Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Review

 

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Into Darkness follows Captain Kirk, who, along with the crew of the Starship Enterprise, return home after an act of terrorism wipes out Starfleet, sending Kirk on a mission to bring down a one-man weapon of mass destruction. 

After testing their hand with an unproven (and rather one dimensional) villain in the first, Into Darkness takes a a step back a pulls from the classics with the one & only Khan Noonien Singh. What I particularly like about this stab at Khan is he’s more of a mixture of the Khan’s we see from Space Seed and from Wrath of Khan (though leaning much more into his debut appearance). He’s calculating, primal, and now more than ever, he is a serious threat, a detail that is only heightened by the sense of scale these movies bring. He always feels 10 steps ahead of Kirk, Spock, and the crew, and yet the film does an amazing job of blurring the lines between his motivations and his instinctual tendencies towards Starfleet (and Marcus), making him a villain who, despite his endgame, borders on ally-ship. 

I also quite like how this isn’t an outright remake of Wrath of Khan, yet it contains similar enough story beats to give you something of a familiar feeling. The only real downside though, is it sidelines a lot of the character development and focus of the first to now focus on Khan, which is good for developing Khan but the movie does falter a bit for it. 

We do however get another terrific cast, starring Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Alice Eve, Peter Weller, Karl Urban, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Quinto, and Chris Pine. I like that with the sequel, roles are reversed a little (from Wrath of Khan) and Quinto gets his chance to shine against the terrifying and calculating malevolence of Cumberbatch’s Khan, who is simply fantastic by the way. It goes a long way in redeeming Spoke from the first film. 

Into Darkness, directed by J.J. Abrams, is another action-packed, sci-fi adventure with Trek plastered over the front, and, while lacking in the usual deepness associated with Star Trek, is nonetheless an incredibly fun ride that, in my opinion, even surpasses the first. 

8.6/10