dvd of the week
The second in JJ Abram’s reboot of the Star Trek franchise starts out a few years after the last film. A rogue Star Fleet officer (Benedict Cumberbatch) bombs a top secret weapons lab, and, then when they are assembled to discuss it, he kills half of Star Fleet’s leadership.
Seeking vengeance, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) asks Admiral Marcus (a Cheney-esque Peter Weller) to allow him and his crew to find and kill the villain, who has hidden himself on the Klingon home world. Who this man actually is and why he is doing what he’s doing harkens back to (and rewrites) arguably the best Star Trek film, 1982s The Wrath of Khan. And arguably, Into Darkness is as good, if not better. Not only is Cumberbatch as brilliant, fierce, and accented a bad guy as Ricardo Montalbán was in Kahn, but unlike in Khan, the character development of both Kirk and Spock are central to the plot.
While Spock is trying to understand and accept how his human emotions can exist side-by-side with his affectless Vulcan half (and manage his relationship with Lt. Uhura, played by Zoe Saldana), Kirk has to deal with his achieving his potential as a leader, his great trouble following rules and his great trouble accepting Spock’s utilitarian belief that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Both Quinto and Pine do great jobs, but I was particularly enamored with how the taut, funny and pointed script allows Quinto to become Hollywood’s first out, gay action star. In Star Trek Into Darkness, Spock kicks ass.
