I really wanted to like it, but....

Rating: 4/10 (11 May 2013)

I really wanted to like "into darkness". I'm not a die-hard trekkie, but I like original series/movies well enough, and I really enjoyed the entire original Khan storyline. As soon as I heard the Khan rumors, I was both excited and anxious. Unfortunately, I think the anxious side won out.
Don't get me wrong. It's a solid action flick, and the acting by pretty much everyone is fine, and Cumberbatch is amazing. But it's not star trek, and it especially is not wrath of khan, no matter how much it wants to be. Other reviews have focused on the good, so I'm going to focus on the bad (as I see it).
First, in the originals, Khan is from central Asia and was played by a Mexican. In this movie, Khan is as English as the queen herself. Cumberbatch's excellent performance notwithstanding, why is he called "Khan Noonien Singh" if he's Engilish? The time travel event in the first movie would not have caused a fundamental change in Khan's race, accent, etc. It's a minor point, I know, but it really dragged me out of the movie.
Second, key parts of the plot are uncomfortably repetitive of the original, with special effects added for the sake of hyperbole and all of the thoughtfulness of the original removed for simplicity. Though Kirk's journey into maturity is obviously meant to be introspective, it couldn't have been less subtle with a sledgehammer, particularly at certain key points in the plot. Parts of London and San Francisco are destroyed just to make the effects and reinforce what a bad guy Khan is, but the consequences of the horror go unrealized. Khan himself is the mechanism of a really cheesy reincarnation that follows a really cheesy exploitation of the original film.
Third, although the acting by the crew is fine, the dialogue is sophomoric and obvious. McCoy is meant to be the conscience of the crew, the thoughtful one holding everyone back from rash decisions. Here, Karl Urban is given nothing but shoddy one-liners. Simon Pegg and Anton Yelchin are similarly disused.
Abrams thankfully doesn't use as much camera shake as last time, but there are still plenty of lens flares, fast zooms, and weird angles, as well as nods to star wars. They're cheap, hack, and do nothing to advance the story. As a fan of both franchises, I hate that they will all soon suffer from these faults. Cut the redundancy and hack cinematography and try to come up with some creative original plots, JJ!