Star Wars, if it were written by someone less talented than Lucas!

Rating: Null/10 (20 May 2009)

Voted 1. Should be a 0 - Blair Witch as a cartoon awful. Bangs and thuds, red shirts tumbling to their doom, bangs and thuds, bad guys falling to their doom, black holes that are very selective in what they 'eat' . . and so on. It's a blend of anti-science and fantasy that separates this monstrosity from science fiction, and from Star Trek. That is, much looks similar to Star Trek. But then it becomes an overproduced ripoff of Star Trek themes and designs, similar to some low-budget TV series that never quite gets picked up.
Abrams and the PR campaign had, it's true, told the fans of Trek to stay clear of his film. Wasn't for those who grew up on Trek, he said. This was for a new and credulous 'generation' who, I suppose, have never even heard reference made or seen so much as a parody of the series - which is most unlikely, if I might paraphrase our favorite Vulcan. The boomers who write TV shows have been referencing Star Trek for at least the last 20 years that I've watched commercial television.
What the writers did, after speaking with Nimoy and getting back to him with a script, after his approval that is, was to take the characters of the bridge crew from the original series (TOS) and take them back to childhood, or at least their late teens (except for McCoy who was older). The actors dutifully looked the part, and adopted some of the mannerisms, and more often the clichés of the adult characters who created the franchise. But the adults were in their mid-30 to 40s. The kids are 10-15 years too young to be aboard THAT Enterprise. And it shows up particularly when baby-Kirk, this mock-Kirk from this mock-Trek film, early 20s, no command experience, just out of the academy is promoted to the captain's chair on the flagship of the fleet. All other officers were in the head, at the time, so one must assume.
But then one must assume something similar of an entire race established in the series, the race of Romulans. They looked like Vulcans, except in this mock-Trek, where they look like the post-apocalyptic rabble of Mad Max, Waterworld or Aliens III. They had fleets of ships. But in this mock-Trek, they sit around on Romulus, refuse to colonize other planets or else call everyone back, ground every space ship, one must assume, and wait merrily for a supernova to destroy them - when by all science, a red giant should have done that, long, long before. Apparently, Ambassador Spock of Vulcan is coming to their rescue, in a sort of slow moving rotating shuttle of some kind. Save us, Spock! ? If the Romulans of the story were threatened by their sun dying, they'd not only have plenty of time to evacuate the system - they would have done that, and taken everything that, as it were, wasn't nailed down.
Spock's cure was something called 'red matter'. Apparently, a single drop is all that was needed to somehow stop a supernova. But Spock brought half a quart. It's never explained why. So he falls out, not in, but out of a black hole (that's right), completely intact, and is captured by the villain. The villain takes a drop of Spock's red juice and destroys Vulcan. A couple of members of the high council, so-called, were trading recipes as the cavern they were in was about to fall apart on this utterly defenseless Vulcan (oh my, a giant laser beam from space, what-ever shall we do? Saave us, Spock!), as mock-Spock, the younger self, dashes in to say - HEY! you, navel-gazers, didn't you know the planet's breaking up, get the frick out of this cave - come ziss me if you vant to live? A couple of council members are predictably crushed by falling effects. Now a new 'homeworld' must be found. And the same question - what about the millions of Vulcans on other worlds, or were they also all ordered home at the same time? Didn't they have high councils, and independent governments, etc? The whole film is just a lazy, back-of-the-napkin Hollywood action film. You probably get your money's worth for all the nonsense on the screen, however bizarre and self-contradictory so much is if you stopped to think about it. But it moves along, and explodes, and goes BANG, and seems to be about something - like sports announcers always screaming the broadcast, no matter how boring the game.
But since they changed so much about the backstory, while trying to retain young doppleganger versions of the bridge crew from the original, it's a film that doesn't draw you in. It spits at you. It shrieks at you. It says - fool, you paid to see this roller coaster ride. 'E' ticket. But you'll get bored. And this sure isn't Star Trek. The Enterprise doesn't have an engine room that looks like a brewery or sewage treatment plant - the warp engines run on steam power? The fleet isn't commanded by a bunch of 20-year amateurs who fly right into a closed-umbrella 'death star' space station disguised as a 'mining' vessel.
A mock-Trek may be what some wanted to see. Malicious screen-writing. Malevolent production. Nimoy - WHAT were you thinkg? You are not Spock, your book title. Yeah, we get that. Doesn't mean you have to dump all over the franchise. So you're not Spock. Let it go! Or else, sick of Trekkers. Sick of constant Trek references in sitcoms and whatever else. No more Trek. This isn't your 'Daddies' Trek. This isn't any kind of Trek at all! Not in any way. It's bait n switch, it's theft of a franchise in order to stomp all over it. What's more, it's just bad film-making, which failure and contempt can't be rescued by a floor of competently produced stunts and effects.