Unoriginal and broke canon BADLY

Rating: 5/10 (10 May 2009)

I gave this movie a 5/10 because if you go into this movie having never been exposed to Star Trek before it is a fairly entertaining action flick. For the Trekkie, however, it was absolutely horrible. I suppose that I might fit in with the "hardcore trekkie" crowd who is very hard to please, but I've never been to a convention, I didn't care much for TOS or Enterprise. I can't quote every single episode. I was a pretty big fan of TNG and DS9 and I've seen all of the movies. Anyway ... the movie involves time travel. I figured by now anyone to ever touch Star Trek would have it figured out that time travel is the Trekkie's nemesis. If your plot requires time travel, the movie (or TV episode) will suck. That's pretty much a rule just like the even/odd movie rule (while Nemesis broke that rule, this movie puts it back on track). Eric Bana plays the villain, Nero, who was superfluous and totally unoriginal. He's a Romulan (btw - for no reason what-so-ever they decided to change the appearance of Romulans. They're now bald and have paint on their faces) that survived the destruction of Romulus when their star went nova, killing his wife along with most Rolumans. Spock was supposed to save the planet but failed. Nero blames Spock and decides to take vengeance by traveling back in time to destroy Vulcan and earth. The plot reminded me of the two-part Voyager episode "Year of Hell" starring Kurtwood Smith. I'm pretty sure that episode involved time travel, and the basic premise (wife gets killed, guy goes bad and starts destroying planets) is almost exactly the same! So the plot is lame and ripped off from other cheesy Star Trek plots from past episodes. But there's other extremely lame elements as well: o Spotty has a cheesy, annoying and unnecessary side-kick that reminds me of Jar Jar Binks (though he doesn't speak as much so it's not quite as bad). o Spock and Uhura have a love affair. o At the end of the movie they leave the "star trek universe" in such a manner that destroys all future Star Trek events. Basically TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise ... never happen. I suppose this might not matter if you accept the time travel premise and "alternate time-lines" etc. but that's basically an excuse to ignore canon and do whatever the hell you want. In other words if you go down that path you're deciding from the beginning that you're going to write a bad script. o There's a freakin' sword fighting scene!!!! Why don't they just pull out a phaser and shoot the bad guy!?!? o As someone else said, Kirk was unlikeable as a character. He was made out to be completely infallible and didn't care about anything. He was that "sexy rebel without a cause, that finds his cause" Hollywood cliché. Overall this movie was a "Big Hollywood Blockbuster Action Flick" and not a Star Trek movie. I gave it a 5 because if that's what you're looking for, it doesn't fail. The story is lame but unimportant if what you want is lots of explosions and unnecessary, drawn-out fight scenes. In terms of acting, dialogue and the script this movie could be one of those "so bad it's good in a funny kind of way" films.