Film Review - Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Star Trek Into Darkness is the second Star Trek film to be directed by JJ Abrams and again stars Chris Pine as Captain Kirk of the Enterprise, this time facing an attack from one of his own, John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) who has fled to the home of an old enemy but Kirk will find a lot more when it comes to this mysterious fugitive.

It would be fair to say that I went into this film with some fairly keen expectations, the previews for the film made it look exciting and Cumberbatch was a good addition despite my big fear about the film regarding if he would be playing the iconic Khan and that Abrams was keeping it under wraps until the film's release, with that did this beam up the goods?

Well, it does up to a point, quite simply the first two thirds of this film are amazing, Abrams's direction is excellent building on his experience on Super 8 two years ago, his editing is much more fluid, the action is terrific and really grabs you by the throat, the cast are much more comfortable in their roles and I really liked seeing Peter Weller again in a film.

But sadly (and it is very sad to say this) the film loses its way in the third act big time by returning to some tried and true tropes that helped to befell the Trek series in the past, it was such a sad shame to see this happen as I was really loving this film up to that point.

I also thought Cumberbatch was something of a disappointment in that section of the film despite doing good work up to that point, it's a sad shame that with all the resources that exist now where anything our heart desires we can put up on the big screen and instead we get this tired rerun for the climax but then again the film was partially written by Damon Lindelof who also wrote last year's Prometheus and like that film he probably did this because "It will be Cool" well it wasn't and it ruins what was a very fun sci-fi adventure.

So all in all, Star Trek Into Darkness tries to boldly go where no man has gone before but instead boldly goes where us audiences have gone before and that is a sad shame, seek out The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country instead of seeing this film, especially as this gave me a very bad feeling about Abrams's handling of that other big Sci-Fi series in a few years time, 1.5 out of 5.