Paramount Pictures has used this year’s Super Bowl as the perfect opportunity to kick off – pun very much intended – the television arm of the marketing campaign for Star Trek Into Darkness with a snazzy and explosive new TV spot.

You can watch it here below.

There’s a lot of mighty purty imagery packed into those thirty painfully brief seconds, a few swatches of which have not been released before. In particular we get to see Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and the movie’s villain John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) have a tense exchange, which is then followed by lots of explosions and people looking quite unhappy.

You got to hand it to director J.J. Abrams, taking his last trip at the helm of his own United Federation of filmmaking before heading off to a galaxy far, far away; Star Trek Into Darkness has all the hallmarks of a typical third movie in a blockbuster franchise (See: Return of the King, The Dark Knight Rises, Iron Man 3) rather than a second. His second and final time guiding the crew of the Enterprise on their lens-flared journey around the universe is skipping the second chapter build-up and unleashing the proverbial Hell on Kirk, Spock (Zachary Quinto), and the gang before taking his bow and handing the series over to other interested parties.

If you aren’t distracted by the action, the emotionality, and all that….darkness, you may catch this little dialogue exchange that seems to spell out a lot about the true nature of Cumberbatch’s baddie.

“I am better.”
“At what?”
“Everything.”

Sound familiar?

Just sayin’.

Star Trek Into Darkness opens in 2D and 3D on May 17, 2013.

Video

[Source via Coming Soon]