I'm wondering if the film should have just been a straight reboot of the franchise rather than this whole "alternate timeline" thing. Would it have really made a difference to old school fans if they just treated this like a standard remake? In their effort to not wipe out the old continuity and keep TOS fans happy, they've left the film open to deeper scrutiny such as the state of technology during the Kelvin's era, Chekov being 17 while Kirk was a cadet (and an officer before Kirk) instead of 8, how so much could be changed by killing Kirk's dad early, blah blah blah. Everything that TOS fans (of which I've been for 42 years) enjoyed about the film would still be there. I don't those guys did themselves any favors by trying to keep it tied in.
Why? Because all of the nitpicks about character ages, technology and so on wouldn't be important. See, when I saw the film a second time, I liked it less because it didn't feel right. Because Abrams and his guys were telling me "Nero screwed up the timeline, but these are still the same people." It didn't fit, it felt forced. But treating this like Ron Moore treated Galactica made everything they chose to do fine with me. But then I saw it a third time last night and it clicked. I was in "remake" mode. Looking at it this way allowed me to swallow stuff which got lodged in my throat last time.
Did anyone else have similar reactions? Being an old geeky Trekkie, I actually found myself mouring the loss of the things erased by Nero until I just decided it was a remake and none of these characters went through those things. Obviously, according to the script, they did and this is just my mind playing tricks. But all of this made me think that making it a remake would have just been easier.
Why? Because all of the nitpicks about character ages, technology and so on wouldn't be important. See, when I saw the film a second time, I liked it less because it didn't feel right. Because Abrams and his guys were telling me "Nero screwed up the timeline, but these are still the same people." It didn't fit, it felt forced. But treating this like Ron Moore treated Galactica made everything they chose to do fine with me. But then I saw it a third time last night and it clicked. I was in "remake" mode. Looking at it this way allowed me to swallow stuff which got lodged in my throat last time.
Did anyone else have similar reactions? Being an old geeky Trekkie, I actually found myself mouring the loss of the things erased by Nero until I just decided it was a remake and none of these characters went through those things. Obviously, according to the script, they did and this is just my mind playing tricks. But all of this made me think that making it a remake would have just been easier.