Star Trek Into Darkness – Review

2009’s Star Trek, directed by J.J. Abrams, instantly catapulted the Star Trek franchise into a tier one franchise.  While the Star Trek television series and the previous films had their merits, it’s tough to call them exciting.  Well, Abrams is a master of excitement and he was able to revitalize the universe with a breath of fresh air.  Star Trek Into Darkness (again directed by Abrams) carries on where the first film left off and it looked to be as exciting as ever.  The film stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, and many others.

Shortly after the film begins, Captain Kirk gets demoted and has the USS Enterprise taken away from him.  A dramatic change of events puts him back in charge of the ship and on a shadow-type mission to exterminate an escaped mass murderer.  It continues on from there with various twists and turns and provides over two hours of almost non-stop action.

Unfortunately, excitement seemed to be about the only goal for the project.  It succeeded in that goal and there were lots of entertaining action sequences to get your heart pumping but the film lacked a clear narrative.

While there was sort of a common idea that could be found throughout the film, the only constant goal seemed to be to keep jumping around to whatever action scene they could think of.  The protagonists’ objective and even the villain they fight against change over and over.  Sure, this keeps the pace of the film fast as there is always some new target to shoot for but it also prevents the film from building up to any sort of meaningful crescendo.

Having recently seen the latest Iron Man film, this second Star Trek movie is very reminiscent of Iron Man 2.  2008’s Iron Man and 2009’s Star Trek were so new, fresh, and exciting but their sequels both proved to be a bit mumbled.  The man in the iron suit got redemption in Iron Man 3.  Star Trek Into Darkness is fun and entertaining – it just isn’t nearly as good as its predecessor.  Let’s hope J.J. Abrams is up for some redemption for the third act.