New Release Review: 'Star Trek Into Darkness'

I liked the last Star Trek film. It pulled you in from the off with a near perfect, highly bombastic, opening - then decided it'd just keep going at that pace. The 'new' Trek universe they set-up during the film, as an alternate one to the timeline that most people had grown-up with, was an ingenious get out clause for the writers, which ought to have given them a huge amount of freedom in the sequels. They wouldn't have to be beholden to decades of mythology, they could go their own way. So did they? *sigh* No... No they didn't.

Unlike the first film, J.J. Abrams does have his cast wrestle with a few big sci-fi questions; the kind the Trek TV shows used to deal with. The film opens with Spock trapped in an active volcano (this is first scene, first minute, first second stuff, but if you want to avoid even teeny-tiny spoilers then skip to the end of this paragraph), if the Enterprise save him they'll be seen by the primitive natives on the alien planet, and could inadvertently change the natives entire culture forever. Spock demands to be left to die - ever the pragmatist; Kirk wants to save his friend - 'cause that's how friends do, Starfleet be damned. It's a fun sequence, but it's over far too soon, and Abrams and his writers (Kurkman, Orci and Lindelof) aren't interested in following the question through. The main narrative tentatively deals with questions about terrorism, war, and weapons of war, but it's all just in service to the set-pieces. They don't really have anything to say about war, and that's not necessarily an issue - after all, this is just a summer blockbuster - but the first Iron Man showed that it was possible for a mainstream film to raise these questions and explore them in a fairly nuanced way.

Now I'm sounding more down on the film than I actually was. The set-pieces are still top drawer: the ship to ship space jump is thrilling, although it lose its impact by being a diluted version of the first Trek film's space jump; the running, jumping and gunning introduction to Cumberbatch's John Harrison is impressive, if altogether too reminiscent of my ill-spent youth playing laser tag; and the space-battles are as shiny (and lens flare-y) as ever. The problem is you won't care. There's no real investment in what's happening. In the first film we get Kirk's father sacrificing himself to save his crew and his wife and child, and towards the end of the second act an entire planet is destroyed. Those are big stakes, but more than that, we understood what they meant to the characters. We could empathise. In Into Darkness this is notable in its absence. The writers kill off the most expendable member of the cast - not the usual redshirt, as the Trek universe usually decrees (in a rather tongue-in-cheek moment the redshirts are given a reprieve by changing into non-red clothes) - so that Kirk et al can build-up some righteous anger and go hunt down the Big Bad.

All in all it was inoffensive fluff; except for the ill-judged, and now much discussed, shot of Alice Eve wearing negligible amounts of clothing. The quips were decent, the action was action-y, and Noel Clarke got blown-up. There are worse ways to pass the time.

Overall: 5.5/10

SPOILER SECTION (highlight to see - in case that wasn't abundantly clear):
Right, so Cumberbatch was Khan. Big whoop. We all figured that already. My problem is the gigantic loophole the story presents, right from the outset. Khan uses his blood as a bargaining chip because he's a super-soldier, designed to be the best of the best. His blood will even resuscitate a dead Tribble, or, slightly more importantly, a dead Kirk. But the technology that made him is 300 years old. It's never explained why the Federation wouldn't be using synthesised blood (or an equivalent) that would help the sick, the dying and wounded, even though they had that tech three centuries ago. And now that they have Khan back in custody are they going to sequence his DNA and produce a cure to death, or at least temporary death, severe illness, and other irksome maladies? Somehow I think they'll forget all about this when the next film comes around.