[Films] Star Trek: Into Darkness

The second of the early blockbuster releases is another sequel, and one that I was even more excited about than Iron Man 3. In fact I was so excited that I took the chance to go to a midnight release showing (it was totally worth it).

The follow-up to the hugely successful reboot of the Star Trek franchise has a lot to live up to. The second instalment in the original series of films was “The Wrath of Khan”, which is widely regarded as the best film starring the original cast. J J Abrams did a good job pleasing both diehard fans and casual viewers with his first film, but how does this one measure up.

The official release poster for Into Darkness (Credit: rogerebert.com)

Let me preface this by saying that I hugely enjoyed the film. It was everything I’d expect from a J J Abrams blockbuster. However after some thought, and after listening to some podcast reviews of the film, I don’t think it’s as good as it originally seemed.

Lets start with the positives. Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant in his role as the main villain. He has the right emotional intensity, and he’s controlled and calculating but always seems to be just one trigger away from going crazy. The ‘twist’ when he reveals his true name isn’t really a surprise, but still exciting and does give Leonard Nimoy an excuse to show up fro 5 minutes (I wonder how much he got paid for those couple of lines!).

One of the most intensely character-driven scenes of the film, this is the moment when

we find out who Benedict Cumberbatch really is. (Credit: thefilmcricket.wordpress.com)

As for the rest of the cast, Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock) do a good job showing the development of the relationship between their characters. Both put in fine performances, particularly Quinto. Despite seeing it happen in the first film, it’s still shocking to see him lose control. Pine’s Kirk is still an arrogant know-it-all, but there’s some character development here in his dealings with Scotty. Sadly, the other members of the main crew are rather short-changed by the script, with few of them getting much to do, or much of a character arc. A shame, as there’s a lot of potential there just waiting to be tapped.

I did also really enjoy the homages to/revisiting of classic scenes from “the Wrath of Khan”.  There were at least two that were eerily similar, but cleverly upended or with reversed roles for the characters involved. One in particular, which was a memorable scene in the original, was equally moving in this film.  There are also some excellent fight scenes, and some spectacular action set-pieces.

However, there are a lot of plot holes in the film, the main villain isn’t particularly convincing (and actually has a valid point to make) and the science is woeful. Most of this I overlooked at the time as I was enjoying the film too much, but there was one point near the end where an event just didn’t make sense. In hindsight it also didn’t feel particularly like Star Trek, and there was too little clever use of technology, which I always thought was a hallmark of the various Trek series.

As usual, the Enterprise racks up quite a repair bill. (Credit: ordinary-gentlemen.com)

All that being said, it was still worth staying up for the midnight showing. As I said at the start I really enjoyed the film, and despite being particularly Star Trek  in feel is still worth watching for fans of the show owing to the clever references to and twisting of classic scenes, aliens (woo, Klingons!) and characters. I’m very interested to see where J J Abrams takes the series next.