Star Trek Into Darkness Reaction

Reader beware, spoilers here. Enter at your own risk. I'll let you know when I start to get really spoiler-happy, but it might be safe to just not read this at all until after you've seen the movie.

So I saw Star Trek Into Darkness last night. Midnight premiere at 9pm, actually. Dunno how that happened. I'm not much of a movie review kind of blogger, but I needed to get my thoughts out for this one.

I watched the 2009 Star Trek right before seeing this and my God did that enhance the experience. It's like the four years between the two movies never happened. The chemistry between the actors and cinematographic style flowed flawlessly. J. J. Abrams, despite being more of a fan of Star Wars, knows exactly how to handle Star Trek with a modern Hollywood budget. I feel like these two movies alone can turn anyone who hasn't seen a single episode of the original series into a Trekkie. It's exciting, colorful, hilarious, and even got me on the verge of tearing up a couple of times. ("On the verge of tearing up" is pretty much my equivalent of "weeping into my popcorn." I can't cry; perhaps the next time I need to make a super-angsty, digging-into-my-psyche post I'll address that.)

One scene caught my attention for an odd reason. Spock follows Kirk into an elevator from the command deck and the camera is positioned in the back of the elevator so that you can see the door. They ride down to another floor and walk out into a hallway. This is all one shot. I don't know why this excited me so much, but I loved it. It felt like they were really filming aboard the Enterprise. I don't know if there was some CGI magic involved there or what, but it was cool to me. Maybe they actually had an elevator built to bring them down to another set, or maybe the elevator rotated to the other set instead of dropping. However they did it, the seamlessness made me giddy.

Now I'm really going to start talking about spoilers. You've been warned.

Going into the movie, I had NO idea Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (his full name is too awesome to shorten) was playing Khan.  I knew there was some speculation on it, but the last I had heard was some sort of statement that no, he was supposed to be some other villain from the series. So I went to this film expecting nothing to do with The Wrath of Khan. This is going to be my Fight Club. It's the first movie to really catch me off guard with its twist. When he started talking to Kirk about his name, the idea sparked into my head.

No way... He can't be.

"My name..."

Oh my God he's saying it dramatically.

"Is..."

He's about to say Khan. This is happening. Oh my God I don't know if I'm ready for this.

"KHAN!"

At this point I damn near soiled myself. I actually said, "Holy shit!" in the theatre - others can vouch for this. How did I not see that coming!? I don't really remember the dialogue from the rest of this scene because I was too busy giggling like a schoolgirl.

The rest of the movie became a reference to The Wrath of Khan. I'll admit, I haven't seen it, but I know some of the most important parts of it. I loved when Spock hailed Old Spock while Kirk was aboard the Admiral's Dreadnought. Old Spock tells about how he faced Khan once before and defeated him at great cost. This was a definitive acknowledgement of the original series' place in the reboot's lore. Hell, it even subverts the fact that this is a reboot. We find out in the 2009 movie that the timeline split when Spock went through the black hole, but I never really bought that Old Spock was the same Spock from the series until this point. Now that they're talking specifically about the original encounter with Khan, I buy the connection completely.

Now for the tear-jerker scene. Well, one of them. Pike's death was the saddest moment for me, but the big one for most people has got to be (gasp!) Kirk's death. Biggest. Fanservice. Ever. Kirk is stuck in a chamber full of radiation with Spock on the other side of the glass. Straight out of The Wrath of Khan, though with the roles reversed. This scene really solidified the friendship between Spock and Kirk, punctuated by Spock's guttural, "KHAAAAAAN!" Once again, giggling like a schoolgirl.

Overall, Khan was an extremely convincing bad guy. Raw power and intelligence go a long way, especially when coupled with the Grinch smile Cumberbatch has. For a while, I was actually convinced that he might not actually be the main villain. When Admiral Marcus shows up and starts acting like kind of a dick, I started to feel for Khan. He seemed a bit misunderstood. Of course, he betrays Kirk and plunges straight into his savagery, but the writers certainly had me fooled for long enough.

That said, I really wish we had seen more of Khan. (I'm supposed to mention his butt, so I'll shoehorn that in here. I never noticed because Alice Eve is in this movie. Ha haw.) The movie was such a thrill ride that I was actually surprised and a little disappointed when it was over. The final confrontation didn't last very long and didn't seem to have the consequences it should have. Maybe it's just because I'm comparing it to the first movie, where the threat was a bloody singularity in the center of Earth. The danger just didn't seem as serious in Into Darkness, despite Khan being such a formidable enemy. I suppose my only complaint is that the movie was actually too short. During the resolution, I thought for sure Abrams would pull a fast one on me and give a false ending. But nope, a little fistfight between Spock and Khan and the movie's over. Khan goes back into cryo (which I actually liked - you don't always need to kill the villain) and the Enterprise is off to explore the universe again.

I liked it. Hell, I loved it. Into Darkness may have been anticlimactic, but that's probably just because the entire movie itself felt like a climax. Whether you consider yourself a Trekkie or not, you owe it to yourself to see this film.