Well, I'm a Star Trek fan due to the old series, the Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine (which was my favorite). (I destested Voyager and stopped watching it, and after one episode, I wrote off Enterprise.) I loved Movies 6, 5, and 2, liked movies 7, 10, 1, and 9, was just barely okay with 3, and hated 8 and 4 with a screaming passion.
This one goes into the final category.
The performances of several characters were awesome: Captain Pike, James Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, and Chekov. McCoy and Chekov were my favorites, with Kirk getting a surprisingly good review from me.
Spock - played by both Leonard Nimoy and whoever the new guy is - gets a complete *FAILURE* from me. There was *1* - *1* - Spockian moment, and it was when the young Spock asked a certain question of his tormentors. Nimoy's Spock almost gets a pass - ALMOST - but it is apparent that the Mr. Spock character has been re-created as something other than what he has always been.
There were lots of great classic lines from cast, and the performances of the actors were very, very much "Star Trek."
The story, however, WAS NOT.
The entire point of the story seemed to be to cement in place the friendship of Spock and Kirk. This was already done - in Star Trek V, "The Final Frontier," which got absolutely horrid reviews, and had a rather weak story and a horrific ending, but was a good insight into the friendship of Kirk, McCoy, and Spock, and actually is among my favorites in the movies.
SPOILER ALERT!
SPOILER ALERT!
There are so many continuity holes in this Star Trek that cannot be explained away. Much of the Trek Universe - "Trek present," "Trek past," and "Trek Future" are tied to the Vulcans. Included in this are Star Trek films 1, 3, and 4, all of which have scenes on Vulcan, and 2, 5, and 6, in which Vulcans other than Spock play a major role. Add to all of this the role Vulcan played in ST:TNG - Re-Unification, the 2-part episode where Picard helps find the pieces of the Vulcan device that kills by thought, etc. A Star Trek universe needs Vulcan.
The fact that the villains are Romulans - Romulans who have been seen (as opposed to those of "Balance Of Terror", who have been encountered but never seen) - the fact the arc of Spock going to Romulus in the first place (from ST:TNG's "Reunification") is necessary for the film to happen (and the new flavor of Spock is going to be willing to do that?) - the fact that Spock's mother plays important parts of Spock's life in "Journey to Babel" and Star Trek IV, and the emerging Spock we see throughout V, VI, and Re-Unification and what they try to pass off as the Spock of the future in this movie. Given the rage shown by Spock on two different occasions, they should have just made him part Klingon while they were at it.
Finally, as the ultimate nit-picky part of the whole thing, how is it we see Scotty being pulled through the transparent aluminum tubes, when he obviously never left from Vulcan to go back and save the whales in Star Trek IV, thus giving the humans the molecular structure for transparent aluminum? (Tie the worst movies together, and you get a bad story all the way around.)
Overlook the fact that Kirk and Chekov are nearly the same age; overlook the fact that Kirk still grew up to be essentially the same man, despite the fact that one had his father and the other didn't; overlook Spock's emotional outburst which will FOREVER leave him unable to fend off McCoy, overlook the loss of Vulcan and of Spock's mother; overlook the fact that Captain Kirk is essentially the captain of the flagship even though he's just out of the academy, overlook all the Kirk backstory of the things he did on other ships, and tell me - is this Star Trek, or is it just the characters of Star Trek playing in some other series?
The most damning thing of all is that Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek spun tales of moral lessons, ethical issues, and a sense of the potential of humanity into a digestable form for a world that is struggling through its problems. What do you take from this latest version of Star Trek, other than the potential to make a buck?
You see, we know these characters. Other than Spock and Uhura, the characters were pretty close to their Original Series counterparts. Why not a story from the original five year mission? Why not even a remake of a classic story that is relevant to today (such as "Let that be your last Battlefield")? Why must you present an alternate timeline which so re-defines Roddenberry's universe so as to make the only constant thing in it seven Roddenberry characters?
I was afraid this would be Star Trek: Top Gun. It wasn't. At least, there's that.
'Twas a far, far lesser thing I saw than I have ever seen. A far lesser resting place than Roddenberry had ever known.
Will I see the next movie when it comes out? Yes. It'll be a decent movie, worth seeing, like this one was. But this was not Star Trek, and I fear the next one will not be either.
At a time when a Roddenberry Star Trek vision is necessary for our country and for our world, we got a Hollywood film. Entertaining, yes; enlightening, no. Welcome to Star Trek, the 21st Century.
