Review of Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) by Greatmartin — 16 May 2013

Full disclosure: of all the Stark Trek chapters whether in books, TV episodes and movies I have only seen 2 of the 6 Star Trek movies. Being fairly new to what has been around for nearly 50 years I hope “Star Trek Into The Darkness” as a stand alone movie doesn’t represent all the previous stories. I felt a lot depended upon being a ‘trekkie’ and knowing what came before.

The current film, in spite of the title, has more strobe lights and different colors than any movie I have seen in a long time. Between “Oblivion” and “Iron Man 3” this movie had very poorly executed non-special effects except how San Francisco will look years from now. The fights whether between men or machines were very lame.

The screenplay by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof offered some looks into the human side of all from a possible romance between Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Nyota (Zoe Saldana) if not a bromance between Spock and Kirk (Chris Pine) though I didn’t know who the latter was until later in the film when he is referred to as Captain James T. Kirk and, for whatever reason, I immediately thought of William Shatner.

The standouts were Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain with Simon Pegg as Scotty offering the only laughs along the way. Whether the rest of the cast were satisfactory to Trekkies I didn’t have any problems with John Cho, Alice Eve, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Weller or any of the other actors.

A new director and other screenwriters would bring a lot more to the sequel than those involved with this did. With many more ‘summer’ special effects blockbuster movies on the way I would suggest skipping this one.