Abnormal Fixation Season Three Sneak Peek - Character Fireworks!

 

Guest Post: "Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma"

As Sondheim wrote, "Every Day a Little Death."

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

 

Two worlds run through Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and the whole trick of the movie is watching them bleed into each other. World one: the present day, where Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder play actual people. World two: Camp Miasma, a fictional 1980 slasher — a movie inside the movie — that Anderson's character starred in as a teenager. Schoenbrun shows us both. Then they collapse them.

Start with the fake franchise. Camp Miasma launched in 1980 and sequelized into oblivion: one in 3D, one at Christmas, one in Manhattan, one somehow in medieval times (or at the theme restaurant Medieval Times — the film enjoys the ambiguity). The rights-holders want the IP revived, but the series is blatantly homophobic, misogynistic, and transphobic, so they hire Kris (Einbinder), an up-and-coming queer filmmaker, to give it a modern edge. Kris decides the reboot needs its original final girl: Billy Presley (Anderson), a recluse who fled moviemaking as a teen and now lives at the real lakeside summer camp where the splatter films were shot. Something in that lake is hungry. Something miasmic gets into everyone.

That's the present-day thread. The 1980 film runs alongside it, and Schoenbrun signals which is which — until they stop.

Any suspicion that the David Lynch of it all is coincidental dies the moment Patrick Fischler, unforgettable in the opening scene of Lynch's Mulholland Drive, turns up inside the fake slasher as the harbinger, warning a slew of camp counselors that they're doomed. Every gag here is also a reference and also an existential tome on the unreality of reality.

Schoenbrun reassures us early that it's all tongue-in-cheek. The killer, a gender-fluid ghost named Little Death (as in the idiom for orgasms), wears an air conditioning vent as a mask, and it looks as silly as it sounds. Camp Miasma spoofs the genre while living in the same video store as Jason, Freddy, and Michael — competitor and parody at once. The homages come by the cornucopia: the spear through the lovemaking couple (à la Bay of Blood and its own ripoff, Friday the 13th Part 2), music suspiciously close to Charles Bernstein's A Nightmare on Elm Street score, a killer's weapon reflected in an eye in close-up (Argento's Opera).

The sly move is that the supposedly real world gets the same treatment. Schoenbrun shoots Kris and Billy's story through The Shining — days of the week stamped on screen, a snowbound resort, a creative type coming apart — so reality is skewed from the jump. If Camp Miasma is Friday the 13th, the outer world is a blood-drenched Oz (Lynch's Wild at Heart got there first). The natural world is unnatural; the fake film defies logic. By the end, characters with no business being anywhere near each other show up in the same frame for the slaughter, and the border between the two worlds is gone.

Einbinder and Anderson are extraordinary as women from different planets pulled into orbit. Einbinder's performance is weighted in reality; Anderson's heightened southern drawl, seductive movements, and slippery asides make her a 1940s femme fatale who wandered in. They tango to the death like the leads of Mulholland Drive.

Schoenbrun shoots the '80s footage on film stock, with the sleazy rhythms of the pre-studio slasher wave, then stitches the worlds together with rhyming images: the killer's vent becomes spiral paintings becomes a whirlpool opening at the bottom of the lake. Sometimes the mask reads as a movie camera. The 1980 cast is wiped out in a brisk five-minute massacre scored to Counting Crows' "A Long December" — a song from 1996, in a movie from 1980. The impossibility is the point. A song that cannot exist inside Camp Miasma plays over Camp Miasma anyway, and the seams of the fiction show without anyone onscreen noticing. The absurdity isn't a wink at us; it's the movie admitting it was never a movie from 1980 in the first place.

Because,  Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, seems to be saying, none of us are really here. We all are in a movie for someone else's pleasure — the killer's, God's, take your pick. All the world's a stage, and we are merely players. Blood is orgasmic, flesh is fragile and penetrable, and what we do here doesn't mean a thing in the scope of the universe, at least according to this tasty but poisonous morsel of a movie.

Considerably heavier than Jason Takes Manhattan.

Sneak Preview of Abnormal Fixation Season Three: "The Spirit of '76"

 

Abnormal Fixation Wins "Best Editing" (Short Film) at Calgary Independent Film Festival!

 

40 Years Ago: Howard the Duck (1986)

In 1986, the comic-book adaptation Howard the Duck -- executive-produced by George Lucas -- landed in movie theaters with a splat.  

