[Locke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ComicGuy89

In case anyone just jumped in, huge SPOILER WARNING for Star Trek Into Darkness.

New Kirk is not rubbish. He makes pretty much the same mistakes as every other captain in Star Trek history. Need I remind you how Shatner's Kirk got his crew severely endangered every single movie. And it is incorrect to say the original Kirk did not rely that much on Spock, every single movie in the original had Spock saving the day except the third one, which was when he was missing. At least most of the time, it was Spock's thinking that prevailed. Most importantly, in Wrath of Khan, which this movie builds of, it was Spock's "two-dimensional thinking" observation that helped win the battle.

Into Darkness is essentially a modern Wrath of Khan, a movie that saw Shatner's Kirk fail so drastically that he had to rethink his confidence and his methods. This movie is the same, both are essentially teaching Kirk the true meaning of being captain. In fact, this bit of character development was the whole point, otherwise Pike wouldn't say these to set up the story:



Also remember Spock's words which, while meant for Spock originally, apply to Kirk in this movie since he never learned that lesson in the 2009 movie:



Breaking down the captain in a situation that gives him no alternative, no way out is a recurring plot point in Star Trek, we've seen it with Picard and other captains. Bonus points if the mess was the result of some bad decisions by the captain in the first place.

I guess the big difference is we had three seasons and a movie before we saw the grave cost it took to take down Kahn, it was also a continuation from a story in the show with considerably greater amount of establishment, therefore we had enough of Kirk's success to feel thrilled by Kirk's incredible failure. It was in senses a grandiose character arc.

Here we've only had one film, and one rescue at the start of Into Darkness, before PineKirk is getting everyone killed and getting himself smashed into the floor.

Being in such a condense space not only gave less time to show PineKirk succeed but magnified how regularly he failed.