iTunes Film Review | Star Trek Into Darkness directed by J J Abrams

Since going ‘all in’ with Apple TV, my wife and I have bought the majority of our Saturday-night movies through iTunes. iTunes’ new releases are generally slightly cheaper than their Blu-ray counterparts (anything from a pound to five or six quid, sometimes); you don’t have to leave your sofa to get them; and they’re available to stream from the moment that you purchase them (you can download a copy to your iTunes library to keep later). And for the sort of compromised-upon comedies that we generally opt for, the quality is never an issue. In fact, we don’t even bother with full 1080p downloads – a 1280 x 720 frame with an average bitrate of 4000kbps or so is more than adequate to sharply render a moping Leslie Mann or a cuckolding Rose Byrne. Should we ever extend our screen beyond 40” (which is unlikely, given the dimensions of the alcove in which our TV hangs), we’ve always got the option of downloading the film again in full 1080p. It’s sat there forever, in ‘Purchased’, until such time as shame forces us to hide it, as well it might with Identity Thief. Even then, a hidden purchase can be unhidden again at any time simply by logging into our iTunes account.

But until now, I’ve generally deferred to Blu-ray for movies that I felt might benefit from the extraordinary bitrates that Blu-rays offer – sprawling epics like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, where someone has agonised over every single one of those million plus pixels that constitute each frame. This time, though, I thought that I’d really test iTunes’ mettle with something more challenging than just another bright and breezy romcom: Star Trek Into Darkness, the action-packed J J Abrams blockbuster that has the dubious distinction of being the first Star Trek film that I’ve not seen in a cinema since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in 1991, which of course makes my choice of home media for viewing it of even greater importance than usual.

I downloaded the movie and its accompanying ‘iTunes Extras’ in full 1080p, noting with some concern that the files’ average bitrates weren’t much higher than in most of our 720p downloads (the movie’s average is 4737kbps). My initial disenchantment was compounded by my discovery that, for some reason that eludes just about everyone in the Alpha Quadrant, iTunes Extras can’t be accessed readily on recent generations of Apple TV - they only seem to work on your desktop computer or laptop. I’d have been more likely to watch them on my iPad or iPhone than I would my hidden-away, media-serving PC, but the iTunes Extras aren’t accessible on them either. But for an inspired bit of technical jiggery-pokery, the likes of which will surely be beyond the patience, if not the technical skill, of most customers of the iTunes Store, I’d have bought half a lemon here.

For those who’ve been enticed by the iTunes Store’s efficient-looking blue button (above) only to find themselves cursing like me, when you download the bonus material to your computer, it is stored by default in a subfolder of your iTunes Media/Movies folder, in this case Star Trek Into Darkness – iTunes Extras. Inside it you’ll find all the bumph used to put a needless DVD menu-like spin on the special features, along with a subfolder labelled ‘videos’, in which the six .m4v files that comprise the bonus material reside. Simply use your software of choice to tag them appropriately (I favour MetaX) and then add the files to your iTunes library. Voila – iTunes Extras not only watchable on your second or third-generation Apple TV, but that can be synced to your Apple devices and enjoyed at your leisure. Anyone would think that you’ve paid for them…

In keeping with my meticulous media referencing system, in which only theatrically-released movies can reside in my ‘Films’ library, I elected to set the iTunes Extras’ media type to ‘TV Show’. I would recommend doing this irrespective of your views on what belongs where as it makes the files easier to manage and navigate (within iTunes, television series are treated much like music albums, allowing for multiple tracks – and Apple TV-friendly special features! – within any given season). If you to decide to set the media type to ‘Films’, you’ll be left with half a dozen separate movies suddenly in your library, though I suppose it’s still better than the watch-’em-hunched-over-your-computer option.

After going through the above rigmarole, it’s a good job that the iTunes Extras offer something that neither the Blu-ray nor DVD releases do – something surprisingly valuable. Together with a smattering of production featurettes available through other media, none of which have any real depth, the iTunes Extras present a near-three-hour “enhanced commentary”. I had no idea what this would be; I was half-expecting an in-vision commentary similar to those that I’ve found on Heroes and Doctor Who Blu-rays in the past, but at 2:42:45 the runtime is significantly longer than the movie. Within the first few minutes of the feature, I realised why.

