Movie review: Star Trek Into Darkness


By Katherine Monk, Postmedia News May 15, 2013 12:46 PM




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Alice Eve is Carol, left, and Chris Pine is Kirk in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Photograph by: Paramount Pictures , Postmedia News


Star Trek Into Darkness
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood
Directed by: J.J. Abrams
Running time: 133 minutes
Parental Guidance: violence


Perhaps it was the sensuous tingle of nostalgia that poured from its twin nacelles that made that second coming of the original franchise so attractive. Or maybe it was the bittersweet frisson of reconnecting with an intimate friend, but whatever the mystery ingredient may have been in that intoxicating 2009 Star Trek, it’s not all there in the double-stuffed Into Darkness.


A fluffy popcorn movie with endless special effects and plenty of plotlines to chew on, there’s no doubt director J. J. Abrams was very busy over the course of shooting this long-gestating “prequel sequel” — which isn’t just an awkward turn of phrase, it’s an ugly reality of the modern movie business and its lack of risk and imagination.


But it’s not Abrams’s fault the film is boxed by franchise expectations, and all its prequel-sequel ridiculousness. And it’s not his fault he had to please young and old, hardcore and casual fan alike in order to succeed.


But it is his fault the film lacks a sense of true aim.


Pulling out of space port in a hurry, we pick up the golden threads of Jim Kirk’s shirt and life story as he’s about to violate the prime directive: interfere with the natural order of history and evolution by saving an entire world from self-combusting.


The whole setting will immediately make the older Trekkie feel right a home: An alien planet where the trees are red and the native humanoids wear loincloths. It’s all a little over the top, and the moment we see Jim running frenzied through the ruddy forest screaming, we can almost conjure a tummy-tucked Shatner sitting on some cosmic barstool 20 years hence relating the yarn of how he really is a god — on one planet, at least.


It’s almost too goofy, but the scene is saved by realistic digital 3D scenery, and a notable lack of crepe paper and Styrofoam.


The point is, it conjures the old-style show all the same, which proves Abrams and screenwriter-producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman understood where to strike a balance between sci-fi camp and earnest pathos.


This is important because it’s in the friction zone between these two that Gene Roddenberry mined the very essence of the modern human condition.


On the chintzy, spray-painted surface, the original Star Trek looked downright silly as it featured green women in purposely revealing William Ware Theiss costumes. But hidden in the shimmering folds of painted skin were socially progressive messages about everything from civil rights to Vietnam.


Star Trek boldly went where no other TV series dared go, which is why there was a slight sigh of disappointment in this movie’s sprawling approach to story.


From an arc about violating the prime directive, to a ragged homegrown terrorist plot and a thickening Spock-Kirk bromance, Abrams and his heroic cast and crew hurl themselves around the bridge to hit the story points, while Scotty screams the obvious: “The warp story engines can’t hold any longer!”


The reality is: Time has sped up, of late. Every cut is shorter, and every scene is a mish-mash of 3D effects and dizzying action because moviemakers know our attention spans aren’t long enough to endure a 10-second ad on YouTube.


So they stuff the studio casing with endless spectacle, and hope we’ll be satisfied by the sensation of being full, if not necessarily moved. Because sometimes, you just want to stuff something in your bun.


But Star Trek demands so much more than sausage, and while Orci and Kurtzman pay homage to the original series with nods to classic episodes, they fail to articulate any single meaningful point to the whole exercise.


The characters suffer a similar fate. With little dramatic dialogue to really work with, they end up over-emphasizing the techie “hull-breach-blah-blah” to land some thespian punches.


Again, this is par for the Starfleet course, but to sustain an entire feature film, you really need to feel the throbbing pulse of a thematic warp core, and this movie burns in shuddering starts and spurts as the main thrusters intermittently go offline, allowing this pimped-out 3D vehicle to drift into the yawning void of formula goodies and baddies.


Not that the man with the showbusiness-defying name, Benedict Cumberbatch, isn’t fun to watch as the “franchise newcomer,” or that Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto don’t have plenty of chemistry as Kirk and Spock. They both capture the emotional and spiritual likeness of their predecessors and make us believe in the continuous depth of the Star Trek universe.


The same could be said for every character who gets a chance to chisel out a hint of new dimension, from Uhura (Zoe Saldana) to Chekov (Anton Yelchin), not to mention the sorrowfully underused Mr. Scott (Simon Pegg) and Bones (Karl Urban).


It’s the obviousness of it all that keeps these solid characters from truly flourishing, hindering this Trek’s ability to really connect at a deeper level.


Star Trek Into Darkness still has the explosive power of high-end entertainment. And it features some crafty allusions to other movies in the genre, but it’s as artful as a shotgun blast. It hits the mark, but shreds the entire target, leaving nothing behind but the hook — and its unspoken promise: “There’s more where that came from.”