Review: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

What an odd, grammatically bad title. It doesn't even work without punctuation. Who does JJ Abrams think he is...God?
The film, Abrams' second Star Trek film, starts off by ripping off Raiders of the Lost Ark. And by now, if you haven't come across a Spielberg/Abrams rant or tangent or article or musing...then you live in a fucking cave. Abrams was a boy and was asked to repair Spielberg's old 8MM films. Abrams is THE new Spielberg. We've all heard it. But Spielberg, at least in the 70's and 80's, made some good films. Abrams makes empty-shell, silly, entertainment machines. The one thing Abrams did that had some heart and some thought and some fully developed characters unfortunately ended up making no sense (it was Lost...if you, as noted, live in a cave).
I will admit that Abrams last two pictures, Super 8 and this, are entertaining up to a point. But they're riddled will ultra-silliness. Remember how cool Super 8 was for like an hour? Then recall that horrendous ET-copy of an ending? Star Trek Into Darkness has some good action and the characters are fun (a bit too cartoonish, though)...but afterwards it rings hollow. There's nothing deep, profound, or illuminating. This isn't like the old Star Trek show. This is frigging Star Wars. Which I guess is good since Abrams is directing the new Star Wars.
The plot for this new film has a bad guy, Khan, waging war on the Star Trek academy in San Francisco and London. Khan, played by the super-serious Benedict Cumberbatch (what a name!), really doesn't have much to do besides glower. &, honestly, he's more hero than villain for no real reason (the real villain turns out to be Robocop). The plot isn't even really worth talking about, nor are the villains (did they really need to re-do Khan?), because the script seems to have been written simply as a way to piece together action sequences. Even the Klingons show up for no good reason.
If you like mindless action, banter, caricatures instead of characters, then you'll have a blast. Otherwise, I now kind of understand why this film made $100 million less than Iron Man 3 on its opening weekend
. **1/2