And as a general rule, I like a story that takes the time to explain what's going on. (Or at least explain enough to make it clear that the writers have thought through the logic of it all—something clearly not the case in this film.)
That might be simple preference; I'd rather leave some of the mystery in place. How can you enjoy a good story, if you cannot draw your own conclusions based on the few facts you've been given?
They might be the wrong conclusions, yes, but that doesn't mean that they're not entirely logical in your mind. You don't get all the answers in real life, thus to make a story believable you can't get all the answers there either, in my opinion. Besides, it's not about the final answer, it's about all those questions and little facts that lead up to that answer. (It's not about the destination, it's the journey that gets you there that counts.
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And the occasional standout episode like "Balance of Terror" aside, Trek was never really about action and battles. It was about science fiction, and the allegorical stories SF can tell, and most decent SF isn't battle-driven.
All right, I can agree with you on that; SF is not battle-driven. But battles do feature in a lot of it; most SciFi (and dare I say it even Star Trek) is not strictly SciFi (think about movies like A Space Oddesey or Contact or even E.T. -- those are pure SciFi imo) but also part 'Space Opera'.
There is a lot of Star Trek that did feature space battles of some sort. Of course, you can argue about how important those are to the main storyline, but my point is: In those cases were these (large or small) battles took place (quite a few), they were entirely unrealistic. At least, unrealistic in the sense of a battle as we, the audience, expect it.
Space battles can not be realistically shown on screen. Ships would be miles away from each other and indeed, those battles would be more like old Star Trek. But they would be unbelievably boring. So, we expect battles as we know them today: chaotic circumstances, lots of people yelling through each other and a Captain that has to try and get some sort of order out of all that chaos and still be able to decide on the right course of action. War might be ordered, individual battles aren't -- plans don't stick when the battle begins.
And that's my problem with the battle sequences in old Star Trek: If you have to have a battle sequence for whatever reason, then at least do it well. Make it as chaotic as possible to get a real sense of danger. You're not supposed to take some time out to get the larger picture. Everything happens too fast and all you care about is survival. In that sense, the battle sequences in the new Star Trek movie did accomplish what they were meant to do.
Okay. On this we can agree. I like Lost, for instance. Also pretty much everything Joss Whedon's ever done.
I just don't see anything at all in this movie that promises that kind of potential.
On a side note: I like Lost as well, at least, up until the 3rd season or so when things started to get silly. I might re-watch it all from the beginning, though.
However, Lost is a good example of the kind of storytelling that my first point is trying to illustrate: You're given a boatload of questions and most of them never really get answered. And the answers you do get, aren't spoonfed to you. You'll have to figure them out for yourself, based on clues you're given. Thats a good way to tell a story; it gets your brain working.
And while the new Star Trek movie didn't have a lot of time to get into that stuff (the whole 'get together' plot did take up more then half the movie, after all -- it needed to), in my eyes it did show potential:
It doesn't give you all the answers. Scenes evoke what they are supposed to evoke -- The Kelvin-battle was chaotic, the loss of Jim's mother was stomach-wrenching and the sense of excitement and wonder at the end was inspiring.
And, it had no reset button. Whatsoever.
That is the single most promising thing about this movie yet. No reset button means consequences. People, events, the universe, they will all be changed forever. It leaves story-threads dangling and it leaves the viewer wanting for more.
]Well, I don't think the mass audience is as dumb (or at least impatient) as Paramount seems to believe. If it really is, though, and if maximizing audience has to trump fidelity to the material, then frankly we're in a no-win scenario, because Trek designed to sell to that audience is no better than no Trek at all.
I agree: I don't think you can say Star Trek is designed for an audience that's dumb at all.
I do think you can say Star Trek is designed for a younger audience -- with a shorter attention span, perhaps -- that yearns for optimism, mysteries and a bright future just like the generation TOS catered to.
Yes, this movie could have had more substance. But that would have driven future fans away; they don't want to be bogged down with all that crap. They want to find it all out by themselves, not be spoon fed with it! Future fans that, now they've seen the movie, would like to see the next. And thus become the future us.
Some of them, 40 years from now, will even become those cranky people who bitch and moan that the 'New New Star Trek' isn't like today's Star Trek.
