Review of Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) by Darik H — 11 Jul 2016

When it was announced that they would be making a sequel to J.J. Abrams' reboot of Star Trek, there were a lot of people who hoped that the new movie would be more thoughtful and complex than its predecessor. The 2009 film had been fun, exciting, and action-packed, but light on the philosophical insight that was Star Trek's greatest strength as a sci-fi franchise. Well, it turns out Star Trek Into Darkness doesn't have any of that, either. What it does have is everything that made the first film fun, exciting, and action-packed, and all of it to the same degree as the last one. So really, this is more like the second episode of a T.V. show than it is a sequel. But it's a good episode.

BTW, consider this whole review SPOILERS.

Star Trek Into Darkness is a brilliant action spectacle, filled with a great cast and superb special effects, and held together by a plot that is both paper thin and tremendously derivative (especially near the end). In fact, you could call this movie a quasi-remake/reboot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan-- the Trek movie EVERYONE loves to rip off, apparently. But what saves Into Darkness from becoming a boring, redundant mess (like, say, Star Trek Nemesis was) is the director's approach to the material, which places excitement and entertainment first and results in a movie that's like the cotton-candy version of the original: sweet, but insubstantial. It also helps tremendously that this time, there's a reason they're ripping off Wrath of Khan: the villain ACTUALLY IS KHAN. Yes, despite the filmmakers' attempts to deny it, the twist everyone with half a brain saw coming is indeed true: Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Khan Noonien Singh, and J.J. Abrams has done the most incredibly unoriginal thing imaginable with his "Star Trek 2". Still, the film does a halfway decent job of explaining how Khan shows up several years before he's supposed to (more altered timeline shenanigans, of course), and he's actually not the only villain-- Peter Weller does a great job as a Starfleet admiral who uses Khan to advance his own aims, and whom Khan is seeking revenge against for the first half of the film. As far as what this movie brings to the Star Trek universe, we get to see the first time Kirk met Carol Marcus, the future mother of his son (and another holdover from Wrath of Khan); we finally get to see what J.J. Abrams' idea of Klingons are (it's weird, but short-lived); and (in yet another bizarre connection to Nemesis) we get to see the Enterprise once again outgunned by a much bigger ship-- in this case, the U.S.S. Vengeance, a Federation warship designed by Khan. It doesn't really amount to much in the end, but the characters are still vibrant and engaging, and they ultimately make it a fun adventure to go through. While you may not be left thinking by the end of it, your blood will be pumping throughout.

The film opens with Captain James T. Kirk doing what he does best: breaking the rules. After violating the Prime Directive to save his buddy Spock from a volcano on a primitive alien planet, Kirk gets busted down to Commander and is chewed out by Admiral Pike for his hubris. But things don't stay quiet for long as a rogue Federation officer, Commander John Harrison, launches a terrorist attack against Starfleet, first blowing up an archive and then firing on a conclave of high-ranking officers. When Admiral Pike is killed in the attack, Kirk vows to get revenge (because of course he does); reclaiming his command of the Enterprise, Kirk is ordered to track down Harrison and kill him. They find Harrison on the Klingon homeworld, Kronos, and ultimately capture him alive... but not before watching Harrison single-handedly mow down a platoon of Klingon warriors. Turns out that Harrison is actually Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically-enhanced superman from the late twentieth century (just go with it), and that he had been seeking revenge against Admiral Marcus, who'd blackmailed Khan into designing a new battleship for the Federation by holding the rest of his cryogenically-frozen crew hostage. Unfortunately, Marcus is ready to cover up his crimes by any means necessary, and confronts Kirk and the Enterprise with the U.S.S. Vengeance-- a bigger, meaner starship that has Kirk outgunned and outpaced. Ultimately, Kirk has to join forces with Khan to save his ship and his crew from the Vengeance... but can Khan really be trusted? And will Kirk succumb to his need for revenge?

(The answer to both of those questions is "no".).

