Another of life's little disappointments

Rating: 3/10 (27 November 2017)

Good grief, is this silly action movie really the highest-rated Star Trek film on IMDb? Higher than Wrath of Khan, First Contact, and the amusing whale one from the 80s? How revolting!
Star Trek 2009 is one of those films that demands absolutely nothing of its audience. It's all pretty people, explosions, and pretty people causing explosions. What little plot there is, is surprisingly nerdy - did they really need to include two timelines and two Spocks? And I suppose it would be churlish to point out that the storyline is recycled from the previous, much-loathed Star Trek film, Nemesis (a Romulan guy in a big spaceship heads toward Earth to blow it up).
For years, I had to listen to people talk about what a wonderful reboot this is, and isn't it great that Star Trek is finally cool and popular and mainstream, blah blah. Well, now that Star Trek: Into Darkness was a box office disappointment, and Star Trek: Beyond was a miserable box office failure, is it okay to look back at this 2009 scrapheap and admit that maybe it *wasn't* so great?
I think the sequels were box office disappointments, because nobody really cared about these characters and their stories. They were amused by this shallow reboot only for the duration of one movie! Eat your popcorn, go home, and forget the whole thing happened, right? Pretty feeble compared to the massive pop-culture impact of classic Trek.
I know what this film's defenders will say - this is still the most financially successful version of Star Trek ever made. To which I would reply, "only sort of." The economics of blockbuster films have changed since the 1980s. Back in the day, Wrath of Khan could be considered a big success when it cost 11 million bucks and made $97 million (unadjusted for inflation, of course). Khan's 9x return on investment made it far more profitable than, say, this movie or Star Trek Beyond, which lost money! Also, the first four Trek films were all among the top 10 movies of their respective years at the U.S. box office. You can't say the same for the reboot Treks, which underperform compared to rival blockbuster franchises.
Indeed, Star Trek remains - and always will be - less popular than other major film franchises. That's because it's nerdy and brainy, and that's a good thing! We need nerdy Star Trek as an antidote to all the stupid entertainment out there.
Which is why this film's dumbing down of Trek is unacceptable. And, considering how much they dumbed it down, this new series has been remarkably unsuccessful. Shatner and Nimoy would never have lost the box-office battle to Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and King Kong! If you're going to go dumb, at least have the dignity to make $750,000,000 and guarantee a sequel...