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Why Is "Into Darkness" So [imagine a different, more accurate past participle here]?

Or maybe this is revisionist history, since its clear that they took Spock’s sacrifice and Kirk emotional outburst from TWOK. And intended to further suggest that this was their take on TWOK by including Khan and Carol Marcus as characters.
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And its not like Cumberbatch did a terrible job playing Khan. But if Cumberbatch was playing another character he is famous for playing, Dr Strange, or a wizard based off of Dr. Strange in the film, it would have made for a much more interesting and fun film to watch. And would have showed that the reboot films are committed to fresh ideas.

Ignore everything about Khan after the reveal midway through the movie, and it’s a strong movie with a good soundtrack to it.

John Harrison being Khan made absolutely no sense to me at all, as Khan's name implies someone of a different ethnicity. Harrison is a white guy. I agree that he should have been his own villainous character and leave it at that.

All of the fighting scenes between he and Spock don't entirely work for me, either, but then I generally find fight scenes, like car chases, boring.

So much of the film I've forgotten because once they revealed that Harrison was Khan, I just said "oh, this is TWOK," and I had already seen a better version of that film than this one was. In fact, I thought it was poor writing that they didn't come up with a new plot instead of rehashing the old one.

I haven't seen the film in years, though. Maybe I would feel differently about it if I saw it again, today.
 
So much of the film I've forgotten because once they revealed that Harrison was Khan, I just said "oh, this is TWOK," and I had already seen a better version of that film than this one was. In fact, I thought it was poor writing that they didn't come up with a new plot instead of rehashing the old one.
While I agree that going to the TWOK well (again) was annoying, taking the film as "just TWOK" is really undercutting both films. TWOK is one approach to this problem, while Into Darkness is a whole other. It weaves in the cold superiority of Khan's character with the desperation of a Starfleet stricken to its core from a recent attack. It's Kirk still finding his way, rather than looking back and regretting his current state in life.

Khan ism in some ways, Kirk's dark mirror, as is Marcus in the film. Kirk, at the beginning, has no regards for rules. He knows better, as Pike illustrates. And what does Khan say. "I'm better. At everything." In essence saying the rules don't apply to me. Same with Marcus. So, Kirk is faced with multiple consequences for his decisions and then sees further what that would do to Starfleet as a whole when the leader decides the rules no longer apply.
 
Khan ism in some ways, Kirk's dark mirror, as is Marcus in the film. Kirk, at the beginning, has no regards for rules. He knows better, as Pike illustrates. And what does Khan say. "I'm better. At everything." In essence saying the rules don't apply to me. Same with Marcus. So, Kirk is faced with multiple consequences for his decisions and then sees further what that would do to Starfleet as a whole when the leader decides the rules no longer apply.

TWOK's similarities aside, DARKNESS has more thematic similarities with THE DARK KNIGHT...some of which are referred to directly above.

You could make similar cases that SUPERMAN begat ROBOCOP, and ROBOCOP begat DARKMAN, at least structurally.
 
TWOK's similarities aside, DARKNESS has more thematic similarities with THE DARK KNIGHT...some of which are referred to directly above.
I would agree, and also with BATMAN BEGINS.

It was one of the few times with STAR TREK that as I sat in the theater and the movie was playing that I felt it was being topical to real world politics, as I was following news stories about drone kills being authorized in different ways. It was very interesting.

The idea that this film somehow is just a pale shadow of TWOK ignores what the film was trying to do. Unfortunately, it was also bound by the same idea the DARKN KNIGHT was-a certain villain must show up in a Trek/Batman film.
 
It was one of the few times with STAR TREK that as I sat in the theater and the movie was playing that I felt it was being topical to real world politics, as I was following news stories about drone kills being authorized in different ways. It was very interesting.

It was a successful allegory in my view, though having Kirk say ''That's not who we are'' is too much of a Presidential quote. Otherwise the second Abrams TREK satisfied me the most.
 
It was a successful allegory in my view, though having Kirk say ''That's not who we are'' is too much of a Presidential quote. Otherwise the second Abrams TREK satisfied me the most.
I can see that but I'm too much of a philosophy learner to find that strictly a presidential quote.
 
John Harrison being Khan made absolutely no sense to me at all, as Khan's name implies someone of a different ethnicity. Harrison is a white guy. I agree that he should have been his own villainous character and leave it at that.
He's genetically engineered, and whatever colour his makers want him to be.

And now in SNW, he's Indian ethnicity but Canadian:rofl:
 
The lunacy they took the tech for one. Plus they treated warp speed like hyperspace, with them getting to Qo’noS from Earth in under 5 minutes.
 
Even the trip from Earth to Vulcan was ridiculously short in the 09 movie. Not only did they get there in a few minutes, Nero had already decimated the fleet by the time they arrived. Even if it took - I dunno - HOURS longer to get there than they portrayed, the Enterprise only left orbit a few seconds after the rest of the fleet. Spock gets from the hanger deck to the bridge via turbolift in seconds. In a straight line. The Bad Robot films play with time and distance for the sake of breakneck pacing. You either accept it or you don't

My only issues with STID in the end were the use of Khan (which wouldn't have bothered me if they were up front about it and cast a little more appropriately) and the line for line TWOK recreations. They wanna have Kirk sacrifice himself to show his growth? Fine. They wanna have this event be along the lines as what Spock did in the 1982 movie? Okay. They wanna have Spock grief-stricken and realize that he and Kirk really are friends? Fair enough. But the use of the same lines and the really strained "Khaaaan" (which is a classic because of Shatner thank you), which probably seemed clever and fun to the production and even some fans, just felt cheap to me. My eyes rolled hard in the theater. And don't get me started with McCoy decided to futz around with a tribble (where did he get it?) and Khan's blood out of nowhere just so they can plant that seed for Kirk's revival later.

I liked the overall story, I liked Cumberbund Bandersnatch's performance, and I loved seeing the Enterprise knocked out of warp, that was a new sight. But I'm tired of Trek's continual pushing of the Khan button and I don't care how many times they want to keep shouting that Khan is Kirk's greatest adversary, he never really was. Christ, Kirk beat him TWICE and the first time wasn't even that hard. He was just Kirk's adversary in The Best Star Trek Film Ever Decided. Kruge did more permanent damage to Kirk than Khan.
 
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