Mind elaborating on how you found those "disrespectful" of the material? Just curious. Granted I never watched the original series, but I'm a huge DS9 fan.
I thought the reboot movies did a fine job in making the IP accessible for the big audience, even though they might have been a little too flashy at points. I enjoyed them nonetheless. Guess I'm easy too.
Sure, but keep in mind that I'm a big Star Trek fan - and I have an emotional investment in the show, because I think it was special. I'm talking, primarily, about Star Trek TOS and TNG.
It ignored everything that I consider to be good about Star Trek. To me, Star Trek was about challenging our views of society - and all the best episodes dealt with interesting philosophical and moral dilemmas.
It took the dangers of technology seriously - but it also argued for a better future and tried to establish how we might make a better world for ourselves. It argued intelligently for technology - instead of stupidly against it, like almost all sci-fi tends to do.
That, in itself, is worthy of respect - as it's much harder than just making the future into yet another dystopian setting where everything has gone wrong. That's so easy to make people believe in.
Counter to what Lackblogger seems to think, I don't think it's impossible to understand what Roddenberry created - and how to treat it with respect and take it further.
It was disrespectful by simply ignoring the history of the show by creating a new timeline. A very convenient way of not having to care about the past.
If they actually did something interesting with that, it would have been better - but I have no doubt it was simply lazy writing and nothing more.
That said, it doesn't excuse the massive changes they made to the characters - as their personalities are exactly the same in "broad strokes", and they've simply changed them to fit their dreck.
They turned one of my favorite characters, Spock, into an emotional and irrational individual - which is 100% counter to his entire and extremely well-established persona.
It turned Scotty into a complete imbecile exclusively for farcical comic relief.
They turned Kirk into an obnoxious twat without the inspired brilliance the character is known for. He was bold and courageous, sure, but he was also quite charming and diplomatic when the situation called for it. They also picked an abysmal actor for the job.
The scripts have massive holes in them - and follow the modern Hollywood standard of idiot scripts full of the spectable.
Case in point: the introduction to Kirk's character is so counter to his profile and so excessively over-the-top that it makes me cringe. He's literally trying to commit suicide driving a car over a cliff - and he's basically just a kid. I won't even get into how the show establishes that he can't drive a car since he never drove one before.
The movie is full of extreme over-the-top moments like that, and don't get me started on the nauseating and manipulative start with the noble father sacrificing himself whilst talking to the mother over the speaker system.
The new movies are shallow action fests with absolutely nothing remotely challenging or cerebral about them.
What would have made more sense is to simply create a new crew and, perhaps, do something new without walking all over the past. That way, they could capitalize on the Star Trek label without disrespecting it.
But, no, they exploited the franchise and appealed to the masses while pretending to care about the fans instead.
Now, I'm not saying that all the other Star Trek movies are works of art, as they're clearly not. But at least most of them tried to do something interesting with the plot - and they were very respectful of the characters and the franchise.
But all of the above is just my opinion.
