Every Star Trek Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

8. Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness isn't a bad film per se, but it is a bad Star Trek film, despite strong performances from Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Taking inspiration from the classic TOS episode Space Seed, as well as The Wrath of Khan, J. J. Abrams' second Star Trek feature was - much like its immediate predecessor - a critical and commercial smash. The young Enterprise crew are as entertaining as ever, with Quinto and Pine bouncing off each other much the same way Shatner and Nimoy did decades earlier, but the film itself is totally unoriginal, perfecting its self-plagiarism of those earlier Trek efforts with a nauseating style of action that made no attempts to stop and ask questions like those aforementioned works did.

Into Darkness is a fine film; it has a wonderful score, composed by Michael Giacchino, and a fine villain in Cumberbatch's Khan. The problems lie in that it retreads familiar ground, and not just with those older Trek films either. Kirk's evolution from headstrong risk-taker into the Captain we knew he'd become was already chronicled in the 2009 film, and yet Into Darkness makes the decision to demote Kirk in order to broach those themes again.

It's just a superfluous work through and through, even if the cast were faultless.