Blame Lundon: Star Trek Into Ha Ha Just Kidding.

TL:DR Suffers greatly from to much talent not enough direction. Everything except the story works perfectly. Lens flares were far less annoying except for one scene they overpowered character development. The film hits all the required moments a movie needs to be a movie but the reasons it hits those notes are completely lacking. See it for the visuals and actors doing their best, lower your expectations by a few steps at least as far as the story.

I give it 6 out of 10 warp core breaches.

THUS BEGINS THE FULL REVIEW:

Dear Bad Robot,

lens flares are cool, they look great, they are not cooler than the following things,

character development
coherent plot
emotional investment that rewards the audience.

if this is what you feel to be a worthy companion piece to Wrath of Khan then I will thank you to please focus the entirety of your energy on Star Wars because, god help you, you're going to need it. Empire Strikes Back is infinitely more nuanced than Wrath of Khan, and you have proven that lighting effects and bullshit random ass special effects mean more than character or story.

Sincerely
The Fat One, Blame Lundon

OOOOOOO kay, first raise your hand if you like the first Bad Robot Star Trek. Those of you who didn't raise your hands can leave. This isn't about bashing the cool kids who don't know what it means to REALLY like ST. I pretty much loved BRST 1 and think that they got the damn thing done right, which is rough because then they needed to do a sequel and there is A LOT of story and content they could draw from and I know they must have had a hard time trying to decide whether they go right into Khan or ignore him completely or do some other story or what.  This question was on the mind of every nerd at least once a week don't lie. So if you're Bad Robot what do you do? Skip Khan and tell your own story? it has the virtue of striking out on your own path and making Star Trek fresh and new for reasons other than the publishing date of the copy of After Effects that they used.

Or you could just do Khan, begrudgingly, because well 'everyone' (THE MONEY GUYS) want you do Khan cause nerds obsess over that shit and by obsess the money guys mean spend money for thirty years never letting the past go. So you suck it up and start cranking out a Khan story line, which is awesome cause it's got a main character death and theres a villain who's presence forever echo's through out the TOS history because he scarred Kirk to his emotional core. So you and your writing guys pretty much figure everyone will assume you're doing Khan so you spend months and half the movie money advertising that you're not doing Khan, Khans a classic legend we would never do that no, nope, uh uh, the villain is Donald Mcbumbleveryoneknowsitskhanstopthestupidfakeoutbullshit. So you announce Benedict Cumberbach is playing Donald MCkahn, and on three continents panties drop simultaneously which is impressive because, damn, you have done something right. You've added british sexiness to an already overly talented cast of overly talented people being overly talented. Now all you have to do is figure out what kind of story you're going to tell about not Khan. Well obviously there needs to be Klingons, Klingons were an integral part of the storyline after Khan and Spock died so we'll throw an action scene in there to introduce klingons cause….klingons. And make some references to other shit from TOS. Nerds love references to stuff they know. So you have klingons and a terrorist plot, and star fleet being attacked by a terrorist and Jim kirk getting busted just like it was back in the old days when Fatty Mc…..pause played the captain, the nerds are going to love it! buildings are shiny, there's price scanners all over the bridge, and everyones got witty banter about torpedos, cause torpedos are a big part of the plot now? and Blondy science officer immediately makes Spock jealous/curious/suspicious. But she's a good guy cause she gets pretty much naked and HOJOLY SHIT KIRKS GONNA BONERCISE WITH HER AND THE TORPEDOS ARE GENESIS!!!!!! AND THIS FUCKING MOVIE IS….what do you mean the torpedoes are actually secretly stasis tubes? Why would Khan put his people in super torpedoes? What? Where is the superman logic in that? Put the people in and take the torpedo parts out maybe yes, then The Enterprise brings the super torpedoes over to Kronos and fires them and Khan lands them by remote on his uninhabited island and his people take their hijacked klingon ship and whoop the shit out of the enterprise and i'm totally cool with Kirk dying because it would have BEEN THE BEST REAL TWIST EVER. But no, Notkhan surrenders after saving the cast in the shuttle instead of shooting them, taking the shuttle back to enterprise and taking that shit over and going to kill the general. Did i forget to mention there is an evil general? yeah, ok so evil general apparently unfrozed JUST khan because with 73 stasis pods to choose from he caught a tiger by its toe, and forced Khan to make weapons for him cause…weapons and tactics made by super notkhan. YUP. So Khan is in Hollywood brand Clear glass prison (so hot right now) and Kirk and Khan team up cause Khan is SURPISE the victim and is just trying to get his family away from the evil general (who interestingly is played by robocop, The immortal Peter Weller. I don't say immortal out of respect i say immortal because he looks like a fucking ghoul, seriously dude eat a sandwich or get reverse liposuction, you look like the understudy for the fucking Emperor…shit they are gong to cast peter welled as the emperor in Star Wars 7.) So Roboempevilgeneral takes the super ship designed by khan out to kill the enterprise cause see the evil general wants a war between klingon and the federation because….he likes space battles, space battles are cool now. But apparently this secret plot to start war between klingon and The federation is a for really real secret and that means the enterprise needs to die so the emperor general fires on the enterprise at warp which is fucking awesome and they fall out of warp cause its sort of like the Eastern Austrialan Current from Finding Nemo, but with no giant space turtles, I COULD HAVE MADE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH COOLER FOR STONERS!!!! So the enterprise is beat to shit they can't really move, or fire but Kirk and Khan go space luging through space debris while scotty talks to a steroid guard on emperorgenerals ship and they start killing the very tiny crew on the VERY LARGE ship, (HOW THE FUCK DID KHAN KNOW 300 YEARS AGO HOW TO MAKE A SHIP THAT MAKES ENTERPRISE LOOK LIKE A MINI COOPER BUT IS FUNCTIONAL WITH A CREW OF TEN? THE ENTERPRISE NEEDS A CREW OF 10 TO TURN THE GOD DAMN BLINKER SIGNAL ON!!!!????

