My own review

[Sionnach Glic]

Wasn't Pixar owned by Disney back then? IIRC, they broke loose when someone at Disney forgot to renew the contracts.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Thread drift, ladies and gentlemen! From a crappy review of ST XI to Pixar/Disney ownership!

[Nickswitz]

Well, what did you expect it's

[IanKennedy]

Wasn't Pixar owned by Disney back then? IIRC, they broke loose when someone at Disney forgot to renew the contracts.

No, Pixar was owned (at least in part) by Steve Jobs co-creator of Apple. It was only recently bought out by Disney.

[Sionnach Glic]

Oh, right.

[Graham Kennedy]

The plot for this film is contrived in the extreme. The idea that a singularity can threaten the galaxy is border-line ridiculous, and the idea that little red blobs of stuff can create a blackhole to suck it up is ridiculous.

As is warp drive, phasers, shields...

Add to that, the fact that the two ships that go through it survive the trip makes the whole film irrelevent, since Plot Point A is improbable, Plot Point B is improbable and Plot Point C is impossible (since a singularity proceeds faster than light, the blackhole would have to be extremely massive to 'suck it up', not to mention fast. Also, for a blackhole to be that effective, it would destroy the galaxy they are trying to save. Kind of makes it redundant).

There's actually a good explanation of this in the comic which expands on the back story. Whilst one should not have to read extra material to understand a movie, I regard this as a relatively minor nit which DOES have an explanation - and I'm fairly glad they didn't spend a minute or two technobabbling that explanation.

In a nutshell - the purpose of the story is not to present scientifically plausible developments, it is to explore the implications of certain developments whether they are plausible or not.

Also, does anyone find it odd that the Romulan sun is the one that goes nova? A supernova takes years and years to develop and come to a head, and Romulus/Remus would be rendered uninhabitable long before the explosion (try centuries). Yet in Nemesis, (set in 2379), Romulus is perfectly habitable and the sun is normal.

It isn't the Romulan sun that goes nova. And the movie never once says that it is.

Now, assuming that a foreign agent was involved (trilithium, for instance), the Vulcan's would not have sufficient time to build a starship (on Vulcan) and get it to Romulus before the nova (see how long it took Amargosa in Generations).

This is just stupid. The movie does not say that the ship was built FOR the disaster. It simply says they took the fastest ship and used it. The ship was a prototype/research vessel which was being completed as the crisis arose. Frankly this just makes it look like you are actively looking for excuses to hate the film.

I also like it how the 'Red Matter' is just thrown in there, no explanation of what it does, how it works, and how it can create a blackhole without a sun. Trek has constantly been ridiculed for too much technobabble, but at least most of the time some background is given on the latest gizmo that will save (or ruin) the day... not so here.

This is by far the best thing about how the movie deals with technology. You say yourself Trek is slammed for technobabble. Sure they could say "Red matter is an exotic material composed entirely of condensed nadion particles suspended within a dilithium picofoam. It's stable whilst within a gravity field, but not in the absence of gravity. When it's dropped to the center of a large mass, like a planet, where the gravity field is zero, the nadion particles become unstable, overwhelm the picofoam and implode. The resulting subspace shockwave causes a gravimetric implosion of exponentially expanding size; in layman's terms, a black hole." They could also halt The Dark Knight halfway through one of the Joker's rants to give an explanation of criminal psychosis, and all it would do was have most of the audience bored.

What is red matter? It's stuff that makes black holes. That's all we need to know about it. Just like all we need to know about warp drive is you push a silver lever and the ship goes faster than light.

Out comes a massive Romulan vessel with weaponry light-years ahead of the Scimitar (which preceeded it by less than a decade)... speaking of which, that mining vessel certainly was well armed.

I could buy that a 2380s mining ship would outclass 2250s warships. An oceangoing mining ship today equipped with demolition charges and some sort of elementary launcher would be an easy match for warships from the age of sail. If the miners took a little time to mount a few .50 cal machine guns on the rails and stock up on a bunch of RPGs - which civilians today can acquire easily in many parts of the world - then she would be more than a match.

