Re: Would you really care if Star Trek was rebooted anew from now forw
Hmm, I think that if it stays true to the spirit of TOS, ie, presenting an optimistic future and the characters we know and love with all their core personality traits intact, then it will be Star Trek. Everything that I've read from people who've seen the movie seems to suggest that it will be. The James Bond franchise is still going strong today after having periodically reinvented itself while keeping the core of what makes it work. Likewise Doctor Who has done the same with its central character, albeit within the same continuity.
And TREK could have too. Just because a show or movie franchise has the same "spirit" as STAR TREK doesn't mean it IS truly STAR TREK.
I'll make a point in a moment that may clarify what I mean.
We still have that Star Trek. It's still there in the form of five live-action TV series, one animated series and ten movies, all readily available on DVD and continuing to boldly go around and around in reruns, not to mention countless Tie-in novels and comic books. The men in suits can never take that away.
The point was we'd have no more of the original continuity. It'd be gone forever, shunted off into a "second class" status, the new continuity being given priority. As said, I like what we had. Why do we have to lose it? If a script is written carefully enough and sets designed carefully enough, we can have new "TOS" Trek, without violating existing continuity in any significant way. Look at the uniforms. Essentially no difference.
Look at the re-done set for that silly Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial. Not exactly the same, better looking consoles, displays, but unmistakeably the TOS bridge. The iMac bridge we've seen isn't it.
If JJ had used something like the KFC bridge, it would have been better. If you have to change anything, don't make the differences glaringly obvious.
Yet he did just that.
Maybe. (See below.)
What is "real" Star Trek anyway? If real Star Trek means a camp and colourful fictional universe in which there was a Eugenics War in the 1990s and women of the 23rd Century aren't allowed to command ships, then "real" Star Trek is beyond dated. As lovely as TOS is, it doesn't talk to anyone outside the fanbase anymore, and if it is to survive then it needs to shake off the "nerdy" stigma and get back in touch with the zeitgeist.
Women commanding ships? Hey, Number One was Pike's second, and she's canon. Obviously, there were female commanders, and some of them certainly went on to become ship captains. Janice Lester was a madwoman whose babblings shouldn't be taken as meaning ANYTHING.
In later Kirk-era Trek, we even SAW women as ship captains. Nah. That's not even a point worth mentioning.
As for the Eugenics Wars, you aren't aware that the whole Khan situation has been cleverly explained in the novels?
Besides, we've long known that STAR TREK's Earth isn't ours. It's obviously to be taken as a parallel universe. For example, even at the very time the episodes were aired, did Gary Seven appear at a government space launch facility and try to mess with the launch? Was there a near nuclear disaster that day?
No.
That's been true from the start.
We don't need yet another parallel universe to replace the one we already have.
Star Trek's history isn't "dated". It's just a bit different. Has been from the start.
You could argue that there isn't a need to go back to the beginning in order to do that, but to the public at large, Star Trek is Kirk and Spock, and this movie is going to get their attention whereas another new crew in the 25th Century or whatever just wouldn't.
I would NEVER argue that we should never revisit Kirk and Spock in the younger days. I think NEW VOYAGES/PHASE II is just plain great, and this movie, in general, is more of the same. I just wish I could look at it and say "That's the same as I remember".
A while back someone posted pictures they'd done, a redesign of the Enterprise. I saw it and couldn't note any differences. Others could. That's a GREAT redesign, when it looks so much like the original, it may take scrutiny to tell the difference. The new uniforms are essentially the same. If the bridge and tech had also been only slightly changed, I'd be tickled pink. It'd still obviously be "our" Trek.
What JJ seems to have done (and since we haven't seen it yet, there's no telling what the look of the bridge really means, so we have to say "seems") is needlessly fix what wasn't truly broken. He could have done updates without truly "violating".
I wish he had.
Personally, I think it's time for a reboot. It seems to me that this is a reboot, whether we like it or not. Adhering to canon does not preclude it from being a reboot in that whichever way you look at it, this is a new cast on newly designed sets bringing something new to the table. Having Nimoy on board doesn't necessarily mean that he's playing the Spock we knew either; while on the one hand having him in the movie serves as a nice metaphorical passing of the torch, since we, the audience, know him as the Spock of old, on the other hand maybe we've been looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe Nimoy's playing an older version of Quinto's Spock as opposed to Quinto playing a younger version of Nimoy's.
A reboot means nothing from before is a given. The claim is still being made that this is part of the existing continuity.
That's not a reboot.
I'm willing to wait and see before saying it is or isn't, and I really think we'd all have to wait. As long as they're saying only the visual aspect has changed, seemingly meaning the stories themselves are still in place, then even then it's not truly a reboot.
A reboot totally ignores and denies the original.
Can we say for a certainty that's what's happening here? No. We've yet to see the film. If this film fails to make clear if it's a reboot or not,
I SHALL BOYCOT IT!!! 
