The original series and films may have contained their fair share of space battles and phaser fights from time to time but nothing like what we've seen in the reboot movies. Gone are the cerebral stories examining humanity and the human condition, in their place is bang bang, pew pew. Lots of spectacle but very little substance. If we examine the story of the first J.J. Abrams film, written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, it is about a bad guy who wants to destroy the Federation, he kills Kirk's father along with a few hundred other, changes history, destroys Vulcan and tries to destroy Earth. Kirk stops him, gets handed the Enterprise. The End. It's a fun film, easy to watch and brings a smile to the face, but it doesn't make you think. Into Darkness was about a rogue Admiral who somehow manages to build a ship 12 times the size of the Enterprise around one of the moons of Jupiter without anyone noticing because he wants to start a war with the Klingons. He wants to use Kirk to start his war and in the progress destroy one of the Federations newest ships, one that would no doubt be useful in said war. This he fails to do despite having ridiculously large guns that for no apparent reason he doesn't use first time. In fact, the story of Into Darkness doesn't really bear thinking about too deeply as the majority of it falls apart as soon as you do. A hodge podge of tropes, plot points and rehashed lines held together with the aforementioned bang bang, pew pew. Contrast this with the original films; a story about an artificial intelligence trying to understand its place in the universe, a film about revenge and loss, one of redemption and rebirth, a tale of humanity's destruction of its own planet, one of friendship and faith, then a final journey through racism, environmental damage, politics and peace-making. All with dialogue and themes far in advance of the nonsense Damon Lindelof puts on screen. More on that in the final section.
I.T. Consultant, technophile and Doctor Who fan. I like to talk about tech, take films apart and make excuses for Doctor Who's continuity errors. No other show has the power to make me feel like a big kid.
