Review: Star Trek Into Darkness!
13th May 2013
It was with some trepidation that I collected my tickets to go see Star Trek Into Darkness. I will admit it from the start that I did not like the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, but I resolved myself to go into this with an open mind. After all, I reasoned, wasn’t Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a spectacularly terrible beginning to a movie franchise that then climbed to giddy fights of awesomeness with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?
And that right there was the problem with this movie, clearly some executive somewhere had decided that what the new franchise required was a star spanning revenge saga and sought to emulate that previous success. Unfortunately though the characters motivations seem incredibly random and they just end up lurching from action set piece to action set piece, even one of the dramatic twists, on which the plot hinges, has to be revealed during a superfluous two minute action scene.
Of course the movie does have its upsides the action scenes are, for the most part, thrilling and will leave you on the edge of your seats, the Klingon fights and the space battles spring to mind. The acting is top notch, especially Benedict Cumberbatch who brings to life a colder, more reptilian Khan rather than the hot-blooded, passionate Khan played by Ricardo Montalban.
Sorry for the spoiler there folks, but frankly that was the worst kept twist that J.J. Abrams has thought up since revealing to an uninterested world that the characters of Lost had been dead all along.
At the end of the day Star Trek Into Darkness is incredibly slick and polished looking, although some old school fans of Star Trek will miss the wobbly set / grown man in a lizard costume charm of the originals. What struck me most about the new Star Trek movies has been that, like most modern reboots, they have been sucked dry of any and all quirky and original features that made us fans in the first place and what we are left with is a competently made but soulless movie.
Star Trek Into Darkness is an enjoyable movie don’t get me wrong but it lacks the soul that made us obsessed with the franchise in the first place, more people will end up seeing this movie and more importantly most will have enjoyed it and it will definitely make more money than all of them combined but no one will love this movie, it will never be anyone’s favourite movie, nobody will want an Into Darkness themed wedding, internet forums won’t erupt into flame wars over whether Shatner or Pine is a better Kirk? Mostly because Chris Pine has done an excellent impression of William Shatner but that’s all it is, an impression with nothing new to set him apart from his predecessor.
In summary if what you are looking for is an enjoyable, popcorn movie that requires very little effort to enjoy go see it, with my blessings, but please leave your Starfleet uniform at home and just enjoy it for what it is.