Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

And this is a mixed review of it: it had good points, and some ones that didn't sit as well with me.   No, no, some flat out bad points.   Lots more of them than the good points, I think, or they were so large that they overshadowed the good points.

The best part was that this was unplanned with my dad and we had a long talk on the way home and pretty much agreed with each other on where this went sideways.   It was illuminating, fun, and I'm so glad I joked that we should see it, and then we just went 'yeah, let's do that right now.'   (My mom was away, otherwise we wouldn't have last minute detoured.)

Anyway, gonna be spoiler-y, so I'm putting this behind a page break. 

I really loved Jaylah.   Even more so when I looked up her actress and found out she's Algerian.   (So is my mom.)  But she was smart, funny, and brave, and she was pretty badass and that's nice to see.   (So was Uhura saving Spock while he's trying to save her.   They gave the women some chops in this, and I'm really glad.   Then again, the men were also smart, funny, and brave, and so it felt very much like everyone was on equal ground.)

I actually was rooting for Jaylah/Scotty, but I feel like that might just be me.

It was funny.   That line about Spock giving Uhura a tracking device was epic, as was the long, awkward silence afterward.   As was Spock realizing, and his defense being that he didn't mean it to be.   

Kinda stalker-y that he didn't at least warn her about it and just let her keep the necklace, but this movie wasn't perfect in a lot of ways. 

Diversity: they had a lot of it, including Sulu apparently being married to a dude, which was, I thought, a nice nod to Takei.   

The visuals were pretty amazing and I loved a lot of little things: the use of bees/bee-like constructs*, the nod to older things - TOS, and 'old' music, and I'm just gonna say it - kinda thought the bike brought the sex appeal.

Onto what I didn't like: I think it can be summed up in my dad saying he felt like it could have been any other action movie.   And while this movie tried, it didn't really bring up anything thoughtful.   When it did**, it was all superficially dealt with.   They won, so they acknowledged the weakness, but fuck that.   No real thought or weight given to the other side, nothing to tuck away for next time.  Nope, just come up with a clever plan, depend on luck and some martial arts moves, and everything will be well.   We both were disappointed and were getting nostalgic for TOS.   

Another problem I had was the main character.   Another black dude who was turned bestial because, y'know, that's never been done before and isn't racist at all.   /heavy, heavy sarcasm.   Beyond that, he was a cardboard cutout, and that actually bolsters the racism argument: he was there to be bestial and angry and lash out.   But, I guess they thought they were diversifying by adding yet another black guy.   They probably should have been more sensitive to the history of what this trope represented.   (Then again, they seemed to rely heavily on tropes in this movie.)

In my opinion, this was the weakest effort of all three of the movies.   I went, for the most part, because it was Chekov's last hurrah in these series, and I wanted to support Yelchin because that was just a tragic death.   He was so young!   I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but here seems a better place anyway: the acting was fabulous.   Not just Yelchin, but the whole crew did amazing things with what they were given.   The problem is what they were given.   I hope it turns around, but I feel like this might have killed Trek in the theater for me.

We both agreed that we weren't upset or disappointed that we saw this in the theater, but seriously what was up with the reliances on tropes?

*There was a panel on Readercon on bees in sci-fi that this would have been perfect for if only it had come out a month or two earlier!   Also got me thinking about this a lot, so I really appreciated this aspect.