Like the last entry, the greatest strength of this film is its phenomenal cast. Chris Pine returns as the young, impetuous Captain James T. Kirk, who, after undergoing the hero's journey of the first film, has to discover his humility and the responsibilities of command in this second outing. Pine does a great job once again, maintaining his rakish charm but also stepping up his game when the film gives him some VERY heavy dramatic beats to deliver. Zachary Quinto gets a similar treatment as Mr. Spock, who is given maybe a little too much emotion near the end as he winds up with his own vendetta against Khan (even going so far as to actually yell "KHAAAAAAN!!!"-- a reference as unexpected as it was inappropriate). Still, Quinto has the role nailed, and the bromance between he and Kirk develops much more organically here than it did in the last film. Meanwhile, Karl Urban once again knocks it outta the damn park as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, who doesn't have a whole lot to do, but steals every scene he's in with his spot-on DeForest Kelley impersonation. Simon Pegg, on the other hand, is given a significantly expanded role as Scotty, the ship's engineer; even though he's still basically a comic relief character, at least this time he's a plot-critical comic relief character. As for the rest of the crew, Zoe Saldana's Lieutenant Uhura is once again relegated to window dressing, her only real role being to generate romantic conflict with Spock that's resolved at the start of act two; John Cho gets to foreshadow Mr. Sulu's eventual rise to the capain's chair of the Excelsior, but does little else; and Anton Yelchin gets probably the least to do as Ensign Chekov is promoted to Chief Engineer after Scotty's resignantion (long story), only to run around helplessly as the engines fail and he can't figure out how to fix them. But dominating most of the film is the deep, menacing voice of Benedict Cumberbatch as "John Harrison"/Khan Noonien Singh, whose superior intellect is matched in this film by his savagery and vindictiveness. Sure, Khan is supposed to be Indian, and Cumberbatch is undeniably British, but he does such a good job as the villain that it's an easy oversight to ignore. Then we also have Peter Weller, the goddamn RoboCop himself, playing villain-number-two Admiral Marcus. He's played as your typical two-dimensional, Colonel Jessup-ish military psycho, with no remorse for his actions and no regard for human life, but... well, goddamn it, it's RoboCop, so I'm happy with him. And finally, Alice Eve plays Dr. Carol Marcus, the admiral's daughter and Kirk's future baby-mama, and... really, the only reason she seems to be in this movie is to strip down to her underwear for one shot. You know, the one in the trailers. ALL of them. Also, for some reason she speaks with a British accent. Marcus wasn't British in Wrath of Khan, and Weller isn't using an accent at all, so the choice is completely baffling.

The script isn't exactly mired in subtlety, so the themes are all right on the surface. Revenge is the main focus of the film, and how it's ultimately a vicious, self-defeating cycle (hell, the main villains tool around in a starship called "the Vengeance". That's pretty on-the-nose, guys). Unfortunately, while the film makes the point that revenge is wrong, it doesn't present a very strong argument as for why it's wrong-- mostly because this is a shallow action film, and it's too busy staging fight scenes and spectacular C.G. explosions to properly develop a philosophical viewpoint any deeper than "vengeance is bad". But while the broader strokes of the script are murky, it's the detail work that draws you in-- specifically, the characters and the humor, which are just as potent and bubbly as ever. And then, of course, there's the direction. At this point, I think J.J. Abrams honestly deserves the title "the new Spielberg", because the guy KNOWS how to use a camera, he KNOWS how to work with actors, and he KNOWS to how manipulate the f%$# out of his audience. Some of the camera work in this film is honestly beautiful, and it creates a visceral impression on the audience-- either of the weightlessness and fluidity of space travel, or of the violence and chaos of an action scene (one sequence in particular, in which the Enterprise is falling down to Earth, is fraught with dizzying sights and brilliant stunts prone to giving the viewer vertigo). And while he does use lens flares again (something Spielberg did a lot, too), it's slightly diminished this time around-- not that I minded it much in either film. The special effects are, predictably, fantastic, with Abrams noticeably tweaking the warp speed effect to take advantage of the fact that the film is shot in 3-D (speaking of which, if you do choose to see the film in 3-D, it's well worth the expense-- space sequences ALWAYS look good in 3-D). Lastly, the score by Michael Giacchino is pretty much identical to the one from the last movie, which is good, but not great (I like variety in my soundtracks, dammit).

Hardcore Trek fans can be forgiven for disliking Star Trek Into Darkness. It screws up some basic character details (Benedict Cumberbatch does NOT look like a "Singh" to me), it's pandering and lowbrow at times (did we REALLY need to see Alice Eve in her underwear in this movie? *cough*YES*cough*), it kind of completely screws up the Klingons (they're portrayed as being much more monsterous and unnecessarily brutal now), and it goes over a LOT of old territory, even lifting at least one scene wholesale from Wrath of Khan (while still admittedly giving it an interesting twist to keep things fresh). But the whole point of the Star Trek reboot was to reinvent Trek for a new audience-- an impatient audience, the kind of people who found old Trek too slow and boring to sit through. In that respect, Star Trek Into Darkness is a resounding success. It's like The Wrath of Khan for the iPhone generation, something that sprints forward at the speed of Twitter to keep up with the seemingly shortening attention spans of viewers. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of it doesn't make sense when you slow down and think about it (seriously, why would a 300-year-old dictator be the perfect guy to design your cutting-edge techno-warship? Don't you have engineers for that?), but that's the thing: you're not supposed to think about it. You're supposed to kick back, munch on some popcorn, and enjoy the ride... and what a ride it is. It doesn't improve at all on what worked in the first Star Trek film, but at least it hasn't lost any of its appeal, either-- it's still got that vibe of adventure and excitement that made the original Star Wars films so much fun. So maybe a better name for this film would have been "Star Trek: Episode II"?

... Nah. That just drudges up bad memories. But with J.J. Abrams working on the next Star Wars movie, I have a feeling those memories are about to fade away for good.