I will not support this blight on the Star Trek series. JJ Abrams is a travesty and destroyed an entire universe to make a buck.

How so?

I thought he made changes, sure, but for a franchise that's concerned with the future, you can't stay stuck in the past...

What changes bugged you?

Destroying Vulcan? I thought it was a clever move...it's an alternate universe, so the "Regular" Vulcans are fine, and it shows that these really WILL be new adventures, that they're going to take chances and let new things happen in Stark trek, rather than the same old techno-babble about inverse spatial tacheon pulses and knowing "Oh, all the main characters and planets will be OK, no way they'll kill THEM off." They killed off Spock in TWOK, the BEST Trek movie, to shake things up...and it worked! It gives the franchise new life, unpredictability, and shows that these WILL be new stories.

That it was action heavy, and not particularly cerebral? Fair enough...but a LOT of Trek stories from the TOS-era were really action/fun factor heavy...if The Trouble With Tribbles, 50 minutes of "Let's have fun with Klingons and little balls of fur that eat everything" is OK, why not "Let's have fun with 2 hours of getting to know the characters and having some fun space battles and explosions?" Star Trek's about thought AND adventure, after all...it's OK to go action-heavy once in a while, especially after the last film was so badly received, they NEEDED something to grab attention to revive Trek.

That the characters are different? Well, yeah, this is Kirk at like 25, not 30-something or so as he was on the show and then late 40s-50s as he was in the films...a younger Kirk means a rawer Kirk, so he has the confidence but not the polish and professionalism yet...who among us didn't do stupid things in their 20s? *Here I am NOT raising my hand...* ;) Bones is still Bones, younger but still ornery...Scotty we barely saw, so we can't say (though Simon Pegg was fun)...Uhura they may actually have IMPROVED, instead of just repeating the radio all the time she's actually DOING something now, that's a plus...Sulu's Sulu...Chekov's Chekov (bad accent and all, which is part of the character, so that's fine with me) and then Spock...and Quinto by even Nimoy's account was a great new, Young Spock, probably the strongest new Enterprise cast member, so if it's characters getting screwed up that's the "travesty"...how?

(Hell, Pike even still ended up in a wheelchair at the end!) ;)

Because the plot was rather silly in large plots, and science got anally raped? Again, true, but Trek warps--pun totally intended--science all the time anyway, and there were a lot of silly TOS episodes...I look at the 2009 film the way I would a pilot for a new TV/film series, and in any pilot you'll have bugs and things that are a bit goofy (just look at TOS' pilot...both the one with and without Kirk) but that lets you make better movies as you learn from all that?

What did he "destroy," exactly, of the Trek universe? (Aside from Vulcan, but again, it's an alternate reality, so I'm OK with that, shows at least it WILL be different and not that they're just going to repeat TOS over...and I like TOS, which is why I don't WANT them to repeat all those episodes again, in many regards, remaking a classic just won't work...which is probably the biggest danger for this film, because if Benedict Cumberbatch IS supposed to be Khan--well, they had a Latino playing that "Indian" character before, why not an Englishman, I guess--then redoing The Wrath of Khan might be a mistake, that film's just damn near perfect as far as Star Trek goes.)

So yeah--WHAT did they ruin that was so sacrosanct that, nearly 50 years or so since it began, is an absolute travesty to redo and reshape in Trek?

