Star Trek: Into Darkness is the sequel to the 2009 reboot film, Star Trek, starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Alice Eve, Peter Weller, and Benedict Cumberbatch. When a terrorist attack hits a Starfleet Base, Admiral Alexander Marcus (Weller) assigns the crew of the Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk (Pine), Spock (Quinto), to hunt down the menace (Cumberbatch) who caused said attack.

On the surface, Into Darkness seems to be it’s own film, with little to no reference to the original Star Trek television series or their films. However, as the film progresses it’s made pretty clear that Star Trek: Into Darkness is a very loose remake of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. As a result, the film suffers from many of the dreaded remake cliches and downfalls. Into Darkness has great scenes and moments, but like many live-action film remakes, it also redos scenes and characters from the original film without the context that made them great. What made The Wrath of Khan an incredible film was its focus on character, the entire film was about Kirk’s midlife crisis. Everything from the characters, like Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, to plot points, like the Kobayashi Maru test, was to drive this point home. Into Darkness seems to have the message of following the consciousness instead of the heart even in the darkest of times, but characterization and story development is so lazily done that no one cares about the message.

All of the flaws of Into Darkness can’t be explained without going into spoiler territory. So the everything about this film and Wrath of Khan will be spoiled except for the last paragraph.

Apparently, Benedict Cumberbatch is the Star Trek film reboot version of Khan Noonien Singh. Now Cumberbatch is excellent at displaying physical brutality, however the problem is that Cumberbatch’s villain is Khan. Khan in the original television series and in The Wrath of Khan, played by Ricardo Montalban, wasn’t anything like Cumberbatch’s version. Which is strange because, while different in some ways, the reboot version of the Enterprise crew is similar to the original Enterprise crew from the television show.

The uninspired Wrath of Khan similarities don’t stop there. Carol Marcus is in Into Darkness and she’s probably the best example of this film not understanding why The Wrath of Khan worked so well. In Khan, Carol was Kirk’s former lover and a symbol of Kirk’s old age. They also had a son together, David Marcus, which drives the point home of how old Kirk is getting. In Into Darkness, Carol serves as a connection to the film’s secondary antagonist that turns out to be Admiral Marcus. So why does Into Darkness need a character named Carol Marcus if the film isn’t going to understand what makes her function or make her similar to her Khan counterpart?

At the near-climax of the film, Kirk dies saving the Enterprise in what is similar to Spock’s death in The Wrath of Khan. It’s actually pretty touching. However, all emotional impact regarding this death scene is made pointless because Into Darkness decides to bring Kirk immediately back from the dead one final battle with Khan later. A death of an important character is pointless if everything returns back to the status quo in the ending. Not to mention, Spock’s death scene worked in Khan because the entire film has been built up to that scene. Throughout Khan, Kirk couldn’t deal with his age, with him getting old, he couldn’t deal with a “no-win” scenario. So Spock dies saving everyone aboard the Enterprise as a consequence of Kirk’s thoughtlessness. In Darkness, even if Chris Pine does an amazing performance as Kirk while he dies, Kirk’s death scene just comes out of nowhere.

As for the film’s original material, it’s surprisingly fresh and new. It actually feels like the old Star Trek series. The dynamic between Pine’s Kirk and Quinto’s Spock is convincing. Urban is amazing as Dr. McCoy, clearly channeling DeForest Kelley in his performance. The rest of the cast also ace at their roles. Peter Weller should have been the main villain given his performance, and Bruce Greenwood is great as Captain Pike.

Despite all it’s flaws, Star Trek: Into Darkness does feel like a decent Star Trek film. The new material given and the cast’s performance are all excellent. However, it struggles from the worst live-action remake cliches whenever it can, such as using elements from the original film, Wrath of Khan, without understanding what made them great. Into Darkness is a step backwards after the solid 2009 reboot, it’s enjoyable at times but isn’t complete without pointless scenes and stupid callbacks. Star Trek: Into Darkness is a 6/10.