The fantasy film cost thirty-seven million dollars to produce (some sources report a budget as high as 52 million, however…), and barely made back its budget. 

Meanwhile, audiences and critics hated the film from director Willard Huyck and writer Gloria Katz. 

So much so, in fact, that the words “Howard the Duck” became synonymous with the term “Hollywood movie fiasco” (at least until Waterworld came out, in 1995).

It shouldn’t have been that way.  

Not because the 1986 movie is good. 

It isn’t. 

But because the source material, a Marvel Comic created by Steve Gerber in 1973, was beloved, inventive, and off-beat. In other words, Howard the Duck was the perfect fodder for cult-movie immortality in the age of non-conventional efforts such as Buckaroo Banzai (1984) or Big Trouble in Little China (1986).  

Thus Howard the Duck may still not have found favor as a mainstream audience attraction had it been a good movie, but it would have likely found a secondary half-life as a beloved movie, at least from cine-philes and aficionados of the comic.

Instead -- as is so often the case in comic-book movie adaptations -- too much got lost in translation to the screen.

Howard the Duck’s deficits are much too easy to rattle off, today.  

First and foremost, the film never decides on its audience.  Is it a toothless slapstick comedy made for kids?  If so, it is dull for long stretches of time, and not particularly amusing.  

Is it an adult social satire with scatological humor and sexual situations?  If not, the scene in which Beverly (Lea Thompson) extracts a duck condom from Howard’s wallet sticks out like a sore thumb.

Is the movie an adventure? A relationship drama? A fish-out-of-water story? A social commentary on human existence with a nihilistic bent?

Indeed, there are moments which qualify the film as all of the above. As Richard Corliss aptly reported, in Time Magazine, Howard the Duck is “too scuzzy to beguile children” and “too infantile” to appeal to their parents.

Even though Howard the Duck never finds a consistent tone and sticks with it, it might have succeeded had its central character not been such a letdown in terms of his portrayal.  The cinematic Howard is earnest and mopey, and a far cry from the cynical, caustic, cigar-chomping character of the comic-books. 

Worse, Howard -- as devised by the filmmakers -- is largely inexpressive.  At the Chicago Tribune, Dave Kehr described the visualization of the title character and noted that “the disappointment is devastating.”  He went on to call Howard “A small person…in a latex rubber suit pasted over with feathers.”

His observation is right on the money. There is no life to this version of Howard.

Memorably, the tag-line for the Howard the Duck comic was “Trapped in a world he never made!”  The tag-line for the movie should have been, Trapped in a Movie That Doesn’t Know Who He is. 

Howard the Duck’s greatest deficit, in the scheme of things, is that the film successfully making an alien, talking duck an utterly dull and uninteresting character.  This Howard is a drag.

“No More Mr. Nice Duck.”

A highly intelligent duck, Howard, from Duck World, is unexpectedly dragged from his distant planet to Earth, and Cleveland. 

There, Howard befriends rock-and-roller Beverly Switzler (Lea Thompson) from the band Cherry Bomb, and hopes to find a way home.

He learns from Beverly’s friend Phil Blumbert (Tim Robbins) that a scientist, Dr. Jenning (Jeffrey Jones) was conducting an experiment the night he was transported, involving a giant laser and a process of “energy inversion.”

Howard hopes that by repeating the experiment, he will be able to return to Duck World.  Instead, Dr. Jenning accidentally pulls something monstrous from the Nexus of Sominus: A Dark Overlord of the Universe.  This monstrous creature inhabits Jenning’s body and wants to use the laser to bring more of his people to Earth.

When Beverly is captured by the Dark Overlord, Howard must make a choice. He can rescue Beverly and save the world, but by destroying the laser, he will be trapped on Earth permanently.

“You think I might find happiness in the animal kingdom?”

In his comic-book form, Howard the Duck was born one “hard-boiled egg,” to quote a funny line in the movie. He was an attitudinal, cynical duck who, based on his very appearance, seemed to be a twisted version of cartoon ducks throughout animation history. More than that, the comic-book version of Howard functioned as the ultimate outsider, able to comment sensibly on human beings (“talking apes” in Howard’s parlance) without, necessarily, sympathy or affection.

His cinematic counterpart, by comparison, has no edge whatsoever. Howard is voiced by Chip Zien, and whether it is a flaw in his characterization or in the writing of the character, he comes across as woefully milquetoast.

