While this may not quite technically be a plot
hole, since you can piece together a sequence of events (as some posters here have done), it definitely is a really mind-boggling series of contrivances and implausibilities. We're asked to believe:
- That a trained Starfleet officer on the Kelvin would describe a spacetime anomaly as a "lightning storm in space," a singularly unscientific and frankly awkward phrase that doesn't even really match the visuals
- That this casual phrase would be noted and prominently mentioned by Chris Pike when he wrote his dissertation about the event
- That a completely different person observing a spacetime anomaly in a completely different place 25 years later would describe it using that same unlikely phrase, as reported by Chekov
- That Chekov would bother to report this at all, despite the fact that it happened in the Neutral Zone, which is nowhere near their destination, the planet Vulcan
- That the similarity in phrasing would be noticed by a man who was busy being born at the time of the first event and who only read about it in the abovementioned dissertation (Kirk), but not remembered by the man who wrote that dissertation (Pike)
- That the two events thus described would actually turn out to be related (in a universe that we know is chock-full of spacetime anomalies)
- That Kirk would connect these similarly-phrased anomalies to a battle on the edge of Klingon space, which is in yet another unrelated location
- That by making these connections Kirk was able to prepare the Enterprise to face an impending threat, even though he was technically wrong as the second "storm" wasn't actually caused by the ship posing the threat (the Narada) but by OldSpock's arrival in the Jellyfish
(This is just one string of unexplained coincidences, of course. There are plenty of other unrelated but equally unlikely ones, such as:
- That Nero's crew was somehow able to calculate the exact time and place of OldSpock's arrival, despite the highly random nature of their mutual departure
- That Nero would drop off OldSpock within walking distance of a Federation outpost, rather than just having him watch the destruction from the Narada
- That Kirk was ejected from the Enterprise near that same outpost
- That Montgomery Scott was in that outpost
- That OldSpock happened to be carrying previously unknown technology that conveniently allowed Scott to use ordinary transporters to send himself and Kirk back to a ship in warp (seriously, wouldn't it have been simpler just to use the subspace radio in the outpost to, y'know, call the Enterprise and say "hey, we have crucial information that can help defeat the Narada"?)
- That Captain Pike happened to have personally memorized the subspace frequencies for Earth's "border protection grids"
- That Nero knew Pike would have this knowledge
...oh, hell, I could go on all night.)
I try not to think about it
Yeah, that would seem to be the approach this movie demands.
Yes.
You can always use your imaginations to fill some gaps that a filmmaker does not need to waste precious time on, on a 2 hour movie.
But that also kind of requires some good faith and not being bent on finding problems in everything.
I went into the theater in good faith, hoping to enjoy this film.
However, we're not just talking about "some gaps." We're talking about almost every major story beat being outrageously implausible.
And a two-hour movie provides plenty of time for writers to construct a story that
makes sense. That's not a waste of time, it's what they're being paid for. It's cheap and shoddy writing to leave that job to the audience, especially when the puzzle-pieces you give them fit together so badly.
Yes I meant vial. Just woke up...
