Star Trek The Wrath of Khan Parity

Rating: 2/10 (11 May 2013)

Firstly, let me say that both the visual effects and sound track are both great, but it's all down hill from there.
The opening scene, I completely agree with Scotty when he says "You know how completely ridiculous it is to hide a starship on the bottom of the ocean?" Yes this ridiculous, it is a spaceship not a submarine. The ship could have stayed in orbit and either beamed the cold fusion device directly into the volcano or beamed Spock with the device down and then beamed him up. This entire scene feels like it was an excuse to get the cast into 23rd century swimmers.
Next, the effect when the ships go into warp has changed since the last film. Why do the ships leave a trail of shiny star dust at warp? When Star Trek was rebooted in the last film, the warp effect was updated, this was the time to add this (I still wouldn't have liked this effect). They should have kept this effect consistent for both films.
Though this film comes after the Enterprise series, making it canon, the appearance of the Klingons, the design of the Bat'leth and the Bird of Prey have all been changed. These are all key Star Trek components are shouldn't be tampered with.
Having Dr. Carol Marcus change uniforms in a shuttle while Kirk is asked to turn his back, is just a pathetic excuse to see Alice Eve in her underwear, and is completely unnecessary to the story.
Many parts of the story were predictable and were taken directly from The Wrath of Khan with a slight twist. Having Benedict Cumberbatch's character of John Harrison ending up to be Khan was no surprise. Having Kirk die while saving the ship instead of Spock and having Spock yell KHAN instead of Kirk, these parts were just swapped from The Wrath of Khan. The audience I was with, was shocked in horror that these scenes were rehashed again. When Bones was experimenting with Khan's blood to resurrect a dead tribble, it was obvious that this was going to be used to bring back Kirk.
The design of the Enterprise has as been tampered with. When falling to Earth, since when did the Enterprise have 10+ thrusters in the underside of the saucer section of the ship? Secondly, why does the Engineering section have torpedo tubes down both sides to firer the long range torpedoes? This made me think of a pirate ship with canons along both sides. These should have been fired via the existing fore or aft torpedo tubes.
The Wrath of Khan is possibly the best film of the first ten and should never have been touched upon again. 2 of the 3 three writers claim to be long time trek fans, if so, they should have known that this would not be taken well from existing fans. The previous film also had a few issues that I wasn't happy with (Enterprise being constructed on Earth instead of in orbit, a Cardassian beverage though we don't meet the Cardassians for about another 100 years and having a Orion (the green women) members in Star Fleet as the Orion Syndicate were enemies of the Federation), but as the story was original and good, these few issues I can turn a blind eye to. Unfortunately, Into Darkness has too many issues for me to forgive. The writers have an universe of new stories they could write, don't go rehashing content from previous films.