Star Trek Into Darkness: JJ Abrams' 9 Point Guide To Rebooting A Franchise

5. BLOW IT UP!!!

white-smoke The action has to be bigger and better than anything we have seen in Star Trek before. JJ knows that if the average person who goes to see his film can€™t be bothered with a ship traveling at warp for more than 5 minutes, then that person isn€™t going to be too fond of a slow, methodical space fight like we saw in The Wrath Of Khan. So Abrams did away with the traditional slow bypasses the ships in Star Trek were famous for; they now charge in all guns blazing as we witnessed at the climax of Star Trek 2009. There isn€™t even time for a nice satisfying phaser blast anymore, the ships now have to €˜€™pow-pow€™€™ everything, presumably so that the non-trekkie doesn€™t start wondering what the funny beam is coming out of the Enterprise. Shuttles have to be destroyed; people have to run in corridors, the Enterprise has to be destroyed and Away Missions have to be injected with steroids. Spock is lowered into a volcano, Kirk space dives on to a drill, Sulu carries a folding sword wherever he goes, Ships crash into San Francisco, a drill drops onto San Francisco, black holes eat everything, Spock fights Khan on flying cars and Kirk has to literally kick start the warp core. Forget about the Enterprise playing cat and mouse with the Reliant in the Mutara Nebula, stand back everybody, JJ Abrams is going to BLOW UP VULCAN! JJ RULEZ
All blockbusters now have to follow a particular formula and each tries to outdo each other in the action stakes. The average popcorn muncher expects to be overloaded with close up shaky-cam shots, overblown CGI effects and as many action scenes you can fit into the two hour running time. The action doesn€™t have to be organic to the story, it doesn€™t need a catalyst and it doesn€™t need to make sense; stuff just needs to blow up to keep the audience happy.
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Contributor

Child of the 80's. Brought up on Star Trek, Video Games and Schwarzenegger, my tastes evolved to encompass all things geeky.