself onto the Enterprise while she's moving at light speed. 
As a fan of J.J. Abrams' work, especially Fringe, I dug the film's alternate timeline.  I imagine many diehard fans were upset at Vulcan's destruction, but I felt that it makes Spock a very sympathetic character: both the original Spock and the young Spock have to suffer the pain of watching their planet be destroyed.  In this way, Spock becomes like Superman; one of the last survivors of an endangered race.  Abrams' reimagined Star Trek is an awesome film through and through.  The effects are incredible and the story is really engaging, even for people who aren't so familiar with the world.  Even though I wasn't a big fan when I watched it, when the Enterprise is first revealed and the music triumphantly swells, I got chills looking at that beautiful ship.  What Abrams really understands and conveys is what's at the heart of Star Trek; the ability of people with vastly diverse backgrounds and points of view to find areas of common ground and work together for a common goal.  Star Trek is really about the melding of initially opposing concepts into something stronger, much like Spock's acceptance of his more emotional human side and his logical Vulcan side.  It's the harmony of diversity that's really at the core of the Star Trek universe and it's a vision of a hopeful future where people can put aside their petty differences and come together for the betterment of all people across that vast final frontier.