Star Trek Into Darkness **** (2013, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Alice Eve) – Movie Review

What’s not to like? It’s Star Trek!!

With the world in its usual chaos, Chris Pine’s Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock explore their properly heterosexual bromance, which culminates in each saving the other’s life against orders – no spoiler there because we know they can’t die.

It seems there’s a new villain on the block, but it turns out he’s only new here in this movie’s timeline and we’ve encountered the Evil One before. Why it’s none other than Khan, whose wrath we already know about, and he’s played screen-hoggingly expertly by Benedict Cumberbatch clearly relishing his chunky role as a camp, tasty villain, properly moustache-twitching and with a cape too!

Must have a cape if you’re a villain. Or hero. It’s high time capes came back into fashion in the real world. What would you fancy, a red one or black one?

Thank goodness Benicio Del Toro or other possibles Jodi Molla and Edgar Ramirez didn’t swing this role as originally planned. Cumberbatch is perfect. Infuriating that he didn’t get to play Sherlock Holmes in the cinema.

Meanwhile, the rest of the new crew are aboard the Starship Enterprise too, of course, with Karl Urban’s Bones carving out the best space and Simon Pegg, still irritating but way less annoying this time as Scotty, with action and drama to do as well as simply being silly comic relief. It’s a shade disappointing that there’s not much for the other actors to do though.

It helps enormously that all are proper actors, and can handle neat lines and moments of high drama with style and conviction. Abrams cast well with Star Trek in 2009. And Peter Weller’s Admiral Marcus and Alice Eve as his daughter Carol prove very useful cast additions this time.

The movie starts with a huge bang, sets off literally running (well Pine is anyway) from the get-go, and never once stops for breath. You can’t take your eyes off it, it looks so dazzling, the CGI’s fantastic.

The 3D? I don’t want to get into this argument but I can see both sides here: it’s brilliantly well used but also pointless. It’s an added bonus if you like 3D and don’t mind wearing heavy specs, but it’s just a gimmick, a minus for everybody else. Incidentally, director J J Abrams wanted a 2D movie, so it was filmed in2D in the IMAX format, then converted into 3D, for the first time ever.

Now for the sound. The score’s great, a bit of a work of art, though it does compel you to listen to it, so it isn’t really an accompaniment as much as a star of the film, and just occasionally you want to shout to composer Michael Giacchino to ‘make the music stop’. Brilliant it may be, but subtle it’s not.

This makes for a less than relaxing escapist entertainment, and you have to keep on your toes throughout. You can’t stop listening to every word in case you miss some important plot or motivation point (there’s no room for slackers or thickies at the cinema showing this).

If there are complaints about Into Darkness to be made, more niggles really, I’d say there are too many climaxes, too few pauses for breath, and there’s too long a running time in returning writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman‘s very capable screenplay. It’s noticeable Abrams loses control of the dynamics of the busy but admittedly thin plotline around two thirds, so pruning would be good.

This, though, is a minor flaw in a terrific movie. But there’s so much value for money here. The spectacle’s all about creating another world we can lose ourselves in, and so we do for two and a quarter hours.

There are some who will bemoan Abrams’s decision to go with a regulation plot that pits the Enterprise crew against a stereotypical villain, instead of going the more imaginative route of taking the unknown and nature itself as the adversary. This would have certainly been more Trekkie for the purists and more good food for sci-fi fans but probably would have ended up being a lot less entertaining and certainly a lot less popular.

You can see they had problems finding a catchy title this time. Into Darkness? Pah! Despite this misleading title that conjures up a way-up-itself Batman-type movie or a completely different plotline (one of those serious ones), this is an infectiously brilliant, dazzlingly bright, glorious fun ride with all the warm performances, witty banter, incredible visuals and thrilling action of the 2009 reboot re-accessed in style.

Star Trek Into Darkness grossed $467million worldwide including $229million in the US. Star Trek Beyond opens July 22 2016.

Anton Yelchin who plays Russian specialist Chekov died at his home in a tragic freak accident on 19 June 2016, aged only 27.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Movie Review

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