Many hints towards old canon. classic lines and true to form shuttles.
likeable characters
MICHAEL BAY EXPLOSIONS
CGI, lots of it.
Lenard Nemoy
Big red reset button
epileptic cameraman
lens flare
forgettable villain
spock uhura love interest.
dumb kirk
forgets lots of old canon, gross universe inconsistencies.
makes the entirety of Memory Alpha, Memory Beta and the last 40 years of Trek irrelevant.
Plot holes V'ger could fit through.
engineering looks like a brewery, oh wait, it is!
no time to process what just happened, the plot moves from action to action.
shit ending
inevitable sequel.
JJ. Abrams.
This contains spoilers, but then the whole movie spoils star trek, like spoiled meat and 8 week old milk.
JJ Abrams, of the Lost and going nowhere fame, spins star trek about and gives it the Michael Bay treatment in this newest instalment of one of the greatest sci fi franchises to grace this earth, so entirely > Star Wars, brought to us by the visionary Gene Roddenberry who is no doubt rotating at 1400rpm in his orbital grave.
I saw this at Imax with several not quite trek fans, they emerged bug eyed and grinning saying "hurrah, i can start watching trek from this point forward and miss nothing", i punched them.
JJ takes the established canon and quietly swishes it under the rug invoking implausible singularities to bring an angry Romulan named nero back in time after the destruction of Romulus in a "totally unpredicted supernova" in the post Voyager timeline. old spock tried to use a completely unexplained "red matter" to create a black hole that will absorb the supernova. he succeeds but both him and the romulan ship are pulled back in time to the moment of Kirk's birth where George Kirk and his wife are aboard the USS Kelvin. they abandon ship but not before the whole Trek timeline is thrown into chaos. George valiantly kamikaze's the Kelvin into the Romulan ship and Jim Kirk is born aboard a fleeing shuttlecraft.
wait what?
thats ok, every time trek screws with time they always reset everything back to normal at the end. it'll be ok. so i sat and enjoyed the Generic Action Movie 8 with callouts and memorable lines delivered by a young fresh from the academy crew. But then when the bad guy is vanquished, uhura and Spock hook up (? - token hollywood love interest) and Vulcan is destroyed... oh yeah, Eric Banner implodes Vulcan, and earth is saved thats it... there is no fix. nothing is corrected.
wait what?
you just rewrote trek. all of it. new timeline from the beginning. Kahn is out there, V'ger is on its way back... this is some serious shit.
do you realise what you just did. you've taken the whole trek universe and wrote a big "MINE" on it.
imagine for a second if you did this to Star Wars. time fix, Anakin dies. lolz! heads would roll.
but people walk out of this giving it three thumbs up and saying this is what the franchise needed.
im sorry but i feel stabbed in the back. the altruistic post scarcity, humanitarian star trek has been pushed aside for pretty explosions, product placement, and vindictive anti-heroes.
im sorry if i sound bitter and puritan, but my childhood has been butched and replaced by a Brittany Spears lookalike.
Abject failure. i feel like crying.