Almost none of his jokes stick the landing land, and that fact, coupled with the underwhelming visual presentation of the character, gives Howard all the charm and charisma of a wet blanket. Total Film, in 2009, latched onto the problem: “…he’s portrayed as a sweet innocent with gooey eyes and a squeaky voice (which manages to neuter the vitriol in even the more sassy lines.)”

I would argue that Howard the Duck exists for the vitriol. Take it away, and he has no purpose, and no reason to exist.

It’s clear that there’s a schizophrenic quality to Howard and his film.  At times he is supposed to be a lost, cute creature (think: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial [1982]) and at other times he is supposed to be an adult, agent provocateur (think of his relationship with a human woman).  It’s bewildering that the script never decides how it feels about Howard, or, finally, even the specifics of Howard’s identity. Is he an adult? An avatar for a child? A sex object?

I suppose Howard the Duck has gotten a bit of a bum rap in terms of its visualizations. The special effects are of their time, the mid-1980s, but nonetheless quite good.  The set-piece involving the Dark Overlord and Howard in a diner is probably the film’s best, at least in terms of pacing, effects and impact.  

And Jeffrey Jones certainly makes the most of his villainous character, mining every possible moment for twisted humor.  I also admire the stop-motion Dark Overlords that appear in the climax.  They are absurd, Lovecraftian beasts that feel like they belong in the same world as Howard of the comics.

Sometimes, when a film goes so far astray, it’s difficult to enumerate all the misfires.  I suppose one more criticism here, and hopefully a pertinent one is that the film mistakes pace, or velocity, for humor.  The film is frenetic and fast-paced, and everybody always seems to be running and screaming from location-to-location, set-piece to set-piece. 

To stand still, I suppose, would be to acknowledge that the film has no idea of its center.  Howard the Duck is thus loud, but rarely funny; save for those moments when the Dark Overlord is on-screen and making mischief.

“Every duck has his limits,” according to Howard, and I guess that goes for movie critics too.  I am always up for a re-evaluation of a critically-disdained cult movie, or a rehabilitation, even, of its reputation, if one is merited.

But Howard the Duck is sidelined by a colorless script, an eminently forgettable title character, a lack of bite, and even a lack of laughs.  This is a movie that has no idea what it wants to be.  One minute, it’s E.T.  The next it wants to be Ghostbusters. In the shuffle to find material to ape, Howard the Duck misses the comic book characters anarchic spirit.

Poor Howard, he’s right about something in this movie.  At least so far as this film is concerned, nobody laughs at the master of Quack Fu.

Sci-Fi Pulse Reviews: Abnormal Fixation, Season 2 and calls it "hilarious" and "heartfelt"

Sci-Fi Pulse's Raissa Devereux reviews Abnormal Fixation Season Two and calls it "hilarious" and heartfelt"

Check out the full review here:

In Review: Abnormal Fixation, Season 2 (Web Series)

60 Years Ago Today: War of the Gargantuas (1966)

It’s no exaggeration to state that The War of the Gargantuas (1966) was a staple of my childhood TV-watching. 

The Japanese monster movie -- released in America in 1970 -- aired frequently on our local station WWOR Channel 9 in the 1970s and 1980s; sometimes on The Million Dollar Movie, if memory serves.

Rightly or wrongly, I have come to associate these viewings of The War of the Gargantuas with the Thanksgiving holiday, or more accurately, the Friday after Thanksgiving.  

So today, I decided to take a look back at the film. Until last week, I had not seen The War of the Gargantuas since a holiday in the early 1990s when I introduced the film to my wife, Kathryn. We were at my grandparents’ house in Tom’s River, N.J. for the Thanksgiving weekend, so the film may have been playing on basic cable.

The War of the Gargantuas stars Russ Tamblyn as Dr. Paul Stewart and is a sequel of sorts to Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965). In particular, the film’s Gargantuas -- brown and green -- were created from the cells of the Frankenstein Monster, which were cast into the sea in the previous film.  

And in Japanese, I believe, the creatures are referred to not as Gargantuas but as “Frankensteins.”

Directed by Ishiro Honda, with special effects from Eiji Tsubaraya, The War of the Gargantuas concerns the attempts of several scientists to save the life of the non-violent brown Gargantua, or Sanda, even while the Japanese Army plots the demise of the violent, carnivorous green Gargantua, Gaira. 

In the end, nature does away with the giant monsters instead. But the film serves as a meditation on the nature vs. nurture debate, comparing the wild, untamed Gaira with the kindly Sanda, who knew human companionship. 

