“I’ve come for your Grey Poupon.”

The newest trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness hit the web today, and unlike previous trailers, where all I could remember was Alice Eve in her bra and that Nordic ice queen bob (*bites knuckle until it bleeds*), this one seems to cover just a few main points:

• Explosions

• Lights shining into the camera

• Benedict Cumberbatch’s bangs (you wouldn’t like him when his bangs are messy)

• Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice (grooowwwlw growwl growwly growwwl)

• Listen to your friend, Bruce Greenwood, Kirk. He’s Canadian.

Yes, it’s probably a lot more explosiony and less about logic and human nature and clashes of culture than you remember from Star Trek, and pretty sure William Shatner never flew around space in a jetpack. But what this movie presupposes is… maybe he should have? I’ll allow it.

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Hi, I’m the ship’s doctor, this is how we look and dress in the future

The second trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness just hit the web, and as I’ve said all along, letting JJ Abrams direct both Star Trek and Star Wars was a weird idea, like the same guy running both Coke and Pepsi, or having Mick Jagger sing for the Beatles. In this new trailer, it looks like Abrams just gets confused as to which one he’s making and films an homage to that Star Wars scene where the Millennium Falcon has to turn sideways to fit between the asteroids:

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“I’m in a glass case of emotion!”

The new trailer for the JJ Abrams-directed, Kurtzman/Orci/Lindelof-scripted Star Trek Into Darkness just hit the web this morning (not to be confused with the shorter teaser from last week or the teaser teaser before that). Like the trailer for the first one, the whole first half is voice over from Bruce Greenwood, who tells Kirk that even though he might be King Sh*t of Huge Balls Mountain right now, there’s going to come a day when his manly hubris and scrotum-based chutzpah are going to get people killed. Or as Val Kilmer would say, “I don’t like you, ’cause your dangerous.” (*air bite*) Greenwood plays Christopher Pike in the movie, but I prefer to think of this advice as coming straight from Greenwood himself. Did you know he lost a front tooth in a bar fight? He also does a mean trumpeting elephant impression. And you know you can trust him because he’s Canadian.

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Pictured: The upside-down mouth of absolute authority

Note: This is an extended version of a review I wrote for the Portland Mercury. Go over there if you want the short version.

Scars vs. Helmets

The first thing you need to know about Dredd 3D is that Karl Urban never takes his helmet off for the entire movie. There’s a scene near the end where his space pants are hitched up so high into a future camel toe that I could practically draw a topographical map of his balls from memory, but his eyes and forehead retain their mystery.

OBEY MY BALLS!

The second thing you need to know is that all the bad guys have scars on their faces. Classic bad guy move.

The third thing you need to know about Dredd (note: these are not listed in order of importance) is that it’s shockingly good. Shocking not necessarily because it’s so incredibly good, but because the possibility of it being even slightly good seemed so remote. I mean, imagine someone saying they’d remade Battlefield Earth. That’s basically what Dredd 3D sounds like to most of us, who were only aware of the source material through Sly Stallone slurring “Aayyy yam the law!” in some half-remembered trailer from the nineties.

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SPACE LAW!

Before it was a crappy Sly Stallone movie, Judge Dredd was a British comic that began in the seventies, about a futuristic, Dirty Harry-style cop who combined the powers of cop, judge, jury, executioner, meter maid, animal control officer, and colostomy-bag emptier. Well now it’s also a movie from director Pete Travis (Vantage Point), starring Karl Urban (who already has a better action-hero name than Judge Dredd), the oddly-cast Olivia Thirlby, and Lena Headey, aka Cersei Lannister. As many have already pointed out, it bears a striking resemblance to Gareth Evans’ The Raid, which also concerns law officers fighting their way through a high rise against a gang of drug lords. However, I’m more interested in the idea that when British dudes were creating their idea of the ultimate law enforcement apparatus, their first step was to give him a big crazy helmet. It’s like all authority over there is headgear-based. “But sir, you cahn’t practice law, your wig isn’t even powdered!” (*thunderous chortling, derisive handkerchief waving*)

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