TheRetroCritic

In this third episode, Adam (aka The RetroCritic) and fellow film buff Jamie discuss movie news, review a recent release ( Star Trek: Into Darkness  this week) and rewind back to more retro cinematic topics. Do you know the answer to  The Big Game ? What song is being sung in the  "I Shat Myself"  segment? Send your answers here:  bigrewindpodcast@gmail.com The winner will get a mention in  The Big Shout Outs  at the end of the next episode. @TheRetroCritic retrocriticblog.blogspot.com youtube.com/Cablogula youtube.com/TheRetroCritic

(SPOILER-FREE REVIEW) "I. Am. Better." "At what?" "Everything." That's the conversation Benedict Cumberbatch's villain has with Chris Pine's Kirk in the trailers for this new J.J. Abrams Trek outing Star Trek: Into Darkness . And, you know what? This movie could have easily had the exact same conversation with the first Star Trek reboot. Yes, it is, indeed, better. At everything. As the title suggests, Into Darkness is darker (duh!) but it's also bigger and more fun. Which is not to say it's perfect, no Star Trek movie is, but it sets out to be a superior sequel and achieves just that. This time around, more emphasis is placed on the film's villain and, considering how forgettable Eric Bana's bitter future Romulan was in the first movie, this is certainly a good move. Especially since Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrisson is such a good villain, the Sherlock actor stealing the show in almost every scene he&#

Rebooting/continuing the Star Trek franchise was never going to be easy. What were they supposed to do? Make a movie based on the flop series Enterprise ? Invent a brand new Star Trek crew, give them their own movie and hope for the best? Give one of the old crews their weight in gold to stick around and continue making Star Trek movies? With J.J. Abrams onboard, in the end the goal became to restart the franchise with the Original Series crew, except with a brand new, younger cast, tons of action, state of the art special effects and try to somehow create a parallel timeline within the film itself in order to keep things fresh and avoid remaking the old show and the old movies shot-for-shot. Probably the only logical approach, but still pretty risky. The result was an epic, expensive blockbuster with enough action to keep even the most reluctant viewers entertained. An origins story, we got to see Kirk and co.'s pre-Enterprise days and their earliest of missions which a

Ah Nemesis... The last of the "old school" Star Trek movies, Star Trek: Nemesis had the misfortune of following the least liked film of that franchise so it was either going to confirm that Insurrection was no accident and the Picard crew had really gone as far as they could or completely the opposite. And although critics and audiences had nothing too positive to say about Nemesis and the film ended the Star Trek franchise promptly, never even giving the Voyager , Deep Space Nine or Enterprise crews a chance to make it on the big screen, for me Nemesis did exactly what it set out to do and delivered something as good as First Contact , if not better. Now I won't pretend that Nemesis doesn't have its problems, every Star Trek movie does. For one thing, Tom Hardy's villain, a young Romulan-made Picard clone, is a bit more cartoonish than he probably should be and looks nothing like Patrick Stewart. He's not bad, it's a decent, very entertaining

And then things took a weird turn... Star Trek: Insurrection , the ninth film of the franchise, is quite probably the least respected of all Star Trek films, and although it's much more watchable than most would give it credit for, it's easy to see why it is often last on people's Top 10 Star Trek Movies lists. Look out for mine on here very soon, by the way. First Contact gave the Picard team solid ground to build on with a respectable outing full of action, gross leathery Borgs and time-travel. With Insurrection, the idea was to go for more of a Voyage Home vibe: a lighter, more one-setting based, more personal story. Problem is, Shatner and co. could indulge in such a holiday flick after three iconic, more serious efforts but The Next Generation peeps only had the vastly uneven Generations behind them and First Contact, their first decent movie. No time to go on holiday, surely! Time to nip it in the bud, I would say. Alas, right off the bat, Insurrec

Finally free from the clutches of the iconic Original Series , Picard and co. finally got their own movie to play with and delivered this much better, much darker, much less gimmicky outing. This time, we're introduced to the Borgs, a race of soulless, zombie-like drones capable of assimilating people completely. A popular race of bad guys in the series, their Hellraiser -style S&M look certainly begged for a movie! First Contact opens with Picard having a nightmare about the time he almost became a Borg forever and little by little, as the current Borg threat increases, he starts to crack up, feeling a responsibility to sort that problem out himself as he still has a slight connection to them but also wanting a kind of revenge, closure if you will, for what they did to him the first time around. The plot sees the crew of the Enterprise witness the Earth get completely assimilated by the Borgs so they go back in time before Earth made its "first contact" with al

