By Brett Blake Let’s get this straight at the outset - STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is not a bad movie. It has fine performances and exhilarating action setpieces to spare. Taken purely as a sci-fi action blockbuster, it’s first-rate entertainment, and I think anybody who says otherwise is simply being a stick-in-the-mud. At the same time, anybody who says this movie doesn’t have some massive problems is delusional, because INTO DARKNESS is far from perfect. The plot, in as bare-bones a fashion as I can muster, involves Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise crew on a mission to track down John Harrison, a character who would probably be best described in our contemporary parlance as a “terrorist.” But that plot is merely the vehicle for a pair of character arcs for Kirk and Spock. Each character undergoes quite noticeable change by film’s end, and these transformations are incredibly satisfying. Chris Pine’s version of James T. Kirk is one still learning, a brash young man who basically lucked into the captain’s chair in the previous film. This movie is about him proving himself worthy of commanding a starship, and Pine sells that journey incredibly effectively. He tears into the role, fully making it his own, rising above comparisons to the previous incarnation of Kirk (but I still love ya, Shatner!). Simultaneously, we have Spock, still struggling to balance his logical upbringing and his simmering emotions. Zachary Quinto has several stand-out scenes in which we see him wrestle with the two halves of his personality, and these are some of the best moments in the movie. The rest of the cast continue to have an infectious sense of camaraderie, with Karl Urban’s Bones and Simon Pegg’s Scotty standing tallest, providing a nice amount of humor and warmth. Bruce Greenwood returns from the first film, as well, and his fatherly influence over Kirk is a nice element that’s key in fleshing out Kirk’s journey. Then, of course, we have Benedict Cumberbatch as our villain, John Harrison, and no two ways about it, he’s excellent. His sizable dramatic chops allow him to be completely convincing when Harrison is doing things that, by any measure, are evil, but he’s also able to pepper in some wonderful little character beats showing us the tormented (almost sympathetic) side of Harrison. If anything, I think he needed to be in more of the movie; while he’s certainly talked about a lot, he’s not actually onscreen very much. That’s a script issue, not a Cumberbatch issue, but it is symptomatic of something else that’s a problem: Harrison’s story, his motivations and desires, are entirely arbitrary. There is nothing about the plot of this movie (or the thematic subtext) that requires this specific character to be who he is, or to do what he does. You could literally remove him from the story, and only have to change a few minor details. In that respect, he’s a strangely inert villain. Again, Cumberbatch makes the best of it. That leads to the bigger problem, though, which is that STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS does not have a story that’s particularly interesting, ambitious, or important. Indeed, as the movie blasted into its end titles, I was asking myself, “So that’s it? That’s all it is?” The whole film feels like it’s building; there’s a calculable ratcheting-up of the tension leading to the climax. The movie builds and builds and then… ends. It builds up to something huge that never arrives. The last section is spectacularly anticlimactic, and it is certainly not helped by the moment that kicks off the film’s final movement - a scene so wrong-headed, so ill-conceived, I couldn’t believe I was actually, really seeing it. For that one scene, the movie becomes a parody of its own franchise, trading on the nostalgia of old school TREK fans in the most pandering, transparent way. It’s lazy writing masquerading as clever writing, and I can imagine the writers were surely clapping themselves on the back, saying, “See! It’s just like that scene in that other movie… only we changed it a little! Cool, huh?” No. It's cheap, and it actually kind of sucks. However, I suspect the less a person knows about STAR TREK lore, the less of an issue this might be for him/her. But enough of the negatives, let’s get back to some positives. The editing and pacing are top-notch, rocketing the film forward with energy and excitement, but also with enough breathing room for the smaller moments to have an impact. On a technical level, the movie is phenomenally well-made, with beautiful, colorful imagery (impressive 3D work, too), some really cool sound design (which uses just enough of the Original Series’ iconic, retro effects without them becoming a crutch), and yet another impressive score by Michael Giacchino, who builds off his work for the previous film in a fresh and organic way. He creates a series of motifs for the Harrison character that weave in and around his established themes in a really interesting fashion. All of these elements converge in the movie's various action setpieces, and they’re all incredibly fun. We get a variety of action (it’s not all space-bound stuff), and there’s a degree of immediacy and creativity to them that I found quite thrilling at times. Like I alluded to up at the top, I don’t think anybody could tell me they sat down and watched this movie and didn’t at least derive some enjoyment out of the sheer visceral spectacle of it all. And again, I have to come back to the strength of the character journeys. Although the movie doesn’t satisfy on a story level, it absolutely does on a character level; frankly, I’d rather have a film err on the side of character over plot than the other way around (ideally, of course, I’d like to have both). So, while I can Monday Morning Quarterback the story flaws all day long, I feel like the truly important things - Kirk and Spock’s friendship, and the interplay between the members of the Enterprise crew - are well-served. Still, this could have - should have - been a classic TREK adventure. As it stands, it’s merely a very good one.
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