STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
It is such a terrific joy when you see a film that is so brilliant it almost makes up for the many that are just ‘meh’. Much in the way that the novels of Dan Brown and EL James earn the squillions of dollars to keep funding smaller books, Star Trek Into Darkness should create enough goodwill to prop up any number of films that only manage to be OK. Based, of course, on the cult space series, which ran for nearly 30 years, Into Darkness is a sequel to the excellent 2009 film that rebooted the franchise and brought the impossible Captain James T Kirk, his highly logical First Officer Spock and the crew of the Starship Enterprise to a new generation. As Into Darkness begins, Kirk (Chris Pine, fantastic) is leading his crew astray in search of adventure and rescue. Back on Earth, Kirk’s superiors seek to discipline him, but all is undone by a terrorist attack on the Star Fleet archive in London (a wonderfully realistic landscape shows that St Paul’s Cathedral will still be standing in the future). When the terrorist turns out to be Starfleet superspy John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), the fleet’s admiral deploys Kirk and his ship to hunt him down by whatever means necessary, which leads to divisions among the Enterprise crew.
Whether you know this universe or not doesn’t matter: this film is worth running to the cinema for. By turns thrilling, funny and intensely moving, it is a tightly plotted picture that, like its predecessor, uses the Star Trek legacy to its advantage, picking and choosing the best bits and adding in gallons of star power. It is also a story of friendship and, just as Kirk and Spock’s relationship charmed for years, we can only hope that director JJ Abrams’s increasing success doesn’t prevent us from getting to know them again.
One of the joys of the last decade’s crop of blockbusters is that the best focus on character, and not only are Star Trek’s all so wonderfully layered that every scene flashes, but the acting is outstanding. I could watch Zachary Quinto’s Spock endlessly. His every eyebrowraise and glance speaks volumes, and he underlines the film with a quiet brilliance that is matched, if not beaten by Cumberbatch, who rivals Quinto for monologues simply by flaring a nostril. His Harrison is intriguing, elegant and magnetic, like an infinitely more dreadful and concentrated form of Sherlock. Despite a huge possibility for ham, Cumberbatch plays it with total dedication that lifts your traditional British villain into another league. During a fight scene in which he seemed to shimmy past his enemies, I found myself idly planning our wedding.
JJ Abrams has been tasked with the new Star Wars film, which is set to shoot in England, and if his wonderful work on Star Trek is anything to go by, this will be another joy in the world of space adventure. But fingers crossed this isn’t the last we see of the Enterprise: if anyone should live long and prosper, it should be this glorious new interpretation of an old classic.