Average 2000's action flick, hurt further by the shameless milking.

Rating: 6/10 (15 September 2013)

I've been trying to write a short review about this movie, but I just can't - below is simply the shortest version I could be satisfied with. There's just too much I want to say, because I honestly thought that "Star Trek Into Darkness" would be the breaking-out film that would re-ignite this new franchise after "Star Trek 2009" failed so miserably.
I vaguely recall hearing that notion from a few people who had watched it, so I figured that despite "Star Trek 2009"'s complete failure to impress me, I'd still give the series another shot. Unfortunately what I got was mostly just "Star Trek 2013" - like the first movie, a good action piece that is heavily marred by constantly trying to remind us that it is a new-and-improved Star Trek and that we should all be really impressed.
To explain what I mean, I'll repeat for this movie the same assertion that I made about "Star Trek 2009": it's a decent sci-fi action flick which has no real connection to the Star Trek franchise whatsoever, except by constantly dropping references to Star Trek memes and reusing elements from that franchise. In other words: The filmmakers could've started a new universe, made up new characters to go with their new actors and new style, and neither movie (2009 nor Into Darkness) would've suffered. In fact I argue that they both would've been improved, since there would be more run-time to invest in actually making the protagonists sympathetic, the villains interesting (I'm looking at you, Nero), and the plots both interesting and sensical.
Instead, J.J.Abrams and crew are putting gigantic amounts of effort into convincing us - today's viewers, whether Trekkie or otherwise - to believe that this films series is a part of the Star Trek franchise. They're essentially milking the remains of that (admittedly dead) franchise without embracing it - a form of cinema necromancy. Cinecromancy!
Trying to start a new franchise is risky, of course, and why would you try it if you can just transplant an entire existing, devout fanbase into your new project? It's financially sound - you get a lot of people in theatres for almost no effort - but unfortunately does not make for quality entertainment. You sit there in the theatre for two hours wondering why they keep telling you it's Star Trek. And what's worse, as these movies show, you need gigantic amounts of effort to keep up that pretense!
So yes, as an action movie and light-hearted sci-fi I believe "Star Trek Into Darkness" is a reasonably-good movie, and you can rest assured that J.J.Abrams knows his stuff when it comes to epic-looking action sequences (though, after 20 years of watching Hollywood action movies, particularly in the last decade, this stuff is starting to look pretty old to me). On the other hand, that heavy-handed attempt to cram as much "Star Trek" into this movie as possible alongside the action sequences means that everything else suffers: The plot is flimsy, simple, and expectable; The characters draw very little sympathy - and you're expected to sympathize heavily with them for most of the non-action scenes to work at all; Once again we get a villain who's reported to have some qualities which are never shown (Khan is a genius superhuman? He's certainly a combat machine, but his plan and behavior indicate nothing about any extra smarts); And once again Starfleet seems to be running on the mentality that crewing its flagship with emotionally-stunted, hormone-driven, immature young officers is the way to go - and only luck gets them out of it alive.
(Amusingly that last point is actually commented on by the movie itself, but that only serves to make it more obvious as you sit there trying to ignore it.)
The bottom line, again, is the same for this movie as it was for Star Trek 2009: If they hadn't tried to force this to be a Star Trek movie, they might've had the time and effort to make a decent film. Instead we got two decent action flicks that have little to do with Star Trek but waste energy trying to convince us that they do - giving both of them the air of shameless capitalization that I personally do not want to smell in the theatre for two hours straight.