That said, referring to the comic again there is also an explanation of why the Narada was so powerful. I don't like that explanation and I don't think it's necessary, but there it is if you want it.

I also like it how they shoot first and ask questions later (note: sarcasm will be prevelent).

That's actually meant to be a complaint?

I also like how they have completely reinvented the stardate system in the real timeline: stardate 2233 means its the year 2233. It makes sense, and I would like it if the previous system hadn't been used for, oh, 43 years....

There isn't a previous system which works at this point.

Anyhoo, they proceed to blow the Kelvin up- for the fun of it, apparently- along with George Kirk, who amazingly is in Starfleet when previous Trek had shown that Kirk was the only one of his family to serve in the fleet.

Simply untrue. Trek has quite notoriously never established anything at all about Kirk's father until this point.

At least Kirk Snr gets a heroic sendoff. (And how is it that a ship as massive as the Kelvin doesn't destroy Nero when his ship gets rammed, but Spock's puny shuttle thing can at the end of the film )

I call idiot at this point.

Spock's ship ramming the Narada DIDN'T destroy it. The impact damaged it - which the Kelvin's impact also did. The Red Matter creating a black hole further damaged it. The Enterprise then unloaded on it and destroyed it.

Did you even WATCH the movie?

... sidetrack. Enterprise. Aside from the extreme hideousness of it, why is it being built planetside?

The more I see and think of this, the more I like it. People have been building things in gravity and atmosphere for millennia. Working in zero gee is HARD. Working in vacuum is HARD. Whilst it will no doubt be far easier in the future, it will never be as easy as building on the surface. And given the propulsion systems they have in Trek, frankly the idea that escaping a 1g gravity well is hard is an absurdity.

Most starships are not designed for atmospheric flight,

Yeah. The Enterprise in the atmosphere? Never happened. Nuh huh.



Put enough thrust on it in the right places, and ANYTHING will fly.

To move a rig that big would require tremendous power just getting it into orbit, not to mention the materials to withstand the pressure of an atmosphere would make it twice as heavy, which would require more power.... etc etc

The TOS Enterprise has been seen to be capable of accelerations in the thousands of gees, if not millions. Compared to that, the thrust required to lift out of the atmosphere is not tremendous, it is TRIVIAL.

Difficult to make materials withstand the pressure of an atmosphere? You bloody moron, being in the atmosphere is the one place where it WOULDN'T have to withstand the pressure of an atmosphere precisely because the pressure of the atmosphere on the outside is balanced by the pressure of the atmosphere inside, like it is for any structure on Earth. It's when it is in space, with no external atmosphere, that it has to be strong enough to withstand that kind of pressure differential.

Sidetrack: ok, assume for the moment this red stuff is the real deal... why do you have to drill to the core? Why not just plant the thing in space and let the blackhole suck the planet up? Also, at the end of the film, we see a blackhole develop within seconds, but at Vulcan, it takes minutes.

No, actually it doesn't. It takes minutes to suck the planet up. It doesn't take minutes for the black hole to form.

As for why at the core, who knows? This is exactly why NOT describing exactly what red matter does is a GOOD idea.

After that, the film takes us to a very close Delta Vega (which is an ice planet, and not desert.

The idea of "an ice planet", "a desert planet" is fairly absurd. If you landed in Greenland would you call Earth "an ice planet"? If your next view was of the Sahara would you bitch and whine that your ice planet was now being depicted as a "desert planet"?

(Aside. One of the better moments in Stargate SG1 was when the crew were stranded on an "ice planet"... which turned out to be Antarctica on Earth!)

Which is in the same system as Vulcan ((how else can Old Spock see Vulcan destroyed)) and not on the edge of Federation space as it was in "Where No One Has Gone Before")

A valid criticism - your first thus far.

and we meet Scotty, an engineer who now eats far more than he drinks (no whiskey), and doesn't question that he can change the laws of physics (which he does).