Kirk, Picard, in the same movie. As a kid, it seemed too good to be true. Turns out it was. Back in the day, the entire point of watching Generations wasn't really to see the first The Next Generation Star Trek movie but to see both iconic Captains together in the same place for the first time ever. It was a good gimmick and it totally worked: I loved it. Re-watching this seventh instalment for the franchise years later, though, made me realise just how flawed this entire movie was and how the gimmick I originally thought of as awesome actually hurts the movie more than it benefits it. The film opens on Kirk, Scotty and Chekov showing up on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B, then a big macguffin solar cloud in space appears and takes out some of the ship, seemingly killing Kirk, who promptly sacrificed himself to save the ship. I say "macguffin" because that's really all this plot rests on since that's what not only drives everyone's motivation

After two outings heavily reliant on comic relief and having a lighter tone altogether, The Undiscovered Country comes in with the director of The Wrath Of Khan at hand and a much more political plot far easier to take seriously than anything involving whales or crazy cat ladies. This was a return to form for the series which had become more cute and campy than legitimately involving sci-fi. Here we have what is basically the Cold War in space but with Shakespearian Klingons, sexy shape-shifting aliens and... Vulcan Kim Cattrall. All weird, wonderful stuff so far, I think you'll agree. This time, the overall tone mixes serious with playful much more convincingly and it never really goes too far one way or the other making this the most balanced Star Trek flick in a while. It has its fun moments with Kirk and McCoy having to deal with being unjustly exiled to some snow/desert planet and Uhura trying to get to grips with the Klingon language but it takes itself somewhat seriou

Ah Star Trek V ... Just thinking back to it is a joy! This William Shatner-directed outing for the Star Trek gang sees interesting ideas being merged with some truly silly ones to create what is quite probably the goofiest non-whale-related movie of the franchise but also one of the most entertaining and memorable. The film opens on a desert planet where a prophetic Vulcan called Sybok appears to have the power to heal others of their fears. It's a promising start and just when it looks like this might develop into a really cool plot involving magical Vulcans and stuff, we meet the Star Trek (old) boys who are on shore leave just bumming around, being wacky. You've got Kirk climbing mountains, super-Spock showing off his brand new rocket-boots and McCoy joining both of them for a drink and a "Row Row Your Boat" sing-along over a camp fire. It's cute and you do feel like these guys really have become a family but it's pretty cartoonish considering

Why The Voyage Home is always included in the good even numbered Star Trek flicks is pretty darn strange. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hate Star Trek IV, actually it's a pretty fun watch, it's just that... Whales? Really?! Star Trek has always had a sense of humour to it and that's fine. Usually in the Original Series it kept its lols for the very last scene, though. And that was usually enough. But a whole movie of just lols? I'm scared... The Voyage Home takes place right after The Search For Spock , though it really doesn't need to, and the gang is still using that Klingon ship Christopher Lloyd so generously lent them. The Federation is pissed off at them for going on their nutty searching-for-one-dead-Vulcan mission but it turns out that the Earth itself is in peril due to a probe that's... making whale sounds and that's... bad for some reason because... whales... don't exist in the future? No, I'm not making this up.

Some new Star Trekky goodness for y'all...

For me, this movie is why the whole odd numbers curse thing just doesn't work. Do people really love The Wrath Of Khan and not like The Search For Spock ?  Illogical doesn't begin to describe it... Yes The Wrath Of Khan was a good, fun movie but so is this one! I mean, no Star Trek movie is perfect and neither is The Search For Spock: some of the humour in it is a bit corny, the whole Spock-is-inside-McCoy thing is needlessly delayed (though Deforest Kelley acting nuts is ALWAYS worth it) and Leonard Nimoy's Spock isn't physically in the film for most of it. That said, there's plenty of great, epic stuff in the film. For one thing, there's plenty of action as Klingons finally take centre stage on the big-screen and follow-up on the whole using-Genesis-as-a-weapon thing and one of them is played by Christopher Lloyd, which is awesome in itself. Plus the actual search for Spock, besides being a mission I can totally get behind, is handled really well

After the relatively slow-paced, somewhat psychedelic, Kubrick-esque first movie outing for the Star Trek gang, they all returned for The Wrath Of Khan , a far more action-oriented sequel with a significant villain who isn't a giant space anus. Though personality-wise, he's not far off. This sequel is often on people's Best Star Trek Movies list, right at the top, and it's easy to see why: you've got a cruel enemy out for revenge, Chekov with brain bugs in his ears, Kirk screaming "KHAAAAN!", a doomsday machine of sorts, that infamous ending but, most importantly, it's just very entertaining and much closer to the Star Trek blockbuster format fans were hoping for. Ricardo Montalban is what most people remember about this one, mostly because of the ridiculous attire his character, we assume, made for himself during his banishment on a barren planet but also because of that glorious mullet, those weirdly toned old-man-pecs, his sadistic hate for C