Man’s violent nature is discussed as well, since the Japanese Army refuses to acknowledge the (obvious) differences between the gargantuan monsters, and goes forward with its plan to kill them both with napalm.

“Is it possible a gargantuan might exist?”

A ship at sea is attacked by a giant octopus, and later, a giant green monster or Gargantua. 

The only survivor of the incident reports the attack, and the Japanese press runs with the story, asking Professor Paul Stewart (Tamblyn) and his associate Akemi (Kumi Mizuno) if such creatures could be real. The scientists know from experience that it is possible.  Five years earlier, they cared for a gentle brown Gargantua, before it escaped from custody.

The Green Gargantua, Gaira, soon makes landfall at Tokyo Airport and does catastrophic damage there. Later, the same beast attacks the patrons at a roof-top night-club, and is repelled only by bright light.  

The Japanese Army brings in maser tanks to annihilate Gaira, but at the last minute, the injured creature is rescued by Sanda, the brown Gargantua who has been living in peace in the Japanese Alps.

Stwewart surmises that the Gargantuas are offshoots from the same unknown cells, and therefore their cells may be able to generate additional monsters.Alarmed, the Army plans to destroy Gaira and Sanda, over Stewart and Akemi’s objections...

“We were sunk by a hairy green giant.”

The War of the Gargantuas explicitly references, at one point, the Biblical story of Cain and Abel: the story of a man who murders his brother. 

That tale roils underneath The War of the Gargantuas as Sanda and Gaira  first discover one another, and eventually face off. Early in the film, Sanda saves Gaira from the Army and nurses him back to health after maser attack. But soon Sanda -- who was raised by humans -- sees that Gaira has killed and eaten a human boater.  Sanda realizes that he can no longer protect his sibling, and nor should he. They fight it out, even though Sanda is peaceful and docile.

The other set of “brothers” in the film -- mirroring this monster dynamic -- are human scientists and soldiers. The scientists, like Sanda, are peaceful and docile, hoping to investigate the crisis and save the more peaceful of the two Gargantuas.  The soldiers, by contrast (and not entirely unlike Gaira...) are bound and determined to destroy anything they deem a threat, including the innocent Sanda.  

Like the Gargantuas, scientists and soldiers possess “the same blood, the same cell structure,” and yet are incredibly different.The movie points out the hypocrisy of the Army's higher-ups. They are bound and determined to kill both Gargantuas, even without cause, even though they are acting in a murderous fashion, like Gaira. 

But brothers are supposed to be responsible for brothers, right?

In the end, the Gargantuas are put down not by each other, or by the auspices of man, but by an underwater volcanic eruption. Though spurred by a helicopter bombing, this eruption is the “other” key player in the film’s action: Mother Nature, or God, if you will.  

The Gargantuas -- as Frankenstein Monsters and creations of man -- are “unnatural” creations. Therefore, it is only proper that nature remove them. But had monster movie history been a little different, however, Sanda and Gaira would have likely returned in another film, perhaps to battle Godzilla himself. 

On my recent screening of the film, I was pleasantly surprised by the effetive and atmospheric opening of the film. Like so many Japanese monster movies, The War of the Gargantuas opens with a ship at sea during a storm, and an attack by a giant monster.  

This time, that monster is a huge, menacing octopus, and the scene is very well-shot. The punctuation of the scene is a surprise too.  Gaira dispatches the octopus so that we think he is a hero, but then Gaira proceeds to attack the ship himself.  Out of the frying pan, into the fire. 

Later, in a scene that is a little shocking to behold, we see Gaira pursuing the swimming survivors from the ship.  He plucks them out of the water and eats them. 

The scene I most remembered from the film is set at a night club, where an American singer croons “The Words Get Stuck in My Throat,” unaware that Gaira is creeping up in the background, behind her.  

The movie misses a genuine opportunity, in my opinion, because the singer doesn’t get eaten (or stuck in Gaira’s throat...). That would have been a wicked (and nasty) joke but The War of the Gargantuas is a sincere entertainment and doesn’t tread into camp, at least intentionally. Still, it's hard not to giggle at the sea captain's cry that his vessel was attacked by a hairy green giant.

On this viewing of the film, I also admired how the filmmakers set up and exploited the comparison between Gaira and Sanda.  

Gaira is a vicious, inhuman thing that has never known love or companionship. By nature, he may have the potential to love, but he has never been nurtured.  He sees human beings only as food, biting their heads off first, apparently. This is terrifying to watch, and I remember, as a kid, being scared by Gaira.  