Scotty went a couple of days without drinking? Scotty did things at 50 that he didn't do at 30? OH MY GOD HOW DARE THEY?

Newsflash : I've picked up new habits and expressions during the last 20 years. There's a word for that. It's called "life".

We then use technobabble to get to a speeding Enterprise, use the same technobabble to get to Nero and, well, blow him up through... you guessed it: Technobabble.

But we should have had more technobabble about the red matter, huh?

The TB for getting back to the Enterprise consisted of the words "transwarp beaming". They never even mentioned it when they beamed to Nero's ship. And the red matter... well you complained earlier that they DIDN'T technobabble it. Hypocrite.

We then see Kirk offer to help Nero survive by saying that if he doesn't get help, he'll be destroyed. Nero refuses. Kirk than blows him up anyway... guess he didn't want the blackhole to get all the glory.

Gee, the Narada had already survived going through a black hole once. Let's watch and wait to see if it does again... given that if it does, it might end up who knows where and doing who knows what. We could blow it up, but sod that, let's give the guy another chance to go planet stomping.

The plot was worse than any other film... I would rate it as bad as 'Spock's Brain' or 'Shades of Grey' or any generic DS9 episode. I would rather watch Broken Bow than sit through this story again. I would rather...

Spock's Brain sounds about your speed, to be honest.

Chekov, however.... they couldn't lather Koenig in drag/makeup and get him to perform? I mean, seriously... and what's with having to give a code to use the intercom?

And this is a character fault?

Everything that made Star Trek 'Star Trek' is noticably lacking in this film. We barely see space. We don't see much in the way of 'science fiction' or 'fantasy'. Instead, we get a slap in the face. We get a film made by non-believers and told its 'what we wanted'. Some of us like, some of us don't.

Okay, seriously. I don't believe you have seen this film. Or I think you're just lying about it. Or you're just a moron.

[Aaron]

Well him posting this was worth the price of admission just to see Graham call him a moron. I don't think I've seen him say anything like that since I joined.

[Nickswitz]

That was hilarious to read, thank you Graham.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Graham, that was a curbstomp. I applaud you.

[Tyyr]

I've enjoyed all the review reviews so far.

[Tsukiyumi]

I've enjoyed all the review reviews so far.

Same here.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Sometimes I get too lazy to bother with the big point-by-point rebuttals of the sort Rochey and Graham so masterfully posted, so here's a pictorial review of aq's review:

[Sionnach Glic]

Well, that's a curbstomp if ever I saw one. AQ just got owned by the creator of the most extensive Trek site on the web.

Okay, seriously. I don't believe you have seen this film. Or I think you're just lying about it. Or you're just a moron.

Oh, I'm sure he's seen it. Thing is, I'd bet you €5 that he was one of the hardcore fans that went in deliberately wanting to hate it. His complaints about the lack of technobabble and philosophical stuff leads me to the conclusion that he's one of those lot that thinks Trek is all about teach us mere mortals the Great Message and that all the tech and science is completely plausable.

So, in a similar vein to Hair's pictoral review, here's my own review of this guy, in picture form:

[Tsukiyumi]

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the forum...

Finally saw the new movie tonight. Words cannot adequately convey the feelings I had when the film finished. However, I can confidently say that not a single thing that went through me was a positive. The overrall feeling was one of forboding, negatvitiy and disappointment.

Wow. That sucks, man. You must be pretty depressed in real life to be bummed out by a story about people finding their place.

As many of you know, I was very vocal about my cynicism towards this film. Was that justified. In my opinion, yes it was. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my review style, I break the following down into their own paragraphs and then rate each out of 100 and give an overrall mark. This time there will be two: One as a fan, and one as an 'average joe'.

I will, from now on, break down my review of your review into two parts, one as a fan, and one where I'm considerably more intelligent than you are.

Wait, that's the same thing. Moving on...

