Why Do So Many People Dislike "Star Trek Into Darkness"?

I've come to learn that. Still does make generally good reviews on other things.

Don't worry, I'm not saying you didn't :P

 

I think most people get mad at the fact that it's pretty much one of the older movies with the roles reversed. I haven't seen the original Star Trek yet, so I can't really compare the original with the new movie, but my mom has. She has seen every Star Trek series. The only thing she needs to be a Trekkie is a red shirt (Picard is her favourite captain) and one of those Star Trek symbol shaped communicators they stick on their chests. She really liked the movie, and even appreciated the reference to the older one. She liked how they were able to change it up without destroying the original (thanks to the alternate timeline).

But I guess reviewers are meant to be critical and utterly destroy people's love of movies. They look for things that the average Joe wouldn't. Kind of like walking up close to a painting and finding a flaw that's invisible from a meter back.

 

I personally loved Into Darkness (to the point that I saw it 5 times in the theater alone), but I can understand where some people are coming from when they say they dislike it.

The most common criticism I've herd is that it kinda seems to be taking a step back when it comes to representing minorities and women. The original series was in no ways perfect when it came to that regard (casual sexism like whoa) but it was still pretty incredible to have black woman and an Asian man in the main cast, without them being treated as stereotypes (and while he was white, it was also pretty progressive to portray a Russian character heroically in the middle of the Cold War). Fast forward 45+ years and pretty much all the characters holding power are white men (look at the scene where Kirk and Spock interrupt Admiral Marcus to tell about Khan's whereabouts, most of the people present are older white men). And then a powerful villain gets turned into probably the whitest guy ever (believe me, I'm a total Cumbercookie, I loved him as Khan but even when he is amazing actor it doesn't erase the fact that it's problematic and somewhat insensitive to whitewash characters). (sorry, tried to find some of the articles people a lot smarter that me have written about this but can't find them rn ;,;)

Then there's the portrayal of women. Again, I really liked Uhura and (surprisingly) Carol, but it was still kinda frustrating the way their characters were handled. Uhura had a bunch of awesome scenes ("Then let me speak Klingon," being my personal favorite), and I found a lot of potential in Carol (a woman of science! Who ends up saving McCoy! Yay!). But Uhura's main role was still humanizing Spock and be his 'nagging' girlfriend, and poor Carol was mainly eye-candy. Was the underwear scene necessary? I think I could've handled it if it weren't used so heavily in marketing. And yes, we got shirtless Kirk in the beginning (with two mostly topless cat girls so errr), but you can't really count that as equal opportunity fanservice as Carol is one of two significant female characters in the entire movie, so for it to be even remotely equal close to half of the main male cast should have had a similar scene as Carol. Add to that the fact that they cut a shower scene with Khan (understandable, as it didn't exactly fit in the movie) and the book version had Bones briefly shirtless while he was getting patched up, (again, understandable for it to be cut, but why not cut Carol's scene too? Furthermore, why the frack use it as a marketing strategy?). And then there's the ickiness of how it happens. It's one thing for a woman to use her body to her advantage, but here Carol specifically asks for Kirk to turn around. And has to repeat it multiple times for him to finally do it.
Here's a couple articles that touch on these issues. Felicia Day's and Slash Film's articles.

Less serious complaints I've heard are the fact that it seemed more like an audition film to Star Wars than a Star Trek film, and that it wasn't really made for fans of Star Trek (which Abrams himself said). The second point I can understand being frustrating, but when you consider that the movie needs mass appeal to succeed it starts sounding really nitpicky. There's also the fact that the last act tried to be an homage of Wrath of Khan but it turned into a less emotionally impacting remake of it instead.

... Okay I had other thoughts about this but being as scatter brained as I am I've managed to forget them, derp. I do want to stress the fact that I loved loved loved this movie, even with all of it's flaws.

 

Didn't I just f*cking address this earlier in the thread.

 

Yeah, but I still think it's a problem. Just in a representation sense, there are so many good characters for white actors to portray, but the amount for minorities is much smaller than what they actually represent in real life, and often they'll be stereotypical and only there for comic relief. Not saying this is always the case (Sulu himself is a great character in both the original series and the reboot).

And again, I stress the fact that I enjoyed Cumberbatch in the movie, he did an amazing job, and in no way am I blaming him for this (iirc he didn't even know who he was playing until well after being casted). But they could've handled it a lot better, either by casting an actual Indian actor to play a Sihk character (kudos for them actually looking into that, although I'm pretty sure Benicio el Toro, who was originally going to play him, is more in the vain of the original series having a Latino play Khan), or having Cumberbatch play a different character (they could've easily used someone like Garry Marshall or had him being an underling to Khan trying to free his commander, or gone the same route as with Nero, an original character created for the alternate timeline, cause what's the freaking use of creating one if you're just going to rehash what the original did?).

Also, notice how the 'he/she was the best actor for the part'-explanation rarely gets used when a previously white character (or a character people who fail at reading comprehension thought was white) gets played by a POC? Did you see the shitstorm on Twitter when people realized Rue and Cinna were black? And then there's those times when the white actors playing originally minority characters are clearly not the best actors for the part (coughLastAirbendercough).

I'm gonna apologize again for not being able to find some of the articles I read about this when the movie came out, and I'm really not the best person to explain this...