(As a final addendum...they redid some things for both Doctor Who and the new Sherlock BBC TV series when those came out, to update things and keep the material fresh...and Sherlock is spectacular, it's probably the best marriage of modern day updating and the original material, characters and threads from the books they could have pulled off, Jeremy Brett and Basil and a few others still own Classic Sherlock Holmes on TV/film but for an update, that was good--and most of the new DW is good, granted I didn't grow up with the old version, but I've watched it...I think they did a decent job...I think Matt Smith is an irritating Doctor and I can't wait until he has to regenerate so we can get either someone Tennant-like or Baker-like in there again or else someone who doesn't always seem like a little kid prancing around on the set play-acting he's Doctor Who...but I digress. Point is, THEY updated, and didn't do so while ruining things--for an example of THAT, try the last RDJ Sherlock Holmes movie, KILLING OFF IRENE ADLER...! >:( And even THAT would've been OK if it'd been a major part of the film and they'd spent a whole mystery building to that, but no, it's just a shock death in the beginning to kill off not only one of the best characters and actor/actresses in that film--whoever played Adler, I forget her name, was one of the closest to actually portraying the character she was supposed to portray, at least from what I saw in this film haven't seen Film #1--but did that and THEN gave Holmes a complete nobody as a female sidekick for the rest of the film...so we trade Irene Adler, THE Woman for Holmes, for an absolute nobody AND treat that death like it's nothing, now THAT is a travesty, dubmdell, at least they built up to and gave weight to the death of Vulcan, poor Irene Adler just got the shaft! >:( Not to mention that for playing the regular, classic, Victorian-era Sherlock Holmes, RDJ neither looks like him nor acts like him beyond the most superficial "be as eccentric as possible until you go off the deep end" way, and as that description hints at, he takes even the eccentricity of Holmes WAY too far...Jude Law wasn't convincing as Watson...the H/W=gay jokes were funny maybe the first or second time, by time ten it was grating...the actual actor for Moriarty wasn't terrible, but his plot was...it was nice to see Colonel Moran actually make an appearance in a big film version of Holmes, but while I could definitely buy Stephen Fry as Mycroft...Stephen Fry NAKED AS MYCROFT...OH...MY EYES!!!!!! :O ...Sorry, where was I?

Oh, right--THAT is how you make something a travesty:
1. Say you're doing the original but don't (JJ said his was an alternate version at least)
2. Stephen Fry Naked (sorry, Fry is awesome, but his naked butt on the big screen--no!)
3. Kill of main characters/"planets" with little reason and no weight
4. Don't have the actors convincing in their roles
5. Make the plot the focus AND make the plot utterly banal

Etc.)

alternate universe. haha shittiest sci-fi trick in the book.

anyway who is cumberbatch supposed to be? Q?

whatever.

^tl;dr version of that:

What, in particular, makes Star Trek 2009 a travesty of an adaptation set in an ALTERNATE reality (where things WILL be different by both logical and storytelling necessity)...

Vulcan getting blown up? I say that's OK, given the weight they give it and circumstances, it shows they'll take risks and make new stories, and anyway, the "original" Vulcan is just fine in the "original" Trek-iverse.

That the characters act differently? Again, the'yre in their 20s as opposed to their 30s and older, so they'll naturally be rawer and a bit different by virtue of being played by new actors...it's not as if they set this in the original universe and THEN made arbitrary and maddening changes to the character...unlike SOME certain Victorian England detective film adaptation in recent years I could mention...

That it was (mostly) all fun and action and not so cerebral? I ask again--if the fun factor for, say, The Trouble with Tribbles or swimming with the whales and "Nuclear Wessels" in Star Trek IV is OK, with those basically being for the fun factor and not really involved in a great intellectual question...why can't this film take that route as well, especially as they needed a film to appeal to the masses to restart a franchise that had come to be panned and rejected by many after the last film?

"anyway who is cumberbatch supposed to be? Q?"

I'd guess either Gary Mitchell--wearing a Starfleet uniform, and it'd make sense as that was the first adventure for Kirk in TOS, so it'd make sense a young Kirk here could also face that adversary, the timing is right--or, given his plan for "vengeance" and the fact it looks like Spock and Kirk are trapped on opposite sides of the glass there, like in Star Trek II, if it's not Gary Mitchell, it's probably...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnSnfiUI54

really, khan? hahahaha they are nothing alike

i mean who knows

anyway whatever. these movies aren't so hot if you ask me. real flashy, sure. attractive actors too. just none of that trekkiness.

^I'm not saying the first one was great...just "good."

That is, a good pilot episode, if you will--at least not the abomination dubmdell seems to think it is...

