That's what happens when you extend a franchise beyond its natural limits...

Rating: 2/10 (22 May 2009)

I went to to this last Star Trek movie with a friend of mine. I am a trekie and watched every series and movie though I am not an overzeaolous fan of this franchise. In fact I am very critical and selective and I won't deny there are some moments of banality and low quality as well as brilliant episodes or movies in 43 years of Star Trek. My friend however never heard of Star Trek and whole concept was new to him though he is a very good critic himself. We both have seen the movie...
and both of us disliked it....
Let's look from two different perspectives...As for Star Trek fans this movie signals death of 43 years of deep Gene Roddenberry themes , philosophy and vision. Star Trek was always about exploration , getting whole universe a better place for mankind and its surrounding races , deep philosophic problems or questions ( remember original series Spock and Dr. McKoy always bickering. They were representing opposite ends of a serious theme or problem) They are gone now. Now it is all about CGI battles against powerful and two dimensional villains who has a personal grudge against main characters and who wish to destroy Earth/Federation/Humanity because of that with super powerful weapons. So the endings are always predictable. You can not identify yourself with destruction of Earth so Vulcan had to go. (we humans always think ourselves and our planet as center of universe selfishly by the way. Even Star Trek adapted that stupid thinking ) Destruction of Vulcan changes whole history of Star Trek and make previous entries invalid.
By the way I am not a purist and if there had been a decent script with proper drama at least I would even liked it despite all of negative factors I mentioned above but the whole movie was also a giant ST X:Nemesis and ST:II The Wrath of Khan rip off with elements of time travel from ST:VIII First Contact added. I can say Orci and Kurtzman watched these three movies and decided to write a script which mixes all three...So it is not even authentic or original. During whole movie I said myself "I have seen that before" In fact characterizations was even worse. During whole movie most of the cast (except Leonard Nimoy and Bruce Greenwood) were either playing young and kid versions or parody types of TOS characters (especially Yelchin and Pegg ) Even in worst entries of this franchise ( before this movie ) like in ST:V or ST:X most of the characters were taking themselves seriously. So aim of this movie is clear. Young , 12-18 year olds who never watched Star Trek or its excellent spin off versions....Kids who will be entertained and buy Star Trek toys in Burger King but forget everything in a few years (who is remembering Transformers anyway right now ?) This is a result of Hollywood Studios always looking to gross income of week not if they ever done an actual art production....
As for my friend he simply said "In an age where they make dark , exciting and thinking sci-fi productions like BSG or Alien this kind of childish productions are bound to fail in artistic sense...I agree completely...