“Star Trek” has always been a franchise caught between its
two selves: its pulpy, space adventure self and its more philosophical,
idealistic self. J.J. Abrams’
previous Star Trek film leaned a
little too heavily toward the former for my taste while mostly ignoring the
latter. Even though he had
delivered a fun space opera, I was worried that Abrams and his writers just
didn’t get “Star Trek”: it’s not just about spaceships and technology; it’s
about family, morality, scientific ideas, and an optimistic vision of
humanity’s future.
But with Star Trek
Into Darkness, Abrams and his team have achieved a near perfect blend of
the two sides of “Star Trek,” delivering an absolutely exhilarating
entertainment that raises the bar for every upcoming summer spectacle and
pulses with the ideas and values that define the very best of this franchise.
At the center of Into
Darkness is a fascinating debate about the moral core of society. After an action-packed (and slightly
confusing) opening, the picture finds Starfleet under attack from a terrorist
(Benedict Cumberbatch of BBC’s Sherlock)
who has fled to a Klingon planet (yes, that means we get to see Klingons this
time). Trying to recapture the
fugitive means risking war with the Klingons, so the head of Starfleet (Peter
Weller) orders Captain Kirk to kill Cumberbatch from outside Klingon space
using specially designed long-range torpedoes.
The parallel with America, Pakistan, Osama bin Laden, and
drone warfare is not particularly subtle (the “Star Trek” franchise has never
been very subtle about its allegories), but it works because it forces the
characters to confront their ideas about Starfleet. Spock questions the moral basis of their orders, reminding
Kirk that the fugitive is being condemned without a trial. Scotty objects to the mysterious
technology of the special torpedoes on the ship and asks Kirk if Starfleet has
just become an intergalactic military.
The movie asks all the “Star Trek” fans in the audience to question this,
too. Is this really what Starfleet
is all about? Is revenge really
worthy of a civilized society?
While Into Darkness
brings in the philosophical components that were missing from the previous Star Trek, it maintains that film’s
propulsive storytelling energy. It
also finds a fascinating villain in Cumberbatch, one who poses a strong
physical, intellectual and moral challenge to the crew of the Enterprise. The intellectual challenge proves
especially compelling, particularly in a standoff between two starships that
becomes a battle of wits and wills rather than just a fight with laser beams.
Director Abrams has dialed back some of the visual excesses
that plagued the previous film (yes, there are fewer lens flares), though he
still has a strange penchant for canted angles and camera moves that constantly
tilt and whirl at breakneck speeds.
What keeps the visual style from being too distracting (as I thought it
was in the previous Star Trek) is the
fact that Abrams does have a fantastic sense of pace and narrative momentum. I sometimes found the visual style
distracting in the first twenty or so minutes, but after that I was honestly
too wrapped up in the proceedings onscreen to care too much about the visual
style.
Star Trek Into
Darkness really is one of those experiences where I forgot that I was in a
movie theater and found myself completely involved in what was happening on the
screen. Part of this has to do
with the way that Abrams and co. keep the tension and level of threat
constantly building throughout the picture. While the story takes a number of turns that I would rather
not mention here, they always increase the sense of danger and never undermine
it. But the biggest strength of
the movie is the way that it constantly pushes the characters to their
limits. Almost every character
confronts enormous responsibilities: Trek fans should smile at Sulu admitting
that he’s getting used to the Captain’s chair after Kirk leaves him in command
multiple times, and there’s a particularly great moment when Uhura has to use
her linguistic skills to negotiate with a group of Klingons. It’s rare to see a film
that is committed to turning its own characters into better people, and the
Enterprise crew that emerges at the end of this film is much stronger and more
mature than they were at the beginning.
I’m still astonished at how this picture manages to be a
gripping summer spectacle that still embraces the sometimes corny and naïve
essence of “Star Trek.” We’ve had
several films over the past few years that have confronted our post-9/11
concerns about fear, loss, justice and vengeance: Zero Dark Thirty, Munich
and The Dark Knight are among the
most memorable. But to confront deeply
troubling modern concerns in an exciting summer entertainment, one that truly
questions the moral foundations of civilized society, but also truly believes
that humanity is good and that it can and will achieve great things, well there’s
several ways to describe that. It’s
bold. It’s corny. It’s hopelessly naïve. But there’s another way to describe it:
it’s Star Trek.
4 stars (out of 4)
