I saw the new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, and despite being a devotee of the series I might just skip the next movies they make with this new set of actors playing the old roles. It was that awful.

The action scenes strike me as so much like a video game I felt cold and left behind: The action moves too fast for the human eye to follow, which of course many movies are guilty of now. Those same action sequences were also so dark they left no impression of anything I wanted to see again and enjoy, no afterimage of beauty.

The characters don't have military manners (or any kind of manners), so when they "break the rules" they aren't being ... sorry, the only word that comes to mind is mavericks... anyway, they aren't being mavericks; they are being rotten children. In each scene Kirk is being smug, overbearing, rude, insistent. He talks over top of people including his superior officer. There is no discipline to start from. I'm weary of it.

There's another problem, and it's a deal-breaker for me and others Trekkies: Both Kirk and Spock behave in ways contrary to canon. Kirk just wouldn't take an order to do something so heinous as he does in this movie, and Spock was a stickler for rules, not inflexible enough to let closest friends die. I can't buy it.

When the story line attempts to have an emotional moment, it doesn't work because the characters haven't been the people they're supposed to be. Some reviewer pinned it down by saying that the director denies the importance of anything from the original Trek series while simultaneously relying on the original for effect.

I've tried to keep in mind that becoming the new Kirk or Spock would be almost too much for any actor, but still can't like either of the new guys. Chris Pine seems to have what my sister called mid-face deficiency or else maybe his face just didn't go through all the necessary stages of development. His features are small and seem pushed close together, like a baby's.

That kind of face seems to be a hot trend among actors. Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain has the same type of face, in fact his face seems -- like outer space -- to be curving in on itself; however, he has seriousness and depth and mutability to his acting that I like a lot.

Secondary characters are good choices, though, and I like most of them.

But this movie altogether wasted itself. If you wanted to know the plot, I'd have difficulty telling it because I was so distracted the story scarcely got across to me.

It's incredible realizing the TV series was over forty years ago.

Maybe I'll just stick to watching reruns.