A Good Movie That Cried Out For Major Tweaking

Rating: 9/10 (25 August 2013)

With such a Wonderful "repeating core cast", Great CGI effects and Large budget this movie had to be a success. However, one has to wonder if the writers ever saw the complete original series at all. As a die-hard Trekie common sense mandated that "Kahn" (which has been done ENOUGH in prior movies) should have been Taboo Country for this one. An older healthy Christopher Pike demeaning Captain Kirk with reference to "son" repeatedly did not work well at all. The addition of "Carol" to the crew was an inspired role for future sequels.
The movie started off with a "bang" with fresh content that promised more of the same similar to the vintage episodes that made the original 60's version so great. New adversaries was the theme in almost every episode back then and sadly underplayed in this one. The 2009 movie provided strong character development and was "logically" concatenated to make it an excellent foundation for future sequels in contrast to this offering.
Let's reference just a few "The City on the Edge of Forever", "Bread and Circuses", "A Piece of the Action" & "The Menagerie" and we see a common formula: excellent scripting and gripping story lines without the high price tag of computer animations. Where are the elements of "Fun", "Humor" and "strange new aliens" magnified in this movie? Where are the trademark beautiful alien women in this movie (Too many episodes to mention)? The original Star Trek series had many Captain Kirk brief love affairs that were void in this one.
OK, in summary, this was a good flick but it should have been much better. Hopefully in the next sequel the writers will get it right. You will recall that the first movie (1979) with the original cast was a total bomb.