I'd rank the Trek films"

1. The Wrath of Khan (Best conflict, best villain, best battles, best climax...and Khan quotes Moby Dick while having Milton, Dante, AND Shakespeare on his bookcase! :D)

2. The Undiscovered Country (Great end to the original adventures of the TOS crew--resolution with the Klingons, Shakespeare quotes abound, and they fly off into the sunset)

3. First Contact (Some plot issues but the Picard vs. Borg dynamic on the big screen is so Ahab-like...add in the interesting Zephram Cochrane and meeting the Vulcans...)

4. The Voyage Home (Fitting, IV for the #4 slot...pretty silly, a probe trying to contact whales, but everyone from Kirk/Spock to Scotty/Bones to Chekov gets to shine here)

5. Star Trek 2009 (Definite plot problems and Nero was sadly underdeveloped, but I thought it was a decent if definitely flawed way to see a young, raw TOS crew begin)

6. The Search for Spock (A very "average" movie...ironically, it's not Spock coming back that's memorable, but Kirk hijacking and *sniff* blowing up the original Enterprise)

7. The Motion Picture (Has some great ideas, but the pace--5 minutes JUST to fly to the Enterprise?!--and the fact characters not named Kirk, Spock and Ilia are shafted hurts)

8. Nemesis (Again, had some good ideas in place, but a villain even MORE irrational than Nero, a botched death for Data, and more plot holes than 2009 and FC combined)

9. Insurrection (Bland, and...we side with 600 NON-natives who KICKED OTHERS OFF the planet, harming THEM, rather than use cure billions? The needs of the MANY...!!!)

10. Generations (So many plot holes it's like Swiss cheese, awful conflict, Data's made an ass of, the Picard/Kirk team-up lasts 10 minutes, & they kill Kirk off HORRIBLY!)

11. The Final Frontier (An awful villain, terrible plot holes, Shatner insults every character but his own--AND given that this film almost killed the series PERIOD--HORRENDOUS)

Well...that was a fun Trek-fest. :p

From what I have read, I thought it was Gary Mitchell

I think it's Gary Mitchell, too, the majority of evidence points to that...

And I think that's a good choice:

Makes sense time-wise (it was the first episode with Kirk in it, so it makes sense for this to be his first adventure with his crew all assembled now)...

Doing Khan, at least this time, might be a mistake (topping TWOK at all would be hard to top, doing it at this point...probably a better idea to use another Trek villain without all the expectations)...

It's someone in a Starfleet uniform and someone known to Kirk (both of which Gary Mitchell fits and Khan only fits #2 ignoring his wearing a uniform for a while in an episode, he wasn't IN Starfleet)...

There's a blonde woman in the trailer in a Blue Medical uniform (and the Gary Mitchell story has a love interest who is blonde and in a Blue Medical uniform, Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, and she's an important part of the story...and actually this blonde actress--I don't know her name--does bear a striking resemblance to her)...

And thus it's new (Cumberbatch's Gary Mitchell looks like a new twist on the character) and old (a classic character fans will know and newcomers) AND you can thus have the best of both worlds--

Take a classic story and character with very, very old effects and sets and costumes, update ALL that, and then add layers of depth to Gary Mitchell, Dehner, and Kirk in a 2-hour film that a 40-minute TV pilot wouldn't quite allow.

(Oh, and allow awesome explosions and, apparently, a ship--the Enterprise, or a like ship?--crashing into San Francisco bay!) ;)

Trekker passion on FULL display!

I. AM. NOT. ASHAMED. :D

So is it contractually obligated for all movies to the do the Inceptionesque BWAAAARNMMM nowadays? I'm surprised it wasn't in Lincoln.

I would think they should have done a movie fully set in space with an exploration story before having one set largely on Earth. We hardly know these new versions of the characters, so a movie that develops their relationships in the normal Star Trek setting seems like the thing to do. But this will probably still be really good like the last one.

I'd also like to say how proud of myself I was for not knowing who Gary Mitchell was. Looking him up online he seems like exactly the sort of ridiculous magic-in-space stuff that people like least about Star Trek. I hope he's not the bad guy, with his dumb boring name.

If it is Mitchell, it will be interesting to see how they knew each other in the alternate timeline where Kirk was never an Academy instructor.