Oh look it's another thread where manchildren get to bleat and cry about how MAH TREKS got modernized for a new generation who doesn't care about how ~forward thinking~ TOS was and can't stand how awful its production values and inability to remain internally consistent from episode to episode or, in some cases, scene to scene.
Enterprise and Nemesis killed the Prime timeline. JJ Trek is pretty much the future of the franchise, unburdened with 40 or so years of canon built on the world's worst foundation (re: TOS) imaginable. Enjoy.
The fact that Galaxy Quest is in the list shows how stupid the list is.
Yes the newest movie had its problems but I still would have less difficulty watching it then Star Trek The Motion Picture. Star Trek The Motion Picture is the most boring of them all.
Oh look it's another thread where manchildren get to bleat and cry about how MAH TREKS got modernized for a new generation who doesn't care about how ~forward thinking~ TOS was and can't stand how awful its production values and inability to remain internally consistent from episode to episode or, in some cases, scene to scene.
Enterprise and Nemesis killed the Prime timeline. JJ Trek is pretty much the future of the franchise, unburdened with 40 or so years of canon built on the world's worst foundation (re: TOS) imaginable. Enjoy.
I've noticed that in most debates about anything people fail to be objective and resort to name calling. Someone can not like a film based on any number of reasons.
It's also ironic that you bemoan how awful TOS was but it has essentially just been updated with different actors, clothing and awful lighting effects.
Art, is a subjective thing. Pickling a cow foetus is considered as much art today as Michelangelo's David. There isn't so much of a right answer only an opinion on either side of the debate. Ad hominem arguments just weaken your position, as do unsubstantiated claims or poor workmanship.
Until JJ et al came along, no cameraman who wanted to keep his job would have a shot with Lens flare, it just wasn't the done thing as it was considered sloppy workmanship. Now it's all the rage and widely accepted.
I saw the 1st JJ movie. Deemed it just puke horrible. And never watch another again. I will watch any of the Kirk or Picard movies any day of the week.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I wonder how many voters in that poll really hated STID on its own merits, and how many merely hated on STID just because JJ had the gall to feature the Khan character in it.
I still wish JJ hadn't gone back to that particular well, but I'm not about to dismiss the whole movie out of hand just because he did. I rank STID around the middle of the pack, 5th out of 12, in between Star Trek '09 and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. As a summer popcorn flick, it lived up to expectations. As an homage to TWOK it hit all the right notes, albeit maybe a little too well in some cases. To me the only thing about STID that really fell flat was Leonard Nimoy's throwaway cameo as Spock Prime. His scene at the end of the 2009 movie would have been a great way for Nimoy to go out, symbolically passing the torch to Zachary Quinto. Instead, Nimoy's Trek swan song may end up being a short, nondescript scene shoehorned into STID for no apparent purpose other than for the sake of doing so.
You mean Insurrection right? Yes, of course you do. That movie barely qualified as a reasonable EPISODE of TNG let alone a movie.
On that note though, calling ST: ID the worst Trek movie is something of a hard sell in my opinion. Not that I am supporting JJ Trek in any fashion mind you but even still.
Star Trek fans at convention deem latest Star Trek movie the worst, even though it was successful in maintaining public interest in the Star Trek franchise...wow. Yeah, remember that next time you watch the Troi mind r4pe scene and dune buggy chase in Nemesis, or ponder why Kirk is dead in Generations instead of him and Picard returning from the Nexus at a time when they could just walk up to and arrest Soran in 10-Forward.
Only ever went to one convention in my life, and that was enough to keep me away (the stupid, stupid questions they kept asking the B5 cast were insulting). This kinda mass trolling from these people confirms it was the right decision to never return.
A couple hundred fans at a premiere, the votes based purely on that (instead of the millions in the world, or the movie's actual monetary gross), and they call it fact?
Riiiight...
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
"Star Trek: The Final Frontier" and "Star Trek: Insurrection" were rather good films. Even though they were not as good as the other ones, I think the films do have some level of entertainment value. "Star Trek: Nemesis" was a train wreck. Even though it had a great CGI dogfight, the other aspects of the film were horrible.