There's a moment in the film when a fisherman looks down into the sea, and there -- below the surface -- is Gaira, just waiting to spring. That moment offers some good old fashioned nightmare fodder, and Gaira represents nature gone wild, untamed and undisciplined. 

Sanda was raised by humans, however, and therefore understands love, companionship, and even brotherhood. That latter quality, brotherhood, is the very thing that Sanda seeks with Gaira, perhaps to alleviate a lonely, or even solitary existence.  

But Gaira simply can’t change his ways at this juncture, and is no doubt confused when his brother turns against him. Sanda, clearly, wishes events had turned out differently.

What I didn’t admire so much about The War of the Gargantuas is the fact that the mid-movie battle between Gaira and the Japanese Army seems to go on forever, and therefore lose some visceral impact.  

I fully realize that many nay-sayers disliked 2014’s Godzilla because there wasn’t a lot of monster-on-monster fighting in the film. The fights were used strategically, and mostly during the climax.

The War of the Gargantuas, however, validates that restrained approach.The battles here go on for so long, without relief, that they eventually become monumentally uninteresting. 

It’s probably sacrilege to say this, but the fights could have been pruned back by a full-third, and the movie would have moved with more grace, purpose and drive. The first thirty minutes or so of The War of the Gargantuas in particular, are terrific, and the special effects (especially during the airport attack) hold up rather well.  

Once the fighting takes center stage, however, The War of the Gargantuas feels like it is stuck in neutral. Long stretches of time go by where we just seem to be watching vehicles getting positioned, and masers firing.

The War of the Gargantuas is generally very well-regarded by fans, and I can detect why. Some feel nostalgia for the film, because they grew up with it. Certainly, I'm in this camp.

Others have keyed in on, quite rightly, the human, affecting nature of these particular monsters. You don’t want the Gargantuas to kill each other or die, and yet, at the same time, that outcome feels inevitable. 

All the best monster movies make audiences care about their creatures, one way or another. You either love them, hate them, or feel sorry for them. 

On that front, The War of the Gargantuas absolutely succeeds, and all those emotions bubble to the surface. Sanda, in particular, is heart-breaking. He attempts to build a bridge to the human world (which includes brotherhood and compassion), and carry Gaira with him -- his own flesh and blood -- across it, but doesn't succeed.  

His failure, one might say, is only human.

Abnormal Fixation Season Three Teaser!

10 Years Ago: Star Trek Beyond (2016)

The world needed a good Star Trek movie in 2016.

Why?

As a reminder of who we are, who we have been, and who, I hope, we can be again.

And because -- let’s face it -- 2016 wasn't a good year for humanity. Historic international alliances were in jeopardy because of the politics of fear and resentment, and major candidates for high office painted dystopian, apocalyptic pictures of our collective future based on the scapegoating of ethnic and religious minorities. 

Instead of actively engaging with the world, we saw an administration-in-waiting putting forward major policies about retreat and retrenchment. They wanted to build walls to separate us from the rest of humanity, presumably to cower behind in terror. And they still do.

It was and remains a worrisome time to be alive, as the unity of Western society frays, and long-held values are threatened by surging nativism, racism, and demagoguery. We are told to fear and ban those who don’t share our “beliefs,” while those who make such recommendations trade on slander, conspiracy theories, logical fallacies, and division.

Who needs enemies from outside our borders when we have them inside our borders, inciting violence and hatred?

By contrast, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek has proven itself a beacon of light and optimism for sixty years now. 

It is a vision of a future in which people of different cultures (and co-cultures) -- and different beliefs -- work together in unity, to push the boundaries of knowledge and friendship ever further. 

It is a vision in which racism is conquered, and all life forms are considered worthy of respect, of appreciation.  

It is a vision in which the unknown is only knowledge “temporarily hidden,” and fear and hatred are more dangerous forces than are alien beings, or other belief systems.

Consider: sixty ago, the makers of Star Trek put a white Caucasian male, a green-blooded Vulcan, an Asian man, a Russian, a Southern gentleman, a Scot, and an African woman together in the control room of a starship and showed us that this crew represented humanity’s best not in spite of their differences, but because of their differences

Captain Kirk, a bold leader, needed the advice of his logical alien friend, and of his cantankerous Southern medico too.  But he could not take his starship anywhere without the Asian man and Russian man driving it, or the Scotsman keeping the whole thing from flying apart. And the African woman at the communications console was the ship’s voice to the universe at large, mellifluous and gentle.

