Butler's Cinema Scene

“STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS” My rating: C+ (Opens wide on May 17)

132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Well made and amusingly acted, there’s really nothing you can say against “Star Trek Into Darkness,” except that in the end it really doesn’t matter.

As is usually the case with franchise movies, the pleasure comes in being reunited with old friends. As for actually learning anything, for taking away an emotion or a thought or an idea…well, that’s the purview of other, less busy movies.

J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” reboot three years ago was a hugely clever prequel that introduced us to those iconic characters as young people. Much of the fun came in seeing Kirk, Bones, Spock and the others as Starfleet cadets feeling their way toward maturity.

But to tell the truth, I cannot remember the plots of any of the many “Star Trek” movies I’ve seen over the decades. One had whales, I know, and another had the Borg. Spock died in one of them and came back in another.

But were there messages in any of them? If there were they quickly evaporated. These were momentary diversions — a few laughs, a whole lot of special effects. Nothing to stick to the ribs or the brain.

And so it  is with “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

Though no Trekker, I recognize that Abrams and his writers (Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof) are having fun mucking about with the mythology of the series. Indeed, the entire movie may be viewed as a prequel to “The Wrath of Khan.”

Benedict Cumberbatch

The picture starts with a prequel that has no real purpose save to gets things off to a spectacular start, the same way each James Bond picture opens with a big chase or impossible stunt.

In this case Kirk (Chris Pine) and his crew have been sent to observe the primitive tribal inhabitants of a remote planet.  But Kirk, in all his hubris, has decided to save these poor benighted oafs from the volcano that is threatening to blow up their world. In doing so he violates the  Prime Directive, which holds that Start Fleet shall not become involved in the development of alien civilizations.

“Into Darkness” centers on a renegade Star Fleet officer named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch, PBS’s Sherlock Holmes) who blows up a secret Star Fleet facility in London and then manages to kill most of the high command.

Kirk follows this mysterious fellow into Klingon territory, where he learns his foe’s true identity, not to mention some uncomfortable truths about his own commander, a Star Fleet admiral (Peter Weller) who serves the same purpose here as Gen. Jack D. Ripper did in “Dr. Strangelove.”

One of the interesting things about “Into Darkness” is that Cumberbatch’s heavy, who exhibits superhuman strength and intellect, has been so wronged that his murderous ways are almost excusable.  God, but those Brit actors make for great, multi-dimensional villains.

Anyway, Spock (Zachary Quinto) is amusingly inscrutable, Uhura (Zoe Saldana) is foxy, Scotty (Simon Pegg) is anal and Bones (Karl Urban) says stuff like, “Dammit, I’m a physician, not a…”

It’s a diverting but forgettable two hours at the movies. In fact, I’ve already forgotten most of what happened.

| Robert W. Butler