How I Rank the Films:
(1) "Star Trek: Wrath of Khan"
(2) "Star Trek: First Contact"
(3) "Star Trek: The Voyager Home"
(4) "Star Trek: The Search for Spock"
(5) "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"
(6) "Star Trek: Generations"
(7) "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country"
(8) "Star Trek: The Final Frontier"
(9) "Star Trek: Insurrection"
(10) "Star Trek: Nemesis"
(100) "Star Trek: 2009"
(101) "Star Trek: Into the Darkness"
The fact that Galaxy Quest is in the list shows how stupid the list is.
Yes the newest movie had its problems but I still would have less difficulty watching it then Star Trek The Motion Picture. Star Trek The Motion Picture is the most boring of them all.
That is a view commonly expressed by Star Trek haters. If you find ST:TMP boring, it is only because you are clueless about Star Trek. Galaxy Quest is infinitely more entertaining than First Contact. Borg? Yawn.
That is a view commonly expressed by Star Trek haters. If you find ST:TMP boring, it is only because you are clueless about Star Trek. Galaxy Quest is infinitely more entertaining than First Contact. Borg? Yawn.
I am not a Star Trek hater. I have all the movies on DVD and all the shows on DVD including The Animated Series. I have a lot of old Star Trek games. Saying my view on Star Trek The Motion Picture is commonly expressed by Star Trek haters and I am clueless about Star Trek is insulting and something I don't take kindly.
Maybe you should not throw around insults and tell people they are clueless because they find something boring.
" one guy took the mic to say these reboots shouldn't even be considered for a list of 'Star Trek' movies.? and yet they ranked Galaxy Quest,a spoof, above some the original series movies ?? Nitwits
We still live!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaa! We live and we will conquer!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!
-Roach, when asked about Klingon extinction!
I am not a Star Trek hater. I have all the movies on DVD and all the shows on DVD including The Animated Series. I have a lot of old Star Trek games. Saying my view on Star Trek The Motion Picture is commonly expressed by Star Trek haters and I am clueless about Star Trek is insulting and something I don't take kindly.
Maybe you should not throw around insults and tell people they are clueless because they find something boring.
heh indeed.. TMP seemed more like the director and vfx guys were in orgasmic bliss through out.. Way too long shots of the ships (both the Klingon ones and the E) with Shatner in a stupid expression as hes looking at a green screen. It was basically a one hour episode stretched to fit a movie format nothing else.
We still live!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaa! We live and we will conquer!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!
-Roach, when asked about Klingon extinction!
The major death scene in STII - I was touched. The major death scene of ID - blank stare, loud laughter, facepalm.
I rellay like the actors of the new ST movies. I think they are doing the best considering the script. But they don't have time to evolve. Its always hysteria, explosions, dead people, superdrama from the first minute to the last. But... in a boring, without any substance way.
I personally think Generations was a far bigger insult to the spirit of TOS than ID was.
Generations completely ignored three decades of character development just so they could manufacture a passing-of-the-torch moment to give an artificial sense of legitimacy to the new cast taking over the movie franchise.
And when Kelley and Nimoy smartly pulled out of the movie, the writers didn't even bother to change the dialogue. In an emergency, Chekov looks at two crewmen and says, "You and you. You're nurses. Come with me."
Huh? Seriously, Generations wasn't "a good action movie that didn't feel like Star Trek." It was a movie that blatantly disrespected the characters from the series that started it all.
When I saw Generations, I remember thinking, "Shame on you, Shatner, for doing this movie."
WOW by posting an article I found, I didn't realise the extent of the debate it would cause. I have yet to see Into Darkness as it is on my Christmas wish list for DVD as I can't abide sitting in a cinema / movie theater. I am the only ST / SCI FI addict in my family, no other family members can stand Star Trek. But one of my nieces told me the other day that she saw Into Darkness, she said she loved it.
That coming from a person who doesn't like anything Trekkie or doesn't know anything about the background of the whole ST universe to me speaks volumes.
Into Darkness... Worst Trek movie.. No.. But it is down there...
I still count Final Frontier, Nemesis, are far worse films in the series.. I find it more on par with The Motionless Picture and Insurrection.
Galaxy Quest being on the list I can see why it is.. It is a spoof of Star Trek. A Rather good one at that. So ridiculing a list just on the basis for how well a spoof did in contrast to the newest ST film is well kinda bad. What I want to know was how big was the sample size of this survey? Would help in giving this weight.
