US "Into Darkness" poster finally released. Meh.

Though I was not a big fan of the 2009 Star Trek reboot film, I am nonetheless a life-long Trek fan so I'm always hopeful that "the next big thing" in Star Trek will be better. The next Trek film, "Star Trek Into Darkness" will be released on May 17th, and though I am expecting the worst, I'm also hoping for the best.

With that in mind, I've been anxiously awaiting the release of the "official" one-sheet poster. A while back, an interesting teaser poster was released to whet our appetites, but that was just that – a teaser. Low and behold, Paramount finally released the "official" version on Friday:

Apparently this is a damaged Enterprise falling toward Earth.

I'm underwhelmed.

I LOVE movie posters – or rather, I love GOOD movie posters. I particularly like Star Trek posters for the most part. Not all are gold, of course, but Bob Peak's series for the first 5 films are excellent, in my opinion. Each was a snapshot of the film, brimming with action or spectacle and always, ALWAYS showing our heroes fighting to persevere (or, as in the case with "The Motion Picture" poster, pondering V'Ger?!? Oh well.)

Even the last fim's poster, though not really great, IMO, had decent visuals, again capturing the essence of action.

But with "Into Darkness" we get something different. I have no problem with different. But I find it rather boring in this case. And definitely evokative of Star Trek III's destruction of the Enterprise at the Genesis Planet.

The film's trailers have included shots of this event happening, so it's definitely not a surprise. And in an unexpected bit of kismet, it shows what I think was one of the key weaknesses of the first film and what I fear might be the weakness in the new film, namely "special effects over story", or "whiz-bang over characters".

I make no emotional connection with the poster's message, which is apparently "the Enterprise is in deep shit". No Kirk or Spock. No bad guy. No people at all.

While I don't think the UK poster is anything to write home about, but at least it has a human element to it:

"Earth Will Fall" raises the stakes over "The Enterprise Will Fall", the unstated yet obvious message of the US poster. Plus, our brooding villain striding out of a ruined city is at least something we've never seen in Trek before.

So I don't like the poster. But posters are made by marketing departments, not filmmakers, so I'm still hoping that the movie is something cool. I'm also hoping that it makes more sense that the last one. Hoping. But knowing all the time that it probably won't.

Bummer.


LLAP

Don