4. Too Much Kirk and Spock
It seems blasphemous, especially when the Kirk and Spock dynamic was one of the few redeeming elements of Star Trek: The Video Game, but there can be too much Kirk and Spock goodness. The TOS movies and ST09, while focusing heavily on Kirk and Spock, gave the rest of the bridge crew moments to shine. Star Trek into Darkness, on the other hand, revolves around Kirk, Spock, Khan, and Scotty (of all people), with everyone else relegated to bit parts even Uhura, whose relationship with Spock was a major subplot in the 2009 film. When it comes to Kirk, STID is pretty much an admission that the ending of ST09 was ridiculous. Thats okay writers acknowledging things that didnt make sense is alright as long as they do something with it. This Kirk has flaws large enough to swallow a Dreadnought-class starship arrogance, immaturity, disregard for authority, and whole host of others. But Kirks respecting the chair character arc honestly doesnt feel like it needed to be in
this story, especially when the plot brings up more interesting potential character arcs for Kirk and the whole subplot eats up time that could be better used for other characters. Spocks character arc in this movie, on the other hand, is weird if you arent familiar with the Star Trek Ongoing/Countdown into Darkness comics. Youve got Spock with a death wish dropping into a volcano to save some primitives (against the Prime Directive), then he rats on Kirk for breaking the Prime Directive, he and Uhura have a spat (thats never really resolved), and Spock takes his bromance with Kirk to the point where you wonder when hes gonna dump Uhura and start pining for Kirk. Part of it is understandable if you just watch the movie Spocks withdrawing from his emotions due to the whole my planet and my mom are dead thing. But the other parts, especially where he goes along with Kirks orders one minute and violates them the next, is something you can only learn about through reading the comics (in case youre wondering, in Countdown into Darkness, Spock went on a suicide mission to rescue Sulu and a redshirt, then decided to play things by the book after getting chewed out by Kirk). Cutting down the amount of time spent on Kirk and Spock and doling it out to the characters that needed it (especially Carol Marcus) might not save this film... but even little character moments can do a lot to redeem an underwhelming film.