Plot: Star Trek XI, as we all know, is a reboot of a 43 year old franchise. Star Trek needed a boost in popularity, a breath of fresh air, but a prequel was not good idea. Especially a prequel that would essentially make the last 43 years meaningless.

It doesn't make it meaningless at all. In the alternate (parallel) reality featured in the movie, it's mostly irrelevant, except for explaining where Nero came from, and why he's so pissed that he's blowing up planets. Did you actually watch the movie? There's a rather good scene where they explain the 'alternate reality' situation.

The plot for this film is contrived in the extreme. The idea that a singularity can threaten the galaxy is border-line ridiculous, and the idea that little red blobs of stuff can create a blackhole to suck it up is ridiculous. Add to that, the fact that the two ships that go through it survive the trip makes the whole film irrelevent, since Plot Point A is improbable, Plot Point B is improbable and Plot Point C is impossible (since a singularity proceeds faster than light, the blackhole would have to be extremely massive to 'suck it up', not to mention fast. Also, for a blackhole to be that effective, it would destroy the galaxy they are trying to save. Kind of makes it redundant).

Even without the secondary info, I caught that the supernova threatening the galaxy wasn't a normal one. I also caught that Spock Prime successfully used the Red Matter contained on the Jellyfish (his ship) to stop it from expanding any further by using a singularity. He just wasn't in time to save Romulus.

Also, does anyone find it odd that the Romulan sun is the one that goes nova? A supernova takes years and years to develop and come to a head, and Romulus/Remus would be rendered uninhabitable long before the explosion (try centuries). Yet in Nemesis, (set in 2379), Romulus is perfectly habitable and the sun is normal.

Like GK and others pointed out, they didn't say the Romulan star went supernova.

Now, assuming that a foreign agent was involved (trilithium, for instance), the Vulcan's would not have sufficient time to build a starship (on Vulcan) and get it to Romulus before the nova (see how long it took Amargosa in Generations). I also like it how the 'Red Matter' is just thrown in there, no explanation of what it does, how it works, and how it can create a blackhole without a sun. Trek has constantly been ridiculed for too much technobabble, but at least most of the time some background is given on the latest gizmo that will save (or ruin) the day... not so here.

The lack of irrelevant technobabble was great. There was enough to let you know what was going on. Period.

But let's assume for a moment that all of the above is possible (when it isn't), we go back in time to the year 2233 to the vessel USS Kelvin (same dimensions as the Enterprise, but twice the crew??? Remember, the Kelvin existed in the 'real' Trek universe). Already question marks are raised when a lightning storm develops and then turns into a blackhole. Out comes a massive Romulan vessel with weaponry light-years ahead of the Scimitar (which preceeded it by less than a decade)... speaking of which, that mining vessel certainly was well armed.

The Kelvin had the same dimensions as the Enterprise? Since when? And how do we know what the Kelvin's designed role was? Quit making sh*t up.

The weapons are an easy matter. 129 years is a long time. Even a modern Coast Guard ship could blast most ships from 1878. Again, the secondary material had to be used to add to this (the ship is refit with Borg tech), which I don't like, but it prevented the movie from being three hours long and half exposition.

I also like it how they shoot first and ask questions later (note: sarcasm will be prevelent). I also like how they have completely reinvented the stardate system in the real timeline: stardate 2233 means its the year 2233. It makes sense, and I would like it if the previous system hadn't been used for, oh, 43 years....

Who shoots first? Nero does, yes. Why is this odd? And, as has been addressed: "the stardate system has been revamped to make more sense! Dear god NOEZ!!!"

In the words of Shatner: "Get a life."

Anyhoo, they proceed to blow the Kelvin up- for the fun of it, apparently- along with George Kirk, who amazingly is in Starfleet when previous Trek had shown that Kirk was the only one of his family to serve in the fleet. At least Kirk Snr gets a heroic sendoff. (And how is it that a ship as massive as the Kelvin doesn't destroy Nero when his ship gets rammed, but Spock's puny shuttle thing can at the end of the film )

Again, this has all been covered, but stop making sh*t up.

