Star Trek Into Darkness

Our Review

Into Darkness is the most handsome Trek film and the most dishonest one. The surface is spectacular: a volcano rescue and a London bombing open the film with real verve, Benedict Cumberbatch’s John Harrison is a mesmerizing presence, all velvet voice and coiled threat, and the visuals are immaculate, even if every third shot has a lens flare begging for mercy. The problem is underneath. The film’s central reveal, that Harrison is Khan, is a twist aimed entirely at people who already know who Khan is, which is both a marketing decision and a narrative cheat.

Worse, the back half restages Wrath of Khan with the roles flipped, Kirk entering the radioactive chamber, Spock screaming Khan’s name through the glass, in a sequence that plays like a cover band performing the original with the speakers too loud. The emotional beat is borrowed wholesale from a better film that this timeline’s audience never experienced, and the film has the gall to resurrect Kirk with Khan’s magic blood ten minutes later, dissolving its own supposed sacrifice. The Klingon homeworld is visited once and never matters again, and Section 31’s presence sets up themes the script drops.

And yet it is never boring. The cast remains the best ensemble in franchise filmmaking, the Vengeance ship crashing into San Francisco is staged with real scale, and Cumberbatch alone makes half of it worth watching. Six out of ten for execution, with a heavy deduction for borrowing instead of building.