The lesson of Star Trek was -- and remains -- that the future is ours for the taking if we can overcome the petty differences of the present.

We achieve that world by getting to know each other, and learning to respect and even love the differences we see in one other. When we don’t know others, we stereotype them, we discriminate against them.  When we get to know others, we detect common ground, and we see ourselves mirrored back.

A hideous rock monster, upon further knowledge, is a mother protecting her young. (“The Devil in the Dark.”) A weird energy cloud is not a zoo-keeper or captor, but a companion, and friend, upon learning the facts (“Metamorphosis.”)  A hideous monster in a giant spacecraft is actually a child-like being, prone to laughter, testing our resolve, and seeking friendship (“The Corbomite Maneuver.”)

Those are just three examples from Star Trek’s sixty year history in which hostility is reduced not by war or gunfire, but by attempts to understand and appreciate that which is different, or unknown, to us.

We needed a good Star Trek movie in 2016 to remind us.  We needed Star Trek to remind us that we don’t have to wallow in petty resentment, and nay, that we musn’t do so, if we hope to achieve the egalitarian future Star Trek projects with such optimism and confidence.

Thankfully, Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond (2016) is not just a good Star Trek movie, it is the best of the Kelvin movies -- and perhaps the best motion picture in the franchise since the original series cast said goodbye in 1991’s The Undiscovered Country.

The purists and nitpickers will complain -- because they always do -- but Star Trek Beyond is a joyous, optimistic expression of Gene Roddenberry’s core ethos and belief system. The future need not be about war or bloodshed. It can be about friendship, loyalty, progress, and the better angels of human nature.

Star Trek Beyond occurs in a dangerous period for the Enterprise -- and the Federation -- as an unknown menace strikes unexpectedly from out of the dark, threatening the crew’s survival. This force hates everything the Federation stands for, and wants to take Earth and its people back to a previous age, to a time of victory and glory, but not, importantly, of inclusion or equality. This force thrives on fear and disunity.

Facing this threat, the Enterprise crew -- separated and endangered -- never forgets its unity of purpose, or ideals, and fights back to preserve progress.

Replete with many delightful and pertinent references to Treks past (particularly, Enterprise [2001-2005]), Star Trek Beyond doesn’t recycle old villains or ask us to relive old narratives. 

Instead, it provides a fresh tale that plays right into the cultural dialogue of its epoch. It thus fulfills Star Trek’s highest aesthetic and moral purpose: it serves as a social commentary on who we are in the present of 2016. 

And -- again optimistically -- it shows us that we draw strength from unity, not fear.  

Perhaps the greatest quality about this movie is the manner in which it shows each crew member -- Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov -- contributing to the well-being and safety of the crew, and indeed, the universe. Not since Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), have we had a Trek movie which highlights every member of the bridge crew so effectively, and with such delightful good humor.

Similarly, Star Trek Beyond’s commentary about “unity” in the face of backwards, divisive villains, not only reflects the specifics of the asymmetric warfare tactics of our current age, but finds literary and historic “symbols” to make its case about progress.

Sometimes, we get “lost,” the movie suggests, but we can find our way back…with a little help from our (pointy-eared) friends.

“Unity is not your strength. It is a weakness.”

Three years into the Enterprise’s five year mission, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) is tired, and uncertain about the future, feeling that every day is becoming “episodic.”  As his birthday nears, he considers a vice admiral position in Starfleet, and turning the ship over to Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto).

Spock, upset to learn of the death of Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy), is also reconsidering his options for the future.

The ship docks briefly at a new starbase on the frontier, Yorktown. Once there, Kirk learns from Commodore Paris (Shohreh Aghdashloo) that the Enterprise is needed to help a crew in distress.

That distress call, however, proves to be a lure to get the Enterprise into an uncharted nebula. Once inside, the ship comes under attack from a swarm of bee-like spacecraft, which cripple her.  The enemy leader, Krall (Idris Elba), apparently seeks an artifact that Kirk has aboard the starship; an artifact that can be used as a weapon.

Krall captures most of the Enterprise crew, including Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (John Cho) and holds them captive on a nearby planet surface. Scotty, however, befriends an alien, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), who has made herself a home out of a crashed Starfleet vessel over a century old, the U.S.S. Franklin.

As Kirk and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) attempt to locate the position of the missing crew-members, McCoy (Karl Urban) must tend to Spock, who has been badly wounded.

