Needless to say, I didn't like it and have created this post to, maybe, maybe not, expose my reasons. Also, I changed the title of this thread to a more apt description.
Spoilers, but the biggest one is that the film is going to spoil Star Trek for you harder than any other movie or TV series based on the franchise.
While I thought it was going to be infected with "the gay", the movie really hammered the fact that you could blink and miss a titty or two for the first half hour (and an overly stretched vagina and you know I'm not kidding), but
*LENS FLARE* spooky, green alien sex is not a big issue when you factor in the many others. First and foremost
*LENS FLARE* the movie right out says it's not Star Trek. Let's digest that "plot device" for a while.
So, basically, this is an alternate universe where the writers or *ahem* directors can't build up suspense by cutting to commercial. Ok, I get it.
But, how did the
*LENS FLARE* time device come to be? Oh, ok, so original Spock went in a mission to save a planet from a supernova. And because the vulcan man pwomised he would and ultimately
*LENS FLARE* failed, some redneck miner with a spaceship on the other side of the galaxy pwomises cool Spock to make him utterly miserable by
*LENS FLARE* somehow predicting what technology Leonard,fucking,Nemoy has and knowing his cronies will "loosen up to it", "jiggle it a lil", meanwhile they're both being sucked by the black hole cock-of-the-block Spock left behind.
A thought occurs, then...
*LENS FLARE*...If being sucked by a black whole allows you to travel back in time (and to the same universe and some time within your lifespan as no doubt the baddie assumed), then
*LENS FLARE* perhaps the planets drilled and red gooed on didn't collapse and completely destroy themselves at all, they probably went through the same time-space fluctuation and still exist, only
*LENS FLARE* in another time and are affecting the parallel "them" in the same way the Romulan dude and you-know-I-won't-like-Sylar-already Spock are now. Only now, then is now and then will be now, but only then, and after now has happened as a consequence of then. Also:
*LENS FLARE*So that's one problem. Another is senior Kirk being cooler than junior. Another is I can't stand Chekov, not even if he tip-toed over half a second on the singularity for the entire film (you know what?
don't say "nuclear vessels", I DON'T CARE ANYMORE). Speaking of singularities, wouldn't the materials used for the explosion be sucked into another timeframe and attack some other hotshot spacecruiser's dad? And since space is void, the ship would have to be traveling faster than
*LENS FLARE* the speed of light to not be sucked into the black hole that chugs on planets for a living... unless the red dye Spock invented intervenes there somehow. I know, I know, it's science fiction. But it's not, and that's why it sucks harder than actual black holes. I saw "Angels and Demons" right after Star Trek, and while the story to that is equally ludicrous (lookie, lookie the "how
dare you call it the" God particle I can carry in my pocket and that is capable of two football stadiums of dynamite+fireworks explosion), it works. Why? Because the characters try to arse around the logic of whatever
*LENS FLARE* historical/scientific fact they're distorting. That's what Star Trek used to be, wasn't it? Hell, that's what movies are for, aren't they? I don't care if you replaced all the cardboard sets with 1's and 0's, it's still going to
feel fake.
Like when
*LENS FLARE* baby Sylar is studying how to not emote in then Vulcan. I have two problems with that
*LENS FLARE* scene. One, Star Wars has it beat in actual logic in that the Star Wars universe replaces the latin alphabet with alien alphabet. Two, it gives bullies (you know,
real Vulcans, kickass) all around the, say, universe the Cliffsnotes version of "Catcher in the Rye" for when they're about to rampage through school armed with machineguns (because logic kicks ass, yo!). But maybe they're right in their logic and saw that I, too,
*LENS FLARE* would fail the little brat from school because of the demented test he created. So, that's how Kirk beat it? Yes, I already knew he reprogrammed the thing, but I thought it was more subtle than "Oh, shit! The program just glitched, gotta start over, I guess, and only the
genius half-breed who built it will notice".
Ok, and wouldn't Nimoy Spock have both memories of what he did as Sylar Spock and what he did as pre-shittiness Spock? That's right, J.J. Abrams. I see your two Spocks and raise you one Dennis Quaid and a Jesus on Frequency. Oh, but you
had to have your silly speech at the end. You know the one: "You will develop a friendship audiences have come to love over the years, which hopefully means lotsa money for cheap plots in familiar territory".
And what's the point with all these SFX if you're going to hire the same
*LENS FLARE* cameramen who filmed Cloverfield and swoop in and out of all sets before we establish what the hell they are without any dramatic sense? I'm beginning to pity all the poor saps in Hollywood whose entire work consists of adding the expression wiggle(1000,bajilliontimes) into After Effects for every shot requiring
*LENS FLARE* a special effect into every freakin' film. Yes, I'm saying special effects these days are special in
that way.
And to add
*LENS FLARE* insult too injury, I can remember far more of Zimmer's score than Giacchino's, but I was expecting that given how Giacchino tones down for all of Abrams' jumbles. Decent, but my favorite Trek scores remain Horner's. And to end this rambling, everyone in this film who didn't give birth to someone on-screen, caused someone to give birth to someone on-screen, or is not Leonard Nimoy was miscast... with the exception of McCoy. I'll be damned if he didn't chew the scenery as bad as everyone else but holy crap was he likeable. And to think this guy's also Eomer. Man. I must admit I liked Kirk and Sulu battling the Romulans on the drill, and would've liked Sulu better if he were allowed to talk, but because he doesn't have breasts or make the va-jay-jay hand-sign, he must therefore have less screen time than everyone else combined. Ok, I could see myself siding with Simon Pegg, but this is one of those rare cases where I was very glad my film had subtitles superimposed, because, really, what the
*LENS FLARE*?
In summary, I give this film (which is not Star Trek, as Star Trek itself so eloquently put it) 9 facepalms (Picard's, none of that cutesy lion crap) and a quadrillion of these:
Fun tip: if you speed the film 5x you'll wind up with last year's Speed Racer, and a better Giacchino score (which, admittedly, would last 5 times less than it originally did).