Star Trek Into Darkness

The Enterprise crew is expecting to receive a five year exploration mission. However, instead Kirk has the Enterprise taken away from him due to his inability to follow orders and violation of the Prime Directive. That decision is short lived as deadly terrorist John Harrison attacks Starfleet and then hides on a Planet the Federation cannot go. Kirk is sent to destroy him, but when he catches up to Harrison, the mysterious man causes Kirk to doubt which side he is actually on.

Cast

Chris Pine - Commander/Captain James T. Kirk
Zachary Quinto - First Officer Spock
Zoe Saldana - Lieutenant Nyota Uhura
Anton Yelchin - Ensign Pavel Chekov
Karl Urban - Lieutenant Commander Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Simon Pegg - Lieutenant Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott
John Cho - Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu
Benedict Cumberbatch - Commander John Harrison
Bruce Greenwood - Rear Admiral Christopher Pike
 Peter Weller - Starfleet Admiral Alexander Marcus

Who will like this movie

With the original cast and crew returning from the 2009 Star Trek movie, fans who liked that one will like this one. Some "original" Trek fans may actually enjoy this one more as it is filled with nods to the original series. Especially after the last Star trek movie totally wiped out the existence of the original series altogether.
Good for 'tweeners and above due to some racey scenes and intense action.

Phantom Thoughts

Let me first say right off the bat that I am not a "Trekkie". I'm more of a Star Wars fan, although I did get into Star Trek: The Next Generation back when it was on and have seen all of the Star Trek films. That being said, I was a bit surprised at the lack of backlash from the last film. As I said above, the last one pretty much made the original series, and all the movies after....non-existent. Perfect for this film franchise going forward as to not have to worry about lining up events or storylines to the TV show. I wasn't as upset about this as I felt die hard fans should have been.

Seeing as you have gotten past that little speed bump in the story telling, we move on to Star Trek Into Darkness. (No colon, please. The writers spent a lot of time trying to come up with the title and didn't want any ties to the old Star Trek titles like Star Trek: First Contact.) We find our new cast still together and Zachary Quinto and Simon Pegg once again steal the show as Spock and Scotty respectively. Seriously. Without these two, and the few points I will bring up momentarily, then on it's own, the movie was just nothing special. No more than a Redbox selection on a weekday night. Now although Benedict Cumberbatch played a great villain, his portrayal of the worst kept secret in Hollywood (but for the sake of argument, I'll put the word SPOILER here) as Khan he just didn't measure up to the original, brought to life brilliantly by Ricardo Montalban. Here's the REAL SPOILER: Khan was not the main villain. In fact it was Peter Weller. Which should not be a surprise to Trekkies as he has played a villain in the series "Enterprise" twice before. But the thing is, that shouldn't have been necessary. Khan is a strong enough character to work on his own. The addition of this "twist" was just a waste.

But Phantom, you say....what if they wanted something that was different from the original series and movies? Well, after seeing this movie, you'll realize how ridiculous that statement is. I'm gonna just go ahead and write SPOILER for this entire paragraph. If you haven't seen it yet, skip to the next one. For those still reading, I actually liked the blatant references to the original series such as the Tribble, the "red shirt" joke, and the lines taken directly from the TV show like Bones' "Shut up, Spock. We're trying to rescue you!" But even those were not as direct as the use of the final scenes from "Wrath of Kahn" that were used almost scene for scene and line for line where Spock saves the ship and dies. Only this time reversing the Kirk and Spock roles and having Kirk die. These things made the movie, in my opinion, worth seeing in the theater.

But that's not the only thing. The 3-D was amazing. In a movie going world where EVERYTHING is now seen through digital sunglasses, this one was well worth it. The amazing thing about this is that it was not shot with a 3-D camera. In fact, this is the first film shot in IMAX with the 3-D done entirely in post production. That fact alone is pretty impressive.

A question I've heard is "Why did it take so long to make a sequel?". I found the answer to this and to be honest...I'm not surprised. Damon Lindelof, the man who single-handedly ruined the most anticipated movie last summer "Prometheus" is a producer of this movie. I found out that he also took the script THAT WAS DONE and then made his own changes to it. There was a re-working of the script back and forth with J.J. Abrams for some time after that. Although I have no proof, it is my belief that Lindelof is the reason for that ridiculous "twist" in the movie I spoke of earlier. I honestly don't know why anyone in Hollywood hires this man who just fucks up everything he touches.

Finally...can J.J. just stop with the lens flare already? I know he loves it and it's his "thing" but after the last Star Trek, I thought he had listened to the fans who complained about it. I had heard that he was cutting back on it, which would have been fine. After all, I'm not expecting him to give it up completely  but there was so much of it, that it was just plain distracting. Not to mention the lens flare was even more pronounced with the great 3-D this movie had, which was the only downside to an otherwise awesome effect.

I found out that Michael Dorn, who played Worf in TNG as well as a Klingon (supposedly a relative of Worf) in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was cast as an officer. But he was cut out of the film because the film makers "didn't want to mix the old and the new". Christopher Doohan, son of James Doohan who played the original Scotty, plays a transport officer and is seen alongside Simon Pegg, the current Scotty.

Until next time, see you in the center seat.