Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Genre

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi

Director

J.J. Abrams

Country

USA

Cast

Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Alice Eve, John Cho, Peter Weller, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy Noel Clarke, Nazneen Contractor Christopher Doohan, Amanda Foreman, Jay Scully, Jonathan Dixon, Aisha Hinds, Joseph Gatt, Bill Hader, Deep Roy, Sean Blakemore

Storyline

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction.

Opinion

Before "Star Trek" I didn't care at all about the franchise. I knew there was Kirk, a spaceship and an alien with pointy ears (Spock), that's all. As you saw last week, I'm completely crazy about that film, and I was excited as hell when this one came out - I mean, it even stars Benedict Cumberbatch. How can it get better than that? And J.J. Abrams gave me pretty much what I wanted with "Star Trek Into Darkness", another visually spectacular, and quite solid installment in the Star Trek franchise.

If the 2009 film was the reboot of the first Star Trek, this one can be considered a modern "The Wrath of Khan". Now if you have followed my journey, you know how much I loved that film: it has a great plot, great characters development and a spectacular villain, Khan. How about this one? Well, it's a little bit weaker than the original. 

The story - which I believe it's an alternative reality - is very interesting, and focuses a lot on the love/hate relationships between the characters. Still, among friendship, love, and jealousy, the film has some plot holes. Actually there's some giant plot holes, if you think about it, and it seems like Abrams hoped, or thought that some dazzling special effects would have hidden that.

Like I just said, this one is weaker, also because the characters development could have been better. Also some of the characters are simply put in the film to appeal to older Star Trek fans, e.g. Dr. Carol Marcus. Yes, she was in the original, but she basically has no purpose here.

But it's not all bad, really. Benedict Cumberbatch is an incredible, intense villain - perhaps even better than Ricardo Montalbán -, and the film is worth seeing for his performance alone. The special effects, like I've already mentioned a bazillion times, are spectacular. The score is great, and the acting, well, once again I can't complain about that.

Hopefully "Star Trek Beyond" won't have the same problems with the script.