That's a pretty mindless analysis.
Not really. I simply listed the most commonly argued of the film's faults. These have been brought up countless times here and elsewhere and have been debated ad nauseum. There wasn't a need to go into a further detail because it's really not relevant to the argument.
But for parallelism's sake, I'll acquiesce. One of the ST09 hater's biggest complaint is the Delta Vega sequence--or rather, how the probability of the whole thing requires a huge suspension of disbelief. Which, I admit, is a valid argument.
However, it isn't any more incredulous than the first act of TWOK.
Because there, before anything else, the audience has to accept planets just randomly explode. Okay, fine.
Next the audience has to accept the result of this explosion altered the orbit of the adjacent planet thus resulting in sidekicks' confusion.
However, an explosion would have
pushed the adjacent planet and not
pulled it. This theory is supplemented by the fact that said planet is transformed from an arboreal paradise to a desert wasteland. This would only happen if the planet is propelled closer to its sun.
Further more, a missing planet would leave a a substantial hole in the star chart. So anyone who comes along would plot a course to the sixth planet and count: "One, two, three, four, five, si.. Wait a minute. One, two, three, four, five, si.." A definite cause for alarm.
So the result can only be the audience has to accept that Token Black Guy and Goofy Russian Guy, at best, can't read a map and, at worst, can't count to six. Aside from being borderline offensive, it's already asking a lot of the audience and it hasn't even got to the good stuff yet.
Now the audience has to accept that a motley crew of "super humans" some how managed to survive 17+ years on that desert wasteland in a hollowed out cargo carrier without a single food or water source solely on the leader's "superior intellect" The may be super, but they're all still human. This can only suggest that, in the Star Trek universe superior intellect = Dumbledore.
But wait! One other form of life did manage to survive. It's some uber slug with the mystical power of brainwashing. It just so happens, it's
exactly what Superior Intellect Guy needs to advance his evil scheme. Then again, we are dealing with Dumbledore.
But whatever. We shut our brains off and move on. Fine. But how is it any different than accepting the fact nuKirk magically happens to run into oldSpock who leads him to nuScotty? It really isn't.
I can do the same silly check list for The Godfather
You're funny. I like you.
it's in the way it's done that a movie becomes great.
But the problem is TWOK is, artistically, so incredibly safe. It was as if Little Nicky took instruction strait out of the "How to direct a movie" edition of
Highlights magazine. Almost everything substantial he did in that film was borrowed from someplace else, even the dialog. This in and of itself is fine. The problem is, he didn't put anything of himself into it. It's very artistically flat.
Which is the very complaint you've made about ST09. At least Abrams
tried the lens flares. Now, you can argue that it ended up being and epic failure, but at least he tried to put his artistic mark (flair?) on it.
Never mind the fact that many of the other cinematic techniques you criticized him for using were ones he's recognized for making popular in the first place. I don't think that's fair at all especially considering Meyer isn't recognized for much of anything.
But the most important issue here is Meyer broke the golden rule of storytelling: He told us. He didn't show us.
For starters, most of the really important stuff happened off screen. And by important stuff, I mean the stuff that directly relates to Khan and his character traits. His "torturing" of the Genesis scientists for example. The audience is only made aware of his involvement after the fact via Terrell anecdotal evidence--who'd not been portrayed as the most reliable of sources, I might add. Therefore the audience is force to assume.
As such, Meyer is only "telling" us Khan is evil. He did not show us.
Furthermore, what he did show usually contradicted what he told us. For example:
Kirk Spock Chekhov Terrell: OMG Khan is like Sooooooooo smart. Like totally a super-duper-uber genius!
Khan: Herpa derp. Three dimensions? Herpa derp.
At least Abrams made an effort to show us a bit more about Nero or at least enough to supplement his (admittedly lesser) significance.
but in terms of an extremely thoughtful link between character and theme,
But the story's resolution completely contradicts the theme that had been building.
It's like you've go Ahab trolling along hunting his whale, he thinks he almost has it when suddenly Flipper jumps out of the water and knocks his ass off the boat leaving him to drown in the deep abyss.
ST09's theme was much simpler but in turn it was much more focused and complete and woven much more efficiently around the characters' arcs.
