Dave's Blog

{4.5/5} “Jim, you’re not actually going down there, are you? You don’t rob a bank when the getaway car has a flat tire.”

Star Trek Into Darkness, released in 2013

Kirk has to reveal the Enterprise to primitive people in order to save Spock’s life. Starfleet is unhappy — since he broke the Prime Directive — and they demote him. Meanwhile, a Starfleet officer named John Harrison attacks Starfleet Headquarters when he knows a bunch of top people will be there. Harrison has used a portable transwarp beaming device to beam himself to the Klingon homeworld — Kirk’s orders are to go there and take him out.

This is the 2nd movie in the reboot series, after 2009’s Star Trek.

Highlights include

• The opening scene in which Kirk and McCoy are running from natives and Spock is inside an active volcano
• The sight of the Enterprise rising out of the water
• The moment when Kirk looks at Spock and changes his mind about what he’s going to do, capture Harrison instead of kill him
• A villain who’s more interesting than most villains
• Kirk doing what Spock would have done, and Spock doing what Kirk would have done
• The banter between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy

It’s another action-packed adventure. Despite its overall dark tone there are moments of levity.

The Enterprise crew are still young and somewhat unsure, and they’re faced with difficult moral and ethical choices.

I may have liked the movie better than I did the first time. When I rewatch Star Trek movies I tend to focus on the good parts.

It’s a great movie, but it could have been better. What was the motivation for going into darkness? That was unnecessary. What was the motivation for rehashing some of the plot of a previous movie in the series? It should have been going where we haven’t gone before.

This was the last time Leonard Nimoy played Spock, briefly — he was too sick to participate in the next movie and later died.

Stars Karl Urban, Zoë Saldana, Peter Weller, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek). The music by Michael Giacchino is amazing.

This is the 2nd time I’ve seen it. My previous review is here.