Star Trek Into Darkness Review: No Spoilers!

Space, the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, as it begins its second foray into theaters under the command of J.J. Abrams.  Here's the plot.  Member of Starfleet John Harrison (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) attacks Starfleet and Captain Kirk (played by Chris Pine) requests to track him down and bring him to justice.  Sound simple enough?  Good, because this doesn't even begin to describe what actually goes down, including some serious S- hit the fan moments.  Lets commence the review.

1. (17%) Music: 

This was a really, really good score with some of the hits including: Sub prime directive, Meld-merized, and London calling which is absolutely ridiculous. The Star Trek theme from the '09 film gets an update that which influences the entire tone of the film. This score gets an 8.5 in my book.  

2. (20%) Acting: 

The acting was solid, there were some really good emotional scenes that worked well, and nobody screwed up.  Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto gave stand-out performances and definitely deserve the big bucks.  I'd give the acting a 9.25

3. (18%) Plot: 

I didn't dislike the plot and while it wasn't completely originally (but that's not necessarily a criticism) it was a plot that would be hard to duplicate outside of the Star Trek universe.  The plot gets a 9.

4. (21%) Execution:

Did it keep me on engaged? Oh Yeah.  Were there any twists? You better believe it.  Was it a little predictable? Yes for me, no for others that I've talked to.  It gets a 9.5.

5. (8 %) First Reaction:

This is the part of the review where I get to pat myself on the back.  When I first saw the first trailer the first thought I had was, "this is going to be the second best movie of the summer".  This was after I had seen the first Iron Man 3 trailer which I also really liked.  When I walked out the theater I thought this movie was better than I thought it was going to be, due to various reviews and comments I had read on the internet.  Note: don't trust everything you read on the internet.  Some people haven't the foggiest what they're talking about.  I digress... I give my first reaction a 9.25.

6. ( 8%) Special Effects -

 The special effects were really good, the only criticism I have is that I don't like the blue lines left in space after the Enterprise goes to warp speed (or whatever its called).  It bothered me a little bit so I'll give the Special effects a 9.

7. (8%) Character/Story Development-  

With a cast this big (the crew of the enterprise + villain) it's extremely hard to give everyone a character arc of substance.  Fortunately, some of the minor characters (anyone who isn't named Kirk or Spock) seemed to have changed from the first film which created a illusion of character development during the film.  Also, the story of the film managed to challenge aspects of the protagonists that differed from how they were challenged in the first film, which was refreshing to see.  I'll give it a score of  9.

The Verdict:

Using my extremely intricate grading system, Star Trek Into Darkness gets a initial score of
90.9.  My gut says that this is an accurate assessment of how much I liked the film so we won't average the score out this time.  I highly recommend this film to anyone looking for a film with great action, great character moments, some humor, and a slightly more serious tone than a film like Iron Man 3.

Also, I may have mentioned this earlier but just because movie A has a higher score than movie B, doesn't necessarily mean that I like movie A more than movie B.  With that being said, if movie A is Star Trek Into Darkness and movie B is Iron Man 3, then yes I did/do/will like Star Trek more than Iron Man 3.  Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Star Trek Into Darkness = 90.9 Enterprises out of 100.