why should I be tolerant to him or his trailer trash movies? Shortly before his first movie he showed great dislike for our kind, he wanted to make Star Trek for the masses and encouraged the die hards to stay home, going as far as saying this isn't our star trek anymore. So I will not be tolerant, I'm more likly to go to the next sci fi convention hes at and throw fruit at him and if Pine is there at him as well.
Ooooh, so he should be hated for trying to expand the fandom? Face it bud, we are OLD. And growing older every year. Sure some of us might rope our friends or family into the fandom, but that's not a guarantee. And while I personally liked Nemesis(sure better than Insurrection), it did terrible at the box office. That goes to show that the population of Trekkies that will continually go to see these movies is shrinking, and shrinking fast. Without expanding the audience, soon Star Trek would belong to only the stereotypical nerds in their basements, slowly rotting away.
I have seen the 2009 film many times. I have also watched every movie and nearly every episode of the TV shows(was up to Season 3 of Enterprise when I lost my job and had to cancel Netflix). Was JJ's film a thinking man's movie? No, but, and let's be honest here, neither were The Wrath of Khan or First Contact. Both were action/sci-fi and both are considered among the best in the franchise. There are elements of both of those in Abrams' movie.
Is the film perfect? No. It could have used a few more bits in Spock Prime's flashback to show how the supernova that destroyed Romulus wasn't a standard run-of-the-mill supernova. It could've possibly been a bit better explained for the idiots in the audience that Nero was being held at a Klingon prison camp and subsequently escaped.
But is it really any different than some of the more action packed episodes of the original series? I say no. In fact, let's take a quick trip back. Do you remember WHY there were two different pilots of The Original Series? Because network executives felt "The Cage" was too cerebral for the audience. So Roddenberry wrote another pilot, removing the brooding Christopher Pike and replacing him with the younger, cockier, brasher James T.(R.) Kirk. Why did he do this? Why compromise his "vision"? Simple. He wanted to sell his show. He abandoned the cerebral plot-driven pilot and gave Jim Kirk something to shoot at, as well as removing Spock's emotions.
Star Trek 2009 didn't change the characters all that much. Jim Kirk was brash, young, and as of the movie, untempered. Dr. McCoy was irascible and had just went through a divorce. Spock was still struggling with his human half. And so on. The only real change was Chekov's age, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that maybe his parents were aboard the U.S.S. Kelvin and as a result of that close brush with death decided life was too short, got married earlier and had little Pavel a few years earlier. As for Spock/Uhura? The attraction was there in early episodes of the original series, at least on Uhura's side. The fact that, in this timeline, Spock remained as an instructor at the Academy since the Enterprise hadn't been completed yet merely allowed the attraction to actually develop. Sulu? Still a swashbuckling helmsman. Scotty? Still an irrepressible engineer with a sense of humor.
All Abrams did was speed up the action. And as for the "horrible" lens flares...those have been in Star Trek way before Abrams set foot at Paramount. For god's sakes, every torpedo ever fired(except for that crappy blurry torpedo the Klingons fired in STV) was a lens flare. The 2009 film reinvigorated a dying franchise and opened the door for new fans to actually ENJOY Star Trek. And I will say this to you JB2005. Nothing JJ Ever said told me, as a die-hard fan, "You're not going to like this." I saw the movie three times in the theaters. Once I went with my anti-Trek/pro-Wars sister. Another I went with some of my friends. And the third time alone. The third time, there was an older gentleman sitting a few seats away. As the film ended and Giachino's rendition of Courage's grand theme played, he turned to me and said something to this effect: "I've been a Star Trek fan since it first came on television. This is the best Star Trek film I've seen." Does enjoying Star Trek 2009 make me automatically dislike the rest of Star Trek? No. Yes, the films are geared for action. That's what films ARE. That's what they will always be. No one is going to pay upwards of 8 or 10 bucks to sit and watch a 2 hour debate over space travel physics. While I love the movies, I think Star Trek is at its best on TV, where the audience can sit back and relax and breathe. For a movie, it HAS to be a rush, it has to engage your senses, otherwise no one is going to recommend dropping the money to go see it.
That's my rant. A bit long, but hopefully people like candle can see where I'm coming from. Hopefully I haven't been rude or insulting, either. But I will say one last thing in conclusion here, and then we should get back on topic for Star WARS and leave the Trek debate to other parts of the forum. I loved the new movie, and excited for the second, and I'm not the only Star Trek fan who is. So I ask of you naysayers...what makes YOU right, and what makes US wrong?