Oh and don't get me started on Generations. Which I should add is a tad worse than ID.
I went to see "Into Darkness", and even put together a sort of review of it. I doubt it'll change the mind of anyone who's seen the film... and I doubt even more that it will change the mind of anyone who hasn't. But here's what I thought.
What did I think? Well, a TOS purist like me ("I spit on your Voyager! I call down a thousand curses on your Enterprise!") shouldn't like it much, right? But, in fact, I did. For that matter, I more or less liked the first Abrams reboot film, too. OK, it's not classic Trek, but it's kind of fun, it's an inventive approach to the re-imagining of the series - whether or not it needs re-imagining is another question. But, both films entertained me, and that's enough to win my approval... up to a point, at least.
There's no question that "Into Darkness" looks good, for a start. In some ways, it's an improvement on the first JJ-Trek; it's not plagued with nearly as much flagrant scientific illiteracy, it doesn't show J.J. Abrams' weird obsession with destructive red globes (was he frightened by a snooker match as an infant?) and for most of the film, the characters' faces aren't obscured by lens flare. So, a step up from JJ-Trek 1. The production values are consistently high, there's a solid look about it, the future world it's portraying feels realistic and credible. There are good touches, like some of the 23rd-century London settings being easily recognizable.
The basic outlines of the plot: Jim Kirk runs himself into trouble on a primitive planet, violates the Prime Directive and winds up busted down to First Officer on the Enterprise, under the long-suffering Captain Pike. (I didn't even recognize Bruce Greenwood; my, he has aged.) However, a sinister figure called "John Harrison" (Benedict Cumberbatch, playing the superior being with eerie conviction) is setting up terrorist attacks on Starfleet, and before long Captain Pike's sufferings have come to a bullet-riddled end, and Kirk is off on a semi-official mission of retribution, pursuing "Harrison" to the Klingon homeworld, with the plausibly deniable blessing of Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) and the even less official companionship of the Admiral's daughter Carol (Alice Eve). Catching up with "Harrison", they discover his real identity, and also that Admiral Marcus has set them up to provoke open war with the Klingons. When Marcus comes after them in the Starfleet dreadnought, the USS Vengeance, Kirk and his crew have to team up with "Harrison" to defeat the rogue Admiral, then cope with the fallout of "Harrison"'s inevitable double-cross....
And it's all got plenty of action - possibly too much action; the lengthy final act of the movie involves a battle in space, Kirk and "Harrison" being fired across space to board the enemy ship, Kirk and Scotty scrambling through the bowels of the Enterprise as the ship tumbles out of control and the artificial gravity goes all wonky, the enemy ship crashing into San Francisco, and then Spock chasing "Harrison" down and having an interminable fist-fight with him on the back of a speeding vehicle. It all gets rather frenetic... which is a good thing, from the point of view of keeping things moving, and also distracting me from considering the plot holes until after the final credits have rolled. Because plot holes there are, and they are there in abundance.
For a start, the two primary antagonists - "Harrison" and Marcus - have, not so much a plan, or even a plan each, but several bits of plans that don't actually fit together. That Marcus, attempting to start a war with the Klinks, could draw on "Harrison"'s expertise in warfare, I can stomach; that "Harrison" would respond by going rogue, I could also believe. But, from then on, neither man seems to have a clear idea what he wants. "Harrison" is attempting to retrieve his fellow spoilers from Marcus's clutches, but his attack on Starfleet would have stood an excellent chance of killing Marcus - would have succeeded in that, were it not for Kirk - and, at this stage, Marcus (alive) is the only man who can give him what he wants. And Marcus then does give him what he wants, sending the spoilers off with an oblivious Kirk, for no reason at all that I can think of. (Going through with his official plan, to blow up "Harrison" on Kronos, would get him his war with the Klingons. For that matter, Kirk's own antics on the planet's surface would have much the same effect. Either way, there is no reason for Marcus to put the spoilers in jeopardy.) "Harrison"'s tactics thereafter - surrendering to Kirk and giving him the information he needs to unravel Marcus's plot - rather depend on a) Kirk not agreeing with Marcus (which is by no means a given), b) Marcus responding in exactly the way he does, and c) a certain faux-Scottish comic relief and deus ex machina having snuck aboard Marcus's ship to sabotage it before it can kill Kirk, "Harrison" and the spoilers all at once. OK, so everything does work out the way "Harrison" expects... but, with luck like that, he should be playing the tables in Vegas.
