1. Big Concepts
Wrath of Khan is science fiction about big ideas. The movie is about dealing with death, with the inevitability of age and decay, with the brutal fact that we will lose everyone we love and everything we care about. Kirk is getting old, hes lost his edge, and he loses his greatest friend. But its also a hopeful movie. Its a movie about the fact that death may be final, but it isnt the end. Life continues, growing from death (thats the point where the space opera drama perfectly intersects with the hard science of Genesis). Kirks final line is I feel young, because hes learned how to deal with death, how to deal with his friends loss, and how in a godless humanist universe there is still hope. Into Darkness is about being a summer blockbuster. In that its about dealing with loss (which frankly doesnt make sense because thats something the ridiculously young crew of the Enterprise should be dealing with down the road, once theyve got some experience under their belt), it contradicts itself by demonstrating how fleeting and impermanent loss really is. The closest it comes to being about big ideas is its criticism of how America is becoming that which it once hated. Khan the man is resurrected because bad guys in the Federation think its necessary to think like bad guys in order to deal with bad guys. This, the movie tells us with all the subtlety of a brick, is BAD. Khan didnt have to say its themes and conclusion out loud like that, it could leave something to be implied and understood. Khan is EVIL, and thats his motivation by the end of Into Darkness. Before that, he just wants to protect his crew, although maybe if someone had said something about that earlier he would have been more relatable. Kirk gets upset and beats Khan up, and thats bad. But then Spock does the same thing later in the film, and hes getting in touch with his feelings so thats good. Notice how that all contradicted itself. Wrath of Khan is about big ideas, big concepts, and serious evaluations of life and its continuation. Into Darkness is a clunky and self-contradictory political commentary, with character drama that doesnt make sense and a plot that drives the whole movie without making any sense. Thats the most basic problem with Into Darkness: the plot drives the drama, rather than in Khan, where the drama drives the plot.