The next one is a one-issue story about redshirts. It may not be "lighthearted" at all. The subsequent one is the origin of Scotty and Keenser's relationship. Since Keenser is a comic relief character in the 2009 movie, that one may well be lighter in tone, but not necessarily "filler". There have been a few powerful one-shot ST stories in comic form over the decades, including several of IDW's "Alien Spotlight" issues. He did and he did. And if the movie unfolded the way you suggest, you can guarantee we'd have had people here arguing that the producers missed a wonderful opportunity for Kirk and Spock to be more vengeful after the deaths of Amanda, many starships and billions of Vulcans. And you're never going to please everyone. (And neither am I.)
Kirk didn't try to save Nero. He made an offer and then decided to execute him. People that argue for Kirk and Spock to be more vengeful don't understand Star Trek. Perhaps Kirk-Prime should have killed the Gorn captain after all. I would image that you also believe that Kirk followed through on his promise to Maltz to kill him later in TSFS. There are ways to defeat someone other than killing them.
Who's arguing that? Nope. In fact, I have played Maltz in a post-ST III fan film, in which he was freed from his Vulcan prison cell... by Saavik. Maltz behind bars by Therin of Andor, on Flickr Free Maltz by Therin of Andor, on Flickr "The Klingon-English Dictionary" thanks Maltz for helping with translations. In her ST IV novelization, Vonda McIntyre suggests that Maltz suicided. In the first two "Genesis Wave" novels, Maltz survives into the 24th century. But JJ Abrams wasn't making that kind of movie for his first outing with ST. We don't know, yet, his plans for the sequel.
Of course I'm not "argu[ing] for Kirk and Spock to be more vengeful." I've said repeatedly that I'm not happy with that ending. But I'm not going to be childish about it either. I may not care for it, but I believe a case can be made that it wasn't as bad as it seemed. And it's really pretty naive to assume that the way Spock felt toward his own mother's murderer just a day or so after she died in front of him is somehow going to be typical of his overall moral stance toward violence in general for the rest of his life. Obviously that's a special case. And even if we think he was wrong to want vengeance, which I do, we should be able to sympathize with the reasons for that lapse. As Surak would say, "the cause was sufficient."
You suggested people would call for them to take vengeance. Spock would certainly have cause to want revenge on Nero. However,he was emotionally compromised and, he wasn't the one who made the decision. Kirk was. Spock could have been standing there screaming "Kill him! Kill him!" and it wouldn't have made a difference. The choice was up to Kirk. Compare Kirk's order to "Fire everything" at an enemy who was no longer a threat to the end of Batman Begins: Batman: I won't kill you...but I don't have to save you. Would that movie have been better if batman had pulled out a gun and shot Ra's? Would you look at the character the same way? Kirk's cocky grin when Spock tells him that mercy is not the way tells us a lot about Kirk. Instead of being a character who has grown we see that, at heart, he's still the bar brawler from three years earlier. He's closer to Mirror-Archer's approach to the Gorn, killing him instead of sparing his life.
Round and round and round we go. I said that if the movie unfolded the way you suggested, you can guarantee we'd have had people here arguing that the producers missed the opportunity for Kirk and Spock to be more vengeful after the deaths of Amanda, many starships and billions of Vulcans. (And Kirk's father.) And they would. That doesn't mean they "don't understand Star Trek", nor that I necessarily agree with them. These characters do have different life experiences. Their reactions may well be different. Different viewer interpretations, after only one film, are just as valid. We never saw a Spock Prime witness such traumatic events at a young age. We never saw a Kirk Prime grow up fatherless. The movie was not to your taste. Fine. Please don't bother with the sequel.
Elements of the movie were not to my taste. Apparently you require someone to fully accept the entirety of a movie or they cannot consider themselves a fan. Star Trek is not about killing. It's not about vengeance. It's not about revenge. It's about hope. It's about humanity growing up to be better than we are. About not giving in to our base emotions and our fears. You have no problem with Kirk killing Nero while he was helpless. You were cheering him. Hopefully Kirk will kill lots of people in the sequel so you can cheer some more. Me, I always hope that they can find another way. They don't always succeed but it's nice to see them try.
Personally I would just perfer people not complain about the same things over and over again from a movie that came out 3 years ago in a thread that isn't even about what their complaining about as if to pat themselves on the back for not liking the vile mainstream movie that doesn't play to their every whim about what they THINK Star Trek is about.
When did I say that? But not every character does this every time. We have seen all of the characters taking dark actions. McCoy - a doctor - having killed his own father. Kirk kicking a Klingon into a volcano. Worf assassinating the killer of his son's mother. Sisko thrusting the Romulans into the Dominion War. Janeway doing a deal with her future self to get home early. And so on. And if Kirk spared Nero... and he started his killing spree all over again...? He did. The offer was rejected. How is this different to kicking Kruge into the volcano? Nero caused more damage than Kruge.
Is there a risk of Nero killing again? Of course. Is there a chance he could be rehabilitated, say, like Garth of Izar? Yes. Should they take the risk? Yes, because as Kirk once said "Risk is our business". Kruge was actively trying to kill Kirk at the time. Nero was on a ship with a black hole forming INSIDE it. "Captain, the enemy ship is loosing power. They're shields are down. - Hail them now. - Aye. This is captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Your ship is compromised. You're too close to the singularity to survive without assistance which we are willing to provide." Nero was no longer a threat. Kruge was. Worf is not human. I don't hold him to a human standard. He reacted appropriately for his culture. He did violate Starfleet regulations and Picard called him on it. He didn't have him arrested. He did't throw him in the brig. Sisko was in the middle of a war and did something that obviously was very difficult for him. I didn't approve of his actions at the time and I still don't. Lying to get someone involved in a war lead to the Iraq war. If Sisko had no problem with what he did, why keep it secret? Because he knew what he did could blow up in his face and make the Romulans turn to the Dominion after all. It was a gamble based on desperation. What McCoy did for his father was to end his suffering. he did it out of love. Have you ever had to give the order to remove a loved one from medical support? I have. It stinks. It hurts. It's something that you think about EVERY day. At the time it felt like the right thing to do. It still does but there's always a nagging question in the back of your mind. What if the doctor was wrong? Imagine how it felt to be the one to have to call your parents and tell them that their daughter was dead. That's a memory I shall never be free of.
