Reviewed By Xin Hu
Star Trek Into Darkness, in one sentence, is like a Christmas candy package. You know the content is nothing special, but it sill amazes you.
While watching Star Trek, I kept asking myself, “How can a sci-fi movie captivate me without drawing attention to its storytelling flaws”. My definition of a perfect sci-fi movie is a film that provides a concept with deep dig of humanities and fantastic visual storytelling skills to let every complex idea make sense. Even if you are not a big fan of science fiction and deep space, you can still get something out of the movie and have it resonate with you emotionally.
Sci-fi movies are always criticized for weak and illogic plot structure. However, there are ways to get around this. J.J. Abrams did a nearly perfect job in using his superb visual storytelling skills to emphasize every scientific point by way of simple characters’ actions and plot details.
However, it is necessary for the director to understand that technology can never cover your narrative flaws. However, directors frequently try to rely on technology to cover those narrative flaws and this only calls more attention to the poor storytelling. In Star Trek, J.J. tends to be more like a craftsman who makes the movie more worthy to watch. However, it also means he focuses too much on craftsmanship and not enough on the spiritual exploration. This movie is fantastic, because it has the best visual storytelling, an amazing villain, smart dialogue, and has the ability to appeal to everyone. However, this movie does not deserve to be called “perfect”, because when you want to appeal to everyone by cramming a lot into a movie, audiences may remember very little soon after leaving the movie theater.
