alobear | Star Trek: Into Darkness

In preparation for going to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, we rewatched the 2009 Start Trek film, and that was better than I remembered. My review at the time said it felt like an establishing shot for a later film, but this time I thought it hung together okay as a story in its own right.

Anyway, the new one was actually pretty good! I particularly enjoyed the 'classic TV series mission on a planet' opening, which was exciting and really funny. Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent, though things got necessarily darker when he turned up. I'm a bit over battle sequences and explosions these days, and there were plenty of those, but there were enough character moments, intrigue and tension to keep me interested throughout. Everyone in the familiar roles has made their character their own - except Karl Urban, who still seems to be pretending to be McCoy from the TV show and limited himself (or was limited by his slightly clunky dialogue) because of that. Oddly, one of my favourite moments was a chase sequence towards the end, where one character was running through crowded streets after another. Each runner was shown basically stationary and in totally clear focus at the centre of the frame, while everything else moved around them, and it was a really effective directorial technique, and much preferable to the shaky hand-held trend of recent years.

There were enough plot holes for several large buses, but then you don't go into a Star Trek film expecting it to make sense, and overall it was highly enjoyable, though if I was inclined to be picky I would have preferred more of the humour of the first fifteen minutes and a significantly lower body count.