Star Trek Into Darkness Reviews
Top Critic
Most of the logic has leached away from this movie, and with it half of the fun.
Happily, there's a good deal of fun if you like things crashing violently into each other and out of warp-drive at regular intervals.
For all its chasing and falling and fighting-and the movie supplies a great deal of each-Star Trek Into Darkness is at its best when the Enterprise crew are merely bickering and bantering among themselves: less space opera than soap opera.
The conceptual sci-fi of the original series is nowhere to be found, though you might enjoy watching the skinny young actors approximate their counterparts from the 60s; Chris Pine is especially good as Captain Kirk.
While the action is often electric, it's the relationships that matter. That, and a lippy regard for a cultural legacy.
The film is, for whatever else it might be, one of the funniest of the Star Trek entries.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
For two movies in a row now -- and possibly even more in the second than the first -- [Abrams has] caught some of the spark of the first Star Trek without either mimicking or desecrating the original.
The result is a wild piece of entertainment that manages to be about something. Beam yourself up for this one.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
J.J. Abrams's Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to his prequel, delivers the goods, even if some of the goods are less than fresh.
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| Original Score: B
"Star Trek Into Darkness" is one of the most aggressively self-conscious summer blockbusters ever made.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Abrams boldly goes into Star Trek Into Darkness, and crushes it again. It's more fun and more intense, without giving less to the characters.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
This is sufficiently rousing and entertaining that it should please a majority of movie-goers whether they're confessed Trek fans or not.
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| Original Score: 3/4
I thought it was really fun, an inventive, surprising rethinking of some of "Star Trek's" most hallowed inventions, but I'm not wedded to the source material as gospel. Trekkies will think it's a desecration. So, pick your side.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Star Trek Into Darkness offers [a] qualified satisfaction, which, especially after the second half, is akin to the relief of surviving a long beating.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Into Darkness is a sleek, thrilling epic that's also a triumphantly witty popcorn morality play. It's everything you could want in a Star Trek movie.
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| Original Score: A
What this movie does with a not-unfamiliar-to-some story is pretty clever, and the incarnation of a classic villain by British cheekbone virtuoso Benedict Cumberbatch is vivid and engaging.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
It's a great deal of brash fun, and it should satisfy all those basic Trekkie cravings.
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| Original Score: 3/5
For all its reckoning with mass destruction, this franchise's vision of a future Earth remains optimistic. The film mixes the iconically familiar with the futuristic.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Star Trek Into Darkness banishes, at least for the moment, the lugubrious mood and sepulchral look that too many comic-book movies mistake for sophistication. All hail an action film that isn't ashamed to have fun and to be seen doing it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Like its entertaining predecessor, "Star Trek Into Darkness" offers much of what the fans expect and not much of what they don't. This character-driven vehicle is a supercharged example of cinematic craftsmanship.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
There's absolutely nothing wrong with "Star Trek Into Darkness" -- once you understand it as a generic comic-book-style summer flick faintly inspired by some half-forgotten boomer culture thing.
Maybe it is too late to lament the militarization of Star Trek, but in his pursuit of blockbuster currency, Mr. Abrams has sacrificed a lot of its idiosyncrasy and, worse, the large-spirited humanism that sustained it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
You barely get a chance to catch a breath as this saga takes off like a starship and just keeps going, from its Indiana Jones-style opening to its cosmos-rattling finale. And all in 3D, no less.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Abrams' sophomore effort picks its references well, builds on the relationships established in the original series (and tweaked in the last movie) and keeps the quips and battles coming. Warp speed, Captain.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
"Star Trek Into Darkness" is ridiculously exciting. Which is to say it's so exciting it's ridiculous. But in a good way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Darkness is a cheery combo of classic catchphrases and young Hollywood heat ...
Star Trek Into Darkness may not go boldly back to the archives, but it serves up an exhilarating spectacle, with noteworthy moments of intimacy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Abrams gets considerable help from a cast who go after their roles with great zest.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The new film works. It's rousing. The human element, and the Vulcan element, to say nothing of various other species, are present, accounted for and taken seriously enough to matter.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
A solid but unspectacular effort that sets the stage for the next chapters.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The movie delivers the goods on both narrative and razzle-dazzle action levels.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
There's something especially disconcerting about Into Darkness's hollowness, given the visibly provocative content that, in true Trek fashion, is meant to put us in mind of our precarious present.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
An excessively derivative what-if rehash of themes and interactions that came before, most of the characters lesser copies and even caricatures of the originals.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The movie presses forward with a high-spirited wit and sense of purpose that makes other action extravaganzas look backward.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A note-perfect blend of escapist fun and thought-provoking commentary, ensemble drama, comic relief, daredevil action and senses-shattering spectacle.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The action is exhilarating, the visual effects spectacular - and spectacularly realized.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
One of the general strengths of Star Trek Into Darkness, in fact, is the feeling of high stakes and genuine threat, which is exceedingly hard to pull off in any long-running franchise.
"Into Darkness" is fast and fun, zipping along on all thrusters while everyone on the bridge settles comfortably into an agreeably lighthearted vibe (and into ever-slimmer outfits).
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| Original Score: 3/4
[Provides] bustling fun equal to its modest ambitions ...
A stunningly nervy sequel that vaporizes any worries that Abrams' terrific 2009 reboot was a fluke.
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| Original Score: 5/5
The only darkness here - besides the dingy-looking images dimmed by 3-D glasses - is the murky plot, which is as silly as it is arbitrary.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
You could spend the rest of the summer waiting for a better popcorn movie. But that would be highly illogical.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
A glorious nostalgia trip, continuing the Star Trek reboot in style through a cunning meld of the best of 1980s action sci-fi with high-end 2013 glossiness.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Abrams has a gift for making us feel as if Star Trek Into Darkness vaulted from our own Trek-ish daydreams.
"Into Darkness" may not boldly go where no "Trek" adventure has gone before, but getting there is such a well-crafted, immensely pleasurable ride that it would be positively Vulcan to nitpick.
The production gives the impression of a massive machine cranked up for two hours of full output; it efficiently delivers what it's built to do, but without style or personality.
A stop-gap tale that's modest, fun and briefly amusing rather than one that breaks new ground or offers hugely memorable set pieces.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
