Star Trek Into Darkness endeavours to boldly go in strange new directions with what's expected of the franchise, and in doing so they re-visit the most obvious portion of Trek lore that the filmmakers could have possibly chosen from. What happens isn't uninteresting, but I think that this time the fans who were especially mad at the liberties J.J. Abrams took with Star Trek in the 2009 reboot, will find new reason to loathe what the director has done with Into Darkness.
The reality though is that Into Darkness is another above par, rollicking space adventure firmly and ably executed by Abrams and Co. It may not be what fans are expecting, and it really doesn't need to be, but on its own I think it accomplishes the goals that were set out when the first film was released in 2009, which was reinventing Star Trek to be a franchise meant for mass consumption again. If the intention and tone of the film ended there, then fine, but then the third act of this film is borrowed wholesale from a previous Trek outing, and it's done so blatantly, even those only casually familiar with previous Star Trek works couldn't blame fans for their anger.
