Moments of brilliance drowned in a sea of pretentious pathos and downright stupidity

Rating: 4/10 (10 May 2013)

** No spoilers in first part ** I saw Star Trek Into Darkness yesterday in IMAX 3D and although it's visually stunning and has a superb cast with great chemistry it falls short in the storytelling department. This is one of those movies that leaves you with the impression that it has very little to offer aside from what it flaunts in the trailer. I am a huge fan of its 2009 predecessor, and can only conclude that adding the third writer to he mix resulted in three being a crowd. It has moments of brilliance drowned in a sea of pretentious pathos and downright stupidity. It opens strong and promises a great ride but then some 30 minutes into the movie abandons the potentially exciting and epic plot for a lame "character development" story.
** Spoilers follow from here on ** First thing that offends that they evidently fired the science advisors or never bothered consulting them in the first place: while in the predecessor you had the mysterious red matter that is never explained and causes planets to go black hole, it works because it remains a mystery - here Spock freezes a super-volcano that is about to wipe out a civilization with a make-shift COLD FUSION device. Fusion, hot or cold, generates energy instead of absorbing it. Later on, there is this long sequence of Enterprise free falling through Earth's upper atmosphere with the saucer placed horizontally and entire ship slowly rotating, yet gravity aboard has gone completely haywire: in some parts of the ship people are flying alongside the hull, in others running along the sides of the saucer corridors, and in others still running on a gantry avoiding debris falling down. I will not even start on Kirk knocking the warp core into alignment hanging from the rafters while in free fall. Or parking a star-ship on the ocean floor for that matter.
Second thing that offends is the overdone "emotional journey" of the characters. OK, I can buy that admiral Pike has become a surrogate father to Kirk and the obvious LOVE, care and respect they have for each-other is plausible, to the point that Kirk is emotionally shaken by admiral's sudden death. What I don't buy is that Spock - who is accused by Uhura of not showing affection - completely breaks down emotionally when he believes Kirk is dying, everything made worse by "holding hands" through the radiation chamber glass door.
However, the worst offense is using Klingon home-world and a group of Klingons as a cheap teaser. The movie promises an imminent all-out Klingon/federation war with Khan involved in a middle of it; to abandon that storyline and Klingons altogether in a few minutes, and offer a sappy Kirk / Spock love story with Khan stuck in between.