Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness

I knew going into Star Trek: Into Darkness that I was going to be hyper critical about the film. I am a life long Star Trek fan, and have been watching the series for about 25 years. I know pretty much every episode of every series, and every film, back to front.

I know that in this film series, an alternate reality from the original franchise is represented. This was pretty much the entire point in the last film. It was written in such a way to both establish a brand new continuity, and maintain the integrity of the original franchise. Even so, there are certain concessions that have to be made in order to maintain the spirit of Star Trek.

Star Trek: Into Darkness is a pretty good film. As a Star Trek film it's okay. It's not bad, but it is quite below average. I have to point out the fact that the film feels very much like a rehash of the first film. This is because the basic plot of the film revolves around the interaction of Kirk and Spock, the instability of Kirk as captain of the Enterprise, and there is one main antagonist, who is a humanoid, and hellbent simply on the destruction of the Enterprise and of Earth.

One of the major gripes that I have about the film, which will probably be nitpicking to many people, is the fact that I feel like they fucked up the appearance of the Klingons. It may seem like I'm going off on a tangent, but the timeline officially split from the Prime time, to the alternate time, on the day of Kirk's birth, the destruction of the U.S.S. Kelvin, and the arrival of the Nerada, with Nero.

The reason that I'm making this point is the fact that due to the time line splitting when it did, that means that everything that occurred in Star Trek: Enterprise also occurred in this time line. In the series, genetic engineer Arik Soong(Brent Spiner), felt like the abandonment of genetic augmentation after the Eugenics Wars was a mistake, and despite the legal state, decided to pursue it. Soong was captured by the Enterprise, and put in prison. The Klingons learned of Soong's augments, and thought that Earth was trying to produce supermen capable of destroying the Klingon Empire.

The Klingons decided to use Soong's research as a stepping stone to create Klingon augments. A strain of the Levodian Flu mutated, due to the augment physiology The Flu became a fatal, airborne, mutagenic plague. To be able to combat the illness, the Empire kidnapped the Enterprise's chief medical officer, Phlox, to work on the cure. Ultimately, the Klingons were cured by Phlox, and their psychical and emotional states were altered, most notably, the loss of their forehead ridges. The Klingons appeared this way in the original Star Trek. The Klingons would appear this way from approximately 2154-2273. Into Darkness takes place in 2259

This small gripe aside, there were many parts of the movie that I just didn't care for. Like I said before, the movie was by no means, bad, but I think that it was pretty stale. I'm not going to go over the whole movie, but I will point out some plot points below, that I either didn't like, or were just stale. There will be spoilers.

SPOILER ALERT

The movie starts off with Kirk and McCoy on an alien planet, with a shuttle containing Spock, Uhura, and Sulu trying to save a primitive civilization from extinction due to an erupting volcano. Spock has to detonate a cold fusion device inside the volcano to stop it from erupting Spock falls into the volcano and Kirk decides to violate the Prime Directive(more so than he already has) to position the Enterprise over the volcano to beam Spock out. This results in Kirk's demotion to first officer, Spock's reassignment, and Pike's reinstatement as captain of the Enterprise.

This kind of feels like a rehash, since Kirk ends up back in a bar, questioning himself and his ability to lead.

This leads to, on Earth, John Harrison coarsening an agent of Section 31 to blow up the headquarters. From here it seems like the plot is going to get interesting, since Section 31 is kind of an obscure Star Trek reference, and it would have been cool to explore the organization, and to actually have a regular human antagonist. This unfortunately, was not to be.

Harrison takes an assault vessel to attack the conjugation of Starfleet brass at Headquarters. Kirk realizes the plot and attempts to save as many of the officers as possible. Kirk uses his usual ingenuity to stop Harrison's attack. When his vessel is about to go down, Kirk sees him beam out. Pike is among the victims of the attack.

In the wreckage of Harrison's craft, there is a subspace transporter discovered. It turns out that Harrison has beamed to Qo'nos, the Klingon home world Admiral Alexander Marcus gives Kirk the Enterprise back, due to Pike's death, and orders Kirk to launch long range torpedoes to attack Harrison, as he is in a remote, unpopulated location. Kirk takes the torpedoes on board, which are shielded as to not be able to be scanned, Scotty disapproves since he can't tell what's in them, and ultimately resigns his commission because Kirk orders him to take them aboard, not knowing what's inside. Kirk also takes on a new science officer, who turns out to be Carol Marcus. Marcus originally appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, as the mother of David Marcus, and creator of the Genesis Device.

Kirk decides that it would be wrong to simply kill Harrison arbitrarily, and without a trial. He decides to bring him into custody. When the crew of the Enterprise gets to Qo'nos, they are attacked by Klingons. Their shuttle goes down, and they attempt to make nice with the Klingons. The Klingons don't want to play nice and try to kill them all. Harrison appears and single handedly kills all of the Klingons. When he asks how many torpedoes the Enterprise has pointed at him, he immediately surrenders. Kirk agrees to take him into custody, and proceeds to beat the shit out of him. Harrison takes it as if Kirk didn't even take a swing.

On board the Enterprise, Harrison reveals that his real name isn't in fact Harrison. He reveals that he is a genetic superman lost in time, marooned in space, by the name of... wait for it... Khan. At this time, I literally face-palmed, right in my seat in the theater. I couldn't believe that they made such a damned predictable move. Of all of the characters, of the entire franchise, of all of the new characters that they could have revealed, they rehash something as damned well known and cliche as Khan. Also, when the fuck did Khan become a white guy???

I digress. Khan continues to tell Kirk about the big, badass, dreadnaught, the U.S.S. Vengeance, that Admiral Marcus has hidden and plans to attack the Klingons to start a war. The Enterprise engages the Vengeance and gets it shit kicked. Khan escapes and commandeers the Vengeance, and attacks the Enterprise.

The Enterprise is crippled, and in a scene that indirectly mirrors The Wrath of Khan, Kirk enters the reactor, regardless of the radiation. Spock goes to engineering, and tries to enter the compartment. McCoy tells him that he'll flood the section with radiation, exactly as he did to Kirk in Wrath of Khan. The dialog between Kirk and Spock also parallels their talk at the end of Wrath of Khan. Kirk dies, and Spock mirrors Kirk's Wrath of Khan scream of, “Khaaaaaaaaan!”

The Vengeance goes down, Khan survives the crash, and McCoy uses his blood to revive Kirk. Kirk gets the Enterprise back and is assigned to a five year mission. Everyone lives happily ever after

SPOILERS END

I may bitch about a lot of things in it, but that's only because it feels like such a rehash. The writers have an entire world of things that they could have explored, and an entire world of new things that could have been, but weren’t I think that as a Star Trek fan, my perceptions were colored a little more than the non-fan. The movie is decent enough, but it's not Earth shattering It's not nearly as good as the last one, and not even one of the best Star Trek films in my opinion. I'd even put this one down in my lower six. I'd recommend giving this a watch once for a non-fan, and maybe for a hardcore fan, pre 2009 film, I'd probably wait for this one to hit the dollar theater.