militarism | the m0vie blog

435. Star Trek Into Darkness (#—)

Posted on September 6, 2025 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This week, JJ Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness.

Captain James T. Kirk has been in command of the USS Enterprise for a year. In that time, he has not lost a single service man. Kirk is angling for the hottest new assignment – a five year mission of exploration into uncharted territory – when a terrorist attack masterminded by a rogue Starfleet Security Officer throws everything that Kirk thinks he knows into doubt.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: 2013, 9/11, allegory, American militarism, Andrew Quinn, existential commentary, existential threats, film, film reception, imdb, IMDb top 250, justice, khan, kirk, militarism, morality, narrative choices, Osama bin Laden, podcast, post-9/11, sequel, socio-political issues, star trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, storytelling techniques, utopian vision | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Across the Spider-Verse” as a Superhero Empowerment Fantasy…

Posted on June 2, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, it seemed like a good opportunity to delve into what the movie is about, particularly its relationship to other recent superhero movies.

After all, what is the point of superhero movies? What are they about? What purpose do they serve? In recent years, the superhero genre has come to be shaped by the language of militarism and law enforcement, treating superheroes as cops and soldiers who just happen to wear masks. Across the Spider-Verse is a film largely about grappling with the legacy of that trend, in which the central villains are “an elite strike team” of “all the best Spider-People” whose job it is to maintain the status quo, no matter how many innocent people suffer to maintain the established order.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: canon, continuity, cops, in the frame, into the spider-verse, law enforcement, miles morales, militarism, policing, spider-man: across the spider-verse, status quo, the escapist | Leave a comment »

303. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (#—)

Posted on September 3, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

So this week, to mark its re-release in Irish and British cinemas, Nicholas Meyer’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Now supervising cadets at Starfleet Academy, Admiral James Tiberius Kirk finds himself reflecting on his mortality. A routine training mission provides an unlikely reckoning when genetically engineered superman Khan Noonien Singh escapes from his exile and vows revenge on Kirk as the man who marooned him. Kirk has lived his life on the assumption that there is no such thing as a no-win scenario, but that philosophy is about to be sorely tested.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The 250, The Original Series | Tagged: aliens, Harve Bennett, Khan Noonien Singh, kirk, Leonard Nimoy, militarism, Nicholas Meyer, revenge, spock, star trek, star trek ii, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Starfleet, violence, William Shatner | 2 Comments »

New Escapist Column! On Thor as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s One True Superhero…

Posted on July 1, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Thor: Love and Thunder, it seemed like as good an excuse as any to take a look back at the character of Thor within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and what makes him unique within the shared universe.

Interestingly, Thor is perhaps the only major character within the shared universe who feels like an old-fashioned superhero rather than a product of the military industrial complex. This is particularly apparent within Kenneth Branagh’s Thor and Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, both of which are essentially stories about Thor being exiled from or rejecting the structures of Asgardian society. The result of all this is interesting. In a universe where so many heroes are defined by their relationship to the armed forces, Thor actually feels like a superhero.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 9/11, escapist, in the frame, militarism, military, superheroes, the escapist, thor, thor: ragnarok | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Avengers – Endgame

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Darren

It says a lot about the state of contemporary pop culture that the biggest movie of the year is essentially a clip episode.

Pop culture has always been vaguely nostalgic, evoking an idealised past and reminding audiences of times when the future seemed brighter. After all, much of the New Hollywood canon is explicitly nostalgic, sixties and seventies films that pay loving homage to the thirties and the forties, often explicitly; The Sting, The Godfather, Paper Moon, Chinatown, Bonnie and Clyde. The past has always had a certain allure for cinema, perhaps because that’s what pictures have always been; individual moments captured on film and frozen in time, removed from their original context. Film is simply those frozen images run together to create the illusion of movement and life. Every film is a time machine, some are just more explicit than others.

Assembly line.

However, there is something fascinating about the modern wave of nostalgia, the speed at which pop culture is consuming itself. Recent waves of seventies, eighties and nineties nostalgia are still cresting. Earlier this summer, Captain Marvel channeled some of this nineties nostalgia into blockbuster (and Blockbuster) form. However, it also feels like nostalgia is getting closer and closer to the present, brushing up against the current moment. In some respects, the success of Lady Bird is indicative here. After all, Lady Bird is a film that is explicitly nostalgic about the post-9/11 era, evoked through footage of the Iraq War and the sounds of Justin Timberlake playing at a teen house party.

Avengers: Endgame is a strangely nostalgic beast. It is not strange that the film is nostalgic; after all, this is something of a coda to a decade of superhero films. However, it is strange how that nostalgia brushes up against the present, the climax of the film feeling very much like a loving homage to Avengers: Infinity War, a film that only premiered one year ago.

Stark raving mad…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: avengers, avengers: endgame, avengers: infinity war, film, militarism, Movie, nihilism, non-review review, review, the past, time, time travel | 18 Comments »

Star Trek: Enterprise – Hatchery (Review)

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Darren

Next year, Star Trek is fifty years old. We have some special stuff planned for that, but – in the meantime – we’re reviewing all of Star Trek: Enterprise this year as something of a prequel to that anniversary. This August, we’re doing the third season. Check back daily for the latest review.

Hatchery is a very odd episode.

On the one hand, it feels like another irrelevant detour on the path to Azati Prime. It is a standalone episode about a wacky adventure that the crew have upon discovering a crashed ship on the surface of a dead world, playing with the standard Star Trek tropes about mind control and possession. This is not the first time that a Star Trek character has had their behaviour dramatically altered by an alien compound, and it does seem a bit distracting to tell this story at this point in this season, even in the aliens in this case are insect!Xindi.

Slice o’ life…

At the same time, it does feel like an important episode thematically. The third season of Star Trek: Enterprise is packed with all manner of existential explorations of what it means to be Star Trek. What are the essential ingredients of the franchise? How far can you wander off the template without breaking it? What does Star Trek even mean in a post-9/11 world? There are aspects of Hatchery that deal with these questions rather directly, as the episode explores the consequences of putting a bunch of marines on a Star Trek ship.

It just feels rather surreal that “Archer goes crazy from bug spray” should be the jumping-off point for that particular story.