8. Relatable Family Drama
There are two layers of family drama in Khan: Kirks reunification with an old girlfriend/his first meeting with his son, and the weathered brotherhood uniting the older crewmen Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and McCoy. Kirk experiences on screen the emotions that an estranged father would have upon meeting his adult son for the first time, and these emotions are so simple and relatable that the audience has no difficult understanding them and sympathizing with the characters. The four men have been through so much in their long lives that they are brothers, and every conversation between them has the weight of history and the ease of familiarity. Its natural to watch them on screen together, because they clearly have a level of understanding and love that unites them. Thats why the films end, when the four men are united at Spocks death, carries so much emotional resonance. Their grief, and especially Kirks, has been earned by their interactions over the course of the film. The emotional conflicts in Into Darkness, however, involve Kirk being pissed that no one will let him do the things his gut tells him are right, and Uhura being pissed that Spock doesnt care enough about dying. If they had been written better, maybe these would have been relatable. But neither of these conflicts make much logical sense. Add to that the fact that there is nothing but conflict among the Enterprise crew, meaning that there are no comfortable relationships, no meaty history, and no real basis against which to cast these conflicts and give them emotional weight. The resolution of these conflicts was based around the death and resurrection of Kirk, but the sudden melting away of all those conflicts into something the audience had no basis to understand meant that the emotions surrounding Kirks death werent earned by the movie.