Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness Review
Let me start off saying this, I went into the Star Trek Remake with very very low expectations. I had seen the promos with the little kid kirk and the whole “Robot” pulling him over and not liked them. There were a lot of things in the promos that turned me off. I hadn’t researched it at all, and had no idea that Nimoy would be in it.

My Brother in law called me the day it released (that’s how you know I wasn’t stoked, I didn’t even midnight it) and asked if I wanted to pop out and see it. I was thrilled with it. From the first glimpse of Spock all the way through the end I was so happy with everything including the subtle call backs to the series with the little sounds and the little pop ins.

So when the rumblings here started I was in from day 1. I managed to remain almost entirely unspoiled some jerkstore in a review a couple of weeks ago. I wont do that early on. I will later though, but there will be warnings before hand.

I loved this movie. It was fun, action packed and just when you think everything is going the way you expect it to it turns on a dime.

The Good
Action- Its everywhere! Seriously the movie starts and ends with elaborate action settings and pulls you in and lets you know that the shit will hit the fan from the beginning to the end.

Throwbacks- There are throwbacks and call outs to the series, to the original movies, and to pretty much everything that has to do with star trek. That being said if you haven’t seen the original movies, or series, any other star trek movie or television show you won’t be lost.

Visual Effects- The movies beautiful. Seriously, they go out of there way to execute some world building here showing more of san Francisco and Star Fleet and even some other parts of both this world and others in beautiful detail.

The Bad
I have one bad and I don’t even entirely know how to say it. Its “Paint By Numbers” is probably the best way to put it, but its not that he paints by numbers he expects you to. As you walk the twist and turns if you’re paying attention you know what is going to happen, or at least you are pretty damn sure.

The Overall
The movie is not without flaws at all, but it has very few flaws. There are issues I have with it but they are very very minor. More minor that the issues I had with Ironman 3. However due to not wanting to spoil you they will be listed below.

Rating
5/5

Spoilers below
Seriously Spoilers Below

PLEASE NOTE SPOILERS BELOW

TURN AWAY NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS

HERE THEY ARE.

Ok so lets start off with the big stuff, we already know from the trailer that kirk gets demoted, and that John Harrison is the bad guy. Theres been a question since opening day of the first movie….would the second movie do Khan? I cant even begin to count how many times I saw questions to Abrams, Orci, Kurtzman and of course they all denied it. But lets be honest no one believed them. In a world where directors will go to extreme lengths up to and including outright lying to protect a story (Talia Al Ghul isn’t in the dark knight rises right?) you cant believe a word they say. I don’t blame them, but it makes you question everything.

That being said Abrams lied his ass off to all of us, am I mad about it? Nope. He did a great job with the introduction of the character. To be honest he actually does a better job of introducing the character of Khan in this movie than they did in Star Trek II. Star Trek II they expect you to know who Khan is, this movie they don’t assume anything and go all the way back to the beginning and intro the Khan character similarly to how they did in the TV show.

Probably my favorite part of this was still the call outs to the previous movies and tv show. Early on a explosion is set off at a Star Fleet institute named after the Kelvin the ship that Kirk’s dad was on when it was blown up. Theres also a cameo by our favorite Vulcan which makes so much sense in the way it was played that I’m honestly shocked they actually did it.

HUGE SPOILERS HUGE SPOILERS HUGE SPOILERS

The one part of the movie that I had issue with was that the one moment that had a real emotional impact is a reverse of the moment from Star Trek II. Even then they already showed you earlier in the movie how it could be reversed.

Some will watch this and say well they just remade Khan. Its not entirely true, in many ways the movie is a remake of the original Episode, some Khan and the last 10 minutes are Star Trek 3.

My only other thing that vexed me just a wee bit was Peter Weller as the head of star fleet. I could not think of one time recently that peter weller was not a bad guy. So when I saw him on screen here all I could think was huh, this doesn’t bode well for our heroes. Ultimately I was right, but that has less to do with story and more to do with casting.

Thanks for reading!
-Richard
Follow me on twitter @hfspodcast