Talking of the faux-Scottish deus ex machina, his own purpose-built plot hole from the first movie shows up... "Harrison" uses his transwarp-transporter dodge to get from Earth to Kronos, rather forcibly reminding us that, in this universe, starships are actually completely obsolete. To further sabotage any future films in the setting, Doctor McCoy manages to use "Harrison"'s magic blood to devise a reliable and repeatable cure for, well, just about anything up to and including death. Expect that one to be glossed over in the next film, too. (Incidentally, McCoy's insistence that they take "Harrison" alive, for his magic blood, is a bit silly given that McCoy has full access to 72 spoilers, all of whom have the same magic blood. But I digress.)
In short: an awful lot of things in this movie happen Just Because. It's In The Script. This is, to be brutally frank, a flaw. And, I'm afraid, one of the things that happens Just Because... is central to the whole concept. And that's a problem.
See... the re-creation of the original series roles works fairly well in most cases. Karl Urban makes a convincing grouchy-but-loveable McCoy; Simon Pegg is more than decent as Scott, even if he is treated by the script as a mixture of comic relief and get-out-of-plot-hole-free card. Anton Yelchin's Chekhov is even more excitable and hapless than the original (and Walter Koenig's Chekhov was never over-endowed with hap in the first place). John Cho's Sulu is just sort of.... there, though, and Zoe Saldana's Uhura is just another generic omni-competent action girl. Zachary Quinto plays Spock pretty well, though with little of the original version's charm. But Chris Pine as Kirk, well -
- well, the characterization makes all kinds of sense. The idea is that when the time-lines diverged, in the first reboot, Jim Kirk's father was killed, and young Kirk grew up with no paternal authority figure, and consequently ran all kinds of wild. And this fits, and Pine plays it well, with twice Shatner's cockiness and a very small fraction of Shatner's assurance and moral authority. It makes sense.
What doesn't make sense, though, is why anyone should trust this young-hotshot version of Kirk with command of a starship. Or why Spock would like him. Or, for that matter, why he would like Spock. The two characters just don't gell.
But... it's Star Trek! And Captain Kirk has to be Captain of the Enterprise, and Spock has to be his first officer and his best friend! It's In The Script!
And so it is. And the script makes occasional efforts to justify it, but they just make the problem more obvious. Captain Pike says he "saw greatness" in Kirk, and all I think is, he'd have done better to see an optician. Kirk and Spock assure each other that they're friends (and Spock gets all jealous when Carol Marcus joins the team, especially when she gets on the shuttle and sits down between him and Kirk, oo I saw what you did there Abrams, very subtle.) But the idea that the two are best buds forever, when everything you actually see shows that they can't stand the sight of each other... it just doesn't work.
Still.... it's not, actually, a bad film. It's spectacular; Cumberbatch and Weller both make good villains (I can't shake the feeling that Cumberbatch, when he's playing a genetically augmented superior being, isn't actually acting). Several of the cast are clearly enjoying themselves, which is always good. There are shout-outs to the great originals; Spock gets to do his "needs of the many" speech and scream "John Harrison's real naaaaaaaaaaaaame!!!!", McCoy gets to insist on his profession, Scotty gets to drink and talk in a phony accent, and so on. It's all well-done stuff, it passed a couple of hours very pleasantly for me, it will likely do the same for anyone else.
But, it has all those plot holes. And it has that central problem with the characters. At the end of the day... it's not really Star Trek. Dammit.
Comments
Enterprise and Nemesis killed the Prime timeline. JJ Trek is pretty much the future of the franchise, unburdened with 40 or so years of canon built on the world's worst foundation (re: TOS) imaginable. Enjoy.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
uHASUhAUshUAshUAHSuAHSuHAS true story
The parts of the movie I didn't like was turning the Transwarp Beaming into a MacGuffin Device and them purposely rehashing Wrath of Khan.
This right here. All other arguments are invalid.
Ridiculous troll thread.
I've noticed that in most debates about anything people fail to be objective and resort to name calling. Someone can not like a film based on any number of reasons.
