Quoted from vid1900:The new Treks have lots of action, but they are not as deep as Insurrection or Nemesis.
Fun, popcorn gobblin films..shrugs.
I was very pleasantly surprised by the first "new" ST film (seemed like it had some heart, not just stupid explosions). Into Darkness was "good enough" for a stupid summer movie, but not much more than that.
If you are satisfied by a bunch of action sequences strung together, then yes Into Darkness does that.
If you want a movie with some consequences to the characters actions and some interesting plot? Nope.
Highlights for me (SPOILERS):
- Remember when Kirk lost command of the Enterpise for an afternoon?
- Enterprise does not fire a single shot in the entire movie if I recall correctly. Not a deal breaker, but considering the "Wrath of Khan" aping it is weird.
- Starfleet communicators can now call from the middle of nowhere in Klingon space to a bar in our solar system. Huh?
- Personal transporter devices that can hop solar systems. Huh? If these exist, just beam a bomb somehwere you want it to go and boom. Movie over.
- nobody tries (apparently) to stop the Vengeance from killing 100,000's(?) of people near the end of the movie... at the very least the Enterprise should have called 911.
- Khan blood cures space herpes.
Lazy writing. It would have been more interesting to me if they did something surprising like:
- Khan's backstory was explored and made a sympathetic charater (e.g. yes he killed people back in the day, but it was to get his people who were being wiped out off the earth to prevent either a genocide of regular humans or his people)
AND then:
- have him join the crew to prove himself... but there would always be a question of trust. Would he betray it?
- have him punch Kirk across the room to enter the warp core to save the ship. With his Khan blood it makes sense he would be more resilient than Kirk. Plus he could more convincingly align the warp core than Kirk does with his wimpy flail kicks