Kirk Sr. was never covered in previous Trek. The Kelvin damaged the Narada, the Jellyfish blasted the SH*T out of it from the inside before ramming it, and still didn't destroy it. The E_n did, in conjunction with the black hole.

Anyway, 33 years later, we get some pretty decent character moments with Kirk and Spock in their childhood. Then we meet Uhura, Captain Pike (who I liked) and various assorted characters and move on to the Academy...

Don't you mean 20-someodd years later? I think you watched the film, but zoned out trying to spot things you didn't like. You missed a lot of the film, dude.

... sidetrack. Enterprise. Aside from the extreme hideousness of it, why is it being built planetside? Most starships are not designed for atmospheric flight, and the Enterprise is at least 800 meters long and grosses several hundred thousand tonnes (yes, to have a hangar that big, it would have to be bigger than 400, even though other shots show it to be a more reasonable 400). To move a rig that big would require tremendous power just getting it into orbit, not to mention the materials to withstand the pressure of an atmosphere would make it twice as heavy, which would require more power.... etc etc

The ship can travel faster than light, but it couldn't possibly escape Earth's gravity. Right.

As to the size: it's definitely in the 700 meter range. The shuttlebay shots, the engineering set, and the shot of it being built (on IMAX anyways) indicate a size in this region.

Back on topic...

You've lost me.

So eventually we get to Vulcan, where a Federation fleet comprising mostly of cadets and new ships (because apparently the bulk of the fleet was staging elsewhere for an ungiven reason) ( ) is destroyed, except the Enterprise. As we know, Vulcan gets destroyed when 'Red Matter' is planted into its core.

How do we know those were all 'new' ships? the E_n didn't get clobbered because Nero recognized the registry number and correctly theorized that a Spock was onboard.

Sidetrack: ok, assume for the moment this red stuff is the real deal... why do you have to drill to the core? Why not just plant the thing in space and let the blackhole suck the planet up? Also, at the end of the film, we see a blackhole develop within seconds, but at Vulcan, it takes minutes.

At the end of the film, about 500 gallons of red matter flies together at once. Maybe that's why it created the singularity faster than the droplet used at Vulcan?

Just does not make sense.

Neither does your ability to form coherent sentences, but there's your review nonetheless. Weird.

After that, the film takes us to a very close Delta Vega (which is an ice planet, and not desert. Which is in the same system as Vulcan ((how else can Old Spock see Vulcan destroyed)) and not on the edge of Federation space as it was in "Where No One Has Gone Before") and we meet Scotty, an engineer who now eats far more than he drinks (no whiskey), and doesn't question that he can change the laws of physics (which he does).

Totally not in the Vulcan system. It was a holographic transmission, quite clearly. They didn't spell it out though! Oh noez!

We then use technobabble to get to a speeding Enterprise, use the same technobabble to get to Nero and, well, blow him up through... you guessed it: Technobabble. We then see Kirk offer to help Nero survive by saying that if he doesn't get help, he'll be destroyed. Nero refuses. Kirk than blows him up anyway... guess he didn't want the blackhole to get all the glory.

They used the transwarp beaming technique Spock Prime showed Scotty. Wow, assloads of technobabble there.

For the record, I loved the scene where Kirk and Spock decide to blow up the Narada.

God, just writing that has made me mad again....

Reading this has made me mad again. Odd coincidence.

The plot was worse than any other film... I would rate it as bad as 'Spock's Brain' or 'Shades of Grey' or any generic DS9 episode. I would rather watch Broken Bow than sit through this story again. I would rather...

Hump a cheese grater? Please.

Casting: Casting was both good and bad in this film. Karl Urban as Bones was brilliant, and a thoroughly enjoyable experience watching him. Chris Pyne did a decent Kirk, but his performance didn't leap out. Zachary Quinto as Spock was also decent, but there were just moments in the film (a fault of the writing, not the performer) where I just couldn't picture Spock saying that. Scotty and Sulu were alright too, though the writing for Scotty was overdone (he was the 'comedic relief').

