As if they hollowed out someone's head and put popcorn inside

Rating: 5/10 (15 October 2013)

This will not be a review that pinpoints all kinds of technical details that this film violates regarding the original franchise. I will not require spoilers to explain what is wrong with Star Trek Into Darkness. I am not a Trekkie by far. Only very recently I watched through the original series. It was an interesting experience. Many episodes were obviously outdated but it was surprising to see how modern some of the ideas and how well- written the scripts were. The series managed to be interesting with a low budget and a spartan look.
Star Trek Into Darkness is the opposite. It is a complete overload of special effects and visual design, wrapped around a simple story filled with clichés and predictability, and devoid of any depth. Every scene is filled with over-designed crap all the time. There is too much stuff on the screen, really. There is so much to look at that nothing stands out. Any good director will focus attention on what is truly important by toning down redundant details in the rest of the image. This film however is 90% redundant details and 10% relevance. The duration of the end credits (I estimate some 12 minutes) illustrates this. Of course they had to include every person who made one of the gazillion 3D models featured in this film.
Imagine someone smart. Someone who is famous for being thoughtful, intelligent, maybe boring at times but always interesting in the end. That is the original Star Trek.
Now imagine opening up this person's skull, scooping out the brains, and putting popcorn in place. Then seal it back up, apply loads of extra cosmetic surgery, and polish it up real good. That is Star Trek Into Darkness.
They took a franchise and mimicked all its superficial appearances like the names, characters, and some plot devices. But they removed all the substance. They even tried hard to find actors who look like plausible young versions of their counterparts in the original series (especially Karl Urban and Simon Pegg are right on the spot). But that is where the similarities end. This is a staple of many a contemporary "reboot" or "remake": focus on superficial similarities with the original, and total disregard for the essence. Why even bother trying to disguise it as a remake of something old? They should have given it a new name so nobody is being fooled.
In the end, STID is just a bog standard contemporary action movie with a whiff of Star Trek flavor. If you long for two hours of visual effects, explosions, and noise, then by all means indulge yourself. But if you want to watch something that has any of the depth that was characteristic for the Star Trek TV series, stay away.