PG-13 for a lot of punchy-punchy violence. There are some people who die. Some of them die in kinda sorta sci-fi gross ways. It isn't exactly explicit, which is good. But considering that Section 31 is the product of quasi-R-rated Star Trek: Discovery, the movie is pretty tame. I kind of wish that my oldest watched it with me, but she said that she wanted to catch up. That's a bummer, because she's not watching R-rated Star Trek any time soon. There's also a couple of sexual reference. There's a gag where a fight bursts in on a couple lovemaking, but it is an extremely tame joke. There's also some language.
DIRECTOR: Olatunde Osunsanmi I know! I'm knocking them all out in one night. My wife has been incredibly distracted and there's been this push to take advantage of her distraction by killing as many of my blogs in one night. It probably makes for an extremely fried writer. But what can I say? I love not having to do these tomorrow. Unless, of course, we get through another movie tonight... ...which we probably will. The critics have spoken about this movie. People hate it. Yeah, they hate it. Do I hate it? No. Is it incredibly forgettable? Yeah, that is one that I can sit by. I'm one of those fans who thinks that there is no bad Star Trek. There's good and better Star Trek. Section 31 is fine. I'm probably going to spend a lot of time simultaneously griping and defending why this movie is fine. It does commit a couple of sins that Star Trek fans should not settle for. But in terms of being the abysmal atrocity that people have been making it out to be? It isn't that. It is a perfectly fine sci-fi action movie that lives in the Star Trek universe. But the frustration with the film isn't that it isn't a good movie (It's probably not that either.) The problem is that it isn't really a good Star Trek movie. Some of the problems come from the fact that nu-Trek has had a hard time finding its audience. I adore nu-Trek. I am living in a Star Trek renaissance. The reason why I have Paramount+ is almost exclusively for the Star Trek. It could be called "Star Trek+" and I would be paying unfathomable amounts of money to get me more Trek. Be aware, I may not be the most objective source for defending a Section 31 film. Section 31 is the worst impulses of nu-Trek. It's still something I would watch (and potentially watch again if anyone said that they wanted to watch it with me!), but I have to admit that it falls into some of the trappings that the Paramount+ era kind of falls into. A lot of it comes from the aftermath of the Kelvinverse Star Trek. That's the Star Trek franchise that started in 2009. There's a lot of names that appear in both the Kelvinverse movies and in the Paramount stuff, so let's chalk up tonal similarities to that. Paramount and Kelvinverse Trek is far more adventure and action that the original shows tended to steer away from, shy of season finales and one-offs. It was more about exploring moral issues while stressing that humanity had the potential to do phenomenal things as long as they stayed open-minded. It is why I love Trek. I'm not saying that the nu-Trek avoids that. In fact, some of those philosophies (minus the action, which it clearly embraces) can be sledgehammers from time-to-time. (I don't hate the sledgehammers, though, if I'm being honest. Some of the fans need to get clobbered over the heads with these messages.) But the concept of Section 31 always sat at odds with me. It seemed like the most anti-Roddenberry concept in Star Trek. For those who aren't the most Trekkie out there, Section 31 was introduced on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The idea behind Section 31 was that they were the branch of Starfleet who weren't afraid to get their hands dirty. They did the black ops work so that humanity had the moral foundation to explore the galaxy with their heads held high. That kind of bummed me out. Roddenberry's argument seemed to fall apart with that logic. Roddenberry always believed that man, when he moved past war and capitalism, (while embracing diversity!) was capable of being an inspiration for the universe. But if Section 31 existed, there had to be a failure in there somewhere. As a commentary on America as the City on a Hill, it worked really well. But if Star Trek was meant to be the one science fiction show that had hope for humanity to get better, Section 31 as a concept was a bummer. So announcing a Section 31 television show that would become a movie was the least exciting announcement for me. I don't want Section 31. I want Section 31 to be the bad guy that Starfleet has to shut down. This is almost the crux of why I don't think that Section 31 is necessarily a great Star Trek movie as opposed to a watchable science fiction movie. My takeaway from this movie is that it is a futuristic sci-fi Mission: Impossible. The movie is comprised of a team of specialized secret agents and there's a mole taking them out from