A Trekkie's Review of Star Trek Into Darkness

I hated it.

What's more, I hate that I have to justify hating it, just because it fails on so many film-making levels that I'm surprised it's not more hated. Anyway, short list of things I liked (SPOILERS FOR THE FILM):

• Simon Pegg as Scotty and Karl Urban as Bones. The two big Trek fans know their characters, and it shows. 
• CGI ships look cool.
• Benedict Cumberbatch can deliver any line with bravado.

That's about it. Let's start at the beginning of this story, where, for whatever asinine reason, Kirk steals what appears to be some deified parchment from an indigenous population they're trying to save. Why? To impress a cute indigenous female, of course (I think), though maybe Kirk just likes to be chased. He's that kind of guy, I guess.

Kirk gets demoted because of his interference with an archaic culture and loses the Enterprise to lovable Admiral Pike. Pike gives him his character's theme for the entire movie in a speech, at which point I smacked myself in the forehead. Pike then got killed right after he had a nice father-son moment with Kirk. Cliche? Yes. That's two smacks on the forehead.

Kirk and company get sent to Qo'nos, home of the Klingons, by menacing Admiral Batmanvoice, where one Benedict Cumberwhatsit somehow teleported himself from Earth after killing a bunch of high ranking people. Instantaneous transportation across more than a dozen lightyears in more than a second? Who the crap needs ships? Just teleport- oh, right, plot device.

The Enterprise sits at the edge of Klingon space and somehow sends a message only to Cucumbersandwich that they'll launch torpedoes at him if he doesn't surrender. First, how do the Klingons not hear the transmission? Second, how do the Klingons not notice the Enterprise sitting so close to their homeworld? That's kind of, I don't know, aggressive? Maybe they were all out hunting targ or waiting eagerly for Worf's birth.

Admiral Baritone arrives in a giant ship after the Enterprise tells Starfleet that they've captured Crumblebumble, who reveals that he's the infamous Khan, except no one on board ever heard of him. Plot twist revealed: Admiral Smoothvoice put Khan's genetically-enhanced friends in those torpedoes, and when they were to land on Qo'nos, they would awaken and incite a war between the Federation and the Klingons. Why? Because "war is inevitable," says Admiral OldManSexyVoice.

But wait, that's not all: Admiral TonytheTiger found Khan in cryo-freeze on the derelict ship Botany Bay and unfroze him to help said Admiral build a new arsenal of weapons. Keep in mind that Khan was frozen for 300 years, so if the Admiral wanted to learn about bullets and maybe some nice compound bows, it would be most edifying.

Fuck it, I'm skipping ahead.

Admiral BoomBoom shoots the hell out of the Enterprise, which somehow doesn't explode even though there are large, gaping holes in what looks like engineering. Fine, containment fields, or whatever, but don't then tell me five minutes later that shields are down to 6%. WHAT SHIELDS? The first damned shot on the Enterprise made a section explode in a giant space fireball. There were no shields, J.J. Abrams. There were no shields.

They end up next to the moon, and somehow, the lunar colonies don't notice anything. Somehow, there are no other ships near Earth. Somehow, there are no space stations with sensors to see "hmm, what are those two ships doing there? Is that the Enterprise about the blow up?" Later on, the two ships start falling to Earth instead of the giant body next to the two ships, i.e. the giant white orb we on Earth see at night. Someone needs to learn about gravity.

And then there's the giant rip-off of Wrath of Khan, not to mention a deus ex machina ending so contrived that it gave me a concussion. I won't even bother mentioning it.

The whole film is character-driven, but really, they all have nothing to offer aside from Crumbcake's Khan, who is basically a stale, one-sided bad guy that, while he does have nice character moments, is underutilized and monotone.

I don't know who vets these scripts for internal logic and consistency, but dear god, hire some interns to put a red pen to every stupid plot device. Please.

And dear god, J.J. Abrams, stop with the lens flares. You're liable to induce a seizure with those damn things.