RageLite review - Star Trek Into Darkness

You may remember just under a year ago I covered the first of the Star Trek reboot films. And now we move onto the second with Star Trek Into Darkness.

Although the original reboot film was released in 2009, it wouldn’t be until 2013 until the sequel was released. Far as I can tell the major issue was the script, which underwent several revisions, then having it line up with the schedules of the actors, and J J Abrams who’s stepping in as director again.

Alex Kutzman and Roberto Orci return for the second film, the two have almost identical filmographies, and have written films featured on Rage4Media (mostly Guilty Pleasures) such as: The Now You See Me films, the Amazing Spider-man 2, Cowboys vs Aliens and Mission Impossible III. Joining them is Damon Lindelof, who was a producer for the original reboot, and had written with them before on Cowboys vs Aliens. He also helped write Prometheus but you can’t win them all.

The film was financially successful, making $467m on its $185m budget, although that said once marketing and theatre cuts are taken into account, the total profit wound up being about $30m, not exactly the take you’d hope for. The movie was praised critically at time with an 84% Critic Rating and 89% Audience Rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with average scores of 7.46/10 and 4.23/5 respectively. That said, this film has some level of infamy among fans, so what do I think?

Well, we’re off to a great start here, we open with the Enterprise violating their prime directive by saving an indigenous primitive population from a volcano and getting seen by the natives. Kirk (reprised by Christopher Pine) gets kicked off the Captain’s chair, with Pike (Bruce Greenwood) taking command in his place. Only for a meeting of the commanders to get attacked and Pike killed off so Kirk is reinstated by default.

We’re introduced to John Harrelson (Benedict Cumberbatch) the orchestrator of said attack. He goes to hide on the Klingon home-world, which Starfleet can’t enter without sparking a war. A plan is initiated by Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) for the enterprise to fire torpedoes at his location from the outskirts of the neutral zone. He claims that war with the Klingons is inevitable, so how long before he’s revealed as the villain?

So the big criticism I hear of this once is that it takes one too many elements from the original Star Trek 2. I have seen Star Trek 2, and whilst this critique isn’t entirely invalid, they take elements in very different directions.

The first of course is the character of Khan, one of the most iconic villains in Star Trek history, is given a complete re-imagining for this reboot. Whilst he certainly seems to maintain most of his backstory, his origins are left deliberately vague to sell the audience on a more sympathetic character. Khan gives off an era of superiority, whilst keeping you guessing about where his allegiances would ultimately reside. Of course, the moment any fan of the original films hears his name, they can pretty much guess he isn’t going to side with the Enterprise crew.

The Klingons serve as a minor antagonist in this film. Little is done with them aside from their appearance but in my opinion they look decent enough, most of the movie has impressive visuals, my only complaint is their continued overuse of lens flares, which really bugged me this time around.

Kirk’s arc in this is a bit confused. It’s said at the beginning he needs to learn humility and have his record of not losing any of his crew broken, and that does happen but because from about the second act the action is almost always ongoing there’s little time for Kirk to reflect on his actions and grow from them. There’s also the fact that the cause of the death of his crew is not from an act of poor judgement on his part. Whether he followed the rules or didn’t, Marcus always intended to kill him and his crew.

Spock’s character growth is also a bit confused. Both Kirk and Nyota are angry at him for his actions in the opening, but this is quickly dropped upon their arrival at the Klingon home-world. There’s a moment of him taking command and coming up with a good strategy, that involves lying which I guess counts as development

But I do have a heap of problems when it comes to the narrative/choices made and some of these are:

• Carol Marcus Gratuitous Bikini Shot, just why?
• Khan’s plan to hide his people’s cryo-chamber inside torpedoes is stupid, really stupid
• Khan has magical blood that can cure death, yes really
• The Starship Vengeance is somehow still intact after 72 torpedoes detonated inside
• How exactly did Marcus sabotage the Enterprise’s warp core? He wasn’t on board the ship when it malfunctioned.

When it comes to the aforementioned copy/paste moments, they include: the use of Khan as a villain, having a protagonist shout KHAN! And the whole scene in the warp core when a protagonist sacrifices himself to save the crew. The story itself is not even close to the same, people have more merit complaining about this with the Force Awakens than here in my opinion

Star Trek Into Darkness has likeable enough characters and decent performances, combined with some great visuals. The story is the biggest weak link in the chain as there are various holes in the plot, and character arcs are basically non-existent. And somebody stop anyone from using Lens Flares every 5 seconds.

Rating 60/100