REVIEW: Star Trek: Into Darkness

'WARE: as per usual, I'm going to play fast and loose with spoilers.  Also as per usual, I am much more about character growth and momentum than I am plot twists, but some things happen in the movie that affect the characters in very significant ways, so...'WARE.

This review came extremely close to being subtitled "Holy Hell, It's Like They're Adults."  Previously on Star Trek, the Romulans made their appearance several decades ahead of schedule, leading to a Spock who is much more defensive about his mixed human/Vulcan heritage.  Rather than growing up in a stable, apple-pie home, James Kirk is alternately neglected and abused and is heading towards nowhere good.  And the nature of the Federation itself is different, warier and less inclined to trust.  (Nyota Uhura remains a BAMF.  Every universe needs a through-line.)

Bringing the Romulans in early in the first movie was a stroke of genius, as 1) it allows for a darker Federation to fit a more cynical generation, but 2) gives the characters a reason to state why their moral stances matter.  Cynicism is easy.  Optimism--real optimism, not naivete--is difficult.  That's why it's laudable, and that's a big part of why I love the rebooted Star Trek so much.  This crew knows the universe can be an ugly place, they just choose to focus on the beautiful parts.

(Pretend there's a segue here.)  A massive part of why I love Chris Pine's take on Kirk so much is his warmth and lack of ego.  He keeps the essence of Kirk, but adds to him a generosity of spirit, an instinctive kindness, that Shatner's Kirk lacked.  It grounds him and keeps him likable even while Kirk is doing incredibly bone-headed things.  (Original recipe Kirk was the youngest captain in history after training for fourteen years.  Reboot Kirk did it in three.  Yeah, he's gonna be a bonehead a few times.)  In the first movie, Kirk isn't thinking about leadership, he's just trying to burn out lingering self-destructive impulses.  Into Darkness Kirk still isn't really thinking about leadership at the onset, but he's emotionally healthy in a way that 2009 Kirk wasn't.  He's processed his issues, he's moving forward like a grown-up.  While he's basically allowed to have daddy issues for the rest of his life at this point, Kirk's Batman in the second movie moments are born of freshly-laid grief rather two decades of festering wounds.  Twenty minutes and one sharp look from Spock, and he came to his senses to be the legitimate hero again.  The big theme of this movie was the nature of good leadership, so I might have squeaked and flailed when Kirk's Crowning Moment of Awesome involved sacrifice rather than testosterone.

No, that moment went to Nyota Damned Uhura.  One of the (many) excellent things about the 2009 movie was the way it singled out each character and gave them a moment to shine before a new audience.  The sequel is no different (Sulu!), and I freaking loved that the big moment of kicking ass and chewing bubblegum came at the hands of Spock and Uhura rather than the ostensible leading man. Kirk is not the only one who doesn't have a scrap of ego to him; well-done, writers.

Kirk isn't the only one who went about the business of growing up, by the way.  Spock is still struggling with his dual natures, he's just pushing himself towards numbness rather than rage.  (And he gets taken to task for it by both Kirk and Uhura in the movie's funniest scene.)  This Spock has had a rougher life than the 1960s version, this one is still looking for his balance...but he's pointed in the right direction.  The kid's going to be all right.

And now we address our bad guy: I will freely admit that my eyebrows went up when I heard that Benedict Cumberbatch was going to be playing Khan.  In retrospect, I retract my reservations.  Star Trek tried very hard and broke ground in a lot of ways, but it's still a universe in which the world was nearly ended by those weirdo Asians.  Casting one of the whitest guys who ever whited as the most notorious villain in this particular universe is probably a wise choice when you're carrying around that kind of baggage.  And Cumberbatch was good.  He knew exactly how to ping the right notes to make Khan appear sympathetic without tripping over the line into being a woobie, as well as being a fantastic foil for Kirk in terms of the movie's themes of leadership and character being what you do in the dark.  The heroes are only as good as their villains.

So there you go.  Watch this movie now, there is hardly a false note in it.

And, honestly, if there's a deleted scene somewhere involving Kirk, Spock, and Uhura realizing that they just had a three-way lover's spat, I will laugh until I pee.

Review: Iron Man 3

All right, I admittedly have some complicated feels about this movie which I've been tussling with over the past day and a half or so.  Most of my wiggling is centered around the last ten minutes or so, though, so let's just get down with what works.  (As always, I have no respect for spoilers, so 'ware.)

1) The Mandarin was.  Freaking.  Awesome.  My eyebrows went up into my hairline when I first heard that he was going to be the major villain of the third movie, 'cause, whoo-boy, there is a lot of racism in them thar hills.  Turning an unintentional racist caricature into an intentional racist caricature deliberately and cynically used by a white villain in order to provoke fear is brilliant.  Excellent trolling, Marvel.

2) Literally every single thing about Pepper Potts.  I was a little worried that she was going to wind up fridged, but introducing Extremis would have actually made it palatable to me if they had decided to go that route.  (No body, no death, baybees.  It's the comic-book way.)  But Pepper getting to be an honest-to-God superhero in her own right was, like the treatment of the Mandarin, completely brilliant.  I'm going to pretend that Tony's making-everything-better in the last ten minutes mostly meant him speed-reading enough books on the human genome to keep her from going 'splodey while still letting her remain an awesome fire goddess.  Did I mention that I liked Pepper in this movie?  I really, really liked Pepper in this movie.

