(cue shouting iconic name of villain with the word: Reboot)

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2013)

I actually do recommend the movie, it's good in an overall manner of speaking. The performances never falter, actors like Karl Urban and Simon Pegg never falter when given good lines to say and things to do emotionally in a scene, and Benedict Cumberbatch is fantastic as John Harrison - until his character starts losing interest past things like clear motivations or stakes past 'destroy everything'. The performances aren't the problem. Into Darkness suffers in the sense that I saw with Abrams' own Super 8 (Spielberg movies), as well as Prometheus (Alien(s)), which also was co-scripted by Damon Lindelof (seriously, has he just not been on top of things since Lost?), where there is just a streak, mostly after the halfway mark, of blatant fan-service. By this I mean that the movie starts out with a good premise, and being from a good place to do something different. But there comes a point where the makers lay out their cards, and the film becomes something else, something *too* familiar.
I was fine with them actually bringing back Kahn to the world, in a way. This is the 'alternate' time-line (ala, again, Lost), but maybe they could do something new with him, being unthawed and back to reaping what he's after. Maybe there could have been something there. But from the moment 'John Harrison' says who he is, little by little, in a snowballing effect, the Bad Robot group just does not have it in them to let go of Space Seed/Wrath of Khan. Yes, there is not quite the vendetta that Khan had against Kirk. But at the same time that they were trying little things differently, there was always a sense of where the film was going to go. The writers - also Kurtzman and Orci who wrote the first rebooted film in 2009 - try and inject a lot of seemingly mind-blowing twists into the framework.
Needless to say I could see almost all of them coming. And it was not as if I was looking out for this; it comes down to some simple screen writing plot-basics crap, which, in theory, should be fine. Kirk's arc is that he doesn't respect authority, does things his own way, and at the start of the film (again, I have to reiterate, the film has a wonderful set-up, especially with a trip to an indigenous alien planet that goes awry with saving Spock and revealing their ship to a race of aliens), it's clear where Kirk has to go. He must prove himself, if not to himself than to his crew or (again, spoiler) the memory of his mentor, Christopher Pike. Sacrifice is the deal here. And guess what - this time the twists and turns, for all of the characters, are... let's just say not quite organic to the film in and of itself. At least entirely.
An homage here and there is fine. Hell, they brought back the tribbles for this one. The problem comes where it's just too obvious, and in Into Darkness it becomes too obvious where the makers are taking their material, which is, basically, anything very memorable about Wrath of Khan or parts of the episode Space Seed, all the way down to a death scene (with a reverse I guess, but still to the note) and a famous exclamation against aforementioned villain. It doesn't quite end the same way as its main influence. Maybe that's a good thing. Search for Spock is safe, for now. But at the same time it ultimately leaves the movie, a thrilling ride for parts of it and never exactly boring, into a place where its this: for a film called Into Darkness, it's too safe, and little plants put in by the writers pay off far too easily.
Some fun action, an ideal cast still and performing the hell out of material that is familiar. But it's also frustratingly uneven and does a strange thing for the audience - half of the people seeing this, more or less, will be people familiar with the predecessors. The other half may be young people unfamiliar with TOS or WoK. For the former, I suspect, things will just ultimately come off awkward, laughable even, and odd. For the latter it may be fine, though they may not see some of the plot strands left behind (Klingons, seriously, what happened there?) in lieu of stroking off a portion of cinematic history. It makes one look at Tarantino as subtle by comparison of lifting from influences.