To boldly go where every man woman and child has been before several times

Rating: 5/10 (13 May 2013)

Star Trek has been a long continuation of new stories, new adventures, fascinating pseudo science. It was the space less traveled. It was a brilliant science fiction in the 60s ahead of its time and The Next Generation is still a classic science fiction today. Voyager too had a good run with original Trek material.
Enterprise wasn't that bold, didn't really go where we haven't been before. It was sort of generic, bland.
Now what we have is a TOU the original universe verses JJ's universe. Which is really just a parallel universe... not really bold. The boldest thing here is that he took a famous classic film and then just mirrored it in his "parallel" universe . Not really that much vision here... at least this one doesn't have so many lens flares? We have essentially the wrath of Khan in a parallel universe. What's next? The Voyage Home in a parallel universe? The spirit of star trek is dead. There is no boldly going anywhere. It's JJ boldly going into an old franchise and taking everything as his own "vision". That's as bold as we get here... nothing really original about this movie. It just takes a famous franchise and milks off of it. It just takes what fans originally loved and gives it a make over . Not really trekking any place new or exciting. Star Trek is just a thing now, it's not a living entity, it's a cash cow without any heart. "What can we do that will draw in lots of people, I know let's make a alternate reality of the Wrath of Khan, next we can do The Undiscovered Country!" It's just giving the past a face lift... there is no future here for Star Trek. Give it a few bright flashy movies without any real substance and then Star Trek will be left out in deep cold space again... buried alive.
It literally has many of the same story lines and dialogs as does The Wrath of Khan. This movie should have been called The Wrath of JJ Abrams, Trek Backwards.
It doesn't boldly go anywhere, it's a face paced action adventure film without any real star trekking involved. When are we going to get something, new , unique, from Star Trek again? When are we going to stop trekking backwards? The character development wasn't even a focus in this film because it was non stop action and you had no time to focus on any of the characters really...
There are better science fictions that come out that are original series, films anymore. If Star Trek can't give us anything new, original then it's basically dead to me. This is more like a homage to a classic film that just happened to be screened in theaters all around the world. A very talented director no doubt, talented actors... but this movie lacks the true spirit of Star Trek and any real mystery involved.
It is cringe worthy that a movie can do this well when it was already mostly written and no real insight was involved and any one who saw the original could predict 90 percent of this film and its outcome...They are laughing all the way to the bank on this one...
The twists it had varying from alternate universes weren't even truly significant.
It's just another movie, another movie adaptation of Star Trek. If this is all that is left for Star Trek then it might as well be dead... There is no real life breathed into the franchise. We don't need to see the same movie in a parallel universe...
There's a lot of Trek fans holding onto something that isn't free to grow, expand the universe. The universe isn't expanding it's contracting... if there is another movie I pray to God that it will at least by that time won't use dialog from the original films. Maybe by the time of the 3rd movie Kirk will wear William shatner's wig on his head and will get plump for the role and they will just green screen parts of the original films into the new film.
There's no real dimension here, the series isn't moving forwards, it isn't going anywhere... It's going in reverse until it halts and engines burn out again.
This film, this sort of Star Trek is not a long term Star Trek, it's a fast paced action film without any real intelligent thought, imagination, creativity put into it. It's not a long term solution to the struggles the franchise was facing... there will be a few more movies then Star Trek will need another reboot or it will just die out. Or maybe a true continuation of Star Trek and what it's really about is what will occur. These movies don't do STTNG or even Voyager any real justice.
The true original content JJ has added is lens flare, flashy effects, action scenes. A mixed up confusing plot, full of holes... what he has added, and his unique imprint, touch on this series and this film is not very Star Trek like and isn't very original. It's just another action adventure film and it's more Star Wars than it is Star Trek. The movie fails to have any real philosophical/ moral dilemmas and it feels more like Star Wars than it does Star Trek with its over the top action scenes.
They had Prime Spock in the movie last minute just to tell the audience how bad of a guy Khan really was. Most of his character development happened off screen and referred to the Wrath of Khan.