I'm a little late replying, but I find it interesting that a lot of the way you feel about STID is the way I feel about Beyond. To me that is the film out of the three that I would describe as having no heart and no story for the characters beyond a shallow plot line. I felt it was way too early to have Kirk considering promotion or leaving the Enterprise. That didn't make sense. The only reasons they gave was that it was episodic and they alluded that command was lonely. But considering he hasn't been a Captain very long that is very premature to my mind. If they were trying to say he was struggling in finding out who he was apart from his father, then they did a poor job of it as that was only mentioned once by McCoy.
On the other hand, I love STID and I watch it at least once a month. I saw it with a live symphony too and man it was just amazing. I really don't see it being repetitive at all. STID was basically about how Kirk was promoted too soon and the repercussions of this and the fall out. It continued JJ's story arc about how this Kirk comes to be the Captain Kirk everyone respects in TOS but coming from a very different background. In contrast I've watched Beyond only a handful of times. I will admit it had some great space shots and I usually put it on for those when I do watch it but I just can't seem to connect with it the way I do the first two movies. I felt they had more of the character's story being told and Beyond felt like a TV series ST episode done on a movie scale. Which works fine for tv, but when you wait three-four years for a movie, you kinda want to see a little more character development.
First of all: While we apparently have completely opposite views on
Into Darkness, I'm genuinely happy for you if you like that film.
Art is, and always will be subjective. And yeah, even a popcorn-sponsored blockbuster is still a "movie" and can be described as "art" (even though it's more commercial than others). Other people will see different things in the same movie, and like or dislike different aspects, and have different priorities while watching.
And if you enjoy this movie - good! Don't let anyone (even me) spoil it for you. This is just my opinion, rooted in a completely different mindset. If I write lengthy about it, it's for people to understand
why I don't like it - NOT to make other people not like it either!
Where I'm definitely with you is that it is a much better directed film than "Beyond". J.J. Abrams can't craft an original plot if his life depended upon it. But in crafting
scenes he's one of the best directors of all times. It's hard not be invested in a situation that's basically nothing more than two people talking in a corridor if it's done by him. I don't know enough about filmmaking to say
why that is, but when it comes to scene immersion (and casting), there is no other director like Abrams.
My problems with it stem mostly from the
story: "Beyond" is as bland as "insurrection". But (in my view) those movies don't do really harm either. They're not the event someone expects for a single movie every 4 years. But they work fine rewatching them on DVD in a row.
But "Into Darkness" tries bigger things. And utterly fails at it (IMO). For me, it's the resurrection part. You just don't do that, unless you mean it serious.
But at best, Kirks sacrifice and ressurection is like that of Optimus Prime in Michael Bay's Transformer franchise (eerily crafted by the same writing guys): Ultimately meaningless. The sacrifice itself is entirely superficious. Optimus Prime died in the most mundane fight possible - Kirk, as a leader - should have had to face the decision to order some of his men to go inside - something that was already much better handled in an episode of TNG where Troi was applying for command duties and had to learn that you sometimes have to order people (Geordie) to die, if otherwise the entire ship is in peril.
And then the resurrection. Unlike that of Spock in TSFS, there was nothing clever about it. They just used a thing they had, and then forever forgot about it. Yes, Spock's original one also has some logic issues: If he was completely "downloading" his brain into McCoy (as was implied he did in TSFS), his famous death scene wasn't actually the "real" Spock, but just the bare basics that were left in this body (maybe that's why Spock had to learn everything again in "TVH"?). If he just made a "copy", then you run into the transporter problem: Is a copy the real thing? Did the original die? Has the copy the same significance of the original if it's merely identical to him, but
not really him? Etc. But there was a genuine effort visible by the writers to make sure this is a
once in a lifetime situation, and there is NO possible way this happens ever again. Khans blood on the other hand is still there, laying around, ready to be used to next time some fan favourite character bites the dust.
And then there is the larger meaning behind it: Both Optimus Prime and Kirk learn
absolutely nothing from their experience. The very next scene they appear in,they already act the exact same way as before. Yes, Kirk is a bit more "humble". But he was already at the end of the previous movie. That was his whole arc back then. And in the very next movie, the fact that Optimus Prime and Kirk have died and come back to life is not so much ignored, as completely wiped out from existence. NuSpock's struggle with the death of is homeworld was at least
referenced in the following movies, if only in the most shallow way possible.
That alone would have already made me not like the movie, even if everything before that would have been a good movie (it wasn't - but it wasn't really bad either). But the fact that they decided to
fuckin' COPY one of the MOST well-known Trek scenes,
LINE BY LINE of dialogue, made me fuckin'
hate it. That felt like a hoax. A bad joke. It's only later (with Force Awakens) that it became visible J.J. Abrams genuinely thinks RE-doing the same things as before is as exciting as it was the first time. His latest movies are like the shot-for-shot remake somebody made of Psycho - a complete artistic failure in this regard - except Abrams is a better scene director. But it's a fucking insult to the audience no less.
And with that grievance, all the other failings that are in this movie - interstellar beaming (why have starships at all?), Tribbles having human blood, the build-up without ever having a pay-off to the klingon storyline, the beat-for-beat remakes of the character arcs from the very previous movie, all become much more visible and annoying. While they would have been easy to be ignored (as so many other canon problems Trek had before) if the movie were
good.
That being said: Yeah, Beyond is bland as hell. I think it
has heart, and the people making it were genuinely trying. But they simply weren't able to pull their themes fully off - they got muddled in with the generic framework of an action movie, and most people didn't notice. IMO the main reason people like it is because it isn't as offensive as Into Darkness. Like "Solo" and "The Last Jedi" - people were divided over one of them. The next one was then just too generic - people didn't care anymore.
), where can you go afterwards with that, except for into a completely new and different direction?
