Big Screen Breakdown: Star Trek Into Darkness

I'm usually not much of a cinema-goer. Three movies in three weeks seems a bit excessive, but when you get the opportunity to go to a flick with an old friend, you don't pass the opportunity up.

Now, I'm not exactly a Star Trek fan, but I'm more than passingly familiar with the series, especially the movies with the original Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, so I think I'm pretty qualified to comment on this film.

• The first Star Trek reboot wowed me mainly with the impressive performances, and this film is no different. Standouts are Simon Pegg as Scotty and Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy. They capture the spirit of the original actors very well, and they are a delight every time they're on screen.
• I want to have Benedict Cumberbatch's evil, evil babies.
• This is maybe a little strange, but I noticed that a lot of the dialog was cluttered, cut off, or otherwise just somehow... off. And, you know what? It kinda works. The dialog feels real, and much less scripted.
• On another strange note, the foley in this movie's a little ridiculous. The sound effects are really loud - every time someone gets punched, it sounds like someone fired a cow out of a cannon at a hundred miles per hour into another cow.
• I worry that the new Trek series clings a bit too closely to the original series. They had the opportunity to make a clean start and free up some of the cluttered continuity. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be willing to do that. Instead, they continually reference the original series and movies. Luckily, most of these callbacks are simple references that only fans would pick up on, so there's little that would actually detract from the experience of watching the movie.
• There's a bit of the classic Kirk/Spock bromance present in the movie, but it feels a bit forced. There's not yet quite enough background to give that relationship enough depth at this point.
• (Note: This part gets a bit spoilery, so be warned.)
• Into Darkness seems to take all the most memorable bits of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, shake 'em up, and make a movie out of the new order. You've got some of the same dialog, many of the same important characters, and even really similar death scenes.
• When the movie DOES stray from the plot of Star Trek II (the first one), it dramatically improves. The final action sequences with Benedict Cumberbatch's character are especially gripping, even clever.
• ...THAT. SAID. I had a really hard time with some of the death sequences. There are a few scenes where holes get blasted in the Enterprise, and some of the crew get sucked out not space, screaming. For some reason, I just couldn't handle these sequences - they felt cheap and gratuitous, and, frankly, they almost broke the movie for me.
• Verdict: For fans of the genre, yes.