The failure of “Inglourious Basterds” is the failure of “Death Proof” and the “Kill Bill” films. After “Jackie Brown” Tarantino jettisoned any concern with gripping storytelling and decided to focus on constructing fanboyish collages, like an amateur film maker recreating his favorite moments from the movies. Perhaps though this change of direction for Tarantino isn’t merely a matter of choice–he may simply be burned out in terms of generating story ideas. After all, one can’t be gifted in every facet. Tarantino can direct and construct involving, musical dialogue–but the man may no longer be capable of originating good stories, and his best work — Pulp Fiction — may have been a fluke as far as HIS contribution to the story of the film is concerned. After all, Roger Avery wrote a third of the script, though he merely gets a “stories” co-credit. “Reservoir Dogs” lifted its most important plot and story elements from the Hong Kong film “City On Fire” from the late 80s. And “Jackie Brown” — his second best work — was an adaptation of a work by a writer who Tarantino drew a lot of inspiration from. But Tarantino has given several interviews in which he claimed that he is very distanced from “Jackie Brown,” a distance that no doubt stems from the fact that when audiences see it they can’t help but appreciate Elmore Leonard as much as Tarantino. In Hollywood, the writer-director is the most prestigious position. But many of the greatest directors have, of course, depended for ideas on novelists and screen-writers. Perhaps Tarantino doesn’t care to stoop so low as them again.

In Kill Bill, what happened to the Bride, and her subsequent quest, was largely goofy. Rather than taking a true risk and making an actual film which involved revenge, Tarantino chose a cheaper, satirical route, so that the revenge quest was treated so satirically and frivolously as to preempt any criticism of the film’s plot or characters, i.e, the “it’s bad on purpose!” defense. The only way to criticize the film was to take issue with the whole cold exercise and observe that Tim Roth getting shot in the stomach in “Reservoir Dogs” and the audience squirming in their seats as he bled profusely was preferable to Sofie Fatale getting her arm chopped off and the audience laughing.

There is no good story in Inglourious Basterds either, and just as in Kill Bill the revenge and dealing out of justice are treated too outlandishly to be taken seriously as plots. It isn’t that the lack of seriousness which undermines the story but that the lack of seriousness covers up the poor nature of the storytelling. We are asked to accept the premise of The Basterds solely on the basis of such a group of characters having been featured in World War 2 films previously. There is no reason for the “Basterds” to be comprised primarily of Jews except that Tarantino requires it to fit in with the revenge theme. And it is not required that the film be replete with overt verbal allusions to cinematic figures other that Tarantino wants to be too cute by half.

The use of chapter breaks in Pulp Fiction elegantly delineated the separate plot threads. Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds (and in Kill Bill) has become dependent on chapter breaks as a way to cut into any scene without having to get there through a narrative. Why establish the details of how Shoshana came to possess her a new identity and a theater? Just cut to the exact place the character needs to be to enact her revenge! Why, indeed, bother with the details of how to get from one set piece to another? Just give each one it’s own “chapter” to relieve the director/writer and the audience of the bothersome details of a smooth narrative.

Gratuitousness abounds. We aren’t shown the bodies of the murdered Jews, yet we’re given full view of the scalping of Nazi soldiers. Did Tarantino think that the former undercut his whole “lolz…violence!” shtick? In two instances a narrator intrudes and embellishes arbitrary details. Michael Fassbender’s character is painstakingly introduced…only to lamely die the next scene. Tarantino kills of Shoshana in an anti-climatic fashion just so he can resurrect her on the big screen. Two of the Basterds get so carried away in pummeling the Nazis at the theater with bullets that they forget the bombs they’re strapped to, but just why they would be suicidal isn’t made clear.

But it doesn’t make sense, I suppose, to get too worked up over any of its details. As said before, the only recourse is to question the whole exercise and the artistic dead-end it represents. The films of the post-Jackie Brown Tarantino will not inspire anyone. They are the products of a fearful film maker aware that, like Orson Wells, he made his greatest film too young. And rather than settling into a comfortable routine of Jackie Brown like films–i.e, substantive and effective thrillers not stylistically overdone based on novels or screenplays not by him– he has opted to produce a flow of pastiches whose failure on a storytelling and character level critics won’t hold him accountable for due to the -mere exercise- nature of the films. But at least he gets sole credit.

