I went to see the latest installment in the Star Trek this past Sunday with more then a little trepidation. This feeling of unease began to set in when Paramount Studios refused to give the villain an name. They tried to hype it into a way of building suspense and it didn't work. What was going through my head was this: "they have a problem." And indeed they did. I have no doubts about that. Millions and millions of Trekkers would have stayed home if they'd known JJ Abrams had chosen to remake "The Wrath of Khan." Believe me, they would not have spent their hard earned dollars on such a thing. I have no idea why Abrams decided to do this, maybe it was a combination of arrogance and ego. Maybe he thought he'd turned into the Pied Piper of Trekkers and they would follow him anywhere, they didn't. Twenty six days into its theatrical release Into Darkness is $12 million dollars poorer then the reboot of Star Trek. That's a lot of lost ticket sales, and that number is only going to grow as time moves on. I bought the reboot on Blu-Ray, I will not by Into Darkness, and I suspect there are a lot of hard core Trekkers out there who will not buy it either.
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The first twenty minutes was good, but then problems began to develop. I knew what was going to happen 5 or 6 minutes before it happened. This is not a good thing. About 70 minutes into the film the entire movie goes down the shit hole. Abrams brings in a wizened old Spock to tell his younger version how to beat Khan. I sat in my seat completely dumbfounded. It was almost as if JJ Abrams thought he could bend over and fart at the audience. His only problem? He popped a wet one, and it stinks. The lesson to be learned? Know your audience and give them what they want. There's an old adage in Hollywood: keep 'em coming back. That's not really happening with Into Darkness, and it's showing up in the box office receipts. What should have been a really good sequel seems to have been nothing more then ego at work.
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