At the end of the film, they all seemed almost exactly like their counterparts; the rest of the movie was about them finding their place together. The same characters, just different lives (sorta like Nemesis, but executed better). Naturally, they wouldn't all immediately act like the 'prime timeline' characters.

Chekov, however.... they couldn't lather Koenig in drag/makeup and get him to perform? I mean, seriously... and what's with having to give a code to use the intercom? We never saw that before... and why wouldn't the computer (that can translate alien dialects) decipher his deplorable accent?

I liked the intercom code (it makes sense), and I thought Yelchin did a good job with a relatively small part.

Uhura was also well done, though she seemed to suffer from Travis Mayweather syndrome... the 'token' minority, thrown in just to prove that the producers weren't discriminating.

I disagree. I thought her relationship with Spock was rather well done, though they didn't have enough screentime to explore it further.

Pike was well played, and Eric Bana did the best he could with his material, but Nero just came across as a generic bad guy, a villian for the sake of being a villian. Decent, but not fleshed out enough for my tastes.

Again, I disagree. I thought Nero was quite well-handled, though I'd like to see his other scenes edited back into the film for the DVD.

Leonard Nimoy: cameo. What more needs to be said?

They used him sparingly. Good idea, IMO. It gave his appearances more impact. And, he could be back for the next movie.

Execution: jerky camera movements in 'serious' 'dramatic' scenes (the bar, anyone, between Kirk and Pike?) was a turn off. Aside from that, excellent directing. Got some nice, good angles in many scenes. Prop and ship design was... unique. Great makeup though. Wonder who did it...

I could follow the action fine. I think the shaky-cam technique adds realism.

Sets: Ugh... Engineering looks like Pipe City. The bridge of the ugly Enterprise is equally ugly (nice window where the viewscreen should be btw). Nero's ship didn't look remotely Romulan (mind you, neither did the actors. Were they a pirate band or something?) The bar looked interesting, but aside from that, the sets were nothing to write home about. Adequate for their task, but really just plain and ordinary... and in some places, not remotely futuristic.

E_n looks great, IMO. Nero's ship doesn't look like a Romulan military ship, and his crew were all on a vengeance quest.

VFX: The only winner in this film. Best. Effects. I. Have. Ever. Seen. Ever. Ever Ever Ever.

And, finally, we agree.

Soundtrack: many of you may not know, but I am a musician. I study theory and composition; I don't play. I compose. I study. I learn. And as a fan of James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith- particularly of their contribution to (combined) 7 of the first 10 films- I am appalled at the soundtrack for this film.

For starters, there is little thematic material in the film. A theme appears to be present at the end for either the Enterprise or the characters, but is so mishandled you can't tell if it stands for one or the other or both. The action sequences are nothing but bombastic brass with some underscoring strings and a timpini/bass drum pounding away at random points. There is no suspense. The film opens with a mundane and lifeless brass, and when the title Star Trek appears, the timpani is given another bashing while the brass compete for both volume and measure.

For Vulcan, the strings section plays chords as the planet disintergrates. No rythym. No theme. Just whole notes being played, getting progressively louder as the planet is destroyed. This would have been the perfect time for a majestic chior to come in. Even more fitting, a rendition/variation of Horner's beautiful Vulcan theme from TWOK or TSFS. Instead, we get a solemn treatment for a symbolic, mind-boggling act.

If there was ever a time to symbolically connect with previous efforts of Trek, the music should have been it. The film should have opened with Alexander Courage's 'Space, the final frontier' (instead, the film ends with a borderline acceptable rendition of it)- and TWOK's version of it, with the solo harp and horn/trombone duet-, or Jerry Goldsmith's excellent fanfare (or a variation thereof). For the Enterprise, either Goldsmith or Horner's (preferably Horner's given, the dark theme of the film) theme from TMP or TWOK would have been good, a nice throwback to the previous generation.

