What's the point?

Rating: 2/10 (8 May 2009)

J.J. Abrams and his crew apparently live by the maxim that "ignorance is virtue"; it's difficult otherwise to believe that the creators of the 2009 Star Trek film have even *watched* any of the episodes of the long running series, let alone *studied* them in an effort to prepare for this latest installment. Aside from shallow parodies of some of the original characters, performed by a collection of barely post-pubescent actors (Cliff Robertson seems to be the only person in Star Fleet over the age of 25 in this century), there is very little for devoted Star Trek fans to recognize or celebrate here.
The script is particularly atrocious; apparently, scribblers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers, The Legend of Zorro) console themselves that "it's just science fiction" when justifying the endless array of non-sequitur scenes, weak or impossible science, breakdowns in logic, inconsistent tone, lack of motivation, and unrealistic characterizations. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the original series, famously fought a one-man war *against* this kind of thinking when struggling to make a believable series back in the 60s; looks like his followers have now surrendered in this war without firing a shot.
(My favorite absurdity among many is the way the command structure on the Enterprise keeps changing every 5 minutes, as cadets who haven't even graduated from the Academy appoint themselves Captain, First Officer, etc., then resign, then come back as a different officer a short time later, much like it works in the movie industry, I suppose. Apparently the Enterprise crew is comprised of sheep who will take orders from anyone who comes over the ship's intercom. And BTW, when did the interior of the Enterprise start looking like a mixture of an Apple store and an oil refinery?)
Today's viewers and anxious movie executives may call this a "rebooting" of the series, by which I suppose they mean that any trace of the original show was lost once the power was removed.