3) Breaking the hero down to his most basic components and then building him back up.  This is actually a textbook heroine's journey, which I love.  Let's face it, if you slot the Avengers into a Five Man Band format, Tony's The Chick, not Natasha.

The only two things I didn't like:

1) I'm still torn about removing the arc reactor.  I know, it fits the movie's theme of Tony shedding his crutches and realizing that he's a hero because he's a hero, not his traumas, but...the arc reactor.

2)  They explained the rabbit.  I was perversely hoping they wouldn't.  :)

LET BLOCKBUSTER SEASON BEGIN!

Other people follow sports teams, or knit. (Or follow competitive knitting teams.)

There are two times of the year that never fail to make me excited: May and September.  Most people associate these time periods with the start of basketball and football season.  (Do they?  I don't do sports.)  For me, though, these two months mark the beginning of something much bigger than any sports franchise.  May and September are, respectively, the beginning of the summer blockbuster season and the new run of television shows.

I'm kicking off with Iron Man 3 this Thursday, after which it's only a few more weeks until the new Star Trek and the Under the Dome miniseries*.  Be prepared to hear me from space.

*Will we finally see a King adaptation that doesn't suck?  Well, I'm a betting woman.

Today SCOTUS hears arguments on the Constitutionality of Prop 8.

Video from Huffpost here.

There is not one single argument against gay marriage that does not tell queer people that they are fundamentally worth less than "good" folk.  Not one, and you may unfollow me now if you think otherwise.

Leech Promotional Weekend

...which ends at midnight tonight.  Yeah, I know.  I fail at promoting properly, but that's been the story since Super premiered, I don't foresee myself getting dramatically better any time soon.  Anyway, from here until midnight, you can pick up Leech absolutely FREE on Amazon as part of the KDP Select program.  I wish I could tell you I was basing this on a St. Patrick's Day theme or something similar, but the honest answer is that I've been battling off a case of Captain Tripps for the past week or so, and in my fever-addled head it simply seemed like a neat idea.  This is Leech's first go-round in the KDP Select program (as I've mentioned here before, I have mixed feelings on KDP Select: on the one hand, I don't think that Amazon is the Great Evil many do, but neither do I like giving any corporate entity an easy path to power, so I tend to rotate titles in and out), but probably not it's last: I'm toying with the idea of putting all three Super titles back into KDP Select when Siren, Naomi's book, comes out and Shit Starts Getting Real, and then again for the finale.  Leech going into KDP Select means that it will not be available on any other platform save for Amazon for the next ninety days, but don't worry: give me a holler, tell me your favored format, and I'll hook you up.  I only ask that you drop me a rating or review on Goodreads or the like, if you please. :)

Second reason I suck at promotion: when I decided to do this earlier in the week, I completely forgot that I was going on a road trip this weekend, which severely curtailed the time I had available to tweet.  Or rather, it didn't curtail my ability to tweet promos, but it did make it significantly harder to bop, chat, and mask the fact that I was promoting.  On the other hand, it did stop me from hovering over my ranks like Gollum (an awful, awful habit of mine every time I do a promotion), so blessings in small places.  For those of you who follow me on Facebook and were wondering about the random country music posts: five hours each way, nothing better to do than listen to the radio and contemplate Eoin Macken.  A girl's gotta entertain herself somehow.

REVIEW: Collapse by Richard Stephenson

Description: America is falling, ready to join the Roman Empire as a distant memory in the annals of history. The year is 2027. Tired and desperate, the American people are deep in the middle of The Second Great Depression. The Florida coastline is in ruins from the most powerful hurricane on record; a second just like it is bearing down on the state of Texas. For the first time in history, the Middle East has united as one and amassed the most formidable army the world has seen since the Third Reich. A hidden army of terrorists is on American soil. This is the story of three men: Howard Beck, the world’s richest man, also diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Richard Dupree, ex-Navy SEAL turned escaped convict. Maxwell Harris, a crippled, burned out Chief of Police of a small Texas town. At first they must fight for their own survival against impossible odds. Finally, the three men must band together to save their beloved country from collapse.

My Thoughts: I like dystopian fiction because there's a slightly sociopathic aspect of my personality that likes smashing the world to bits.  Not the most honorable part of myself, to be sure, but definitely the most fun, kind of like that kid who builds Lego towers over and over again just to knock them down.  Collapse is an excellent novel in that regard.  I admittedly lawled a little bit over the idea of Iran being able to conquer anyone, but in the good-hearted way you laugh at the sillier aspects of action movies while still maintaining suspension of disbelief.  Stephenson keeps the plot moving along at a deft pace and is adept at skipping between a multitude of characters while keeping their voices distinct.  (I will note that it's a good thing that the book is ensemble, though, because my dislike of the Navy SEAL character was approaching hateboner territory by the end.)  It's a fun little popcorn read, and I'll definitely look at the second book when it comes out this summer.

Making cracks about leap-frogging is probably not appropriate, given that I've spent the evening writing smut under a pen name.

About a year ago, I was doing the first draft of Naomi's book--AKA When Shit Starts Getting Real--and, man, did I ever hit a wall. Hard. I looked like a pekinese. At the suggestion of Aud (who can just shut her face right now, she knows why), I threw it into a drawer and started work on a ridiculous standalone PNR as a way of blowing off steam. A year later, I'm editing it. I've learned two things:

1) Over-thinking, thy name is Mari.

2) Damn, I miss Naomi and Ophelia. They are truly the OTP of this series. Well, there's one more, but it's currently redacted due to spoilers.

Ugh, y'all.  Why must editing be so hard?