After the debut of IRONMAN 3 and last week’s premiere of the Gatsby, Into Darkness has brought an accumulation of $164.5 million worldwide in the first weekend. The second Star Trek installment has received many “A” ratings and took the number one slot at the box office. With the sixth installment of the Fast & Furious series and the new animation movie EPIC due this week, hopefully Into Darkness’ instant rise to the top won’t be easily shot down.
It is round two for the Enterprise team as Jim Kirk now faces the threat of a super soldier, Khan, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Khan’s mission is one of revenge steeped with dark intentions. Jim Kirk is still accompanied by his trustworthy friend Spock, and his other loyal crew mates. The main cast members have remained unchanged with Chris Pine again reenacting his role as Jim Kirk and the robotic Spock played by Zachary Quinto. The supporting roles of the normal Star Trek team also are the same and include Zoe Saldana as the lovely Nyota, Karl Urban as Bones, Simon Pegg as Scotty, John Cho as Sulu, and Anton Yelchin as Chekov.
In this Star Trek, Jim Kirk’s luck avoiding death seems to have run out as he risks his life to save the beloved Enterprise and its crew trapped onboard and plummeting toward Earth. The movie begins with Kirk and the Enterprise crew saving a newly discovered civilization from being decimated by a volcano on their planet. Kirk is faced with another difficult decision of obeying the rules or following his heart. He saves Spock’s life as opposed to letting him die to hide their presence and involvement of saving the planet’s life. As Kirk barely escapes the consequences of his actions, he is stripped of his captain’s title by Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood) and demoted to first officer. Admiral Pike and Jim attend a response crisis meeting to the recent bombing of a Star Fleet’s classified archive by a former agent, John Harrison, later revealed as Khan. Khan then attacks the captains and first officers at the emergency meeting in a gunship but manages to beam from the aircraft onto the planet Kronos, a planet where the Federation has no jurisdiction. As the Enterprise team embarks on a man hunt to find the deadly John Harrison, Kirk discovers hidden secrets about StarFleet Command’s research and study of advanced warfare technology against the notorious Klingons on Kronos and the involvement and purpose of Khan. Later, as Khan threatens Kirk’s life and the whole Enterprise crew, Khan makes an exchange with Spock for cryogenic pods containing people of his kind. Spock deceives Khan and instead blows up the ship he is in and rescues Kirk and two other fellow crew members. Khan still manages to escape the exploding ship but is captured by Spock on Earth in order to save Kirk’s life. Khan is then restored to hibernation along with his fellow beings as they are frozen in deep sleep.
In the end, Kirk survives, to continue his journey in “Space… The final frontier… These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: To explore strange new worlds…To seek out new life; new civilizations…To boldly go where no one has gone before!” Into Darkness’ success wasn’t only due to the well-written plot or a nonstop flow of action, but also because of the amazing visual graphics and the characters’ lively personalities that come with a big budgeted movie.
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