Movie Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

This is one great movie.

I've been looking forward to this movie since I saw the 2009 Star Trek movie. OK, so call me a fan boy.  Paramount starting teasing us with trailers at least a year ago.  Before I tell you how much I liked the movie I want to tell you that Paramount has conducted an excellent advertising campaign. Thinking back about the trailers I now realize that they managed to make me excited to see the movie without giving much of the story away. Sure, we knew that Benedict Cumberbatch was the bad guy. Could he possibly be the return of Khan!  The trailer showed battles with Klingons, the Enterprise getting the crap beaten out of her and cool cityscapes of future London and San Francisco. But the trailers did not tell us what was really going on and there lays the greatness of the movie.

J. J. Abrams has gotten it. He's captured what the original show and movies had and has brought it to life with a new cast. His 2009 Star Trek was pretty good, but this one is better.

I read a couple of reviews of the movie and I have to say that the reviewers did not get it. At this point, Star Trek has a lot of history. Abrams has mined that history well to present this alternate universe Star Trek that remains true to the original. If you know a lot of that history, then the movie has a lot of depth that you'll appreciate. If you don't, the story stands on its on.

I'm not going to divulge the plot here just in case you've not been following all of the publicity. You can look at the IMDB page if you want the ultimate spoiler right on the front page if you want. I'll just say that my wife is a fan but has not been following closely so the main plot came as a surprise to her.

The one review I read thought that this was the funniest Star Trek. I wouldn't go that far but I there are a lot of good lines, delivered with style and a sense of awareness.  McCoy gets to say "Dammit, I'm a doctor not a weapons technician". and "Are you out of your corn-fed mind"? Kirk tells McCoy "Enough with the metaphors"! 

I can hardly wait to see the movie again. I only have to wait until Thursday. My daughter and I are going to see it again, but this time in 3-D IMAX.