Star Trek Into Darkness

Directed by J.J. Abrams

(PG-13)

**

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The second installment of the rebooted Star Trek franchise plays like fan fiction created with a huge budget, said David Edelstein in New York magazine. “For all the movie’s off notes”—and there are many—it will delight a vast audience of devoted Trekkies because it’s loaded with spectacular action sequences and generates great insider fun by slyly appropriating details from a beloved 30-year-old Star Trek movie. Still, Darkness “marks a big leap backward” from 2009’s smart comeback flick, said Anthony Lane in The New Yorker.Chris Pine returns as Capt. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, while Benedict Cumberbatch exudes a suitably exotic air as the intergalactic villain they’re chasing. But the characters feel two inches deep; the plot “proceeds by spasm and lurch”; and the emotional scenes prove as heavy-handed as the space battles. The movie “has too much competency on its side” to be labeled a cinematic misfire, said Anthony Quinn in The Independent (U.K.). But there’s not even much suspense. Darkness “gets the job done without ever threatening to raise one’s pulse.”