Great and possibly awful

Rating: 6/10 (24 May 2009)

The good news is the great cast and faithfulness to the characters we love. The bad news is that this production is just like JJ Adams TV show "Lost"- reminding me during the movie of Austin Power's take off on Time Travel. They are so blatantly diluting the continuity to give them wide abandon for future "sequels". Come on, it doesn't take that much work to write the story the way it unfolded for the last 40 years. Someone has to reign in JJ Adams. He's got his hands on a fabulous property, don't ruin it.
The entire population and planet of Vulcan is gone? There's a lot of Vulcans in the story lines of the rest of the Star Trek movies and TV shows, so none of that happened? Why the need to kill Spock's mother, who we meet in the original series? Where were the volcanoes on Vulcan? Why would the elders be standing around a fire while there's a big drill from the sky coring their planet? Why does it take Spock running in to tell them to leave? Not logical. Why was the cop who stopped young Kirk in the corvette a robot? Where were the black people in Star Fleet academy? Where were the aliens we have previously seen? Where are the handicapped people (aside from Pike).
Great that they used Leonard Nimoy, but I hope they also got some of the rest of the surviving original cast and Next Generation and Voyager (and I guess even Enterprise) on some kind of footage.
I am grateful for sure for the fabulous casting, most of the writing was excellent to spectacular, the special effects were nice but some of them were poorly used. The chase scene with the big monster who chases Kirk into the cave was more Galaxy Quest GoRigNak than Star Trek- any series. Establishing shots need to be a little longer.
Although I accept that Spock was waiting there in the cave... just happened to be the same planet, just happened to be the right cave... and no explanation why Spock hadn't gone to the nearby space station and warned someone... but the glib passing over of why Spock didn't come with Kirk - to not deprive him of the friendship he'd make with Spock???? BS. No homage to the original bridge- OK, one sound effect... but the chair should have been the chair at least, the curved bridge...
In any case, I could forgive the small technical stuff and even some of the leaps of faith required if I wasn't so afraid of the broad license they can take from here out. This is not "Lost" and you can't do the "Dallas" thing where the little boy falls out of bed and its all a dream. Star Wars worked their prequel without the time travel excuse, come on Star Trek!
And what's the next movie... Star Trek, How we returned Old Spock to the right time line?