Anyone who has ever read much music criticism will be familiar with the 'sophomore slump', the idea that artists may struggle to make a decent second album because they put all their best ideas into their first one. Often the problem results from trying so hard to recreate what was so special the first time around that they make something which seems old and tired almost as soon as it comes out. Few films better exemplify the cinematic equivalent of a sophomore slump than
Star Trek Into Darkness, J.J. Abram's follow-up to his own
2009 reboot of the
Star Trek franchise. It's not a bad film, though there are aspects of it which are terrible, but it tries so very hard to replicate the thrills of its predecessor that it loses much of the excitement that made it so winning.
