I was somewhat of a Star Trek fan in my youth: I watched The Next Generation pretty much all the time it was on – both new episodes and reruns – I watched DS9 and Voyager and I watched enough reruns of the original series, to the point where I probably saw a small majority of the episodes of that show. But what I feel I spent the most time on were the original six movies.

I’m not sure I quite know what changed; I know I’ve changed. I know what I like and dislike in films has totally changed. But I think it’s not just me. I think it’s the series. I think there has been a definite desire to modernize the films, and I think that was pretty obvious with the TNG movies. Maybe it was just me, but I felt the TNG movies to be significantly different from TNG the series itself.

And I think there has been another qualitative change in these new films, though I should note I didn’t see the original. (That was probably silly of me, and I’m sure many people will feel like I shouldn’t have seen this one first. I normally wouldn’t have, however my significant other was watching it so I figured I should.)

This film doesn’t feel like a Star Trek movie to me. It feels like a modern sci fi action film in Star Trek‘s clothes. There are numerous things that don’t feel right, such as the implausible relationship between Spock and Uhura.

But even though Star Trek always was soft science fiction, it feels like this is getting softer and softer. I had such a hard time accepting so much of this and it reminded me that, had I watched the TNG movies as an adult rather than as a teen, I probably would have really disliked them too, but probably not this much.

I just don’t think this does the old series justice. I think I will watch the original reboot anyway, to see if that is better, as people claim it is, but this just isn’t what I think of when I think of Star Trek. (And, though it is certainly well-paced, I don’t think it’s a great movie even without the issue of it not being true enough to the original series.)

5/10