As Starfleet’s finest gather -- with no ship and no crew -- the Federation’s future itself is at stake from a monster who wants to see the progress of the last century torn down. He wants a return to the past he knows, and will stop at nothing, even mass-murder, to achieve that goal.

“This is where the frontier pushes back.”

One of the greatest lines in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country comes from the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner). He notes to Captain Kirk that “if there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.”

His line suggest that progress is always jeopardized by an old guard; a generation, or establishment that wants to maintain the status quo. Even if that status quo is conflict and warfare.

In many ways, this is also the subject matter of Star Trek Beyond. 

Krall is a man who was bred into war and conflict, and who fought the Romulans and the Xindi as a military officer. After those wars, he saw the emergence of a “brave new world” (like Gorkon’s) and couldn’t adjust to it.  

Instead, he feared it.

The world he had served in was, specifically, human centric, but this new “Federation” is not. Instead, in the new order, humans are just one square in a quilt of many colors and designs. This fact is conveyed in beautiful visual terms through Beyond’s surfeit of aliens.  It has been years since so many alien beings took center stage in a Star Trek film, and their make-up and designs here are fantastic.

But the message is that Krall wants things to go back to being the way they were when he was comfortable and at the top of the food chain; he wants to return to a “human” world, or one where humans are, at least, first in line.  

We see a similar desire in 2016 America, as demographics change.  There is a longing by some to “take America back” to a time when it was less diverse, less colorful, and more monolithic.

It is no accident, I submit, that the new starbase in the film is named Yorktown.  

It is true, of course, that Yorktown was the original name of the starship Enterprise in pre-production of the original series in the 1960s.

  

But historically-speaking, Yorktown was the site of the last battle of the American Revolutionary War. It was there, in 1781, that the forces of the Colonies defeated the British, and finally, truly became something greater than a group of states. After Yorktown, those states -- which had declared their independence from England in 1776 -- truly became the United States of America.  The war was, for all intents and purposes, over.

And yet those thirteen colonies, of course, still had big differences in terms of industry and agriculture, religious belief, and even geographical features. Beyond, by selecting the name Yorktown, celebrates the last battle for the birth of the United Sttates. And thus, we can speculate that this Yorktown is the place that expresses, in the final frontier, the ideals of the ethnically-diverse, still young United Federation of Planets.

We know it is vulnerable. Bones compares it, explicitly, to a glass snow-globe. 

Glass snow-globes break. 

By inference, we understand that this is a fragile time in the history of the Federation.

Pitched against the young Federation is a villain named Krall, who is essentially a 23^rd century equivalent to Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). But Krall is based more upon the literary figure, Kurtz than he is the historical one. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz is described as a demi-god; as being more than a man. Given his abilities to regenerate (and absorb life), Krall could be given the same description.

In Conrad’s narrative, Kurtz is a man who goes to the Congo Free State and becomes a tyrant of sorts, using superior technology to control the natives. He is prone to exclamations of hate such as “Exterminate the Beasts!”  

Krall -- also like his literary corollary -- travels to uncharted territory, harnesses unusual technology, and plans a campaign of extermination. He even gets, upon his demise, a kind of “the horror, the horror” moment, at least in visual terms.  

But most importantly, Krall is a strong contrast to our Starfleet crew.

He is a twisted reflection of Kirk, at least on one level. Kirk fears getting “lost” as captain of a starship, engaging in an enterprise with no end, and with no relativistic direction. Krall is the embodiment of such a lost captain; one who goes up river, or into the nebula, and strikes out to make his own kingdom or fiefdom. He cannot live in modernity.

And Krall, again in keeping with his literary antecedent, views alien races (read: the natives) not as equals or as beings to respect, but as people to conquer; to destroy. Like the Enterprise crew, he is “of” civilization, and yet falls victim to ethnocentrism; the belief that other cultures are not as worthy as his own. This is especially ironic considering how he willingly and repeatedly sacrifices his human appearance for longevity.

Star Trek Beyond thus diagrams a pitched battle between the forces of egalitarian progress -- represented by the U.S.S. Enterprise crew -- and the regressive forces of nativism/racism/imperialism. This “war” is waged at the aforementioned Yorktown, a place that -- if it survives -- will be remembered, perhaps, as a true test of the Federation’s unity (just as the 1781 battle of Yorktown cemented the unity of the Colonies).

I find it fascinating how Star Trek Beyond’s screenplay suggests a knowledge of history and literature, and more than that, finds a way to give those influences valid context inside the Star Trek world. 