the inside? They tell some jokes. They do some dark stuff? That's sci-fi Mission: Impossible, another Paramount franchise. And do you know what? I like Mission: Impossible. I shouldn't dislike the notion of a section of Star Trek being Section 31. After all, I have been the one fan of what Disney+ has been doing with offering a variety of Star Wars offerings. I like the idea that we can distance ourselves from the Skywalkers with Star Wars. But Section 31 feels barely Star Trek. There are a couple of nods to the greater Star Trek universe. Rachel Garrett will eventually become the captain of the doomed Enterprise-C. There's a laughing Vulcan. There's even that race of people who are split in half when it comes to being monochromatic. That's fun. But the only thing that is crucial to the plot that makes this a Star Trek story is the Mirror Universe. Do you know what? The Mirror Universe hasn't been ruined for me. Yeah, they keep mentioning the Mirror Universe. I get why. They got Michelle Yeoh to be a recurring character from the Mirror Universe. If I was in charge of Star Trek and I got Michelle Yeoh to play in my pond, I would make her character more important as well. And do you know what? My favorite stuff out of Star Trek: Section 31 is the Terran Empire stuff that the Mirror Universe offers. So that's not a loss for me. The stuff that almost doesn't work for me is the aggressive three-act structure. As I mentioned, Section 31 was initially sold as a television show. My guess based on what I saw here was that it was meant to be a limited series with few episodes. The movie is an hour-and-a-half and there is a very clear three act structure. The first act is the recruitment of Phillipa Georgiou; the second act is Among Us; the third act is the showdown with the bad guy. It's very clear. But it is a movie that never quite makes the movie scope and it's a TV show that never really lets us bond with a character that we're supposed to care about. Honestly, I was in the second act looking at the timecode and all I can think of "this movie needs to do something big to justify its movieness." While the third act kind of delivers on that, it seems like the film was intentionally keeping them on a desolated planet because there wasn't much story that would ever justify leaving this place for the grander scope of a spy-fi movie. I hate to say it, I would have preferred this as a show. The thing is, it would have been a show that everyone would have hated even more than the movie. The movie's blessing, for the greater nerd community, is that it is easily forgotten. It's a side-story that doesn't really affect much of the main Star Trek canon with things that are barely Star Trek. But the show would have done one thing: it might have made us care about San. The fulcrum of the movie needs us to not only care about San, but also be hurt by his reasonings to destroy the universe. Neither of those is really accomplished because so much of the story is purged for the sake of making a 90 minute movie. Golly, this movie actually makes me want to turn my back on my 90 minute rule, which I still stand as the perfect length for most movies. My final gripe comes from the notion of Fuzz. I don't hate Fuzz. I'm very cool with slightly silly Star Trek. But the movie offers something cool that never really pays off. Just to spoil it, Fuzz is a microbe who is sentient and wants to kill us all. I like that. To do that, he inhabits a robot body that is a member of the team. The robot body...is a Vulcan. Now, the microbe comes across as an Irish psychopath. It's fun. But out of all the bodies in the universe and the species he could be, he chooses to be the one who wouldn't act like an Irish psychopath. I thought that there was going to be some kind of Vulcan payoff. Maybe he could act like a stoic Vulcan in public, only to become a loudmouth braggadocio when the spotlight wasn't on him? I don't know. Also, the guy who looks like a Borg can't be in Star Trek because...he looks like a Borg without being a Borg. But in terms of what does work is that it is super fun. My friends tend not to care for Kelvinverse Star Trek. I get that. The Kelvinverse isn't my favorite Star Trek, but I also believe that to be true for all of the Star Trek movies, with maybe the exception of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. These are movies that are meant to be fun for the general audience. The goal of Section 31 isn't to make you think. There's a lot of Star Trek out there that is meant to make you think. But sometimes, Star Trek is allowed to be fun action. While I wish that Section 31 got me thinking, I can deal with some good old fashioned dumb fun. If you watch it for fun, you'll have a good time. If you watch it for pushing the boundaries to the Final Frontier, it offers none of that. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
February 2025
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