4 stars (out of four)
Star Trek Into Darkness
is a perfect summer movie. It is smart, fast-paced and emotionally engaging,
grabbing your attention in the opening moments and refusing to let go until
it’s over. Scene after scene, it surprises and thrills. You can’t help but get
drunk off its relentlessly exhilarating energy.
The film, which is J. J. Abrams’s second Star Trek feature, begins by following what I feel is one of
the cardinal rules of any great action movie: Open with a scene so good, a
lesser movie would have used it as its climax. Captain James T. Kirk (Chris
Pine) runs through the blood orange jungle of an exotic planet, chased by
spear-throwing natives with chalk white faces. A mostly self-contained episode,
this first mission involves dropping First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) into
an active volcano and sets the tone for the rest of the film, which oscillates
between edge-of-your-seat suspense and comic levity.
This is a delicate movie alchemy and too many directors get
it wrong, overloading their films with convoluted, disorienting action and
occasionally punctuating the monotony with ham-handed one-liners. But J. J.
Abrams makes it look simple. The comedy flows easily from his cast and the
action is never difficult to follow. There is a clear sense of space and Abrams
plays with it.
Take one scene, for example, when the starship Enterprise is
under attack. The ship spins through space, tossing around the crew inside.
This forces our heroes to run along walls and ceilings as the ship turns.
Another scene gets a laugh from watching Scotty (Simon Pegg) sprint down the
seemingly endless length of a ship’s hangar. Abrams delights in creating
locations that feel real and lets his characters interact with the space. I’d
bet half my paycheck he played with Legos as a kid.
He also uses this inventiveness to build a large, richly
detailed universe. Even a relatively agnostic Star Trek fan such as myself (in my formative years as a
nerd-movie padawan, I sweat and bled Star Wars) could not help but become completely absorbed by
it. Along with production designer Scott Chambliss, costume designer Michael
Kaplan and countless others, Abrams creates an authentic, believable world. Any
given shot is packed with fun things to look at in the background. You get the
sense that not a dollar of the movie’s massive budget was misspent. Even the
ice cubes at the bar – little spheres of ice that spin when dropped into a
whiskey glass – are cool.
But all of these details and embellishments are merely
decorative, like so many ornaments Abrams hangs on this dazzling Christmas tree
of a movie. The script, written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon
Lindelof, is the fuel that powers this warp speed adventure. Into Darkness is always two steps ahead of its audience; just when
you think you know where it’s heading, it twists and turns back on itself. The
stakes are always high but ever changing. Villains become allies, friends
become enemies and the movie keeps cartwheeling like this until the very end.
Following the wonderfully fun prologue, the plot begins in
earnest with the bombing of a Starfleet building in London. Admiral Alexander
Marcus (an excellent Peter Weller, growling and snarling his lines) assembles a
group of Starfleet commanders and explains who the suspect is: a disgruntled
former employee named John Harrison (a steely and terrifically ruthless
Benedict Cumberbatch). Harrison attacks a second time and flees to the Klingon
homeworld of Kronos. Tensions are already high between Starfleet and the
Klingons, and Harrison believes Starfleet would not dare risk starting an
all-out war by following him there.
Harrison does not take into account, however, the daring of
James T. Kirk, who offers to take the Enterprise and its crew on a covert
mission to Kronos to take out Harrison. Armed with seventy-two of Starfleet’s
newly developed and highly deadly photon torpedoes, the Enterprise blasts off
in hot pursuit of the fugitive.
As the plot rockets down its twisty roller coaster tracks,
the crew members on board the Enterprise trade snappy banter and gently poke
fun at the proceedings. The dynamic between Pine’s Kirk and Quinto’s Spock is
much as it was between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (who has a brief cameo
here). The cocky bravado of Kirk provides a nice foil for Spock’s rigid
adherence to logic and following protocol. They frustrate the hell out of each
other but they also share a deeply rooted respect and love for one another.
The beautiful Lieutenant Uhura (Zoe Saldana) is romantically
involved with the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock and has her own reasons to be
annoyed with him. Think your boyfriend has trouble expressing his emotions?
Just imagine if his species was genetically predisposed to be devoid of
emotions.
Other franchise mainstays include the ship’s doctor, Leonard
“Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), and its chief engineer Scotty (Pegg, relishing the
character’s trademark Scottish brogue). A few, including Sulu (John Cho) and
Chekov (Anton Yelchin) are present too but are featured less prominently.
For some viewers, there may be additional buzz surrounding
this movie beyond the anticipation generated for a sequel by Abrams’s lively
and entertaining Star Trek in 2009.
Earlier this year Abrams was announced as the director of the upcoming Star
Wars: Episode VII. But calling this movie
an audition for Star Wars feels
unfair because Into Darkness, one
could argue, is actually better than at least half the Star Wars movies. Prior to seeing Into Darkness, even thinking such a thing would have seemed
blasphemous to me. (I believe I already mentioned my allegiance to the Force.)
But perhaps the clearest sign of this movie’s greatness is its ability to turn
anyone who sees it into a Trekkie.
- Steve Avigliano, 5/21/13
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