The enhanced commentary brings the filmmakers into your living room, and by ‘filmmakers’ I don’t just mean the upper echelons of the production crew – I mean everybody with an interesting insight or anecdote to share. The merry-go-round of contributors watch the film with you, talking about how they created the amazing special effects that you’re witnessing on your TV screen; why the script went down a certain road; even why certain roads weren’t travelled. They play certain bits in slow motion and rewind others; sometimes they scribble on the screen like football pundits. If this is what they call ‘enhancement’, then they’ve got a gift for understatement - this is one of the most thorough ‘making of’ features that I’ve ever come across, and that’s no small statement given that I collect classic Doctor Who DVDs.

Star Trek Into Darkness itself looks incredible. Despite its gloomy title, the twelfth Star Trek movie is by far and away the most visually arresting of the saga, combining the colourful flair of the 2009 film with a bold, authentic edge, that the iTunes 1080p download preserves magnificently. I don’t know what compression techniques Apple use to achieve such superb quality at such economic bitrates, but the result is nonetheless stunning. Uniforms scream colour; ships exude the finest of detail. Dark areas of the picture, often prone to pixilation when crudely compressed, generally retain their sharpness, while daylight sequences – which are surprisingly common here for a purported trek into darkness – are, without exception, breathtaking. The Enterprise sinking into the clouds of Earth, or rising from the oceans of Nibiru stand out as particular highlights, as does the more disturbing sequence that sees the Vengeance on an unforgettable collision course with San Francisco, eerily redolent of 9/11. Even the heavy metal, helmeted Klingons benefit from their HD rendering. 

The narrative is a wonderfully-weighted thing, dextrously balancing the demands of a mainstream audience hungry for sensational spectacle against the wishes of a decades-old fanbase with quite trenchant views on its Trek. The high-octane pre-title sequence was sufficient to demonstrate the inherent paucity of my pre-purchase chuntering about iTunes’ “misclassification” of the film as ‘Action & Adventure’, and from there the movie only seemed to get faster and hit harder, with barely moments passing between each scintillating set piece. It’s hard to imagine it being received anything less than thunderously in cinemas, and so it’s little surprise that the movie had become the highest-grossing of the whole Star Trek franchise by the time that its run in cinemas ended.

Yet despite its ubiquitous kerb appeal, the themes that characterise Star Trek Into Darkness are ones that resonate across every incarnation of Gene Roddenberry’s “Wagon Train to the Stars”, from the rousing allegories embedded in the voyages of the original starship Enterprise all the way to the gritty moral dilemmas of war-torn space station Deep Space Nine and the lost and vulnerable USS Voyager. The only difference, really, is that here the moralising is a little closer to home. The kid gloves are gone, along with the theatrics. This time around, the wrath of Khan is as clinical as it is cold, instilling an all-too-familar desire for retribution in the Enterprise captain’s heart.

Interestingly, the casting of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonien Singh caused uproar amongst Trekkies and media pundits alike, who accused the moviemakers of “whitewashing” the production. Whilst it’s possible to see where they were coming from, given the themes of the film I think that the producers’ refusal to perpetuate racial stereotyping should be applauded - another exotic-looking Khan in the Ricardo Montalbán mould would have sent out the wrong message. Moreover, he wouldn’t have been such an effective and frightening reflection of Kirk and Spock, thus undermining the central conceit of the story.

When it comes down to it though, Cumberbatch didn’t get the job because of the colour of his skin – he got it because he was the right actor for the part. I love him as the 21st century Holmes, but here he’s got even more gravitas. His sonorous tones should come from a man twice his age, and the steel in his green-eyed gaze is plausibly that of a genetically-engineered superman. He’s the best Trek villain ever to grace the silver screen, and I sincerely hope that we haven’t seen the last of him.

Of course, Khan isn’t the one trekking into darkness; he’s already there. What’s most disturbing about this film is the darkness that it shrouds our heroes in, at times perhaps too completely. Star Trek Into Darkness was responsible for more than one popcorn spillage in our house, all of which were borne of anger or sheer incredulity. The parallels briefly drawn between James T Kirk and George W Bush pissed me off as much as they did Spock (“There’s a sole, yet-to-be-tried terrorist hiding on Qo’noS. Never mind the Klingons, let’s bomb the shit out of Qo’noS!”), but ultimately my indignation drew me deeper into Chris Pine’s impassioned portrayal, thus increasing the eventual payoff when the cracks of light started to shine through Kirk again. This example effectively sums up my views on the whole film in microcosm, as it hooked me with fury and then dragged me through just about every emotional state imaginable, eventually leaving me uplifted – but knackered.

