A disgrace to Star Trek

Rating: 2/10 (9 May 2009)

Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5 year mission. To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before...
I cite these lines because they pretty much sum up what Start Trek was all about. It was about adventure and exploration. About the mysteries of deep space and alien cultures. About science, tolerance and understanding between different peoples and species and so much more. Star Trek (most of the time) used to provoke thoughts and imagination and to inspire it's audience in many ways.
Unfortunately, it seems the makers of this new Star Trek movie didn't understand any of this. Nor did they seem to bother. They obviously thought making a Star Trek movie would be easy. Just take some famous characters and spaceship design, stuff it with (forgettable) CGI, throw in some trendy shaking camera action (which is just pathetic) and it will all somehow magically fall into place and make a good movie. They were so wrong. I really can't begin to imagine how anyone could honestly think they would get away with this. The sad thing is: They just might. For some reason the IMDb rating was around 8.4 (when I wrote this) which suggests there actually are people who liked this movie and I suppose it won't fail at the box office.
I won't summarize the plot because others already did that. Suffice it to say that because of time traveling, history got changed and we are presented an alternative universe which 'allows' this movie and potential follow-ups to completely 're-imagine' Star Trek. What bothers me most is that this movie dares to negate the entire Star Trek saga. It tells us that all those countless adventures we witnessed never happened! That might have been acceptable if we had been given something new that's worthy of Star Trek. Sadly, that's not the case.
The plot is shallow, full of (black) holes and often lacking in logic. The characters are mostly boring, one-dimensional and unconvincing. Kirk a rebel, bar brawler, womanizer and suddenly heroic starship captain? Sounds like Kirk, but I didn't buy any of it. I'm not sure whether this is to blame on Chris Pine portraying him or the writers, but it just didn't work. And what about Scotty? He's just silly and annoying, a bit like Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars. The only real good character was Zachary Quinto's Spock. I liked him a lot. Some others were good too, like Cpt. Pike and Dr. McCoy, but they didn't add much to the plot. There also was Leonard Nimoy as old Spock, but there was nothing particularly interesting about him. Actually, half-way through the movie I realized I wasn't caring for anything or anyone in it. And of course, this movie had nothing to do with exploration, adventure or imagination. Which is why to me it seemed quite laughable that at the end this movie cites those famous lines about 'Space: The final frontier'.
I usually don't write reviews, but for this I had to make an exception. I grew up with Star Trek and loved most of the shows and movies. And I had to express how wrong this new movie felt to me. This is not about me being frustrated about the time and money I spent watching it. I don't want my money back. I don't regret having seen it. And it's nowhere near the worst movie I've ever seen. I actually enjoyed it to a certain degree as another mindless action flick. And as such I'd probably rate it somewhere around 5 out of 10. But in the context of it being labeled 'Star Trek' and being highly overrated on IMDb can't give it more than 2/10.
Simply put: It's a disgrace to Star Trek.