It's also ironic that you bemoan how awful TOS was but it has essentially just been updated with different actors, clothing and awful lighting effects.
Art, is a subjective thing. Pickling a cow foetus is considered as much art today as Michelangelo's David. There isn't so much of a right answer only an opinion on either side of the debate. Ad hominem arguments just weaken your position, as do unsubstantiated claims or poor workmanship.
Until JJ et al came along, no cameraman who wanted to keep his job would have a shot with Lens flare, it just wasn't the done thing as it was considered sloppy workmanship. Now it's all the rage and widely accepted.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
QFT...Exactly!
My character Tsin'xing
I still wish JJ hadn't gone back to that particular well, but I'm not about to dismiss the whole movie out of hand just because he did. I rank STID around the middle of the pack, 5th out of 12, in between Star Trek '09 and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. As a summer popcorn flick, it lived up to expectations. As an homage to TWOK it hit all the right notes, albeit maybe a little too well in some cases. To me the only thing about STID that really fell flat was Leonard Nimoy's throwaway cameo as Spock Prime. His scene at the end of the 2009 movie would have been a great way for Nimoy to go out, symbolically passing the torch to Zachary Quinto. Instead, Nimoy's Trek swan song may end up being a short, nondescript scene shoehorned into STID for no apparent purpose other than for the sake of doing so.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
You mean Insurrection right? Yes, of course you do. That movie barely qualified as a reasonable EPISODE of TNG let alone a movie.
On that note though, calling ST: ID the worst Trek movie is something of a hard sell in my opinion. Not that I am supporting JJ Trek in any fashion mind you but even still.
Nuff said.
WOW! Signed.
Kirk's Protege.
Only ever went to one convention in my life, and that was enough to keep me away (the stupid, stupid questions they kept asking the B5 cast were insulting). This kinda mass trolling from these people confirms it was the right decision to never return.
Riiiight...
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
The fans that voted FF higher just had pure spite in them. But hilarious nonetheless
How I Rank the Films:
(1) "Star Trek: Wrath of Khan"
(2) "Star Trek: First Contact"
(3) "Star Trek: The Voyager Home"
(4) "Star Trek: The Search for Spock"
(5) "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"
(6) "Star Trek: Generations"
(7) "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country"
(8) "Star Trek: The Final Frontier"
(9) "Star Trek: Insurrection"
(10) "Star Trek: Nemesis"
(100) "Star Trek: 2009"
(101) "Star Trek: Into the Darkness"
I am not a Star Trek hater. I have all the movies on DVD and all the shows on DVD including The Animated Series. I have a lot of old Star Trek games. Saying my view on Star Trek The Motion Picture is commonly expressed by Star Trek haters and I am clueless about Star Trek is insulting and something I don't take kindly.
Maybe you should not throw around insults and tell people they are clueless because they find something boring.
And definitely not because of the incongruous costume design or molasses-in-January pacing?
" one guy took the mic to say these reboots shouldn't even be considered for a list of 'Star Trek' movies.? and yet they ranked Galaxy Quest,a spoof, above some the original series movies ?? Nitwits
We still live!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaa! We live and we will conquer!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!
-Roach, when asked about Klingon extinction!
heh indeed.. TMP seemed more like the director and vfx guys were in orgasmic bliss through out.. Way too long shots of the ships (both the Klingon ones and the E) with Shatner in a stupid expression as hes looking at a green screen. It was basically a one hour episode stretched to fit a movie format nothing else.
We still live!!!!! Hahahahahahahahaa! We live and we will conquer!!!!! Hahahahahaaha!
-Roach, when asked about Klingon extinction!
I rellay like the actors of the new ST movies. I think they are doing the best considering the script. But they don't have time to evolve. Its always hysteria, explosions, dead people, superdrama from the first minute to the last. But... in a boring, without any substance way.
Fancy but already forgotten.
Generations completely ignored three decades of character development just so they could manufacture a passing-of-the-torch moment to give an artificial sense of legitimacy to the new cast taking over the movie franchise.
And when Kelley and Nimoy smartly pulled out of the movie, the writers didn't even bother to change the dialogue. In an emergency, Chekov looks at two crewmen and says, "You and you. You're nurses. Come with me."