Better still, Horner or even Clif Eidelmen should have been given the job (Goldsmith died in 2004). They would have done a spectacular job on this film. Instead we get *insert name at later date* to do a Leonard Rosenman/Dennis McCarthy effort. Music with no style, no substance, no grace and no place in a science-fiction film- little lone a Star Trek film!

Here's where I call you an idiot. I'm also a musician, and I enjoyed the hell out of Giacchino's score. And the ending sequence is more than just a 'borderline acceptable rendition' of the TOS theme; it's nearly identical. Maybe you were too busy storming out of the theater to notice?

Themes: Um, yes. Star Trek has normally managed to incorporate themes into its films to engage the audience. This film is lacking; no moral questions; no futuristic portrayals of current events. Just technobable. Indeed, did anyone notice the trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy was absent in this film? Friendship wasn't even a theme in this film. I suppose, if one wanted to clutch straws (and in this film, that's all you have to go on), you could say that destiny is a theme.

The themes were simple: people will be different if the events of their lives are different, but they still have the same potential. Also, that dissimilar people can work together to be greater than their individual selves. And, that people have choices in their lives that can change who they are, and will be. Jesus, we're we supposed to be beaten over the head with those concepts to make them more relevant?

So, move over The Final Frontier and The Motion Picture. You are removed from the Worst of Trek listings for movies. XI has taken that... honor...

Says you. And, I still like TMP.

Everything that made Star Trek 'Star Trek' is noticably lacking in this film. We barely see space. We don't see much in the way of 'science fiction' or 'fantasy'. Instead, we get a slap in the face. We get a film made by non-believers and told its 'what we wanted'. Some of us like, some of us don't.

As has been pointed out, Abrams made it clear that this film was not going to cater to the two thousand uber 'Trek nerds who've memorized the dialog from every episode. If it had, it would've flopped, and 'Trek would be dead forever. Which would be a sorta bad business decision...

Maybe on a second viewing I will be kinder to this film. But it will never, ever measure up to the likes of The Wrath of Khan (which was the first piece of Trek I ever saw) or The Undiscovered Country or First Contact, or Nemesis. Or any of the others. Never.

Cry me a river.

Perhaps, instead of reinventing, they should have tried surpassing. Alternate timelines are the result of sloppy, lazy thinking, a way to 'reboot' something and start afresh.

Which is exactly what had to be done. Continuing onward (over the cliff) would've killed the franchise. Go watch your VOY DVDs or something.

What I wanted from this film? I wanted a film with either Picard, Sisko or Janeway (preferably Picard or Janeway), or, failing that, a new set of characters altogether. I wanted it set post-Nemesis, with no time travel. I wanted to see my favorite classes: Galaxy, Sovereign, Akira, Nebula in it. I wanted to see tremendous action sequences- not the brief affairs in this film. I wanted to see wonderful character moments.

There were tremendous action sequences and great character moments in this film. A shame it wasn't two hours of what you wanted.

I wanted a James Horner soundtrack.

I wanted a Michael Giacchino soundtrack. Go figure.

Despite what I think, this film (with its 150 million dollar budget) is set to do extremely well in terms of money, making Star Trek XII all the more likely.

Woo-hoo!

Congratulations, Mr. Abrams. You have just saved Star Trek.

But the cost was its soul.

Long live Satan! Long live Star Trek!

Sorry, I mean, what the hell does that mean? This film is a purified form of the very essence of TOS. Adventure, romance, action, aliens, and finally with a real budget to do it with.

Go cry over your devalued Seven of nine action figure, already.

P.S. - don't post your spam advertisement links here again.

[Sionnach Glic]

You missed a lot of the film, dude.

Well, in fairness, it's hard to watch a film while at the same time trying to scribble furiously on a notepad all the things you hate about it.

You know, I'm actualy sort of annoyed that I removed the link to his forum. He's clearly not coming back here, so I had the idea of signing up to his forum and posting my rebuttal there. Now I can't find his forum.