Star Trek Wars or Star Wars Trek?

Rating: 6/10 (23 May 2013)

I consider myself a Star Trek fan, but not as loyal as some and not as aloof as others. I enjoy the original series, Star Trek the Next Generation, Deep Space 9, all original series movies minus 1 and 5, and all the Next Generation movies other than the last. I think Voyager and Enterprise and Nemesis were terrible and I would prefer to assume they do not exist. In the spectrum of Trek fans, I am not sure where that puts me.
When the 2009 Star Trek movie came out, I really had no expectations for it. It was hard to be disappointed if I did not expect much. And I did enjoy the movie, but it wasn't a Star Trek movie. It was an action film and Star Trek is not an action series. They could have changed the names of the characters and the look of the ship and it would have very little in common with the Star Trek concept.
The same thing can be said for this second chapter in the Trek reboot. This movie was an interesting story, but it was not a Star Trek movie. It was an awkward action film with the names of Star Trek characters superimposed on other characters. The movie made attempts at character development, but each try came across as a cheap attempt to connect this movie with the original Star Trek universe. These attempts seemed forced.
I think JJ Abrams is doing here a very similar mistake as to what George Lucas did when he made the second Star Wars trilogy. I do not want to lower the Star Wars series by referring to them only as action films. They were much more than that. Still, the action sequences and the special effects were one of the major attractions of these movies. In the second trilogy they were there, but George Lucas tried (and in my opinion failed) to integrate commentary along with action and effects. He turned an action franchise into something else.
Star Trek is not a series that is reliant on special effects and actions. Yes, they play a part in the series and the movies, but they are rarely the focus. Star Trek is a character development based franchise. The main focus in the original series was Spock and Kirk. Once they graduated to the movies, the Star Trek franchise became focused on the friendship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The Next Generation movies focuses on the development of Picard.
These new movies are not character based. Pine's Kirk is not James T. Kirk. There is no relationship between Kirk and Spock that makes sense. In the previous movie, Spock casts Kirk off into outer space and Kirk pushes him to the brink of murder. Their relationship in this movie is tense at first. In "Wrath of Khan," I come to tears at the point where Spock dies every time I have seen it. When Kirk dies in the new movie, it makes no sense as to why Spock is as upset as he is. Until the moment where Kirk dies, there is not an establishment of friendship that explains how Spock could lose his cool as easily as he did. When his mom died, he had to be severely pushed into the deep end, but when a man he has known for little more than a year and never seems to get along with him dies, he loses his mind? It doesn't make sense.
The other problem lies with Khan. Other than having Khan's back story, this character was not Khan. Cumberbatch's Khan lacked the depth that Ricardo Montalban's Khan had. The emotion he had for his crew did not seem genuine. He did not have any of the fire and the drive and the hatred that Montalban's Khan had.
The other issue I had with the movie was the Admiral's ship. It just awkwardly appears out of nowhere even if Marcus was the head of Starfleet, he would not have had the resources to hide the construction of such a ship from the Federation.
In the end, this was an enjoyable action movie. I saw it on Imax in 3D and visually, it was engrossing. But the characters lacked the soul of the original series. "Wrath of Khan" was a great movie because it told a story that the writers and actors wanted to tell. It is the story of a man who lives for exploration having his entire life stripped from him. Shatner's Kirk loses his command when he is promoted. He lost his son for that command. He lost his identity when he took a job that wasn't his purpose in life. And when he fights back for all of that, he loses one of his best friends. James T. Kirk is a man in "Wrath of Khan" who is cursed in a way that each time he gains anything, he loses something bigger in response. Khan is a man who has lost everything too. He lost 200 years of his life, he lost the world he commanded, he lost his wife and many of his people. Khan and Kirk are two men who have lost everything, and they are fighting each other to take something back. It is a basic primal struggle between two deeply passionate men.
Pine's Kirk is driven by one thing in this movie: revenge because Khan is responsible for the death of Pike. Khan wants revenge on Admiral Marcus for using him. Spock wants revenge on Khan for being responsible for the death of Kirk. These characters are motivated solely by the desire for never ending vengeance. While it is a great motivator, it does not inspire love or concern for any of them. What is left is a weak action movie that should not have the name "Star Trek" attached to it.