is a worse fan than I first realized it when I saw the movie on the big screen back in May of '13. I talk about the '09 movie and Into Darkness here right after I saw STID. I'll copy and paste below my new thoughts on STID after watching it late last night:
I realize that with all the high reviews this movie has here (on Letterboxd), many will disagree with my opinion. That is OK with me; after all I am the A-hole who did not like such films as Fury Road, Gone Girl or The Lego Movie. It's not something I want to be known for, but I am being honest here. While I am frankly baffled by the high scores it has everyone (from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and the like) I am not afraid to be honest here and agree with those few people who recognize all the issues with this... including J.J. Abrams himself, who recently admitted that the script is atrocious and is an abomination, to paraphrase a bit.
Now, when it comes to this movie, I haven't seen it since I watched it on the big screen back in May of '13. I wasn't a big fan but when I originally reviewed it at the time I gave some short thoughts and rated it average. Watching it a second time, my original rating was me being too kind. If I was one of those people I'd do a spoiler-filled review where I'd list like 100 different things with this movie that make zero sense. But other people on other sites have done similar things, so I'll just try to explain without being too loquacious why I think this is a pretty bad motion picture.
Right away things left me flummoxed trying to explain it. I had completely forgotten about the stupidity of the Enterprise hiding in an ocean for no reason, then those memories came flooding back to me and I remembered how I thought it was dumb back in 2013. On that planet Nilbog-or whatever it was called-why exactly was Spock noting the Prime Directive of not interfering with the development of a primitive alien species as Kirk and Bones were running away from the natives... when Spock was trying to save those natives from being destroyed by a volcano? From there, the plot is a convoluted mess. Having a Byzantine story is OK with me and all; when you try to figure out why characters do certain things and how events in the plot happen and it all falls apart, that is when I say it's a convoluted mess.
Breaking it down will take way too long so I'll just say it's utter nonsense. Some things I can highlight include the gratuitous shot of Alice Eve in her underwear (it comes off as gross) and how Spock & Uhura have relationship problems that end up being a lame plot device. Then there's the character that Benedict Cumberbatch plays... to be honest, even with how The Force Awakens turned out, I still don't think too highly of J.J. Abrams. The whole “all my movies MUST have a dopey mystery angle” thing has always just been so stupid to me and it was stupid here. Although, him playing a certain character still leaves a bad taste in my mouth as what an insult it was as that take on the character pales in comparison to the awesome original. I mean, it doesn't seem like the same character at all. Then again, it can be argued that this doesn't really seem like a Star Trek picture. If that character had just been a random superman named, say, “Bob Smith”, it's still be a badly done villain. Before I saw it theatrically I unfortunately got spoiled not only about Cumberbatch's character but also how another character was a bad guy; while that still irks me, even if I wasn't spoiled I would feel the exact same way about this.
The worst part of this: how they allude and downright bastardize many famous moments from the franchise, and just do it badly. The way that they treat Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is especially insulting. Talk about ruining iconic moments, especially with an all time bad and stupid deus ex machina which basically means that no one can ever really die in the Star Trek universe. Just atrocious all around. The capable cast trying their best and the movie looking real nice visually can only do so much.
This is a great example of why modern big budget filmmaking is something that I tend to avoid as a lot of it is just too stupid, too insulting, too illogical to my intelligence to be enjoyable. I really hope that Star Trek Beyond (which I thankfully have not had spoiled at all; I barely even know what it's about, which is the way I prefer it) is better than this drivel.
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