Star Trek: Into Darkness – review

Star Trek: Into Darkness is the sequel to the 2009 Stark Trek film.  Action-packed and full of charm, this movie is certainly not lacking when it comes to a fun and entertaining script.  This movie’s effects are really great and make it well worth seeing in 3-D for the battle scenes and amazing shots of the ships and landscapes.  Sadly, for all the pros there are a few “Kahns” to this movie. If you can look past them it will make for a very entertaining couple of hours.

Star Trek: Into Darkness begins with Captain Kirk, played by Chris Pine, rescuing Spock, played by Zachary Quinto, from a volcano in front of a primitive civilization and breaking the prime directive.  Kirk looses his command until a massive attack on Starfleet Command allows him to hunt down the man responsible.  Who is this mysterious man and what are his goals in killing so many?

It is really great to see the cast back for another movie. They all worked so well together in the 2009 film that it was like a perfectly put together puzzle of personalities for the crew.  In this film they are present but not nearly utilized as much as they should have been.  Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy and Zoe Saldana as Uhura, felt like they were barely there.  The movie was very centered around Kirk and Spock, which works for the story, but if you enjoyed the performances of these other characters it will be a bit disappointing.

There are a lot of great shots and amazing action sequences.  This is filmed really well and seemed to use much less of the lens flare effect that was mocked so heavily in the last film.  Kahn, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a pretty opposing villain.  It is funny that a person can slug him and he simply look smug as if he was hit by the flutter of a moth.  He certainly makes for a fun and interesting version of the character Ricardo Montalban perfected in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn.

This leads me to the things I found a bit bad about this movie and if a person were to nitpick they would find it obnoxious too.  There are scenes almost word for word taken right out of Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn.  Some might argue that it is homage to do this but when it’s this similar to the original I call it a rip-off. Spoiler alert, there is a scene that involves Kirk knocking a man unconscious to get inside the radioactive room that contains the warp drive to start it up.  As he lay dying he sees Spock from the window and they bid each other a tearful farewell and give the hand signal to live long and prosper.  Sounds familiar to the original?  The only difference was the characters were reversed.  They even have Spock yell the famous. “Kahn!” line.

There is also a scene with the old Spock that was very strange.  It basically consisted of young Spock asking about Kahn, old Spock telling him that he swore not to get involved with young Spock’s destiny, then proceeding to tell him anyway everything he knows about what an evil guy Kahn was.  Thank goodness he was around to act as an over glorified Wikipedia for young Spock whenever he needs to know about a new evil that arises.

Star Trek is not an unlikable movie just because of that.  If I wanted to go the full nitpicker nerd I could argue that the Tribble on board the ship would never be the only one for long since they are basically “born pregnant,” and the Enterprise should be swarming with the little hairballs within a few hours.  The movie is very enjoyable and is a very good continuation to the first film.  If you are looking to see a fun action or sci-fi movie I recommend it highly and would say to go ahead and spring for the 3-D.  It will actually be worth it in this case.