With the benefit of 11 years of hindsight, lets talk about Star Trek Into Darkness. Cards on the table: I don’t like this movie at all. It’s probably my least favorite Star Trek story across the entire canon.
While this movie was being promoted, no one would confirm that Cumberbatch was Khan despite rampant speculation. He’s not even introduced as Khan, for the first half of the movie he’s “John Harrison,” and the Khan reveal is played as a big dramatic moment.
JJ Abrams’ entire shtick is that he crafts “mystery boxes.” So… is that it? Is Star Trek Into Darkness just a mystery box where the identity of the villain is the mystery, and Abrams & co. just worked backwards from there?
Lets be generous and say that’s not it: Into Darkness had something to say. We have a conspiracy, a rogue admiral, an automated super-warship, the death of a mentor… it seems like we can pull something out of here, right?
… right?
Every time I watch this movie, I reminded of how much better it would have been with Benicio del Toro in the Khan role.
https://screenrant.com/benicio-del-toro-star-trek-2-villain-khan/
Was it trying to say that a white guy can play a South Asian as well as a Mexican?
I have to admit that I was blinded by all the classic Trek references and actually enjoyed this and the 2009 movie on my first watch. It was a fun action movie with a Star Trek coat of paint on it, which got me to the theaters.
After a little while, however, the flashy new paint started peeling, and I realized that I had just liked it because it was new. It doesn’t share the same place in my heart as TOS, so whenever I feel the inclination to watch Kirk & crew explore the galaxy again, I go back to the original.
The visuals, music, and fight scenes were cool, but the writing felt superficial and boring. The same argument might be made for the original 6 movies, but I think the difference is that where the original movies felt like an encore for a beloved cast/crew that audiences were dying to see more of, the JJ movies were built without the same foundation. Watching them now feels like I’m watching a shadow of something else that was great.
I saw this movie in cinema when it was released and I can tell you that I haven’t see it since so I haven’t got a clue ^^’
What I can tell you is that I was 13 at the time and I had probably watched most of TOS and seen a few movies with the TOS cast tho I also can’t pinpoint which. Most of the plot of Into Darkness eludes me and I know even 13 year old me thought it felt like a very generic action sci-fi film, almost like Star Wars, and that my dad was disappointed by it for similar reasons.
But I definitely wasn’t as disappointed as him; you can impress a 13 year old with explosions and I think that Leonard Nimoy’s obviously old appearance made me realize just how long ago TOS was filmed, but it also prompted me to research the actors of TOS a bit (I usually don’t care much for actors or celebrities in general).
Seeing Into Darkness in cinema also lead to me believe that Star Trek as a franchise was still alive and well and I only realized later that these movies came seemingly out of nowhere. It’s probably also why my English teacher was so taken aback when I, a 7th grader, could explain a comic with a joke or pun of some kind about William Shatner’s toupee that was printed on one of her outdated worksheets a year prior to the release of Into Darkness (English isn’t my native language, otherwise this might sound pretty normal). But my parents just had their children rather late and my dad is a nerd who grew up with TOS, of course I know Star Trek.
TL;DR: I think for me personally it helped me connect to a fandom I thought was dead; I’d have to see it again to give any actual analysis of the plot.
Was it trying to say something or was it just trying to milk the fans because they like Wrath of Kahn?
