Highly Illogical: ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ And the Perils of the Reboot

WARNING: Spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness.

Seriously, I give away all the plot twists. Go watch the film first.

I would actually recommend you give it a miss but then you won’t read this article.

Let’s be straight here, no messing around. Star Trek Into Darkness is a shambles. The plot is almost entirely incoherent, with character motivations at the mercy of bombastic action scenes. Make no mistake, it is explosions first and character development later (or not at all). Instead of focusing directly on the garbled narrative, we will instead assess the problems of rebooting a franchise so ingrained in popular culture, like Star Trek.

In order to fully elucidate on the failings of this new Star Trek universe, we will compare it to probably the most successful (both financially and critically) reboot of recent times, Christopher Nolan’s, The Dark Knight series. This may not be the most natural or obvious comparison in the world but there are some similarities. Both are helmed by hip, young directors, whose aim was to revive a flatlining, yet still prominent, franchise. Both feature impressive action sequences, yet one is decidedly more thoughtful and mature than the other. The reboot of Star Trek was undoubtedly influenced by the dual-success of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Yet unfortunately, as we shall see, it fell hard into one of the main pitfalls of the reboot: indulgent, illogical fan-service.