What Nitpickery is this?

You'll want to be about this cool
(see above) to continue.

What's that? Why yes, I did go see Star Trek Into Darkness this weekend...oh? You'd like to me to use my encyclopedic knowledge of all things Trek to pick apart the film's shortcomings? My pleasure. Of course, these aren't reasons you shouldn't enjoy the film, they're just reasons Bad Robot should hire me as a consultant on the next film tentatively titled: Star Trek Tokyo Drift. Anyway, I'll be calling bullshit on some specific elements of the film and I should warn you that I'm about to drop some serious nerd here, so like proceed at your own risk.

Oh and you should also know that I will be spoiling the shit out of Into Darkness, so if you want to go in clueless about what happens stop reading now. Like for real. Spoilers. Don't goddamn read the following if you want to be surprised.

"You know what sweetie? I'm sick of this. Here, spoilers, his name
 is Jeff. Doctor Jeff Who. That's his name. Mystery: over." 

-Professor River Song,

saying what we're all feeling

Still with me? Ok.

"Got your scroll suckers!"

1) Bullshit on the opening scene.

The film opens with Kirk and Dr. McCoy stealing a scroll from some primitive pre-warp natives for no
reason whatsoever and then booking it back to the Enterprise, which for equally unclear reasons is hiding under the ocean nearby. Meanwhile, Spock is busy getting himself trapped in the caldera of an active volcano which is somehow going to destroy the entire planet if he can't set off a 'cold-fusion' device. Ok...whatever.

The Transporters are powered
by magic and dramatic necessity. 

Because this is Star Trek and the transporters only function when the plot demands it, Kirk decides that the only way to rescue Spock is to fly the Enterprise into the volcano and beam him up at close range even though it means revealing the ship to the natives and thus will violate the Prime Directive. Why is Kirk stealing their scroll in the first place? Why does Spock have to personally insert the bomb into the volcano? Why is the goddamn ship hiding under the water? The answers, in order, are 1) Because the director wanted to open with a chase scene. 2) To put Spock in danger. 3) Shut up and eat your popcorn, nerd.

In fairness, Benedict Cumberbatch
is equally as Indian as Ricardo
'Fantasy Island' Montalban.

2) Bullshit on Spock Prime:

Yup, classic Spock (Leonard Nimoy) has a cameo in this film when Alterna-Spock (Zachary Quinto)
tries to consult his future/parallel self on what to do about Khan. Huh? Yeah, it's Khan. Everyone swore that Benedict Cumberbatch was't going to be playing Khan but, surprise he's playing Khan. So apparently Khan is now a white English guy, alright...Anyway, after some bullshit about how he doesn't want to affect NuSpock's destiny or whatever, he decides to go ahead and clue him in anyway because hey, Khan is like really dangerous.

Although is anyone going to believe
this thing just wants to talk to whales?

But why the hell is Spock Prime still worried about altering the future? The reboot universe is already hopelessly deviated from the Prime Universe thanks to Nero's time-meddling in the last movie. The future Spock Prime remembers is completely off the table. He should have been telling everyone to watch out for Khan, V'Ger, the Whalesong Probe, the Borg, everything. Then maybe all the terrible shit that happens in this movie up to and including Khan's nosedive from orbit into San Francisco could have been avoided.

Oh boo-fucking-hoo.

3) Bullshit on Emo Spock:

Look, I like Zachary Quinto as Spock. He's great. But do the writers even know what a Vulcan is? Klingons like to stab things, Borg assimilate you and Vulcans suppress their emotions. It's kind of their thing, yet every other scene has Spock making out with his girlfriend, shouting, crying or going into a berserker rage and beating the crap out of someone. What the hell guys?

"One does not simply
beam onto Kronos..."

4) Bullshit on Trans-Warp Beaming:

Ok, so Khan, for reasons not made entirely clear, decides to pull off a couple of terrorist attacks designed to cripple Starfleet. Kirk stops him, but Khan evades capture by beaming to Kronos. Yeah. He beamed to the Klingon home world, from Earth. I know I'm talking about a sci-fi movie with aliens and warp drive and everything, but that's just preposterous, even by Star Trek standards. At the beginning of the movie Chekov couldn't beam Spock out of the volcano because there was too much ash or interference or something but Khan can beam from San Francisco to Kronos? Unless the Klingon home planet is located just outside of Oakland, there's no way this should have worked.

And another thing, if the technology exists to just beam anyone or anything anywhere, why doesn't Evil Admiral Robocop (oh yeah, Peter Weller is in this movie!) just beam a couple of thousand anti-matter bombs directly into Klingon HQ? Why would anyone even bother with Starships anymore?

"Um...uh...well there's a perfectly good reason for...uh..."

On the other hand I think I just
got an idea for Star Trek Z.

5) Bullshit on Khan-juice:

And can we also talk a little about how Khan's blood is basically a cure for death? In a scene in which Bones for some reason pumps Khan's blood into a dead tribble just for the hell of it, he discovers that augment platelets reverse cell deterioration (syence!). Not only does this come in handy when the film decides to rip of Star Trek II, but it also suggests that that everyone in the Star Trek universe is now potentially unkillable. All they have to do is tap Khan and his genetically-engineered pals like a bunch of immortality kegs and live forever.

This summer, get ready to boldly
kick ass no man has kicked before...

Yeah, ok, so I probably sound a little harsh, I mean Into Darkness was ok, I'm just a curmudgeonly fan who grew up on the Shatner movies and TNG. This movie is aimed at people who enjoy summer popcorn flicks. If you're like me you'll probably walk away complaining about the illogical plot, blurry and confusing action scenes and how they put the Enterprise's torpedo tubes in the wrong place. And then when you're done complaining, you'll go see it again and then probably a third time because let's face it, we have problems.

To sum up:

If I were to say to you "Shaka, when the walls fell," and
you responded with "Sokath, his eyes uncovered," then
Into Darkness is not your kind of Star Trek movie.