Star Trek into Darkness - A Trekkie's Review [Movie Review]

I think Benedict Cumberbatch really deserves top billing.

I have been putting of my review of Star Trek into Darkness for a couple of days. I have a reason. It's very hard to review this movie without revealing a massive number of spoilers. So this will probably be a somewhat short review.

I like the new Enterprise.

No, seriously. I really like the new Enterprise design.

So lets set out from dry dock and get down to it.

4 out of 5 stars

Guess the ship.

With luck our future cities will look at least this cool.

The opening scene sets some of the tone of the film - the idea of blending the original with the new. It has the feel and color pallet of Star Trek TOS. Bright tones, vivid colors contrasting in almost garish ways. But at the same time there is the feel of being updated. More 'punchiness' to the characters, more action, more tech, more danger.

Then the movie jams itself right into warp and plunges us right into the very Darkness of the title.

And sadly I'm not going to give anything more away. I hopefully have given almost nothing away so far.

An awesome point of note for any Whovian reading this: the actor who played 'Mickey' has a small role. 


Now for my personal take on the film.

The extent of 'service' in any reboot Star Trek film so far.

It's not a Star Trek in old sense, not in the sense of the older movies, and especially not in the sense of the series. But it is a Star Trek. It has all the elements there, but they are more compact, more condensed.

This does not mean it is bad. Nor does it mean it is necessarily good either. That is determined by how those elements are used.

They are used well. But there is a lot in the movie that is improved with prior Trek knowledge. Can the movie be enjoyed without knowing your Trek, yes, but you will miss the inherent humor of throw-away lines like, "We got this craft from the Mudd incident." If you don't know your Trek, that just explains a minor plot point in a throw-away manner. If you know your Trek, you get exactly what that line encompasses - and you get the added depth.

There are numerous incidents like this. I'm not going to say anymore. That line was my one big spoiler - they mention Mudd. I'm not even certain it was a certain Harcourt Fenton Mudd - but in my mind it was.

There are numerous times where they use Trek knowledge, but change things up to make it new. There are subtle character alterations that occur. We saw those in Star Trek (2009); Spock and Uhura as an example.


I liked it. I'll probably see it once or twice more in theaters.