I Expected Entertainment

Rating: Null/10 (20 May 2014)

... and I wasn't disappointed.
I love the direction in which Abrams has taken the franchise. His creation of an alternate timeline in his first outing was brilliant, freeing him (and us) from all that came before. I found his reworking of the Khan storyline enjoyable and appropriately updated. His juxtaposition of the Kirk/Spock roles near the end of the film was a nice touch.
Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan is deliciously menacing and lethal (oh, that voice). Yes, Ricardo Montalban is a Star Trek icon. Be that as it may, I am *delighted* to have something new to replace my mental image of the insanely dramatic Khan created on TOS and reprised in Star Trek II by Ricardo Montalban.
There's nothing that I don't like about the crew. They're well cast and I'm glad that all of the actors returned for Into Darkness. Chris Pine is perfection, handling slapstick and drama with equal ease. I've tried and I honestly can't imagine another actor filling the shoes of James T. Kirk half as well. I'd love to see Zachary Quinto play an evil version of Spock some day. Anyone who saw him play Sylar in the TV Series 'Heroes' will understand what I mean.
A few things in the film that bugged me were:

Peter Weller's villain. BORING! The guy has zero range so I can only assume that he gets cast for his voice. He's exactly the same in every single bad-guy role he gets. Same delivery, same inflections, same expressions, same everything. Thankfully, he gets little screen time.

Bones' dialog. Seemed flat in a few places. Karl Urban is a talented actor who absolutely nailed McCoy in the previous movie.

Uhura's spat with Spock about his lack of feelings (really?) was cringe-worthy. She's the only character who ever seems out of character in comparison to the TOS Uhura. Anyway, this argument that the writers dreamed up makes her sound like a petulant teen.

In the latter two cases, scripting rather than acting is to blame. These were brief hiccups in an otherwise highly entertaining space romp that I wish I'd had the opportunity to see on the big screen.