Not Nearly as Bad as J.J. Abrams first Star Trek

Rating: 5/10 (31 August 2013)

J.J. Abrams returns with a sequel to his over-celebrated re-boot of the original Star Trek film series with a re-imagining of Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan.
Most audiences know J.J. Abrams as a new acclaimed film director that everybody loves and is thought of as a young Steven Spielberg. He gets credited as the creator of the hit television series Lost and the visionary director of Cloverfield, Super 8 and the man behind making Star Trek more accessible to a wider audience. Not all of this is true. Originally known as Jeffrey Abrams, he began his career as a screenwriter and producer in the early 90's. He co-wrote the James Belushi comedy Taking Care of Business and was both the writer and co-producer of the tearjerker, Regarding Henry. In 1992 he wrote and executive produced a science-fiction romantic drama, Forever Young, which starred Mel Gibson and introduced the world to Elijah Wood. Forever Young is actually quite a perfect example of Abrams writing, an ambitious story that begins quite interesting but ends horribly. The name Jeffrey Abrams died in 1997 after co-writing the embarrassingly bad comedy, Gone Fishing. The birth of J.J. Abrams came as the co-writer of Michael Bay's Armageddon. Armageddon is easily one of the most terribly written, acted and directed films ever made. This same year J.J. made the move to television, where bad writing is acceptable, with Felicity, a series he created and produced. In 2004 he created Lost, writing, directing and executive producing the pilot, which he has been reaping the benefits of ever since. In 2006 he tried returning to feature films with co-writing and directing Mission Impossible 3, only to fail horribly. He continued to have major success in television and in 2008 produced Cloverfield (not directed, produced). Cloverfield was widely popular simply because of an extremely clever marketing campaign and J.J. was again trusted in the world of film.
J.J. Abrams first Star Trek film watered down the franchise by taking away the intelligence and wit it was famous for and replacing it with the non-stop action Star Wars fans crave. James Kirk was now a completely unlikeable brainless daredevil locked in an epic ego battle with a completely unrelatable version of Spock. Worse of all the film was guilty of containing the most boring villain ever put to screen. On-top of all of these atrocities, Abrams felt the need to fill every frame with annoying lens flares, constantly reminding us, as an audience, that we are only watching a film. Of course the special effects and music were as good as they got for their time, so everyone fell in-love with the film anyway.
Now we have Star Trek Into Darkness. Though Into Darkness begins with an opening scene proving that Kirk has not learned anything from the events of the previous film, the visuals are stunning. Once the first scene is done with and the opening credits fade from the screen, the film actual begins to get quite interesting. We are introduced to a mysterious villain, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Both Kirk and Spock actually mature through some much needed character development, making them both likable and relatable. While the film is still more of a battle of fists than wits, it is highly entertaining and perfectly paced with some emotional depth. Even the over-bearing lens flares die down as the film continues to get better as the tension rises higher.
Star Trek Into Darkness is surprisingly a decent blockbuster with extremely high entertainment value despite a silly opening scene and a cop-out of an ending.