So they take over the ship and Buckaroo Banzai gets knocked out and his daughter is all blond and helpless, and now that Khan has a ship he and Spock have a little verbal chess match and its awesome cause I FUCKING SAID SO. And the torpedo people get sent over and Khan who can design super ships and do all kinds of fucking awesome gun katas doesn't think to scan the torpedoes for life signs and is somehow shocked that they blow up cause well we're running out of time, then the enterprise almost crashes into earth for like three months and then some tiny rockets save everyone because  yay tiny rockets, then we find out that Kirk was the reason for the tiny rockets and we get a GREAT flippsy daisy scene from Wrath of Khan with Kirk dying instead of Spock and for a split second your mind screams WUUUUUUUUT DAAAAAA FUCKBUBBLES!!! but then you remember that this is hollywood and he'll probably be saved by a tribble or some god damned thing. And then khans ship which i swear to fucking god blew to pieces not three minutes earlier is now re-intact and crashes into San Francisco, which, random point of trivia, Khan never apparently listened to Scott Mckenzie, because I saw no flowers in his hair. So Khans miracle self assembling ship crashes into A HUGE portion of the city and destroys like seven sky scrapers and tons of the town and then two blocks later not only does no one care, but they don't even SEEM TO NOTICE because life goes on as per normal even though a HUGE FUCK OFF SPACESHIP has just taken out a substantial part of a coastal city…no biggie I guess. Spock and Khan leap from flying car to flying car like 'roided out billy goats and beat on each other cause action scenes are cool. Bones gets the idea to save Kirks life with…A FUCKING TRIBBLE FUCK YOU BAD ROBOT, FUCK YOU. So Uhura beams down to keep Spock from beating Khan to death Rocky style and they use his blood to bring back Kirk. Then thirty seconds later, with the slightest of fades, it's a year later and the coast city of San Francisco is fine as frogs fur and Captain Kirk is giving a tribute speech about dead extras and responsibility and now the Enterprise is going on it's five year mission.

1: everything and I do mean EVERYTHING in this movie wraps up TOO NEATLY, even character deaths are either erased or made insignificant. Everything that seems to be a negative consequence always turns around to be a positive thing through very little to no action from the main characters.

2: Kirk gets demoted, then promoted again not three minutes later because why would we not want Captain Kirk? the demotion did fuck all of NOTHING FOR ANY REASON.

3: Spock uses the death of Pike to make up with his girlfriend. As far as classic Star Trek death major characters have died for much much less so i can't slight them here but as the only persistent consequence in the whole film I felt completely and utterly cheated. For all of three seconds i felt invested in the death scene between Spock and kirk but that investment was betrayed almost immediately because they didn't have the balls to follow through on it.

4: Khan needed to be a main character, the general was a complete and total waste of time. Pick a plot, a villain and stick with them, classic movies are classic because they took the time that was required to let emotional investment from the audience PAY OFF. he's a terrorist, no! he's a freedom fighter!, No he's a Super genius psycho mad man bent on killing  guy he just met ten minutes ago and has actually been WORKING WITH most of that time, NO HE'S REALLY A SUICIDAL IDIOT WHO CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING BETTER TO DO WITH HIS SHIP!. This is not development this is jumping from lilly pad, to lilly pad hoping one of them has enough strength to float your bullshit.

5: The selective gravity of the Enterprise during the crashing to Earth scene REALLY annoyed me. To have a scene where the ship is fully flipped on its side and people are falling to their deaths and three main characters work together to not die, immediately followed by a scene where they run through another huge open area of the ship and a shit load of extras are standing at their posts somehow successfully having not fallen to their deaths when the ship went completely ass over tea kettle not thirty seconds previous is SLOPPY. If reminded me of this: http://www.hark.com/clips/xbrnwmfngm-tilted

6: Any time the main cast was conversing with each other i loved what i heard, these guys know their characters and hit home runs again and again, but the plot was god awful and a complete waste of a classic character, several great actors, seriously you needed Peter Weller AND benedict Cumberbatch to chew scenery in your shitty dollar store space based rip off bastard child of Cocoon and Under Siege? What the FUCK is wrong with you?

7: I would love to have some actual Trekking in the next Star Trek please.