I’m personally looking forward to Star Trek into Darkness, despite the criticism over lens flares and altered character profiles.
Director J. J. Abrams has modernized and refreshed the franchise in a way that could not have been done without a reboot, and as much as I’d like to have seen more of the classic Star Trek stuff on the big screen, it wasn’t going to fly with mass market audiences, so I can accept that.
I do wish, however, that they could get their 3D done right. Segments of Hollywood are starting to learn that 3D either needs to be done either from the start, on the ground, with 3D cameras and a director who understands how to direct a 3D feature, or it should be skipped entirely.
Filming a movie with standard techniques, then adding the 3D effects in post-production simply doesn’t work well. It looks like a cardboard puppet show, and it gives people headaches. No matter how good the tech and the editors get, it will never work because it requires the creation of dimensional information that simply doesn’t exist. It’s equivalent to trying to increase the resolution of a photograph to improve the detail: the information required simply doesn’t exist. Many filmgoers and critics have taken to calling this process ‘fake 3D’, and for good reason.
Abrams doesn’t like to film in 3D, and he doesn’t like 3D films, he’s said as much in several interviews and snippets in the past, so when he made Star Trek Into Darkness, he used standard film techniques. Afterward, the studio decided to fake the 3D for release, in hopes to box office revenue. Thus, it feels a bit duplicitous to hear Abrams yammering away about how great the 3D is in the latest behind the scenes featurette:
Of course, the only way they’ll stop making fake 3D film effects is if we stop paying to see the films that use them. If you’re ever unsure about the veracity of a film’s 3D when thinking about seeing it, there is a great minimalist site that lists all the 3D movies as either ‘real’ or ‘fake’ complete with verified sources for the information, and footnotes about films that hybridize the process. Bookmark it, and use it. It’s the resource I check when I’m not sure myself.
Here is the latest full-length trailer for the film:
The official synopsis is thus:
When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.
Star Trek into Darkness hits theaters in 2D, 3D and Imax 3D on May 17, 2013.