There was a period in the 90s in which Star Trek spin-offs  were seemingly unmissable. Next Generation had ended its run in 94 and was in heavy syndication, and Voyager and Deep Space Nine were at the height of their run. This is when I first started watching Star Trek regularly. The first glimpses I had of the show was when I was about 6 or 7. The images struck me as wondrous and exciting. When the show started becoming syndicated I had the chance to delve into it deeply. In a significant way, these 90s Star Trek series (Next Generation had actually begun its run in 87) had a considerable impact on my taste in television. I watched and enjoyed most of their episodes for the most part. So I approach J.J Abrams Star Trek being  quite familiar with the Star Trek franchise, and there are two questions by which I’ll assess the new film: Does it work as a film in and of itself to one who is not necessarily a fan of Star Trek? And is it a film that is a worthy entry into the Star Trek mythos? The answer to the former is “maybe”; to the latter, a resounding no.

For, upon leaving the theater, I did not have any immediate gnawing sense of dissatisfaction. I was diverted for those two hours, and for the crowd that adored Iron Man and X-Men: Wolverine, Abrams Star Trek should be a fun movie. I don’t think Iron Man and any of the X:Men films are any good, mind you, but they are the sort of dumb summer fare we’ve grown accustomed to and Abrams’ Star Trek should entertain along those lines. It was only as the hours passed that the film’s failure as a Star Trek story became more and more evident to me. First, it is not something that has to do with the film’s set-up as an action/adventure fim. All the Next Generation films, as well as most of the TOS films, are action-adventure rombs. The film’s failure as a Star Trek entry has to do with its complete and utter disregard for the implications of the film’s plot.

First, the makers of the film, as you are no doubt aware, were seeking to effectively reboot the Star Trek franchise. I hear this is a common practice in the comic book industry.  For instance, Spiderman began its run in the 60s, and Marvel rebooted the Spiderman story so that it’s told in a way that is fresh and modern and therefore more appealing to today’s audiences (after all, Stan Lee’s comics do strike us today as horribly retro.) What marvel did is to reboot the Spiderman universe entirely. There’s no logical connection to the stories Lee and his writers penned for the series, except that the new series borrows elements and draws inspiration from them. In the movies, recently the 007 franchise was rebooted with 2006’s Casino Royale. The same thing was done for the series when Pierce Brosnan took over the role with “Golden Eye” in 1995.  Abrams Star Trek is reboot, but it’s a reboot in a fashion that is aggravating, poorly thought out, and ultimately insulting to the Star Trek franchise in general. For the film doesn’t just reboot the Star Trek universe–no, it has a plot that erases all the previous shows, movies, characters, and stories of Star Trek from existence! It’s like finding out in the last chapter of a novel that everything you’ve read up to point had been a dream. And worse, it’s as if the author had no idea that he had suggested as much!

The plot of the film involves villainous characters traveling back in time from a date that, presumably, immediately postdates the end of Voyager, in order to interfere with Federation history. The plot details are irrelevant: Let’s just say that these villainous characters, by the end of the film, succeed marvelously in interfering with Federation history and changing the time-line. This is how Abrams and his writers chose to reboot the franchise–not by starting from scratch, but by logically connecting it to the regular Star Trek canon and using time-travel shenanigans to put the young versions of the original series characters on a new path. In a rather ham-fisted scene, Zachary Quinto’s Spock and Zoe Saladan’s Uhura explain to the audience that the characters are now on a new path–on an ‘alternate time-line’–and that their destinies have been changed. But what about the destinies of, I don’t know, the cast of Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine? How could all those characters be born–or the stories which they’re were involved in occur–given that the villain of the film has successfully interfered with history? In a scene that is perhaps intended to call back to Star Wars: A New Hope, the planet of Vulcan is destroyed. Now if we watch Next Generation or DSN–in which Vulcan still exists–we know we’re watching a timeline that doesn’t exist and perhaps characters who most likely will never be born.

Apparently it has only recently dawned on Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman–the writers of the film–of the implication of their plot. Orci has been going around claiming that the time-line which bad guys came from (the time-line of all the shows and movies) somehow remains intact, due to quantum mechanics (?!?), and that the universe Abrams film takes place in will now be one that is parallel to that other, regular universe. Except for one problem: no where in Star Trek movies or shows has it been suggested that time travel leads to the creation of a parallel universe. Indeed, in all the Star Trek plots involving time travel, it’s never suggested that the good characters need not worry about some bad guy going back in time and meddling with things since it would just create a new time-line that cannot effect the one that the characters are in. Indeed, the time-travel stories always depended on the assumption that there is one time-line which time travel can alter. Since Abrams and his duo of writers (the same brilliant scribes that brought us the recent “Transformers” flicks) unwisely chose to connect themselves with the established canon (via the time-travel story), the same rules as all other Star Trek movies/shows/stories apply–and so, by implication, since the bad guys of the film succeeds in going back in and meddling with things, all the Star Trek stories we are familiar with have effectively been retconned out of existence, never mind what Robert Orci claims.

