Star Trek into Darkness, the sequel to the 2011 Stark Trek film, continues the re-visioning the first series of Star Trek that starred William Shatner as James T kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock.
JJ Abrams and his team from Bad Robot (the guys who brought us Allias, Lost, Cloverfield, Super 8) who wrote and directed the first re-visioned Star Trek with Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, are back with a Star Trek Into Darkness that has plenty of action, laughter but ultimately stays in the kiddie zone and looses steam after the first hour mark.
Let’s start with what works in the new Star Trek: the pace is electric. In the electronic press kit a.k.a. the behind-the-scenes feature doing the rounds on DSTV, JJ Abrams talks about the movie being relentless and it is. We move from one action set piece to the next, without actually losing out on story and character moments. The story continuously pushes forward and uses the action scenes to move it along.
The characters are richly realized. At the core its Spock and his Captain Kirk, whose different personalities face challenges as a result of their differences - this is the emotional heart of the movie. So there's a lot of interplay between the two that was there in the first movie but we see less of the other cast this time around.
This could be because the plot centres round catching the bad guy who set off a bomb on earth - this seems to put the two lead characters at odds with each other and themselves as they're forced to look deep into who they think they are and how they act.
The somewhat love/hate relationship is fun to watch and also gives tension to the story but the new bad guy Jim Harrisson, played by Benedict Cumberbatch (of the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes series), steals the show.
Cumberbatch’s performance is perfect - he's like a combination of Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lectur (of Silence of the Lambs) and one classic baddie from the Star Trek cannon (who will remain unnamed for now). If you see the movie you will know who. Their presence also brings another dynamic to the emotional arch of the story and politics.
Like Iron Man 3, terrorism from within the system is at play and for their money Star Trek into Darkness does try to ask and answer questions about how one deals with terrorism .
Unfortunately the answers to it seem to be more suited to Star Wars than Star Trek. Star Wars has always been seen as the sci-fi for the man who wants just action and story whilst Star Trek has always been a thinking man’s sci-fi that uses story to deal with not just philosophical issues, but political ones.
Yet halfway through the story the characters start making choices that are not aligned with them or the series. Another disturbing thing is how the Federation is portrayed as a quasi nazi-military entity that goes against Gene Roddenberry 's (the original creator of star trek) ethos of the series. Where the federation was about enlightenment, peace and all that 60’s groovyness which was seen in the costumes and the politics of the show back then.
This is replaced with a George Bush /military organisation that is first explained and still exists even after the conclusion which was very jarring for me.
The first hour for me was great and I was like: this could be JJ Abrams' greatest movie to date but after the hour, complex choices become over simplified - as if Abrams and the writers were trying not to shock kids about the nature of terrorism and the needs of the many versus the few.
The clichés started to mount and slowly but surely I started grimacing at what I was watching - I was shocked at some of the choices the creative team went for.
For me Star Trek into Darkness is a lost opportunity - it could have had a balance between the thinking man and the action pleaser but unfortunately the brain got kicked out after the first hour and action and crowd pleasing kicked in which turned the movie into a bore for me.
Rating :
**1/2 out of 5
Index
* = very bad bad
** = could have been better
*** = Good
**** =Now we cooking
*****=instant classic aka buy this