From the Hole – Star Trek Into Darkness Edition

The views expressed here are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect those of the crew of the USS Tiburon, the 888th MSG, Starfleet, KAG or any affiliations with anyone or anything other than the author. (Aaand I’m pretty sure they don’t.)

From the Hole normally scheduled for this week is pre-empted so we may bring you a special “Star Trek Into Darkness” edition.

76251355166072-hh-27766r-2A nice dark hole is always a good place to watch a movie. Slowly but surely the majority of the crew of the USS Tiburon and the 888th MSG Tigersharks (Starfleet Marine Corps) have been making the journeys to their favorite movie holes to see the latest in the JJ Abrams reboot of the Star Trek franchise. Having watched all the trailers, read posts and seen reviews from a large number of other folks, some Trekkers but most not, I didn’t really know what to expect when I finally made it to the theater to see it for the first (and most likely only) time.

As I suspected when I saw “The Hobbit” the extended trailer that was offered with that movie actually is the lead in for this one. This isn’t much of a spoiler especially if you didn’t pay the extra money for the extra pre-footage. If you’ve kept up with all the hype you already know what the Klingons look like and yes, they do make what you could call, a guest appearance. Without giving a huge amount away I will say that JJ Abrams took characters and events from both a TOS episode AND a TOS movie and twisted them. He also loaded in a couple of magic bullets and anyone that watches the film can see what’s coming as soon as Kirk takes custody of the villain.

There is a great deal of violence, strong language (not for kids if you don’t want them repeating it), and action. The characters are thrust into positions where they have to grow but it all seems very and perhaps too forced to me. As a stand alone action film I give it a B-. As a sci-fi film in general I would rank this as a C+ at best. As a Star Trek film it gets a D+ due to a lack of true originality. Assuming there is a third film in this series, with JJ off to work on at least Episode VII of Star Wars it could be a while, I’m seriously hoping that he can come up with something original – however I seriously doubt that he will. I’m pretty sure that I will have to be forcibly dragged to see the next one assuming there is one. To paraphrase a line from “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” save your money, save yourself, avoid “Star Trek Into Darkness” at all costs.

On the plus side I did get to see a decent preview for “Man of Steel” which is due out in July and I’m eagerly awaiting “Wolverine” in June.

With a bit of luck From the Hole will return in it’s normal slot next month.