Why Is "Into Darkness" So Hated?

I thought it was a perfectly decent action film for the first 90 minutes or so.

Just the Wrath of Khan role reversal at the end was so stupidly cheesy it ruined the rest of the film.

 

Indeed. ID feels the most like this could happen in real life style storytelling that was really popularized by police procedural, i.e. NCIS, Law and Order or 24. It's messy, convoluted and doesn't always have the best endings, and that's OK.

 

They could have gone full Dark Knight and had:

• Kirk and Spock aggressively interrogate Khan where Uhura and Marcus were held.
• Have Khan try and start a war between the Federation and the Klingons using a psychological experiment.
• Khan corrupts the best Starfleet has to offer (basically the entire crew of the Enterprise)
  
• Khan betraying his Augments and being a lone wolf.

On paper, it already seems like a better story.

In all of Trek, emulating 24 really only worked for Enterprise, imo. Not just because they are close to 21st century humans, but because they don’t have a handbook as to what to do. They are the ones writing the handbook. So, the storytelling can be grey and have a bunch of ethical dilemmas that require pulling out the phase pistol first.

 

Funny you say this...

And then this.

I don't see how your idea of "full Dark Knight" works without rewriting the handbook substantially, nor do I see thematically the difference between the film we got, and what you suggest.

 

Because I'm defending the best TREK film of the NuTrio as I see it, and the second of the three pandered the least, and if the fans feel DARKNESS is the dregs, it's my duty to attempt to reeducate them.

 

Story. Tale. Premise. Entertainment.

 

We watched very different movies.

 

Then the first line of the movie could have been "three of a Khan, let's do this."

 

I never hated it, but I did initially have mixed feelings about it. I enjoy(ed?) the hell out of the Kelvin timeline crew, but at the time I was in the camp that felt Into Darkness was a bit too much of an attempt to remake TWOK. I also wished John Harrison was the actual character and not Khan in disguise. I loved Cumberbatch's performance and just wanted it to be its own thing.

But Into Darkness has grown on me a lot over the years to the point my mixed feelings have become generally positive feelings.

 

ID is definitely my least favorite of the Kelvinverse movies. Not that the others don't have their issues, too... Kirk's unrealistically fast promotion to Captain annoyed the heck out of me in 2009; he should've gone through the ranks, with a 10-year rather than a 4-year skip in the middle of the movie to make his promotions at least slightly more realistic.

Full disclosure: I absolutely and totally detest Khan as a character, in any incarnation. I realize he's a fan favorite, but I can't stand him. Granted, TWOK works as a movie, probably better than most of the other Prime universe movies, but I can't bring myself to enjoy it because I hate Khan so much. Space Seed is my third least favorite TOS episode, I only despise Turnabout Intruder and Spock's Brain more. Needless to say, the revelation that Harrison was Khan, and everything that happened afterwards, pretty much ruined the movie for me (Alice Eve's eye candy scene didn't help, either).

My favorite Kelvinverse movie is Beyond. Compared to the two others, it was refreshing.

 

I thought that Into Darkness worked well enough for a big budget, science fiction action film. But it stumbled by crowbarring Khan into the movie. The movie didn't need him for the story. And then by adding Khan they couldn't help themselves from turning the third act into a Wrath of Khan remake to some extent. About the only thing I liked about the use of Khan was the Kirk-Khan team up because I wasn't expecting that, and it was neat to see.

If they took Khan out that meant they would not be pressured to put in Carol Marcus (a relationship that didn't go anywhere anyway). Alice Eve could've still played a similar character without making her Marcus, and not having to worry about why Marcus now has an English accent. And Peter Weller's admiral made for a pretty good villain. I think he could've carried the movie's villain duties without Cumberbatch. Taking Khan out might also have created more space for the Klingons so we could've seen more of the Kelvin Klingons.

 

More Klingons, more Marcus, more Harrison.

 

I did hate it. A big part, for me and also I think generally, was not just redoing Khan (when he had been done great before and so that was inviting and failing in comparison) but that I did mostly like 09 and it seemed that the point of a reboot was to do kinds of stories we couldn't do, albeit with reusing the original crew, not just get to do redo big elements we had already seen. I also disliked Spock's role and thought Marcus's plan was at least stupid and contrived and at best really lacking as allegory/social commentary and the action felt way overblown and overdone, to being boring and annoying.

That Reboot film 2 went straight to Khan after the TNG films were (rightly) criticized for trying too hard to have a new Khan in every film made it even more offputting, too very much more of the same we've already had a lot of rather than fresh.

And it is interesting that it did underperform at the box office especially after the triumphalism after 09 of ST IS KIRK/ORIGINAL SERIES, ORIGINAL SERIES IS THE BEST, ORIGINAL CREW IS THE ONLY ONE GENERAL AUDIENCES REALLY CARE ABOUT, KIRK/ORIGINAL CREW MEANS MAINSTREAM SUCCESS, no, only Kirk/Spock origin (along with maybe a few other kind of big, strong ideas/stories like Klingons and Borg) means a lot of mainstream interest and success, otherwise the general audiences are also still pretty uninterested even with Kirk, Spock and the original crew.

 

Not sure what polls were dishonest. I do remember, after release, Pegg being infuriated about a poll ranking ID as the worst film (and also, less focused on, 09 as the fourth-best film meaning the polled were not anti-Abrams in general let alone hugely so).

Not of the whole film, definitely not to the scene-for-scene level, but of too much of it, and lacking compared to it (and "Space Seed"), and the Admiral Marcus elements were also really bad.

 

I think ID suffered from both polls and negative word of mouth. I know when I was on another forum, even those who liked 09 were wary because of it. I finally when and saw it and really enjoyed it, a lot more than the naysayers insisted I must. Despite my annoyance at the inclusion of Khan I found Marcus a compelling villain, and that the worldbuilding from the last film really compelling. Couple that with Spock's struggles with the whole loss of his home world and his mother, as well as Kirk's own journey in maturing as not just a captain but a leader.

While I think Khan was unnecessary (and has been since TWOK) the film does a lot better job than it gets credit for.

 

I saw Thor: Love and Thunder a few days ago, and something I noticed is that I felt it's first and second half were also of very, very different levels of quality, but Thor, unlike STID, had the first half be the kind of lousy part, and then it got really good once everything was on the board and the story started drawing back in towards its conclusion, and I felt a lot more generously towards it when I left.

 

I'd like it a lot more if I could understand the whole business with the torpedoes and the augments. Every time I watch it I feel like I've missed a scene.

 

What's to miss? Khan hid them in there to try and protect them and smuggle them off. When he attacked the Kelvin facility he assumed Marcus had figured out what he had done and had destroyed the torpedoes, thus his attack on Starfleet Command. Only when Sulu announces the "72 torpedoes" does Khan realize how Marcus plans to destroy the evidence of him using Khan and to start his war.

Only, Kirk attempts to capture Khan rather than firing in to Klingon space.