Not faithful to the original

Rating: 4/10 (13 December 2009)

I thought the idea for this movie had tremendous potential (ie, taking the series back to its origins) and the new actors did a nice job with the tall task of playing legendary characters. However, I thought the writers and producers sabotaged the original 'Trek' with this effort, carelessly jamming together elements from Star Trek lore while not hitting the right emotional chords. There were numerous factual inconsistencies with the original series - which might be explained away with the "new time line" idea in the movie, but the changes were radical enough to create the impression that the writers were just sloppy or didn't really care.
With regard to the depiction of Captain Kirk - it's fine to paint him as heroic and bigger than life, but his unlikely ascent to power in this movie strains credulity, even for sci-fi. The character of Kirk, while heroic and intrepid, should have been portrayed as a much more believable person and maybe shown to be a bit more mature and responsible - which would have been much more in line with the original series. All in all, this movie -- as a possible introduction to a new set of films -- is disappointing, but I will hope that subsequent films will be better, if writers and producers can discipline themselves just a bit!