A movie with no taste, and not worthy of the name.

Rating: 1/10 (12 March 2014)

You know, I believe that the first time that I saw STID was at the Drive-In (after all, where can you see two pictures for a low price nowadays?)and since it was a weekend during the summer, it has always been one of my favorite things to do at that time of year. When the titles of the film came up, I could not help but remember the last time that I had seen the last adaptation, and the confusion that I had with it. Sad to say, I was even more flabbergasted with this one.
Now, onto the points:
1. The Enterprise underwater? An intriguing idea, but really not necessary, when it would have made more sense to just have the ship in orbit.
2. The removal of Kirk as Captain of the Enterprise for violation of the Prime Directive. This, of course, was done to give a bit of closure to the lunacy from the first film which gave Kirk command of a starship without the necessary moving up in rank that comes from years of experience (just to move along the story to the point of him having to have command just to be the good guy against the bad guy). Of course, he gets command back in five minutes anyway in this film.
3. The ongoing frittery of the Spock and Uhura dynamic. Was it ever really necessary to introduce a romantic angle?
4. Scotty, Chekov, and the ugly midget. You have to give Scotty credit for not compromising his ethics when it came to the torpedoes, but Chekov as Engineer? He is about as competent as a engineer as he was in the first film as a transporter operator. As for the silent Ewok, he is not a necessary character, and really should be written out(or killed off).
And finally, the fifth: John Harrison/Khan and the whole death scene.
When "Harrison" was first introduced, I was kind of intrigued. A Terrorist attack was something not heard of in the series of movies, even though I did hear that "Harrison" would become "Khan" eventually. When I finally found myself watching the big "reveal", and heard "My name is Khan.", I quite literally rolled my eyes. There was no impact at all and I wondered why they were going down a road that was done so well before in a greater, superior film. Frankly, as others have said on this site as well as on others, it would have been better to take a different approach and had a villain with different motivations and another background.
When the Wrath of Khan came out in 1982, seeing Khan in that film motivated with revenge with a belief that Kirk had done him wrong made sense because Kirk and he had a history together from the episode "Space Seed", which included the death of his ambitions as well as his wife (and that was completely absent in STID).
The death of Kirk, although noble in this film, made even less sense because of another lack of relationship between Kirk and Spock. Wrath used the relationship of decades to the greatest advantage between the two characters to draw and garner the sympathy and grief needed to make Spock and his death in the original memorable.
By the time of the scream of Khan by Spock (which was out of character and ridiculous) the chase and the Magic Blood, I think I was back at the concession stand or in the bathroom.
To conclude, the movie itself was yet another bit of confusion because JJ and the writers again ignored Roddenberry and his vision for more flash, action, lens flares, and retreaded/reversed plot-lines just to appeal to people who really do not want to think or appreciate a good concise story.