@Taggerung:
I said trek films. You can't compare one movie to the entire series
Yes you can. The old films were. And they held up against them. The last Next Gen flik wasn't very good, but the ones before weren't awful.
And shouldn't you always strive for the VERY BEST the franchise has to offer? Shouldn't you want to match and exceed the high bar as much as possible?
Time travel plots are always weird and ask you to turn your brain off
Terminator
Doctor Who
A Christmas Carol
Back to the Future
The Time Machine
Futurama
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Planet of the Apes (1, 2 and 3!)
Superman
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Army of Darkness
Groundhog Day
12 Monkeys
At least 2 of the previous Star Trek films and a bunch of episodes
Donnie Darko
Austin Powers 2 and 3
Primer
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Men in Black 3
Looper
Being a timetravel plot does not for even half a second mean you have to be stupid and "turn off your brain". Comedy or serious, timetravel isn't an excuse to just go "oh well, whatever!"
The timetravel isn't even the issue, there's no problem with that whatsoever.
but it was a necessary device so they could free themselves from the continuity of the rest of the series.
That's fine. The needing a blank slate angle is perfectly acceptable, and given trek's history, there's no problem at all with using time travel to reset things and shake it all up. That was NEVER an issue.
The execution however, is.
The characters were more or less the same as their original versions which are almost cartoon characters of real people.
Bullshit.
The characters get PARODIED a fair amount because they're ingrained into pop culture, but they were all extremely developed and had a lot of depth. Especially with decades of revising to hone and draw upon. The new film gets to pick and choose the very best characterization, cherry pick all the best and enduring interesting parts from all the source material that came before for its new slate.
Aside from the time travel crap the plot was a fine introduction.
So Spock gets pissed off at Kirk and abandons him on an uninhabited planet to die… where it just so happens ancient Spock was hiding out? Kirk goes from rebellious academy drop out to Captain in 2 hours? Giant hands to bypass security? Magic red matter stuff thats never really explained? Gratuitous red shirt death just because thats the gag? Nero didn't just... warn his planet 130 years in advance about the impending Supernova? And I'm sure a whole bunch of other stuff I don't remember from 4 years ago that probably bothered me at the time.
The pacing was perfect. The action was entertaining.
If you say so.
Compared to other Star Trek films it was good. Easily better than III and V and it was WAY better than ALL the TNG movie.
3 wasn't bad it just fell between the two best ones. 5 had some of the best moments in the franchise despite the main idea of the plot being weak (its mocked to the point of being "the one you should just forget… but its NOT that bad.) 7 was passable as a bridging movie, everyone liked the Borg Next Gen movie at the time, and movie 9 wasn't bad in any way, it was just merely a long episode rather than a movie. The 10th one was the only truly bad one, mostly because it tried too hard to be Khan.
Was it as deep as it could have been? No. Are there plot holes? Yes. Are either of these things distracting enough to override the thrill and adventure of the film?
Yes.
Also, the characters were idiots, was the big thing.
Clearly this movie beat and raped your childhood
Yes, because I disliked a movie that means it must have raped me.
It's appeal to such a large group of people
Appealing to a wider base doesn't mean shit. Avatar made 2 billion dollars, the Transformers movies are making untold ammounts of money, Cars makes a billion dollars in merchandising, Jerry Springer ran for twenty years, and the Kardashians is one of the biggest things on tv. Dumbing down a franchise to have more explosions and more sex doesn't make it better. Hell, the Enterprise series did that and NOBODY liked it. (And original Trek had PLENTY of sex already)
Im sorry you won't get your slow paced trek film about weighty moral decisions and intergalactic politics or whatever is your side of the fanbase considers deeply offensive about this reboot.
Characterization. Being human and examining the human condition. Smart scripts. And YES, moral decisions! Less horrible speeches and cheezy dialogue and character choices that make no sense. And NO sex with farm animals jokes.