Huh? Seriously, Generations wasn't "a good action movie that didn't feel like Star Trek." It was a movie that blatantly disrespected the characters from the series that started it all.
When I saw Generations, I remember thinking, "Shame on you, Shatner, for doing this movie."
That coming from a person who doesn't like anything Trekkie or doesn't know anything about the background of the whole ST universe to me speaks volumes.
:rolleyes:
I've seen worse, like the one movie in which "Dracula" beat on his chest like a primate. Fortunately, I can't remember the name of that travesty.
I still count Final Frontier, Nemesis, are far worse films in the series.. I find it more on par with The Motionless Picture and Insurrection.
Galaxy Quest being on the list I can see why it is.. It is a spoof of Star Trek. A Rather good one at that. So ridiculing a list just on the basis for how well a spoof did in contrast to the newest ST film is well kinda bad. What I want to know was how big was the sample size of this survey? Would help in giving this weight.
Oh and don't get me started on Generations. Which I should add is a tad worse than ID.
What did I think? Well, a TOS purist like me ("I spit on your Voyager! I call down a thousand curses on your Enterprise!") shouldn't like it much, right? But, in fact, I did. For that matter, I more or less liked the first Abrams reboot film, too. OK, it's not classic Trek, but it's kind of fun, it's an inventive approach to the re-imagining of the series - whether or not it needs re-imagining is another question. But, both films entertained me, and that's enough to win my approval... up to a point, at least.
There's no question that "Into Darkness" looks good, for a start. In some ways, it's an improvement on the first JJ-Trek; it's not plagued with nearly as much flagrant scientific illiteracy, it doesn't show J.J. Abrams' weird obsession with destructive red globes (was he frightened by a snooker match as an infant?) and for most of the film, the characters' faces aren't obscured by lens flare. So, a step up from JJ-Trek 1. The production values are consistently high, there's a solid look about it, the future world it's portraying feels realistic and credible. There are good touches, like some of the 23rd-century London settings being easily recognizable.
The basic outlines of the plot: Jim Kirk runs himself into trouble on a primitive planet, violates the Prime Directive and winds up busted down to First Officer on the Enterprise, under the long-suffering Captain Pike. (I didn't even recognize Bruce Greenwood; my, he has aged.) However, a sinister figure called "John Harrison" (Benedict Cumberbatch, playing the superior being with eerie conviction) is setting up terrorist attacks on Starfleet, and before long Captain Pike's sufferings have come to a bullet-riddled end, and Kirk is off on a semi-official mission of retribution, pursuing "Harrison" to the Klingon homeworld, with the plausibly deniable blessing of Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) and the even less official companionship of the Admiral's daughter Carol (Alice Eve). Catching up with "Harrison", they discover his real identity, and also that Admiral Marcus has set them up to provoke open war with the Klingons. When Marcus comes after them in the Starfleet dreadnought, the USS Vengeance, Kirk and his crew have to team up with "Harrison" to defeat the rogue Admiral, then cope with the fallout of "Harrison"'s inevitable double-cross....
And it's all got plenty of action - possibly too much action; the lengthy final act of the movie involves a battle in space, Kirk and "Harrison" being fired across space to board the enemy ship, Kirk and Scotty scrambling through the bowels of the Enterprise as the ship tumbles out of control and the artificial gravity goes all wonky, the enemy ship crashing into San Francisco, and then Spock chasing "Harrison" down and having an interminable fist-fight with him on the back of a speeding vehicle. It all gets rather frenetic... which is a good thing, from the point of view of keeping things moving, and also distracting me from considering the plot holes until after the final credits have rolled. Because plot holes there are, and they are there in abundance.
