No. Just No.
I saw Star Trek Into Darkness today and found it disappointing, even though I enjoyed the first movie. Some plot stuff that was just stupid, the whitewashing of our villain, the hundreds of loose ends left at the end, the dedication to 9/11 veterans at the end of a movie in which an airship is used by a terrorist to crash into a city target.... Watching this movie, I can't help remembering that Daily Show interview in which J.J. Abrams admits that he never got through a whole episode of or liked Star Trek before becoming director of the first reboot movie. It shows.
So Abrams got one of the pastiest guys available to play Khan, who's whitewashed without explanation in a universe where everyone else resembles the original characters, without even the weak attempt of "Since I was among Starfleet under another name they changed my face so I wouldn't resemble the famous Khan." He's just really, really white now. (Zvi offers some great PoC possibilities for Khan here, and I saw Naveen Andrews mentioned elsewhere.) Cumberbatch was great to watch and listen to, though looking at him you wouldn't think he's a genetically engineered superman, but he couldn't measure up to Montalban's Khan, who had more going for him and was smarter besides. Original Khan's sense of planning and plotting makes Cumberbatch!Khan's look pedestrian. The movie could have made Cumberbatch be one of the other eugenic supermen and avoided these problems.
Meta-wise, poor Chris Pine was fighting for his life in scenes against Benedict Cumberbatch.
That bit at the beginning where Kirk lied about breaking the Prime Directive in his report, assumed his crew would lie for him, then got angry at Spock for reporting truthfully annoyed me. Own yourself, you little brat. Uhura had a number of really unprofessional moments that bugged me, PDA kissing Spock while they're both on duty, starting a personal issues argument with him while on a mission.
There is an amusing scene where Kirk is only hurting himself when trying to beat the hell out of Khan. Otherwise it wasn't even as much fun to watch Kirk get beat up as it was last movie.
I am also amused that Admiral Marcus sent Kirk on a mission not out of any liking or respect for him but because he figured Kirk was an arrogant, break-the-rules, interventionist ass who'd cause the kind of diplomatic incident that could lead to the war he wanted. (There's a major incident on the Klingon homeworld leading to many Klingon deaths, yet we don't get to hear a year later whether the expected interstellar war resulted. That could have been covered in a sentence or two but Abrams won't care.)
Even though even today governments are starting to think of measures to protect our planet from space debris, the Earth of two centuries from now has no defense from or warning system for a massive falling spaceship. What you get to do is see it coming with your own eyes and kiss your ass goodbye, basically.
Also, not enough Scotty--it doesn't pay to have principles and stick up for them on the Enterprise these days--or Bones. Enough with the lens flares already!
They didn't need to kill Pike, since the other innocents should have been enough and Spock should already know a lot about dying and loss from 98% of his people getting killed.
There's another callback to Wrath of Khan that doesn't seem earned here because nuKirk and nuSpock don't have the history or the same friendship. No decades-long friendship. They're not together much in this movie anyway. There's a switch in that Kirk exposes himself to the warp core to save the ship in this nuTrek and after Spock watches him die of radiation poisoning Spock yells, "KHAAAAAAAAAAN!", which was laughable. Rather laughable is Scotty calling acting captain Spock down alone to dying Kirk's side. Wouldn't Bones be a better idea? Especially since Spock has a hell of a lot else on his plate and it's not like he and Kirk really have that kind of friendship yet, while Bones is a doctor and more Kirk's friend? Let the doctor make an official call on whether anything can be done for Kirk. (I loved the short scene earlier where Kirk after refused to get a physical after getting attacked, Bones is sitting behind him trying to sneak some of it in while Kirk is talking to Spock.)
But a serum made off of Khan's regenerating blood brings Kirk back to life, though after a two-week coma. (Does that get applied to other ailing people as you'd expect it would? Who knows? I had the same question about the end of Iron Man 3....) So getting the dead guy back took much less time and effort too.