And the titular darkness isn’t all Khan’s, Kirk’s, or even Spock’s - there are countless moments in the film that are desperately uncomfortable in of themselves. Noel Clarke’s haunting turn allows Abrams to vest a single glass of water with a greater sense of dread than Star Trek: Nemesis director Stuart Baird could the colossal Romulan Scimitar, so imagine what he’s able to do with a terrorist with superpowers and a stealthy, experimental Federation warship. Outer-space duels of The Wrath of Khan kind couldn’t hope to cut as deeply these days as Khan’s one-man war of terror against the Federation does here. It’s right on the zeitgeist.

Fortunately Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof were sagacious enough to saturate their polemical plot with relentless fan service, which ranges from reintroducing classic character Dr Carol Marcus in a younger, sexier guise (Alive Eve) – and, obviously, stripping her down to her bra and panties in the process (as above) – to making about a million jokes about the steely Sulu’s yearn for captaincy; having Uhura and Spock air their dirty laundry in public; allowing Scotty take a moral, but still somehow comic, stand; and having the dénouement turn on a tribble. Most remarkably of all though, the script cleverly mirrors the events of the second Star Trek motion picture, albeit with a disturbing inversion, adding a further level of tension for not only those familiar with the 1982 masterpiece, but – thanks to a welcome, expositional Leonard Nimoy cameo – everybody else watching too. You’ve got to admire the writers’ gall: create your own, unbound Star Trek universe to engender an ‘anything can happen’ vibe, then turn to the inescapability of fate to prove it.

This brings me to the most arresting thing about Star Trek Into Darkness; the same thing that made its 2009 forerunner so outstanding: the relationship between its two central heroes, Zachary Quinto’s Spock and Chris Pine’s Kirk. Insofar as the first film told of the beginning of this legendary friendship, which the characters’ youth injected with a much hotter edge, this second film tells of the cementing of it. In the deafening echo of lives and deaths that they’ve never experienced, Star Trek Into Darkness brings the two nascent legends full circle in the most moving of ways. If their Star Trek II homage scene doesn’t stir up a manly tear, nowt will.

In all, I paid a pound and a penny less for my digital copy of Star Trek Into Darkness than I would have done for the Blu-ray edition. There is no question that the Blu-ray would have offered me superior sound and picture quality, and I daresay that were I to compare the two on my own equipment objectively, there’d be some discernible difference - but it doesn’t automatically follow that the difference would be worthwhile. Indeed, I’m so impressed with the quality of the iTunes 108op movie that the point is effectively moot, and with it I’ve also got the welcome option of downloading 480p or 720p versions to my iPhone and iPad for enjoyment on the move at any time, which I’ll certainly do at some point in the near future. I’m not sure what the quality and limitations of the free digital copies that come with the Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D releases are like, but I’ve yet to come across a free digital copy worth the paper that it’s printed on.

As regards the iTunes Extras debacle, I’m block-capitals furious that the special features didn’t work as I’d wanted them to ‘out of the box’, as it were, but I’m also mindful that even if they had done, I’d have eventually retagged them all anyway, as I do with all my iTunes purchases (the metadata of which generally leaves much to be desired, as proven by Star Trek Into Darkness, which doesn’t have its director tagged and has half its short description missing). If, like me, you’re a control freak and moderately-techy geek with an unhealthy interest in absorbing hours of exhaustive bonus material, then I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend purchasing this movie through iTunes. Otherwise, for ease alone I’d urge you to stump up the extra 101p for the Blu-ray – you’ll save yourself a hell of a headache.

The digital edition of Star Trek Into Darkness is available from iTunes in 1080p HD to buy for £13.99 or to rent for £4.49. Its Blu-ray counterparts, which do not include the iTunes-exclusive enhanced commentary, are currently cheapest at Amazon, where you can buy the 2D edition for £15.00, and ASDA, where you can buy the 3D edition for £18.00.