Continuity? Ridiculous?

Rating: 3/10 (4 December 2010)

Suffice it to say, I like Star Trek. One of the things I liked about Star Trek was its integrity. Yes, I know that's a big word to be throwing around nowadays, but STiNG and TOS were unitary in my mind...STiNG being a natural extension on TOS. STiNG did a pretty good job of keeping continuity with TOS. The movie series, bereft of truly stellar efforts made a few splashes with installments #2 and #3.
I LOVE the work of Simon Pegg ("Shaun of the Dead", 2004 "Hot Fuzz", 2007). He cinched the purchase for me. I even like Anton Yelchin ("House of D", 2004, "Alpha Dog" 2006). Both's later roles have been a lot more tenuous, but these two actors alone gave me some hope for Star Trek.
Star Trek has now come full circle. Deep Sleep Nine, The Enterprise, and Voyager stunk. They weren't entirely a betrayal, but they had run the course with the line they had created, but movie-genius writers couldn't get off the train anymore. The series lost wide-spread appeal. Name any long-running series that hasn't had the same problem? Here's a franchise we can't bury quietly. Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner are old men, we can't do a new series and have them do a ceremonial walk-on role to christen the rebuilt series unless we act quickly! What's the solution? Make some implausible story that allows at least one of them to do a role to "authenticate" the work that would make D.C. Fontana cringe in horror. What shall we do now? Go the way of Star Wars. Suck as much money out of the franchise as you can, sacrifice the integrity. Keep pouring it on. Make more sequels. Broadcast TV hasn't hit a wall in terms of rating from doing the same thing at all.
Why go back to the original series and set fire to it? Why not create something new from the ground up? It worked before with STiNG. What you failed on in the later spin-offs was broad appeal. Lots of preachy talking with too much fan-pandering. Go back to what formerly made Star Trek great. The philosophy. Genuine human ideas and questions that lots of thoughtful people can relate to. Gene Roddenberry might have been the genius with the philosophy, but lots of people see what was going on there.
Some people who saw money-making potential of Star Trek (2009) in somebody else's philosophy without seeing the point of it. It is not Star Trek. Why bother calling it Star Trek, why use the same characters you could stand to reuse on a regular basis 10 years ago? Don't worry that your ideas and constructions are almost direct rip-offs of the compromised George Lucas Star Wars franchise, which Star Trek (2009) most certainly is. The most casual viewer can see a similarity between Kirk's car ride and Anakin Skywalker's rocket sled ride in The Phantom Menace.
I spent the first half of the Star Trek (2009) thinking "Wow"...the second half I got distracted and was counting the myriad of contradictions and pointless character conflicts. Why would Spock, a man of peace, a man who would not harm another being in the way he was raised for some 20-some years prior to his posting on the Enterprise throw Kirk off the ship? Do you really think that a time shift could explain a complete reversal of his character? This is consistent with modern movie and society's thinking. We are just corks bobbing up and down in the currents. We are not born to be one way or the other, we are not a sum of our progenitors. Not to mention his taking up with a woman! It strikes me that one of the most unbelievable features of Star Wars (and Star Trek now) is that the same people find their way back into each other's lives like some cosmic coincidence? Somehow, time changed in the Star Trek universe, and everyone ended up in the exact same place yet with altered personalities? I'm remembering STiNG "Parallels" right now or even worse TOS "The City on the Edge of Forever".I'm sure many people have explanations for myriad of discrepancies. They've been explaining the plot holes for years (Why do Klingons magically change between TOS and STiNG again?). Some people are satisfied, some people like me are skeptical and say its easy to make up an excuse why you did something after you did it when you didn't have a reason when you did it. Why did you break mommy's vase? You didn't tell her it was to maximize box office draw or that time travel made it possible for it to be broken and unbroken at the same time.
IF I had never seen anything having to do with Star Trek (or Star Wars), I might say it was a 6/10 effort. The Genie is out of the bottle; it can't be undone. Here's a prediction. I hope I'm wrong. The sequel to Star Trek (2009) will be awful. Rip-offs don't invest in new stories or originality...they invest in driving it into the ground. Since people have bought into eating whatever the headmaster puts in front of them in terms of Sci-Fi, they will drive this into the ground too. The same problem plagues Broadcast TV. We've seen it before and spiraling budgets sate people temporarily, but good movies live on forever, despite their budget. They fail to understand that new ideas drive box office interest...and interest drives sales. You can't short-cut straight to the sales without acknowledging the mortality of the medium.
Originality is to movies as defense is to football teams. They are the tie-breaker for the championships. Do you want to make a good product and make money or just make money? Those are the two choices.
Star Trek (2009) failed as a concept, as an idea, its implementation. As a movie it was passable.