And yet Garth managed to kill more people after his incarceration. Exactly. How can you be so sure? He'd declared war, and became a casualty of that war. Exactly. He broke his Hippocratic Oath. And then, to make it seem even worse, a cure was found. I'm still not seeing much difference. You are criticizing ST 2009 when the Prime timeline has plenty of moral dilemmas and no-win scenarios of its own. And yet you seem convinced that neither Kirk nor Spock will have self-doubt about their actions. We haven't seen Part 2 yet.
I agree with both sides of the argument up to a point. Each view is valid because Trek has always been inconsistent. I enjoyed the movie immensely even though some elements (the long distance transporter being the biggest one for me) I found profoundly irritating. My personal view would be that Kirk offers assistance, Nero rejects, Nero (like Maltz) tries to take Enterprise down with him, the gravity of the singularity pulls his own weapons back and his own hatred destroys him. It makes sense and sends a more powerful message to the viewer. Actively wasting time at the edge of an expanding singularity was a poor tactical decision whether you approve of their actions or not. It makes it much harder for me to credit Kirk with the sense to be a captain at such a young age.
^Except, again, the first singularity Nero fell into threw him back into the past, where he was able to wreak havoc with his anachronistic technology. And this singularity was generated by the exact same technology. So how is it logical to assume this singularity would've killed him, rather than sending even further into the past where Earth and the other Federation planets would be defenseless against him? Kirk had to make sure that threat was neutralized. He couldn't take the risk that Nero would be sent further back in time, and had to prevent that by any means possible. He would've preferred to do it by rescuing Nero, but Nero took that option off the table. So really, he had only one option left when protecting the whole timeline was at stake. (And yes, I know the difference is that this time the singularity opened up directly around the ship, but it was a damn big ship, and enough of it could've survived intact to allow Nero to survive the trip and salvage the weapons he needed. After all, he was imprisoned in the 23rd century for 25 years while the Narada repaired itself. Time travelers tend to have plenty of time.)
^You can't know that, and neither could Kirk. Would you entrust the survival of the entire Federation to a guess?
Lol. I assume that's a tongue in cheek comment unless you've forgotten TOS and Star Treks I, II, III, IV, V, and VI? Kirk's entire career is founded on lucky guesses! Plus, while I'm talking about writer's choice rather than in character justification, we can also observe that: 1. Nero has more weapons and his weapons are way more powerful than Kirk's. 2. The gravity of a singularity powerful enough to prevent a ship from pulling away at maximum warp from a distance of a few thousand meters would crush and detonate a torpedo in a heartbeat, thus preventing Kirk's weapons from doing as much damage as they should. 3 Nero's own torpedoes would detonate close to his ship. If anything, Nero's own weapons would stand a greater chance of destroying the ship than Kirk's but it's sort of moot, since the writers would have taken care of that issue if they had decided to write the ending that way. Kirk wouldn't have to guess because Nero's ship would have been obliterated by his own hatred.
So, in Arena Kirk should have killed the Gorn and let the Metron destroy his ship because of the possibility that the Gorn might see mercy as weakness? Yhere was no mention by anyone that they thought Nero could survive going through the black hole. "Your ship is compromised. You're too close to the singularity to survive without assistance which we are willing to provide." Is Kirk simply making this up or should we assume that he's basing it on sensor information? If he's lying about this, is he also lying about the offer of assistance? "Just kidding! Fire everything!" There's a difference in how the ship enters the black hole, if the engines are operating, where the black hole is forming, how much red matter is used. Or are you saying that Vulcan wasn't destroyed but simply moved into the past? After all, it's even bigger than the Narada and the block hole was forming inside the planet, just like one was forming inside the ship. I'd say that Nero had about the same chance of surviving as Amanda did. What Kirk did was an execution of a helpless man. There was no indication that the Narada was even capable of charging or firing weapons. If they could, why weren't they?
On Romulan mining ships, everyone stops for tiffin. Hang on though - don't you suffer time dilation the closer you get to a singularity? Whoever said you cannae change the laws of physics? That dude was crazy!
Obviously the "red matter" singularities didn't behave anything like real singularities. Look -- what's in the film is what's in the film. You can use it as an excuse to whine and gripe and be perpetually negative... or you can use your imagination and try to find a constructive way to rationalize what we were given so that it isn't so bad. I don't see any point in wasting your energy on just complaining all the time. What does it gain you or anybody else? I'd rather take the constructive option. If you don't like something, don't just complain about it -- make it better.
Well, personally I'm not moaning and griping for the sake of it. I enjoyed the movie but I also really enjoy poking fun at the silliness of it all. And part of the problem with what we see on screen is that it leads us to the conclusion that maybe Kirk is not as fit for command as Pike seems to think he is - it really smacks of that episode of the Simpsons where Homer is put in charge of the submarine because the captain likes the cut of his jib and that was hilarious. He succeeds because the writers want him to, not because of any great aptitude. And I really don't see any way to rationalise or improve upon Kirk stumbling across Spock in a cave. There are so many things wrong with that scenario not even the Universe can fix it Even so, coming back to the comics, aside from some of the silliness that was already present in the original episodes, they are keeping the characters on a relatively even keel so far.