Director: JJ Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch
Confession time: I'm not much of a Star Trek fan. I know, as a self proclaimed geek, this is shameful. I chose Star Wars early in my life instead. Aside from a few of the classic episodes of the original series and the occasional episode of Next Gen caught on cable as a kid, my experience with the Enterprise is limited. However, I did watch Wrath of Khan as part of my original Daily Cinema project.
I loved JJ's first Star Trek movie. It was fun, the characters were great, and the action effects were impressive. I wasn't a major Star Trek fan, so the overall changes in tone didn't bug me at all. This second foray into space is even better than the first. The villain is better, the plot is more coherent, and the action DOES NOT STOP. Seriously, this film doesn't take a breather or check in on side plots. Instead, this is two hours of solid action propelling the entire film towards a single climax. It worked beautifully. The action was absolutely awesome.
The performances, though, grounded this space opera for the audience. The main cast from the first film seemed to take a firmer grasp of their roles (especially my favorites, Karl Urban and Simon Pegg). The addition of Benedict Cumberbatch was welcome. My wife is obsessed with him and we both love Sherlock. He crafted a villainous role here that stole every scene he was in. He managed to by a psychologically complex antagonist, something totally missing from film one. The movie managed to tackle moral and intellectual quandaries while blowing apart space ships. Fun. That's what it was.
I did have some gripes here, though. Firstly, there was a major plot hole during the climax in which they supposedly needed to keep Khamberbatch alive despite having a room full of people with the same super blood on the ship. Also, the callbacks to the old Star Trek II were a little heavy handed. I would have liked to see them do some more original dramatic/emotional stuff rather than rehashing the thing that was so iconic before. Yes, I understand that this is a tribute, but it sort of felt cheap playing on what worked in the past so directly. Also, the major death was resolved too quickly without giving the audience time to grieve.
MAJOR WHINE TIME: I'm sick of big action movies being forced into 3D film making. It is ruining cinematography. I always choose to see the movies in 2D because I refuse to pay extra for a distracting gimmick, but these days it remains distracting even without the 3D. Everything is unnecessarily zooming towards the camera for a sort of shocking 3D effect. In the future, when the 3D fad is over and we're watching these movies at home later, we'll see this era as an odd time for wacky superfluous camera work.
Lesson learned: It's handy to have an older, alternate version of oneself around for advice in tough situations.
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