genuinely the funniest thing about into darkness is the parallels. the parallel romantic arc between spock/uhura and spock/kirk is genuinely hysterical because it gives me such incredible kirk & uhura interactions. very "YOUR boyfriend is pissing me off" while the other one says "he's not MY boyfriend right now he's YOURS"
the turbolift scene where kirk and uhura have a conversation about how stressed out spock makes them and she says, "it's not you," and kirk makes that FACE makes me scream. their weird poly-v energy in this movie is off the charts and i'm thrilled. also the obvious way that her and kirk's dynamic has altered to a positive one! they're friends! he's her captain! she cares about him and she knows that he cares about spock! she's devastated when he dies!
then you have the parallel of kirk having the same character arc that spock had in the first movie, the roles now reversed, as spock tries to talk him down off the ledge (becoming a militant murderer babygirl) and he eventually has to yield to logic and listening to the people around him much like spock did in the first film.
THEN of course the parallel between this and the wrath of khan which, while i don't particularly think this is a good remake of the original film, has its own merits and is an excellent sequel to the 2009 film. and, although it doesn't carry the same emotional payoff that the original scene did, i DO actually quite like the warp core scene. i think it makes sense for aos trek to make the older junk bigger and clunkier. bigger warp cores because they aren't advanced enough to be smaller and more compact makes sense! technology evolves from big to small in size almost across the board!
also, the way tos spock is much more reserved and a little more vulcan vs aos spock is a little more human and less reserved is so interesting! i like how they play it! i enjoy the way these movies are constantly seeking to put the crew on even ground by getting them to understand each other and my only regret is that they haven't given us uhura/scotty yet which is SUCH a shame because i think they're darling together. also the way this crew is poly for no reason. the vibes.......they must embarrass star fleet on the reg by being so insanely into each other all the time. yes there's main canon couples, but you cannot tell me this crew is not incredibly fucked up and traumatized and a little psycho-sexual about each other. you just can't. they are. they're amazing.
anyway, i think this movie is good and we were overly critical of it when it came out even though action movies were very in vogue when it premiered and that was obviously what it was going to be with that director at the helm. that doesn't mean they're BAD though. they're ALTERNATE star trek, which we are all familiar with, and fun and interesting.
i will kill and die on the hill that james kirk did NOT need to be such an insane overt flirt but that's fine that's my opinion clearly even though he's married to spock and also drinks far too much respecting women juice for that to be the case.
