Star Trek Into Darkness Review

SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! SPOILERS AHEAD!

VINDICATION! I was right, I was right about everything; the villain was Khan, Admiral Macrus was with Section 31 who found Khan and was holding his crew as leverage, and I knew they would call Old Spock to confirm who Khan was. Those predictions aside there was still plenty of surprises, and Into Darkness is a hell of a ride to watch, hands down I give it 8 out of 10 Photon Torpedoes. I do have to say the previous film was better on the basis that it was completely original, every thing was fresh and new, but with Into Darkness it felt like Abrams and the writers gave in and pandered to not only the fans but also their own inner-fanboys to make the film's villain Khan and put in more Trek universe references and easter eggs for us Trekkies to chuckle at or point out to others.

So what I'm trying to say is Nu Trek 2 is a great sci-fi action movie, but in terms of being a Star Trek film I think it fell short, this was Abrams and the writers chance to create an entirely new tale for the young crew to blaze their own trail in the final frontier to discover new lifeforms and new civilizations and to boldly go where no Trek series or movie has gone before, but instead we got the Alternate Reality's version of Wrath of Khan, complete with lines lifted directly out of the 1982 script I might add. There are a couple of things that  did bug me, like Khan Transwarp Beaming all the way to The Klingon Homeworld, I mean I suspended my science fiction disbelief when they used it in the first movie, but really?! 90 light years?!, then I couldn't be the only one that was disappointed that they spelt the name of The Klingon Homeworld as Kronos instead of Qo'nos, and lastly the whole Khan's blood in dead Tribble situation felt sloppy thrown in the audience's face just to setup Kirk's resurrection which I think took away from his sacrifice to save the ship knowing McCoy already has that idea in his head. I don't want to say I hated how the Klingon who removed his helmet looked, but I do want to point out we haven't seen a Klingon that was bald (besides General Chang) or without any type of facial hair or ever wear earrings so I gonna say that particular soldier was not the best representation on the new forehead design, that if he had head and facial hair he would of been more recgonizable as a Klingon, but really Abrams?! Now Klingons have point ears WTH?!!

All that aside, Benedict Cumberbatch was a pure extraordinary joy to watch as Khan, some may think he wasn't portrayed as his usual megalomaniac self, but I think the writers did with him what they did with all the other new incarnations of the classics characters and took the core traits of him now affected by the different course of events of the Alternate Timeline, so with Khan being awoken and put to work under duress with his crew held hostage for nearly a year would strip him of his tyrannical superiority complex which just left his cold calculating mind wanting nothing but vengeance and the retrieval of his people. Chris Pine continues to amaze as the young James T. Kirk, you definitely see him getting closer and closer to becoming the Captain of the Enterprise we know from The Original Series, and even though the scene was rehashed and flipped from Wrath of Khan, Kirk's method of repairing the Warp Core and subsequent death was a real tearjerker, I will admit I myself got a little misty eyed. The next Nu Trek movie is up in the air 'til we see if Abrams comes back to make a third or if he'll be tied up making a second Star Wars film after Episode VII, but whoever makes the next film I'm hoping for something completely new and invigorating on par or even better then the 2009 movie, your move Abrams, Orci, Kurtzman, and Lindelof.