Star Trek into Darkness is actually a great fucking movie.
I finally got a chance to see it tonight and I can honestly say that it’s really great and much better than the 2009 film in a lot of ways and I actually liked that one too. Having established the new Star Trek universe in the previous film, this one seems a lot more like the original series but over blown to an epic scale in terms of dynamic camera shots and all the benefits that modern CGI has to offer.
It’s opening scene was like an entire episode from the series turned all the way to 11 (i’m sorry I can’t come off cornier while typing that.) Sure the impact of the prime directive being COMPLETELY violated was brushed off as “oh c’mon! what would you have me do??” But the prime directive was violated every other tuesday on TNG and really, all it would boil down to was Picard being grumpy about it for a day.
The rest of the film is equally interesting in the sense that you really get to see the ramifications of the time-line split that occurred in the first movie. The Earth has become more defensive and militarized after it’s attack was an interesting bit of commentary I think, and the consequences of a Federation Warship are equally scary.
As for the controversy…
Bennigans Cranberrysnatch did a fantastic job in the movie. He was convincingly terrifying and I bought every word of his arguments. If you haven’t watched the movie and are busy crying mutiny over the the skin color of the actor, let me remind you that Ricardo Montalban was mexican, but he was a pretty fucking light-skinned mexican.
When he appeared in the show the first time, they brown-faced him a bit, but then, when he appeared in The Wrath of Khan, He was just moderately tanned. So unless you want the negative stigma of a genocidal psychopath monster villain to be portrayed by a brown man, I encourage you to shut the fuck up for a second and watch the goddamn movie.
It isn’t perfect, it doesn’t have the intelligence of the series, but it is a great non-stop thrill of a Star Trek Episode.
Cosigned,
-Daniel
