Ok, I swore I wasn't going to do this, because it's not like it's going to make any difference at all, but I'm just going to try one time.
Sci - unfortunately, saying "we like seeing Kirk on the ship enough to forgive the stupid" is just playing into April's narrative. He sees that and thinks "this guy is so dumb he'll watch it no matter how bad it is." Obviously he's wrong, but I'm saying it's not an argument he'll go for. So let me try one.
The movie was smarter than you think it was, April. When analyzing entertainment, it's important to look beneath the surface, and see what it's really saying. "Wait", you say, "but that's my whole point - there's nothing beneath the surface!" But no. The surface of TOS was its moral debates and so-called "deeper meanings". Never has a show worn more on its sleeve its desire to be Important, and Ask Important Questions. TOS was, at times directly at the camera, about Making The Audience See The Error Of Their Ways. Quite frankly, as often as it was enlightening, it was patronizing.
I contend that the actual deeper meanings and morality of TOS, though, are actually quite simple - "whatever we face, we can fix it, through the power of friendship and optimism." I honestly contend that TOS was never saying anything more than that, except in Special Issue episodes where it stared at the camera and informed us that Vietnam was wrong. It wasn't trying to be morally ambiguous or complicated, it was not trying to make us think. It was, in an often insanely on-the-nose way, pointing out the obvious.
Of course, there were exceptions, like the oft-quoted City on the Edge of Forever. Which was one out of 79 episodes. Give Orci and Kurtzman 78 more movies, and you'd get the same thing. I still say, outside of a tiny handful of examples, that you'd have a hard time calling TOS subtle, and sure as hell not a one of the movies was subtle.
But the new movie? The new movie was subtle. It apparently flew right over your head. You were expecting a movie to stare right at you and tell you to save the whales, but instead, it went around you.
Think about where we've been the last 8 years. Think about the rhetoric of fear and hatred that's been coming from the people in charge, and continues to come from the bitter dregs of the people that used to be in charge. Think of the videos of people in rural kansas genuinely fearing that the terrorists might attack their town, and thinking they'd probably go for the Wal-Mart. Think of how many of us knew someone in the towers on 9/11, and how it affected the nation's thinking for so long.
Now, tell me - what's the first thing you see in this movie? A middle-eastern captain die bravely. And what's the major focus of the plot? An enormous act of terrorism committed by someone absolutely insane, an epic tragedy... that we get over. And we go on. And we still make this future an optimistic place. We deal with the death of the loved one we knew in the attack, we have our freak out, but we get over it, act professionally, work together, and win.
Sci-fi, for 8 years, has told us that the world is a scary fearful place where terrorists are just like us (nuBSG, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis, Revenge Of The Sith, etc, etc.) And that's a point worth making. But Abramstrek was a giant, cultural kick to the pants for the entire sci-fi genre, to me basically saying "get over it". It's time to get back to imagining an optimistic future, instead of wallowing in self-pity. "Whatever we face, we can fix it, through the power of friendship and optimism."
And if we could invent incredibly ridiculous time-travel, and have Scotty act bizarrely and recklessly out of character ("who knows he didn't invent the thing?") in order to make a Save The Whales movie entertaining, we can sure as hell allow one unrealistic promotion to make this entertaining.
Don't assume every movie with flashy effects is stupid. That would just be Avatar.
(I apologize for continuing to derail the thread. As I said, I'm only doing this once.)
