Pretty much like all modern adaptations of classic 60s TV shows to the big screen. They take a nimble, fast moving, witty and dramatic work and turn it into a hoary, long winded and lugubrious dirge. cf. Batman.

I'm thinking from what I have read they should have just dived into a new TV series after the 2009 movie and treat the original characters as an ensemble cast like they did with TNG.

But if they are going down "rehash-road" the next movie should be Kirk vs. BORG

Hrm, wouldn't it be a GOOD thing that it avoids all the Star Wars-like "adventure" and get back to the more cerebral Star Trek-ness? I suppose I'll see it and figure that out for myself. The lack of decent role for Uhura makes me sad, as always.

@3, I stand by my claim that they should have given Uhura her own series back in the 80's with Nichelle Nickles kicking ass in her strong sexy way. Kirk, Picard scary? Whatever...Uhura pissed off at you? HOLY FUCKING SHIT WATCH OUT!!!

It would have been far more enjoyable if it had absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek, and especially if it had nothing to do with The Wrath of Khan. But instead it feels like a bad cover version of an awesome song - they hit all the same notes (Spock saying "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" and most of the other famous parts of the original Star Trek II) but it lacks feeling. I enjoyed it whenever it was trying to be a straight-up scifi action movie, but each time they tried to remind the audience that this was Star Trek, and especially whenever they made references to The Wrath of Khan, it just made me wish I was watching the originals.

For what it's worth, I disagree with Paul on the 3D. It's more than decent. It made a lot of the action sequences truly exhilarating.

@4: Every episode, a variation on her sexydance from the Final Frontier.

Oh, @7, you HAD to go there, didn't you?

@1 You're just trolling for troll's sake now, aren't you?

@7, she was the only character that had a decent line in that entire movie.

But I was thinking more of Uhura from the mirror universe episode or the Search for Spock "This isn't reality, this is fantasy! Now get into the closet!"

@10 even better: Sulu's "Don't call me Tiny."

@8: Hey, the Plinkett commentary made that movie so much more tolerable on rewatch.

So in other words, the crew is stuck on the island defending it, and sometimes they're pushing a button in the hatch.

Well another installment of J.J.Abrams “Star Trek “ this one called “ into Darkness” is now in theaters
These films I will remind you are being done by a man who admits “I was not a fan of Star Trek. “
I mean if your going to do a film based after a T. V. show who better to get then someone who “hated” the show, RIGHT?
After all he only destroyed Vulcan in the first film how bad can he screw this one up
Well as most of you who have not been in a coma the last ten years know that old J. J. likes a lot of explosions and guns being fired at random targets in most of what he does
After all why use your mind and think your way out of a situation when you can blow something up
Isn’t that what good old Gene Rodenberry was trying to tell us in Star Trek
That people are still just cavemen at heart ruled by the instinct of if you can’t sleep with it you kill it
That humanity has no hope of overcoming the killing vile creatures we are
We are destined to just build the biggest weapon ever built and then annihilate ourselves
No
He had another vision one that these films do not project
One that says we can over come the darkness
That our minds are what set us apart from the rest of the animals here on Earth
We have the capacity to grow beyond the need to kill and destroy and screw every thing we see
But Mr. J.J. doesn’t share that vision so he has made another movie to please the public that is the bread and butter of the industry right now
Those that check there brains at the ticket counter that are walking in to see Star Trek that is Star Trek, in name only

Did Saldana suck, or did what they did with the character suck? (I thought she was okay, though nothing special in the earlier one.)

But the first of the rebooted films was all about marginalized women. The reason any of the women characters were there (Kirk's mother, Spock's mother, Uhura) was to support or motivate the male characters: Kirk had to be born, Spock had to be given a sad, and Spock had to be given a reason to go on. Kind of surprising, since Lost had such strong female characters.

In interviews, the director said he didn't watch Star Trek as a kid cause he "didn't get it", just not able to watch it.

Hence, the resulting movie is really an action-adventure film redone with a fancy Star Trek brand.

Abrams simply isn't a visionary like Roddenberry. You see, he's a corporate cash house that always delivers what the masses want to see right now and never deviates from that formula. Sure it makes money but it isn't memorable beyond the weekend of it's release.

Roddenberry (or even Steve Jobs) saw beyond that corporate formula and gave the audience something they didn't even know they would like. (Guess what, they found that they DID like what they offered)

And yeah, visionaries get it wrong a great deal of the time (Jobs stint while he was away from Apple or all the other TV stuff Roddenberry did that wasn't Star Trek). But the times they got it right are the times that matter.

I read a plot synopsis since I was sick of Abrams' blatant lies about Cumberbatch's character and wanted a definitive answer, and, as far as I can tell, that plot line is a heap of trash.

It isn't just that Abrams is shitting on the franchise or SPOILER (but who fucking cares, really?) that he cast the whitest white guy in Whiteville as a Central Asian dictator, it's also that the plot is fucking awful regardless of what the franchise is supposed to stand for.

Lindelof shouldn't be allowed to write anything ever again.

I've said it before - since 2009, actually - but I would absolutely love to watch a new Star Trek movie, and I would be ecstatic to watch a JJ Abrams adaptation of the Mass Effect games in theaters, but I will definitely not watch a JJ Abrams Mass Effect movie wearing the gutted carcass of Star Trek as a costume.

I enjoyed it. Any re-boot would surely suffer from too much reverence for Rodenberry's vision, and Abrams wisely steers well clear of that, making it his own. The cast is great (esp. Pegg and Quinto), the action is well-paced and not action movie stupid, and the storyline is relevant to modern events (much like TOS often was) without beating you over the head about it (*cough*Battlestar Galactica*cough*).

The lens flare thing is getting really out of control, though. And yes, Saldana/Uhura got shafted...this was a spectacular failure of the Bechdel test.