At the end Khan and his people are in cryogenic stasis... somewhere. Maybe the room that holds the Arc of the Covenant and other mysteries? Though I wonder if they'll be harvested for their regenerative properties.
ETA: io9's Star Trek Into Darkness: The Spoiler FAQ covers a lot of the problems in the film [massive spoilers abound].
So Abrams got one of the pastiest guys available to play Khan, who's whitewashed without explanation in a universe where everyone else resembles the original characters, without even the weak attempt of "Since I was among Starfleet under another name they changed my face so I wouldn't resemble the famous Khan." He's just really, really white now. (Zvi offers some great PoC possibilities for Khan here, and I saw Naveen Andrews mentioned elsewhere.) Cumberbatch was great to watch and listen to, though looking at him you wouldn't think he's a genetically engineered superman, but he couldn't measure up to Montalban's Khan, who had more going for him and was smarter besides. Original Khan's sense of planning and plotting makes Cumberbatch!Khan's look pedestrian. The movie could have made Cumberbatch be one of the other eugenic supermen and avoided these problems.
Meta-wise, poor Chris Pine was fighting for his life in scenes against Benedict Cumberbatch.
That bit at the beginning where Kirk lied about breaking the Prime Directive in his report, assumed his crew would lie for him, then got angry at Spock for reporting truthfully annoyed me. Own yourself, you little brat. Uhura had a number of really unprofessional moments that bugged me, PDA kissing Spock while they're both on duty, starting a personal issues argument with him while on a mission.
There is an amusing scene where Kirk is only hurting himself when trying to beat the hell out of Khan. Otherwise it wasn't even as much fun to watch Kirk get beat up as it was last movie.
I am also amused that Admiral Marcus sent Kirk on a mission not out of any liking or respect for him but because he figured Kirk was an arrogant, break-the-rules, interventionist ass who'd cause the kind of diplomatic incident that could lead to the war he wanted. (There's a major incident on the Klingon homeworld leading to many Klingon deaths, yet we don't get to hear a year later whether the expected interstellar war resulted. That could have been covered in a sentence or two but Abrams won't care.)
Even though even today governments are starting to think of measures to protect our planet from space debris, the Earth of two centuries from now has no defense from or warning system for a massive falling spaceship. What you get to do is see it coming with your own eyes and kiss your ass goodbye, basically.
Also, not enough Scotty--it doesn't pay to have principles and stick up for them on the Enterprise these days--or Bones. Enough with the lens flares already!
They didn't need to kill Pike, since the other innocents should have been enough and Spock should already know a lot about dying and loss from 98% of his people getting killed.
There's another callback to Wrath of Khan that doesn't seem earned here because nuKirk and nuSpock don't have the history or the same friendship. No decades-long friendship. They're not together much in this movie anyway. There's a switch in that Kirk exposes himself to the warp core to save the ship in this nuTrek and after Spock watches him die of radiation poisoning Spock yells, "KHAAAAAAAAAAN!", which was laughable. Rather laughable is Scotty calling acting captain Spock down alone to dying Kirk's side. Wouldn't Bones be a better idea? Especially since Spock has a hell of a lot else on his plate and it's not like he and Kirk really have that kind of friendship yet, while Bones is a doctor and more Kirk's friend? Let the doctor make an official call on whether anything can be done for Kirk. (I loved the short scene earlier where Kirk after refused to get a physical after getting attacked, Bones is sitting behind him trying to sneak some of it in while Kirk is talking to Spock.)
But a serum made off of Khan's regenerating blood brings Kirk back to life, though after a two-week coma. (Does that get applied to other ailing people as you'd expect it would? Who knows? I had the same question about the end of Iron Man 3....) So getting the dead guy back took much less time and effort too.
At the end Khan and his people are in cryogenic stasis... somewhere. Maybe the room that holds the Arc of the Covenant and other mysteries? Though I wonder if they'll be harvested for their regenerative properties.
ETA: io9's Star Trek Into Darkness: The Spoiler FAQ covers a lot of the problems in the film [massive spoilers abound].