First, congratulations on releasing Star Trek: Into Darkness, a new entertaining Star Trek movie! It's an accomplishment all around, well almost all around. It's greatest weakness, it's one real weakness at all, is the screenplay. Let's take a look.
We open with Kirk being given the decision to either save Spock's life or "Violate the Prime Directive."
The reasoning, beyond a neat action scene, for this scene later on in the screenplay is twofold. First, it gets Kirk in trouble with the higher ups in Starfleet. This, as we see later on, is a plot point that goes absolutely nowhere. Secondly, it gives a conflict between Kirk and Spock, and Spock and Uhura. The latter is well done. The former is, wait, didn't this happen in the first movie? And result in Kirk being stranded on a planet and later a dramatic fistfight and Kirk becoming captain? Here, the same thing is happening, yet nothing dramatic comes of it.
Moving on, we're introduced to the main villain. He blows up a huge building in future London, in a scene we can barely see, destroying nothing or anyone we care about. Still, it's reminiscent of modern day terrorism, so I guess that's enough to get us to feel a little something at least. We also have Kirk getting into trouble with the brass and fighting with Spock.
The "fight" ends up being Kirk saying "I'm disappointed" and going to grab a drink. That's it, that's all the drama that ever comes of it. Fifteen minutes from now Kirk and Spock will be friends again, back aboard the Enterprise with the chain of command no different. Which begs the question of the entire purpose of this plot thread to begin with.
The "back to status quo" happens due to Captain Pike being killed by our main villain. Why is our main villain doing it? We don't know. Regardless Pike is killed after 5 minutes of screentime and not doing anything much to endear himself to the audience, good thing that first movie existed or it might have felt entirely pointless. Regardless this gives Kirk all the motivation he needs to track down our villain personally.
Who has conveniently teleported halfway across the galaxy or whatever using a mcguffin, of which only one is available because shut up, and yet has left behind all the evidence needed to advance the plot because Deus Ex Machina.
After this we are introduced to a new character, a soon to be villain with no shown motivation, who sends Kirk off on the mission of getting the other villain with yet another mcguffin in tow to get the job done. And before we go off, Kirk and Scotty have a fight, and Scotty resigns! Surely this will lead to our drama, the famous Enterprise crew breaking up, a dramatic resignation.
And yet his resignation is barely registered or commented on by the crew or even Scotty himself, who goes and has a drink, which is all the drama it creates. So free of drama the Enterprise zips off on a dangerous mission to capture a fugitive in enemy space. Why is it dangerous? Well we were briefly told it was so offhandedly once a scene or two ago. Not shown, not demonstrated too, just a brief snippet of dialogue.
Kirk and crew arrive, go down to capture the villain because of Starfleet regulations or whatever, despite Kirk never having had a problem breaking them (heck last time he broke them he was captain again within about 4 scenes!) and we get into a brief fight that established only that the villain is a badass, and he surrenders because of the mcguffins now aboard the Enterprise.
After surrendering we learn what's aboard those mcguffins thanks to the villain telling us. Huh, it's his crew which he desperately trying to save and sought revenge on Starfleet for holding hostage.
At this point I as an audience member am actually feeling some empathy for him. He isn't even so different from Kirk. Regardless, at this point the other villain shows up and reveals that his plan... is to be villainous. As to is his motivation, and personality. He's basically a one dimensional character that the label "evil" can be slapped on, and up to this point we haven't even seen him do anything evil that we care about. Not someone particularly fun to root against.
Regardless, in another cool action scene half the Enterprise is blown up and Khan and Kirk go over to defeat the villain we know little about, and after doing so and without wasting any time Khan reveals that he's Super Duper evil. Yes, the guy we were just given some empathy for is now more evil, not because of anything we've seen him do, but because we're told he is in a brief snippet of dialogue and because he's suddenly gone all maniacal.
Regardless, the Enterprise is once again blown half to hell (didn't we just do this?) and the emotional height of the movie is reached as Kirk sacrifices his own life for that of his crews and Spock uses some cool cheesy time travel trickery to blow up Khan.
But that's not the movies end, which is quite strange. Khan is alive, seemingly for sake of the movie not ending, and crashes into San Francisco in dramatic fashion, another event that no one seems to care about at all as its never remarked upon, and Spock goes down to stop Khan himself because... whatever. Now we get to the action height of the movie, which is... after the emotional height which should never happen, and really we already had the emotional height and shouldn't the movie be winding down already? And yet lo and behold the villain loses (for the second time in as many scenes) and Kirk is saved thanks to yet another McGuffin that he couldn't have gotten before because it wasn't in the script. And then movie just sort of ends. There's some sort of platitude about revenge the audience doesn't really connect with, and it's over.
So to review: Poor pacing and huge sums of missed drama. A lot of repetition in theme from the first movie but not done as well. Villains that never seem nearly as villainous as they should, and time after time of being delivered important plot points in brief snippets of dialogue instead of actual scenes; I.E. being told and not shown. Oh, and two ending to the movie, for whatever reason.
I don't think it's beyond the pale to say that if THIS was the best script that could be turned up after 3+ years of waiting, and assuming the esteemed Mr. Abrams is producing a third Trek and has some approval over the final script, then entertaining stories and screenplays from writers other than messiurs Orci, Kurtzman, and Lindelof should be highly encouraged.
