In short:
If you haven't seen Star Trek Into Darkness yet, do so.
At length (and without spoilers):
While Star Trek Into Darkness failed to meet the standard for writing set by Star Trek: The Next Generation, it (like its 2009 predecessor) did match the bar set by Star Trek: The Original Series in terms of plot, dialogue, and story. It was also somewhat better than its predecessor in that it rectified the major problem I had with the 2009 film.
Star Trek Into Darkness does suffer from a few of the same problems which plagued its predecessor.
Unfortunately, the film's facing was far too quick — and I say that based on post-movie conversations I had with other audience members, so it wasn't just me. Critical scenes were misinterpreted by viewers in some cases: one audience member was confused about a character's continued active presence after he appeared to have been killed, until it was explained that no, actually, in all the chaotic fighting he'd moved (probably while said audience member was in the middle of blinking), and that t'was another character entirely who suffered a case of fatal death; the way the movie jumped from a ships' departure to its arrival left the audience with the impression that two major planets, supposedly on the brink of all-out war with each other, were mere minutes' travel away from each other (which one would think would have taken things from on-the-brink-of to mired-in-the-abyss-of in very short order); dialogue was delivered so quickly that lines which explained major plot points and shed light on developing situations went completely unheard by some members of the audience — and was so terse that words which seasoned Trekkers should have understood without difficulty and references to The Original Series didn't register for some of the audience until they were pointed out post-film. I'll be the first to agree that movies shouldn't drag, but neither should they move so quickly that viewers are forced to prop their eyelids open with toothpicks in order to avoid missing things.
… seriously, the studio would not be remiss if they included a set of lid-locks with the DVD release.
One problem which wasn't seen in the 2009 film was that this time around, Abrams' team forgot that some cool-sounding phrases are in use by real-word scientists to describe things which said scientists are trying to build in said real world. A Mac Guffin which showed up in this film was referred to as a "cold-fusion device" by the characters — despite the fact that the device bore exactly zero similarities to the cold-fusion device as sought after by actual physicists. For you aspiring script-writers in the audience, there are far better options than using the name of a real-world concept for a fictional device which behaves completely differently: writers who were smart and motivated have been known to name fictional devices after off-screen characters, and found that doing so helped develop their fictional universe (the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine which showed up in Bungie's HALO games was a good example of that); writers wanting to be clever could just call the device a Mac Guffin Device (which would either turn a work into a spoof or make it extremely meta); and writers have been known to make up random, innocuous-sounding names for their fictional gadgets (an action Team Abrams themselves proved to be perfectly capable of undertaking when they wrote the "red matter" into the 2009 Star Trek, making their failure to do so in this movie all the more spectacular). Any of those options will prevent the indignity of having to concede that the armies of science-fiction nerds e-mailing you to say "Oi! That's not the correct phrase!" are correct, and that you are a fool for not having checked the internet to see what the phrase might be used for in the real world.
Fortunately for viewers, the pacing and that one (admittedly significant) writing error are the only real problems with this film.
The actors have nailed their parts — in particular, Peter Weller and Benedict Cumberbatch excelled as the megalomaniacs whose sinister skulduggery and devious deceptions drove the plot.
The character development in this continuity is actually turning out to be superior to The Original Series in some respects, owing to the different real-world audiences which they're aimed at. Kirk was always a jerk, but in this continuity he has good reason to have turned out worse, and was introduced to viewers at a much younger age than he was during the timeframe of The Original Series — giving the writers an opportunity to give him a much more pronounced arc of development. The character of Uhura (multi-lingual, skilled at co-ordinating missions, possessing knacks for both code-breaking and signals intelligence, and positively gifted with communications equipment) was introduced as a glorified receptionist when The Original Series launched in the 1960s, and writers needed to ramp up her role slowly in order to avoid alienating the viewers of that era. This continuity, however, is being viewed by a generation which will be alienated if there aren't well-developed female characters in a movie — giving the writers an opportunity to use Uhura's interactions with this continuity's version of Kirk to showcase her smarts and spunk, and to build on that by bringing her to the forefront of affairs in this film. The writers have leapt on both of those opportunities like Kirk on a naïve female ensign.
The film opened with a bang (several, actually) and maintains a good level of intensity for its entire running length.
Lastly, the script is very good. Team Abrams did a huge service to old fans by incorporating plot elements which were previously used by writers for Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, and using them to craft a story which hinged on ethics as much as it did on the characters. The banter between the characters in this film reached the level of familial dialogue which will be familiar to everyone who's seen The Original Series, and which has always captured the viewers' attention — the more familiar they act with each other, the easier it is for the audience to invest in them emotionally, after all. The ethical issues (how much should one risk to maintain one's principles? when is it time to resort to the last resort? how severe can one's actions be and still be worth executing?) loom large in the script, which I was pleased to see — I was not pleased that such issues were absent from the 2009 film, and seeing them brought back to the franchise with this film is a huge relief.
Everything that was done correctly has brought Star Trek Into Darkness very close to being the sort of film which I hoped to see when I was told that the franchise was being re-booted. I look forward to seeing the third installment of the franchise.
~ STEELCAVER
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