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Regardless, I do believe that some consideration needs to be given a film's source material -- the belief that the filmmakers are better than the ideas they are borrowing infects far too many movies these days. "Star Trek" succumbs to that too easily, going so far as to use its source as window dressing for a work that thematically and dramatically has nothing at all to do with the franchise it claims to be part of.

The film follows bad boy James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), coerced and humiliated into signing up with Starfleet Academy because his father (Chris Hemsworth) was a legendary captain -- in fact, Kirk was born during an escape from the destruction of the ship that claimed his father's life. In official "Star Trek" lore, this apparently never happened and is the initial change that creates an alternate time stream -- and gives the filmmakers a "get out of jail free card" to ignore what has previously been established in the franchise.

Meanwhile, Nimoy's Future Spock side story is so full of holes, it's a wonder that the poor old guy doesn't slip and fall into one of them as he totters through the sets.

Defying all logic, Future Spock is willing to sacrifice a billion of his own people in order keep his existence a secret from his past self (Zachary Quinto), only to downplay the importance of this concern by the end of the film, when he introduces himself to his past counterpart with the excuse that "there are so few of us left."

The main point of the story is that cheating, juvenile delinquent, woman-using, dishonest, dishonorable and disrespectful jackass James T. Kirk must end up captain of the Enterprise and save the solar system with Spock at his side.

To accomplish this requires a series of impromptu military promotions and maneuvers that stretch disbelief -- Kirk somehow manages to gain command of the starship literally within a few hours of story time despite behavior that should inspire a court martial instead. Many of the characters have been transformed into dishonest shadows of their former selves. Engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg) gains his post through fraud -- one minute he is being reprimanded on an outpost planet, and the next he is the chief engineer of the Enterprise -- entirely because Future Spock finished an important math equation for him that he couldn't actually complete himself.

Kevin Thomas Riley wrote:Frankly I'm rather sick of the whole exploding planets thing in science fiction. They blew up Alderaan and suddenly a lot of planets on a lot of shows/movies had to go. As much as I enjoyed ENT season 3, I was always bothered by the Xindi "death stars". Not very original.