Review of Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) by Zoe M — 25 Jan 2015

Set aside the incredible lack of character development for any of the crew members besides Kirk and Spock, ignore the completely gratuitous (although less so than the last movie) surplus of action, forget the fact that the villain has no decipherable motivation beyond the idea of being better than everybody else, and toss aside the fact that the plot goes virtually nowhere.

Set all of this aside, and one would think that this might be a decent movie. But it's not. It's not because Star Trek Into Darkness doesn't have an ounce of originality to offer, opting instead to take its ideas from screenplays from decades ago.

Rather than providing fan services, Into Darkness flat out steals the stories of The Original Series episode "Space Seed" and the famed "Wrath of Khan." Beyond just ripping off previous works, the movie blatantly uses entire scenes and lines of dialogue from these sources.

Seriously. Every single scene that has anything good about it in this movie is from another movie. And in this one, it's done worse. Star Trek Into Darkness is more than just a weak movie, it's downright offensive.