If that was deliberate, it would be staggeringly asinine, but since it was apparently not deliberate, it’s just despairingly poor writing and staggeringly asinine. The plot of film, by the way, has much else that is wrong with it.  Kirk is jettisoned on a snowy planet on which he randomly happens to run into two characters that are crucial to the plot. In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, it is mentioned that Kirk, by cheating, happened to have passed in his Starfleet Academcy days the insurmountable Kobayashi Maru tactical test. Abrams film proves that things that are reputed to be legendary about characters are perhaps best left as legends.

The direction of the film isn’t much to speak of either. It suggests the work of a director painfully aware of his limitations working hard to dazzle us with the superficialities he is only capable of. The interior of the Enterprise, for god knows why, is distractingly bright. And there is much needless shaky hand-held camera work. Many of the aliens that are shown have faces that look like reflections off fun-house mirrors. There’s a scene that involves Kirk making love to a green alien–except she looks entirely like a cheerleader of the Dallas cowboys who has been painted green. Abrams forced kinetic style seems incongruous with the spirit of Star Trek. There is simply no grace.

But in the end, it’s the time-travel plot that remains the glaring fault of the film. By implication, it negates all other Star Trek stories. And it is indicative of the cheap plot device that time-travel has in general become in science fiction. It’s not an original story but rather something that even the most non-creative movie executive could have thought up to reboot the franchise. Moreover, it actually undermines the purpose of a reboot because it beholds any sequels to the rules and premises established in the regular canon. But should this incompetence surprise us?  After all, over the last months Abrams has been announcing at the top of his lungs that he had not been familiar with Star Trek before being asked to shoot the film. He was sneakily suggesting that as a consequence his approach would be all the more original because of that lack of familiarity. Paramount has chosen to hand the reigns of the series to someone who is  eager to announce his lack of interest in it. What happens when this new franchise inevitably fizzles out? How will they reboot Star Trek then? I don’t think we’ll care about Star Trek in general by that point to even ask the question.

However, nothing makes me groan more than a badly made trailer. Obviously some movie trailers are more successful than others regardless of the quality of the film they promote. This is a sort of success separate from whether or not the trailer manages to bring audiences in. Rather, I’ve come to look (it’s pathetic, I know!) trailers as little pieces of art. Surely there is a creativity element involved in selecting and sequencing appropriate images from a film and adding fitting music. In any case,  here are a few trailers that over the years I’ve found myself revisiting on youtube:

Dark City:

“Dark City” ( 1998 ) is a great film and this trailer sells it perfectly to intelligent people. There is no spoken word–just eerie music and intriguing images. Perhaps if the film had employed dumber promos it would have done better at the box-office.

Femme Fatale:

“Femme Fatale” (2002) is my favorite Brian De Palma film and perhaps the culmination of all his cinematic obsessions. De Palma said that it is hard to make noir films today since the world of noir had moved on–its style and atmosphere is incompatible with modernity. In “Femme Fatale” De Palma elegantly gets around this obstacle and presents an erotic and captivating stylish thriller that’s very much in the spirit of noir. I’m not sure if that trailer was ever shown in the U.S but it’s one of the most creative I’ve ever seen.

300:

The movie was mediocre but this trailer is a masterpiece.

For some reason I’ve never cared to catch every episode of The Shield despite the fact that it has never failed to entertain me. Like most cable dramas, it has about a dozen or so episodes a season, so the makers can take their time in fashioning gripping plots and character arcs. I think though I’ve never tried to catch all of it because on more than one occasion I randomly tuned into it only to stumble onto a scene where the police discover something gruesome–like six people murdered with machetes or something equally horrific. The show is unfortunately somewhat riddled with this sort of sensationalism, and the LA it depicts through hand-held camera work and a grainy tint is suffocatingly hellish and depressing.

For most part, the purpose of all that is just to generate mood. Above all else the show is a thriller, and the substance of its narratives hinge on the doings of a trio of corrupt cops. A season’s story arcs usually concern their shenanigans which are punctuated by more episodic “case of the week” plots. I think this is the sort of show that would never have been possible without The Sopranos. Like with Tony Soprano, we are at the same time forced to root for, root against and have sympathy for these corrupt cops as they continually abuse their power and are humanized by those close to them. Actually I’m not entirely being genuine with this comparison: that’s what many other people supposedly got out of The Sopranos. I personally found Tony Soprano to be irredeemably evil and repulsive–which is why I never cared for the show all that much. The Shield handles the morally vile characters at its heart better, perhaps because it contrasts them with ethical and responsible characters.

Anyway, I’ve been catching the final season of The Shield currently airing on FX. It’s getting quite climatic as the actions of the corrupt cops catch up with them and they turn on each other. It’s gripping stuff–perhaps not The Wire gripping, but good enough nonetheless.

Thanks for reading!