Too much which becomes too little

Rating: 7/10 (22 May 2013)

After a long wait, a disappointing movie. Or probably the hype was too great after superb trailers. The first part was way better because we were in an uncharted territory where anything can happen, and it did - for example the destruction of planet Vulkan. Now in this movie we have by-the-numbers action and a very thin plot with a couple of not so great plot twists. The creators of the movie have managed to keep the identity of the mail villain secret and after so much speculation from the fans it has become irrelevant who he is, at least for me. The creators of the movie have played on this single card and the rest of the movie suffers greatly because of that. The main problem of this movie is, to be honest, a paper-thin plot. All that happens in the movie is as follows: a terrorist manages to eradicate half the starfleet captains and then teleports (!) to the Klingon homeworld Kronos, Kirk&Crew receive orders to find-him-and-kill-him", Kirk than decides to capture him instead, the terrorist kills couple of Klingons and then he surrenders and reveals himself as Khan (no further explanation necessary), then arrives the second villain of the movie-an admiral who wants to start a war with the Klingons and he has a brand new ship (like USS Excelsior from the original time line), there is a undramatic and chaotic space battle, some gun- and fistfights and then Khan takes over admirals ship, then follows a chase on Earth and a happy end. This plot points do not last much longer on screen, everything happens too quickly, not allowing for the suspense to build. But there are some redeeming points as well. Spock is brilliant in this movie and steals every scene he is in. I love his reasoning and his adamant moral. The new Klingons are very cool. We see that they have managed to destroy their moon Praxis and their homeworld ahead of time. And this time they did not have chancellor Gorkon to make peace with the Federation. I hope we will have relentless enemies in them for the future movies. Space battles between Enterprise and Admiral's new ship are pretty underwhelming. Enterprise is a sitting duck and keeps receiving punishment in every battle, which becomes boring after a while. Great final battle in The Undiscovered Country" is something the director could have drew an inspiration from. And of course we have Kirks sacrifice at the end so his ship and crew would live. It is a copy of Spock's death from The Wrath of Khan" and sadly it is a missed opportunity. The scene fails to be dramatic or sad or significant. In the moment where Kirk enters a radioactive warp core, I knew how he will be cured. To be honest I had hoped that Spock would try to enter this warp core and that the old Spock" would take his place, but that was an ordinary wishful thinking of an old ST fan. Benedikt Cumberbatch is superb as a villain Khan but the emotional connection between him and Kirk is absent in this movie, which makes sense because they met for the first time in this time line. Nevertheless, the screen dynamic between Khan and Kirk from The Wrath of Khan" was better. I hope that the creators of this new Star Trek will avoid similar mistakes for the future movies, because this new reboot of the series has great potential because all bets are off. Good luck next time.