(This review may contain spoilers).
Khan is probably the only villain I’m familiar with from the original Star Trek movies, so seeing him made use of in this movie was a good nod to the original franchise. Although Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t fit with the original version of Khan, he portrays him particularly well… at least in my opinion.
One of the strongest parts of this movie, in my opinion, was the tension between Kirk and Spock. In this movie, they seem to butt heads a whole lot more than in the first movie. And both of them are characters whose motivations I can understand and relate to.
It was nice to see more of Spock’s relationship with Uhura, even though I preferred the friendship between him and Kirk. There was a lot of action in this movie… and a lot of scenes that were really tense to watch, drawing me into the movie despite having seen it before.
There were some elements of humour in this movie, but I felt that those were used at the right moment and didn’t seem forced or stilted. I especially liked seeing some of Scotty’s motivations in this movie… and how he refused to compromise on what he felt was right.
I liked the fact that Kirk demonstrated he was able to do the right thing… despite his anger and grief over Khan’s actions. I thought this movie was more of a character growth for him than the previous. In fact, I felt both him and Spock grew and matured over the course of this movie.
There were a lot of really cool special effects in this movie and it was also good to see a little more of aliens and androids in this movie.
I liked that the bad guys did have elements of depth to them, even Khan. I also thought it was good to see more of Pike and future!Spock in this movie, too, though I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the crew members actually knew about the parallel timelines.
The ending to this was good and I noticed a couple of scenes that paid homage to Wrath of Khan. I’m looking forward to the next Star Trek movie.
Ink of Blood 