Star Trek Into Darkness

Posted by Itheliving 12 years, 5 months ago to Movies
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Star Trek Into Darkness / Rated PG-13 for intense intensity and sci fi violence.

In February 1967 a first season episode of Star Trek titled Space Seed premiered. It featured the regular crew of the Enterprise and a great appearance by Ricardo Montalban in the villainous role of Khan Noonien Singh. In 1982 Paramount released Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. RM was back and more villainous than ever. The film featured a great story, good special effects many of which were left over scenes from Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979). It also featured a gut wrenching death of one of the lead characters. So we thought. The 1984 film Star Trek: The Search for Spock was a resurrection of the believed to be dead Vulcan. In a brilliantly funny and terrific wrap up to what turned out to be a trilogy, Star Trek: The Voyage Home (1986) brought everything back to normal.

Other Star Trek TV series’ and films followed but the trilogy was the best of the group. Part of the original cast remained intact through 1994 when Star Trek Generations (1994), using another dead but not exactly gone twist, brought the current Enterprise TV crew together with the original Capt. Kirk.

In 2009 Director JJ Abrams brought the series back with a complete reboot. Star Trek the 2009 film was the best film of the decade. Everything worked. After 4 long years the 2nd in the new series has made its premiere in May of 2013. It continues the story begun in 2009 but reworks the Space Seed TV episode and most of the ideas in the trilogy into a neat 2 hour package of high speed entertainment. Ricardo Montalban aka the original Khan was born in Mexico City in 1920 and passed away in Los Angeles 2009 at the age of 88. Unable to pull off the come back to life trick used regularly in the Star Trek movies, the film makers turned to Benedict Cumberbatch to take up the role of young Khan. Good choice. BC has been acting since 2002 and is best known for his fantastic portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the BBC update of the eternal story of the worlds first consulting detective. Along with the writing, BC’s modernized portrayal of SH makes this one of the best TV series ever. Only three episodes are produced each season, each 90 minutes long. Season three should be out in January of 2014 and make a USofA appearance a few months later. The first two seasons totaling 6 episodes are on DVD and not to be missed.

Star Trek Into Darkness is not quite as much fun as the original but it more than makes up for it in sheer speed, drama and action. And a pretty decent dose of humor. The plot does rework the original Khan stories mentioned above but adds some great twists and a new (and just as evil as Ricardo) villain. Star Trek fans should be thrilled. Fans of good movies in general should also be elated by what Abrams is doing with this series. Can’t wait for 2017 to see how they resolve one plot conundrum they created within Into Darkness. We will all be waiting in deep, dark space to find out what happens next.

Rated 3.8 out of 4.0 reasons you will ask yourself, “Why are there 2 Spocks?”


All Comments

  • Posted by fivedollargold 12 years, 5 months ago
    A friend of 5$'s saw both this film and Iron Man 3. He liked ST: ID better. 5$ has seen neither.
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  • Posted by $ rockymountainpirate 12 years, 5 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Zero Dark Thirty is what the military uses for way before dawn. I do get your point though, and I haven't seen any of these. Even though I can see just released movies for $5.50 at the local theater I seem to wait for HBO to do it. I might go see ST:ID though.
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  • Posted by $ EitherOr 12 years, 5 months ago
    I was reluctantly dragged to ST:ID with my boyfriend and... pleasantly surprised. I like what Abrams did, playing with audiences familiar with Wrath of Khan. Plus the cinematography is super sexy, though the classic Abrams lens flare left me a little dazed.

    Curious though - seems the film focused mostly on Spock, keeping Kirk around for relevance but placing him in a background role for the story. First film did that a bit too, esp. creating the relationship between Spock and Ahura. This seems like a major diversion from the original series/films, which featured a lot of Kirk saving everyone and taking his shirt off in the process. Not complaining though. I'm definitely a fan of logic over cocky, shirtless guys. :)

    p.s. Has anyone else noticed the abundance of "Dark" movies lately?
    -Dark Knight
    -Star Trek: Into Darkness
    -Dark of the Moon
    -Thor: The Dark World
    -Zero Dark Thirty
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  • Posted by richdejohn 12 years, 5 months ago
    You need to get us a spell checker on these fields for the ADHD Dylslexics
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  • Posted by richdejohn 12 years, 5 months ago
    In My opinion...If all the new Star Treks would please cut way way back on the War And Violence(WV is a teenage thing) and be more like StarTrek/NG More cerebral...tackling the Objectiveness's issues in space and try to stay realistic about when and How we will conquer all those age old Problems that are the real obstacles that the challenges of space bring....

    ...Sure keep Warp travel, Q, etc..stuff, but drop all the unreal fantasy stuff e.g....my brain just went dead...I'll have to finish this with some good examples...GET OUT of the WAR and Gore Business...that's what killed Star Trek a la Jane Way...I can't even remember her tag line...I hate what Jane way did to Star Trek...and that why Star Wars is too much fantasy and fighting...no match for a good Ole fashion NG Picard episode
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  • Posted by khalling 12 years, 5 months ago
    I loved BC in Sherlock Holmes. I shall have to "come out" and declare that I do not love Star Trek. shocker!
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