STAR TREK . Despite a marketing onslaught that has included several trailers and a full nine minutes of footage, previewed before select screenings of "The Hobbit" last December, precious little has been revealed about the actual plot of JJ Abrams's hotly anticipated sequel "Star Trek Into Darkness." Even less has been known about the movie's enigmatic villain, played by certifiable next-big-thing Benedict Cumberbatch . Well, with the unveiling of a new international trailer, courtesy of iTunes , that has changed -- somewhat.
The trailer focuses primarily on Cumberbatch's villain, whose identity is still shrouded in mystery; he appears to be some kind of next-level terrorist (we see parts of London destroyed and he crashes a Starfleet meeting, killing a number of senior members). Kirk ( Chris Pine , once again ) vows vengeance, telling Cumberbatch, "I watched you murder innocent men and women. You will answer for what you did." Cumberbatch seems nonplussed.
Elsewhere in the trailer we see all of our old favorites: Scotty (Simon Pegg), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Spock (Zachary Quinto), plus new characters like Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) and RoboCop himself Peter Weller as some kind of Starfleet higher-up. The second half of the trailer is a lot of zooming spaceships and people flying through the cosmos, climaxing with an image that probably would have been better experienced while watching the actual movie -- a severely disabled Enterprise crashing towards a heavily populated San Francisco. Zounds!
In short, it looks like "Star Trek Into Darkness" will not disappoint. The film opens on May 17th. Set phasers to "get terribly excited."
