Star Trek Into Darkness (B+)

For a series with the tagline "To boldly go where no man has gone before," Star Trek Into Darkness treads some pretty familiar ground.*

Admittedly, it treads with panache; the spectacle is spectacular, lens flare abounds, and lots of things go 'splodey-boom. IN SPACE. With Simon Pegg. And Benedict Cumberbatch. 

So it was enjoyable. If you're unsure about shelling out nine clams, go right ahead. Come back and we can quibble about details. 

Speaking of which ... (spoilers after the break)

1. The movie didn't earn all of its emotion. Particularly when Pike died, I thought I was supposed to feel a whole lot more than I actually did. Giacchino's music told me that this was a Big Moment, but I wasn't buying it.
2. Could we PLEASE have been given a little more of Khan's backstory from a less-unreliable narrator?
3. The jumps from one instance of sudden peril to another were too sudden for my taste. They didn't flow naturally from the action; they seemed more like marks that the movie had to hit, come hell or high water.
4. The resolution was lame. I was prepared for "and then it gets worse" when Khan crash-landed; shooting civilians left and right? That would have made sense. Final doomsday device? That, too. But the grand climactic battle was fisticuffs-on-a-vehicle, something most movies use somewhere in the middle (as far as I can recall).

Mostly, I wished that the movie had been allowed about 15 extra minutes to smooth out transitions and develop a little better. But it was heaps of fun, and you should definitely go see it.

*for exactly how familiar the ground is, you have to make sure that you've actually seen The Wrath of Khan.