“Star Trek Into Darkness” makes absolutely no apologies as it lights up the theater.
For the Trekkies out there, the following sentence contains a rather important spoiler, which you may or may not have surmised from the advertisements. Yup, John Harrison is Khan. I apologize for bringing it up, but it would be extremely difficult to say what I need to without giving readers that piece of information.
The sequel to the 2009 movie “Star Trek,” “Into Darkness” explores the relationship between Captain James T. Kirk, played by Chris Pine, and his first officer Spock, played by Zachary Quinto. While they’re busy having a friendship spat, a mysterious figure named John Harrison, or Khan, shows up and begins tearing things apart. The crew of the Enterprise then embarks on a manhunt for Khan, who is played by the remarkable Benedict Cumberbatch.
The film is probably completely incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t familiar with the 2009 film or the storylines for the original Star Trek series. This film is made for the fans. It works well for me as I’m a self-professed Trekkie of the original series from the 60s. I realize that not everyone is up on their TV from several decades ago or even movies from several years ago, so if someone who falls under the category is considering seeing the movie, I would not advise going in cold turkey. For this film, homework is required to fully appreciate it.
For the most part, I like how this movie deals with traditional plot points. It’s self-referential without overdoing it.
The only problem for me is that the only character I feel absolutely nothing about is the protagonist: Kirk himself. Whether good or bad, I do feel something about every other character in the film. I had this same trouble with the 2009 film. This new Kirk is like a rambunctious teenage boy. Sure, he has courage, but he doesn’t seem all that well prepared or all that wise.
In the original series, Kirk, played by William Shatner, was undoubtedly a highly trained man who took calculated risks because he believed in justice and peace.
To be fair, he typically got there by punching things and sleeping with women – of both the human and alien type – but boardroom meetings are boring to watch. Anyway, Shatner’s Kirk had clearly worked his behind off studying as a cadet and then in the field to prepare himself.
Pine’s Kirk has none of that studiousness. And, yes, he is supposed to be younger than the age Kirk was in the 60s series, but he still isn’t quite an adult yet and the rest of his crew clearly are. There’s a lack of maturity in this Kirk that wasn’t in the former one. I’m not exactly complaining about Pine here. I think it’s more the way the character is written, rather than some misstep on the actor’s part.
All that Kirk character mess ends up taking a lot of time, which would have been fine if he wasn’t the least interesting person on board the Enterprise. The time it takes up leaves very little room for any character improvement for any of the other crewmembers. Spock and Uhura – whom I had always hoped would get together – have one fight. Mr. Sulu, played by John Cho, and Scotty, played by Simon Pegg, each have about a minute in the spotlight. Bones, played by the pleasing Karl Urban, and Chekov, played by Anton Yelchin, are important to the overall scheme of things but are much underused. Overall, the relationship between Spock and Uhura, played by the more than capable Zoe Saldana, is probably the most satisfying to watch and there’s not nearly enough exploration of it.
The most interesting character of the film is Khan himself. To be honest, he probably has the deepest wealth of motivation. And Khan is the bad guy, who committed genocide because he deemed anyone without superior genetics incapable of tying their own shoes – if shoes are still tied in the future, that is.
Khan is not a nice guy, but he’s still, oddly, the most likeable character of the whole film. Everything he does in the film is motivated by the love of his crew, who are popsicles at the moment. They are his “family,” as he calls them. His past exploits on Earth are very bad indeed and nothing can excuse that behavior, but a genetically engineered superman probably has decent reasons for thinking that regular people are morons screwing up the universe.
And that’s bad for me. I’m uncomfortable with wanting the bad guy to win, even if it’s just a little bit. Bad guys are fun, that’s true, but to actually enjoy the sheer ruthlessness of a character … I like interesting people, and Khan is by far the most interesting character of the film. I’m not on his side, but I don’t exactly hate him either.
It probably also doesn’t help that Benedict Cumberbatch is the actor who tackles the role. He’s just good, so very good at bringing emotional depth to what the writers have given him to work with. Cumberbatch makes it very clear that Khan feels. I don’t get that as much from Pine’s Kirk.
Anyway, the film is fulfilling in some way, although it doesn’t do as good a job as it could. That’s not to say I was disappointed. I saw the movie because I was sure Khan would be the antagonist, and he most certainly was. It’s just the rest of it that isn’t quite right.
