To Boldly Go…

The strapline for Star Trek must be the most famous split infinitive in popular culture. Off we boldly went to Cinema City to watch the latest installment of the franchise, ‘Star Trek, Into Darkness.’ I’m not what you might call a trekkie. Nor am I particularly keen on slash and burn all-American action movies but I’ve always had a soft spot for a touch of sci-fi with a brain. We both enjoyed the hyper-ride. The script was crisp and engaging, the bromance between the unfeasibly handsome Kirk and the French-fringed Spock was credible and the action sequences tripped along at warp speed. The big budget special effects were, as we all expect these days, believable and not at all like a glorified X-Box game (something that afflicts so many Hollywood blockbusters). Benedict Cumberbatch makes a suitably menacing baddie (even if casting a clipped-vowelled Brit as the evil villain is a bit of a cliché) and seeing London in a high-rise 24th century cameo role, complete with St Paul’s and the London Eye, was a nice touch. I suspect Wren’s opus magnum may well last a few more centuries but the Eye? We watched the entire extravaganza in 3D and this worked well  for the big ticket scenes, particularly when the Enterprise flew directly towards us from the screen. That said, the multi-dimensional technique jarred with some of the more intimate close-up moments and I’m sure we looked quite ridiculous in the goggles. All in all, you get a lot of cosmic bangs for your bucks. Space: the final frontier. Go see.

52.630886 1.297355