An excellent reboot of a reboot

Rating: 8/10 (23 June 2013)

"Star Trek: Into Darkness" was brilliant, and it fixed all the problems that its predecessor created. At the end of that movie, all we had was a Kirk who was nothing but an unrepentant bad boy with no regard for anyone but himself and his own disrespect for the rules. That's not a leader, so putting him in the captain's chair at the end ruined that movie and made it feel ridiculous. But "Into Darkness" addresses that problem right away by having Kirk screw up and get pulled out of the captain's chair, and the rest of the movie covers Kirk's learning and growing process -- the things he should have done in the first movie to make him worthy to occupy the chair. Plus, this movie does a great job integrating the rebooted plot line with the pre-existing Trek universe, and the plot was just as good as the characters and the dialog. So overall, it was MUCH better than its predecessor, and I'd rate it a solid eight stars.