It’s no accident, either, that the film picks and chooses its original series references carefully.  

In my introduction, I noted the line about the unknown being something, simply, “temporarily hidden.”  

That is an exact quote from Pine’s Kirk in Star Trek Beyond. It is also, importantly, a quote from Shatner’s Kirk in the original Trek episode, “The Corbomite Manuever.”  

That episode concerns the Enterprise crew grappling with a fear of the unknown, until the light of understanding dawns. There is even a crewman in that installment, named Bailey, who becomes convulsed with fear…until steadied by Kirk. Star Trek Beyond chooses wisely indeed, this particular allusion, because the film concerns what happens when people are fearful. The “other” becomes someone not merely different…but terrifying…a force to be destroyed.  

This is precisely how Krall sees the universe.

There are other original series references in Beyond that will draw positive reactions from longtime fans.  These come from “Amok Time” (“in a pig’s eye!”), “Who Mourns for Adonais” (the giant green space hand quip), and “A Private Little War” (“Lucky his heart is where his liver should be, or he’d be dead right now.”) That last one, especially, plays into Beyond’s theme of being strong because of differences, not in spite of them. McCoy credits Spock’s survival to his Vulcan anatomy. Were he human, he would have been killed.  

He is strong, literally, because of his differences from us.

The theme of “differences making one strong” weave in and out of the Beyond narrative at different points. Jaylah is a thickly-accented alien of unique appearance, for example. She could be treated as an enemy, but Scotty treats her as a friend, and her knowledge and abilities become part of the key to defeating Krall. 

Strictly-speaking, Kirk doesn’t “need” Jaylah alive to defeat Krall at Yorktown. By that point, she has done all she can do, really. But Kirk treats her as a necessary member of the team, and risks his life to rescue her, in one of the film’s many dynamic action sequences.

Star Trek Beyond also references today’s post-War on Terror threats with Krall’s method of ambush. He launches an attack against the Enterprise with thousands of bee-like fighter crafts which carry quite a “sting.” 

There is no typical ship-to-ship combat here (a nice way of keeping things fresh and inventive, certainly). Instead, the Enterprise is overwhelmed by a force of chaos the crew can hardly understand.  Welcome to the world of modern, unconventional warfare. Two forces, with significantly different strategy and tactics, collide.

Historically-speaking, I couldn’t help but think of this ambush scene as being reflective of the U.S.S. Cole incident. That American Navy destroy was attacked by terrorist bombers in October of 2000.  

But the situation is analogous A powerful force, representing a vast organization or nation-state, is suddenly and unexpectedly jeopardized by a small but zealous force of vicious fighters using the techniques of asymmetric warfare.

But Star Trek Beyond succeeds as Star Trek not only because of its social commentary and allusions to literature and history, but because writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung have absolutely captured the essence of the franchise’s diverse characters, and their relationships. 

It is a pleasure to report that Pine, Quinto, Urban and all the others have become their characters in a dynamic way.  In the original Star Trek, there was always this sense of esprit de corps -- of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ingenuity in the face of danger and insurmountable odds.  

This film nails that spirit like no film in the franchise since the aforementioned The Undiscovered Country.  Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura and the others live and breathe again, and showcase, for fans, the promise of Starfleet. 

Even when the people around you are different in color, sex, or planet of origin, they are worthy of, loyalty, empathy, compassion, and, finally, love. 

That pointy-eared hobgoblin who drives you crazy can be, simply, the best friend you’ll ever know. 

Although I can’t believe this, there are those fans who complain of too much action in Star Trek Beyond.  There is indeed, plenty of it, but what there is really a lot of here is, simply, characterization…of the crew as individuals, and the crew as teammates.  

Again, not since Star Trek IV have we seen the crew on individual adventures, but working towards a task accomplishing “the needs of the many.”

And the message -- of all these unlike parts working together for the betterment of us all -- is transmitted, expertly, particularly in the film’s coda.  

We hear the traditional Star Trek narration. 

You know the words by heart: “Space, the final frontier…”

But for the first time, this over-50 year old narration is not spoken by merely the captain of a starship.  

Instead, the entire command crew delivers it sequentially -- handing-off the words from Kirk to Spock to Bones, to Scotty, and so on -- thus proving again, that the diverse characters of Star Trek are joined in a noble purpose, for the sake of us all. They are united, not divided. 

And in their unity they are indomitable.

I am thankful we got a great and timely Trek in Star Trek Beyond ten years ago.