For a start, the two primary antagonists - "Harrison" and Marcus - have, not so much a plan, or even a plan each, but several bits of plans that don't actually fit together. That Marcus, attempting to start a war with the Klinks, could draw on "Harrison"'s expertise in warfare, I can stomach; that "Harrison" would respond by going rogue, I could also believe. But, from then on, neither man seems to have a clear idea what he wants. "Harrison" is attempting to retrieve his fellow spoilers from Marcus's clutches, but his attack on Starfleet would have stood an excellent chance of killing Marcus - would have succeeded in that, were it not for Kirk - and, at this stage, Marcus (alive) is the only man who can give him what he wants. And Marcus then does give him what he wants, sending the spoilers off with an oblivious Kirk, for no reason at all that I can think of. (Going through with his official plan, to blow up "Harrison" on Kronos, would get him his war with the Klingons. For that matter, Kirk's own antics on the planet's surface would have much the same effect. Either way, there is no reason for Marcus to put the spoilers in jeopardy.) "Harrison"'s tactics thereafter - surrendering to Kirk and giving him the information he needs to unravel Marcus's plot - rather depend on a) Kirk not agreeing with Marcus (which is by no means a given), b) Marcus responding in exactly the way he does, and c) a certain faux-Scottish comic relief and deus ex machina having snuck aboard Marcus's ship to sabotage it before it can kill Kirk, "Harrison" and the spoilers all at once. OK, so everything does work out the way "Harrison" expects... but, with luck like that, he should be playing the tables in Vegas.
Talking of the faux-Scottish deus ex machina, his own purpose-built plot hole from the first movie shows up... "Harrison" uses his transwarp-transporter dodge to get from Earth to Kronos, rather forcibly reminding us that, in this universe, starships are actually completely obsolete. To further sabotage any future films in the setting, Doctor McCoy manages to use "Harrison"'s magic blood to devise a reliable and repeatable cure for, well, just about anything up to and including death. Expect that one to be glossed over in the next film, too. (Incidentally, McCoy's insistence that they take "Harrison" alive, for his magic blood, is a bit silly given that McCoy has full access to 72 spoilers, all of whom have the same magic blood. But I digress.)
In short: an awful lot of things in this movie happen Just Because. It's In The Script. This is, to be brutally frank, a flaw. And, I'm afraid, one of the things that happens Just Because... is central to the whole concept. And that's a problem.
See... the re-creation of the original series roles works fairly well in most cases. Karl Urban makes a convincing grouchy-but-loveable McCoy; Simon Pegg is more than decent as Scott, even if he is treated by the script as a mixture of comic relief and get-out-of-plot-hole-free card. Anton Yelchin's Chekhov is even more excitable and hapless than the original (and Walter Koenig's Chekhov was never over-endowed with hap in the first place). John Cho's Sulu is just sort of.... there, though, and Zoe Saldana's Uhura is just another generic omni-competent action girl. Zachary Quinto plays Spock pretty well, though with little of the original version's charm. But Chris Pine as Kirk, well -
- well, the characterization makes all kinds of sense. The idea is that when the time-lines diverged, in the first reboot, Jim Kirk's father was killed, and young Kirk grew up with no paternal authority figure, and consequently ran all kinds of wild. And this fits, and Pine plays it well, with twice Shatner's cockiness and a very small fraction of Shatner's assurance and moral authority. It makes sense.
What doesn't make sense, though, is why anyone should trust this young-hotshot version of Kirk with command of a starship. Or why Spock would like him. Or, for that matter, why he would like Spock. The two characters just don't gell.
But... it's Star Trek! And Captain Kirk has to be Captain of the Enterprise, and Spock has to be his first officer and his best friend! It's In The Script!
And so it is. And the script makes occasional efforts to justify it, but they just make the problem more obvious. Captain Pike says he "saw greatness" in Kirk, and all I think is, he'd have done better to see an optician. Kirk and Spock assure each other that they're friends (and Spock gets all jealous when Carol Marcus joins the team, especially when she gets on the shuttle and sits down between him and Kirk, oo I saw what you did there Abrams, very subtle.) But the idea that the two are best buds forever, when everything you actually see shows that they can't stand the sight of each other... it just doesn't work.
Still.... it's not, actually, a bad film. It's spectacular; Cumberbatch and Weller both make good villains (I can't shake the feeling that Cumberbatch, when he's playing a genetically augmented superior being, isn't actually acting). Several of the cast are clearly enjoying themselves, which is always good. There are shout-outs to the great originals; Spock gets to do his "needs of the many" speech and scream "John Harrison's real naaaaaaaaaaaaame!!!!", McCoy gets to insist on his profession, Scotty gets to drink and talk in a phony accent, and so on. It's all well-done stuff, it passed a couple of hours very pleasantly for me, it will likely do the same for anyone else.
But, it has all those plot holes. And it has that central problem with the characters. At the end of the day... it's not really Star Trek. Dammit.