Weekend Trek: Star Trek Into Darkness

Ah yes.  Star Trek Into Darkness.  A movie that got panned by all kinds of people, and one that is also often referred to as one of the worst movies in the franchise.

I actually like it.

Now, to be fair, this movie is not my favorite in the franchise by a long shot.  It does have problems.  Casting the whitest man possible in the form of a very pale Benedict Cumberbatch as “Khan” bothered a lot of people, though I do like the way Cumberbatch chews the scenery as the bad guy.  There’s that brief shot of Alice Eve in her underwear, there for not clear reason aside from the obvious thing to attract young men who don’t discriminate much when it comes to their entertainment choices.  The movie lacks the philosophical soul that is often at the center of good Trek.  It feels like just another big-spectacle action movie at the end.

All these things are true.  And except for the Cumberbatch casting, nothing there was new.  Director J.J. Abrams had all that, plus the lens flare, in the first movie of this series.  Why did it bother people this time?

My best guess is the people behind the scenes, for whatever reason, decided to remake Wrath of Khan, arguably the best Star Trek movie the franchise ever produced.  I mean, I would say it is the best.  I’ve learned, since seeing both movies, that Khan director Nicholas Meyer watched a bunch of original series episodes, which he’d never seen before, and settled on Khan as the villain.  Here?  Well, someone watched a bunch of old Trek and then recreated the ending only with Kirk and Spock switching places and letting Spock try (and largely fail) to kick Khan’s ass.  Why?  Beats me, but it happens.

Oh, and Kirk lives because, well, obviously.

Really, this movie is basically a standard action movie, and not a bad one either.  The characters are essentially the same as they were in the first one, and the script takes advantage of their different skills, whether its McCoy’s steady hands being good for maybe defusing a torpedo or Chekov’s nerdiness making for a good replacement for Scotty when the Chief Engineer resigns over ethical issues–a minor theme to the movie as Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and even McCoy do discuss the ethical reactions to different scenarios.  Sulu even gets to try out the captain’s chair and finds it suits him, a nod to “Captain Sulu” from the latter days of the original cast’s adventures.  There’s Leonard Nimoy makes his final appearance as Spock-Prime, and Klingons appear for the first time in this continuity…and the last since they don’t appear in the next movie.

Besides, before I go too far, I should point out that the ethics of Kirk and his crew works well since the secondary antagonist, led by Peter Weller’s Admiral Markus, is Section 31, a group whose name meant nothing to me when I saw this movie in theaters but means something to me now that I have seen Deep Space Nine.  If anything, Into Darkness is a little too deep into Star Trek lore that would have been something of a turn-off to causal fans.  Did Kirk ever worry much about the Prime Directive before?  Not that I can recall, but the opening escape scene plays that as a factor, and it leads to Kirk’s temporary demotion to Captain Pike’s first officer before Pike (among others) is killed by Khan in a sneak attack.  That does make me wonder why the movie ends with the Enterprise beginning its five-year exploration mission because, well, what was it doing before then?

Here’s the thing:  I like this movie.  It’s not a bad movie.  I’ve seen bad movies.  I’ve seen much worse movies.  I’ve even seen much worse Star Trek movies.  This movie just feels a lot like the first Abrams-directed Trek.  The characters are basically the same.  It has a nice sense of humor.  I particularly liked Kirk’s reaction to learning Uhura and Spock are fighting when he asks how that even works.  As I said above, Cumberbatch makes for a sinister villain, and you know he’s bad when he just knocks Scotty out when no one is looking.  Then he crushes Admiral Robocop’s head in his bare hands.  Everyone has a role to play, the Vengeance is a rather menacing ship that can follow other ships in warp and shoot at them at the same time.

Now, is it a good Star Trek movie?  Eh, not really. Abrams was more of a Star Wars fan, and Paramount was more than happy to just make the humanist philosophy of Star Trek into more straightforward sci-fi action movies.  Sure, the movie suggests Dr. Markus is hanging around, but Alice Eve will be gone by the time the next movie rolls around.  But in the end, it’s fine.

There’s just much better Star Trek movies out there…possibly including the next one.