Star Trek Into Darkness

Truly spectacular, one of those rare amazing, inventive and often unpredictable blockbusters. The acting was great all round, especially Cumberbatch - wow, he was superb. The direction, cinematography and visual effects were all greatly innovative and brilliant; the screenplay fun, often humorous and has a lot of heart for all its characters which are all really well developed.

The film has some cliché moments which can't be avoided often with a film this scale however they make use of them well and still pack plenty of surprises. As well as this, despite not being a proper Trekkie myself, some moments gave me goosebumps from the awesomeness from seeing the Enterprise for the first time for example, which greatly honoured the original series. J.J. Abrams' lens flares helped create more realism in a lot of the scenes despite the fact he often overuses of them.

The villain was very interesting and the development, dialogue and motivations of his character were very convincing and inventive, Cumberbatch's fantastic acting greatly helped bring this character to life. Also the way he executed his plan showed a lot more cutting edge creativity than especially most modern blockbusters, not to say it's done nearly to the same level of genius but something I haven't felt in a villain's characterisation/acting since The Dark Knight.

Overall, a mesmerising film with nice homages to the original series, one filled with heart, grace, innovation, superb characters and acting and some impressive, clever visuals and immersive 3D, one of the only times I can say that. Up there with the 2009 one, not sure which I prefer, possibly the previous one largely due to the more clever story, despite this one having a much better villain, still not sure though. Still a very strongly recommended film, may hit my top 100 simply because how much I was impressed by it. 9/10!

Abrams is merely an efficient technician, uninteresting as a man of vision. But we need guys like him, conservative and mechanical in their efficiency, who will hold down the paradigm as others more adventurous fight to shift it, who will remind us by the arbitrary limits they impose that there must be a broader space. It's always the routine and familiar that kindles dreaming.

And this is just so routine. Abrams takes the Spielberg-Lucas model of climax after climax, starting with an Indiana Jones prologue. A few simple moral dilemmas form the backbone, inherited with a wink from the Trek genealogy. The hamfisted 9/11 allegory, enforced by terrorist bombings and a final 'plane crash' in Starfleet hq, is that we may covet revenge but we are dehumanized in the process. Khan as a vengeful mujahedeen, 'trained' by the secret military which is headed by a cowboy admiral hellbent on preemptive war. (Interestingly, everything about Khan's handling here bears Nolan's influence.)

Soulless.

So it is fitting that this guy is spearheading the next generation of established cinematic imagination, taking over from Lucas who is now retired, and Spielberg who is 'respectable'. I'm sure that in 20 years time he will be making his own respectable war movies. That kids growing up on stuff like this will fondly elevate the memory. And that his idea of artistry, Welles' action camera dotted by twinkles of color, lasers and flares, will be elaborated on in essays about his aesthetics, maybe.

All of which is just a natural state of things, nothing to get up in arms about. It just means that the interesting stuff will be defined by contrast to him.

Star Trek: Transformers 4 would fit best to this, because it is not the Star Trek we are used to. This is simply an action movie, that happens to have phasers instead of guns, and beaming instead of taking a plane/car. I was expecting to see some science and understanding, instead I got the 1970s captain again, with the fist fighting enemies and kissing the girls. What happened to the optimistic bright future where money is not an issue and people work to better themselves? What happened to the Earth that was heaven? What happened to the engineers who make improvements to the ship using alien technologies, and not try to fix it all the time? What happened to technological competition and diversification? Where is the strategy? Smart ship tactics? All seems to be brute force in this movie. As a trekkie, I am quite disappointed.

After violating the Prime Directive of the Federation interfering with the primitive inhabitants of Planet Nibiru, saving their lives from a volcanic eruption and exposing the Enterprise to them to save Spock (Zachary Quinto), Captain James Kirk (Chris Pine) is summoned by Admiral Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) and loses the command of the Enterprise.

Meanwhile, a Starfleet facility in London is bombed and the high-command has a meeting where the identity of the responsible, the former agent John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), is disclosed. However, Harrison attacks the commanders; kills Spike and flees to Kronos, the land of the Klingons. Admiral Alexander Marcus (Peter Weller) assigns Kirk to kill Harrison and brings seventy-two torpedoes to the Enterprise to accomplish the mission. Chief Engineer Montgomery Scotty (Simon Pegg) refuses to receive the weapons and Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin) is relocated to his position and Dr. Carol Wallace (Alice Eve), who is a science officer specialized in weapons, joins the Enterprise crew. When they arrive in Kronos, they are attacked by Klingons but out of the blue, Harrison kills the Klingons and surprisingly surrenders to Kirk after knowing that the torpedoes are on board of the Enterprise. Then he discloses that he is Khan, a superhuman that was awakened by Marcus from a cryogenic pod to prepare the star-ships with powerful weapons for a war against the Klingons. When the Enterprise is intercepted by a mysterious starship commanded by Admiral Marcus, Kirk asks Khan to help him to save his crew.

"Star Trek into Darkness" is a great sci-fi with a good story of Kirk and his crew and a powerful villain. The good acting and direction associated to top-notch special effects make a highly entertaining movie. Surprisingly there are bad reviews in IMDb that must be ignored by those that like this franchise. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Star Trek Além da Escuridão" ("Star Trek beyond the Darkness")

The previous Star Trek movie is a tough one to beat. It was (in my eyes) close to perfection (lens flares and all). So this movie had a tough up-hill battle ahead of it. I am happy to report that the writing, direction, cinematography and acting were all terrific. But it's not quite flawless. There are a couple of minor plot holes that distract viewer attention to some degree.

Cumberbatch is brilliant. I won't divulge any spoilers, but I will say that the throw back to the earlier movies is very very clever and well executed. The added depth we see in the characters of Kirk and Spock are icing on an already delicious cake!