And when I say "alternate" future I mean "unintelligent and pointless"

Rating: 2/10 (15 June 2009)

This is a really disappointing movie. This reboot of the Star Trek universe is way off the mark. The original series certainly shows its 1960's roots, but the characters, and almost all of the stories, were intelligently written and imaginatively and consistently developed.
The relationship between Kirk and Spock was built around each providing a counterpoint for the other's strengths, with Spock, of course, balancing Kirk's passion with a healthy dose of reason. Between them, they formed a symbiotic medium, reflecting the human condition that leadership and advancement comes from a balance of both reason and passion.
The original Kirk was passionate and decisive, but was not reckless. Nor was he consumed by his own crude, punk emotions. He was a leader who understood that his responsibilities extended to his ship, his crew, Star Fleet, and the rules and aims of the larger society. He let this guide his decisions. Even by himself, there was responsibility, rationality and reason within him. Spock represented, and added to, the pure rational component of any argument. Put together, the two characters showed us that goals and problems are best addressed by moving the human condition towards a stronger sense of responsibility, rationality and reason. It was a vision for the future.
Against that, in this new movie, both characters have moved decidedly away from the rational and towards the emotional. Kirk is now just some one-dimensional, self-obsessed, reckless angry rebel who treats every situation as an opportunity to start a bar fight (literally and/or figuratively). One expects future dialog to be along the lines of "Spock, did you see the way that ambassador glanced at me during negotiations? He needs a lesson in respect. Fire all photon torpedoes!!" Who in their right mind would want such a character as a starship captain?
And the new Spock has had the strengths of his rational side completely neutered. This new movie makes it obvious that his rational Vulcan side is ineffective, unimportant and weak, and that the emotional human side is where all the important cool parts are. The arc of the story in this movie seems to be constantly telling him: "Dude...stop thinking so much! What you need is to do is get yourself a girlfriend, get laid, have a few shots of Jack Daniels, and go punch a few people."
Similar dumbing-down occurs with the destruction of Vulcan. Six billion lives lost from a culture that was as advanced, peaceful and intelligent as the Vulcans (remember...it was the Vulcan's who first reached out to humanity to make First Contact) is an tragic, important event. The original series would have made THAT the point of the event, as it should be. But in this movie, the only really important thing was that Spock's mother was killed. Well! Now it's personal I guess! No wonder he's mad! Why is it that movies such as this can't talk in the important abstract? Why is there always the need to introduce the personal vendetta? Why can we not have an important cause that is worth struggling for in its own right?
In the aggregate, whereas the point of the original relationship between Spock and Kirk was that the addition of stronger reasoning adds to our human capacity, the point of this movie seems to be the opposite: that what humans need to do is reason less, think less, make everything personal, give authority and responsibility the finger, break as many rules as possible, and get into as many bar fights as we possibly can. I was hoping that we'd left that attitude behind us with the passing of the Bush years...but I guess not.
As a side rant on that...the American psyche is frustrating in its contradictions. We live in gated communities to keep us away from exactly the bar-fighting trash represented by Kirk in this movie. We want harsh, lock-em-away laws if such characters challenge our peace of mind. But in the movies, we celebrate those same characters fighting authority, breaking all the rules, thumbing their noses at exactly us and those we appoint, punching anyone who asks them to be reasonable, killing anyone who tries to stop them, and winning only by fighting, not by thinking or working together. The same effect shows up in shows like Prison Break. How does a society both impose capital punishment AND cheer for the (supposedly) wrongly convicted to fight against the police that are trying to enforce the very laws that us as a society put in place? If we recognize that people are sometimes wrongly convicted...why are we killing them?
The other sad direction in this movie was the removal of Vulcans and Romulans as alternate societies. Again, we seem to be taking the attitude that only "us" humans matter. The "others" are uninteresting, unimportant, and potentially get in the way. Whereas the original series celebrated the idea of different societies, and recognized that any society (even all of humanity itself) will benefit by coming together into a larger common society with others of sympathetic goals, this movie promotes the idea that we would be better off if everyone was more like us, or better yet, if everyone else BUT us would disappear. In this movie the "us" is humanity compared to the "them" of other planets. In our world, the "us" is our culture or country compared to the "them" of other cultures or countries. Again...I was hoping that such a provincial attitude would pass with the Bush years...but again sadly, I must be mistaken.
The original series was a vision for the future...a larger, more interesting future. The new movie is a vision for the past...a provincial, isolationist, fearful past. In the end, the world, and the galaxy, are both poorer places because of this movie when compared to the vision and intellect of the original series.