Star Trek Into Darkness : DVD Review


Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Available on DVD, Blu-Ray™ or Digital Download
ITunes link: http://bit.ly/1mfDakv

Director: J. J. Abrams
Writers: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin
Length: 133 minutes

I really enjoyed the first rebooted Star Trek film - The Future Begins - but if I had one issue with it, it was the slightly unexciting Romulan villain, Nero, played by Eric Bana. Star Trek into Darkness offers a new threat - one that is from within Starfleet and therefore so much more frighting and potentially destructive. Who is John Harrison and why does he want to destroy Starfleet?

Having taken full command of the Federation’s Flagship, the USS Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk (James Pine) is ably assisted by his Vulcan Science Officer Mr Spock (Zachary Quinto). Down in Sickbay is Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy. He is joined by Star Trek newcomer Alice Eve as the daughter of Admiral Marcus.

The opening scenes are of Spock and Bones on an alien planet trying to snuff out an enormous volcano that is about to literally tear a planet apart and destroy a tribal (pre-industrial) culture. It’s a fun, colourful opening that harks back to the original series of Star Trek when each episode the crew would visit a new strange world with new civilisation. It’s a bit incongruous with the rest of the film but it’s a nice opening and the aliens look fantastic.

Hopefully by now you'll know the big faux-twist that Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Khan. Fans of the original films would be right to fear that Ricardo Montalban was irreplaceable. His swaggering portrayal of Khan was par excellence. In this new age of Star Trek would could replace him? Cumberbatch is fantastic, even putting Pine and Quinto into the shade. He steals all of the scenes he appears in.

Star Trek fans will once again enjoy spotting snippets of dialogue from the original series, but this time around the story is far more heavily based on the original storyline of The Wrath of Khan. This new version is twisted and warped but it's still very recognisable.

Pine is once again excellent as Kirk. He inhabits the character flawlessly. He breathes his own life and quirks on the character whilst also giving the occasional reverent nod to Shatner. In first rebooted film Quinto was the perfect actor to play Spock. His portrayal of the character was beyond compare. His characteristics were so similar to those of Leonard Nimoy that the rest of the cast and crew could have been forgiven for mistaking him with Leonard Nimoy when he was also on set.

The inclusion of Alice Eve and other minor characters sadly mean that Karl Urban as ‘Bones’ McCoy, Anton Yelchin as Pavel Andreievich Chekov and Simon Pegg as Chief Engineer Scoty are pushed further to the extremes. It's a shame. The one actor that does have more screen time is Zoe Saldana as Uhura, but sadly it’s mostly screen time with Spock (who she is now in a relationship with) and it doesn’t really ring true that she is emotional and argumentative around Spock (even whilst on duty) but then she can straight go into a full-on firefight with the Klingons. And talking about the Klingons - they are also incongruous to the plot and just feel shoehorned in as the ‘alien of the week’. They deserve their own movie as the main villain not to be squeezed into 15 minutes of screen time in a movie that focusses on a separate villain.

JJ Abrams is hottest director in the world right now. TV fame with Alias and LOST has made him a household name. Star Trek and now Star Wars will cement his name into the film history books for eternity. His direction is so slick that everything runs perfectly smoothly and his attention to detail is precise. The pacing of the film is perfect which is a real accomplishment considering the length of the film and the complexity of the script and the number of characters. And the only writers that could possibly match Abrams at the moment are returning writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Having already penned the The Future Begins they are totally familiar with their characters and the Star Trek universe and whilst they made a mis-step with the Transformer sequels aftera blistering opening movie they make no such mistakes with Star Trek. They’ve done an outstanding job and thankfully banished the use of time travel from this instalment.

This is a great second rebooted Star Trek film that is a great addition to the franchise. The mixture of action, comedy and drama is perfect.

Keep the engines running, Mr. Sulu...

Author : Kevin Stanley