The final trailer for Star Trek hit the web today. Watch it, then read the rest of the blog. Resistance is futile.
Much of my disappointment with the announcement of Star Trek XI was in learning that it wasn't Star Trek XI. It's more appropriately Star Trek 0. A prequel dealing with Kirk's angst ridden youth that eventually led him to Starfleet? No! What happened to the idea of Tom Hanks being captain of the Enterprise years after The Next Generation crew logged their final voyage?
When taking on a franchise as vast as Star Trek, don't you think you'd want to set it in the future to avoid continuity hassles? Instead of that, JJ Abrams decided it was easier just to not give a shit and make the prequel without even trying to keep any sort of continuity. Blasphemy.
As we got closer to the film's release (which at the time was Dec 2008), more and more continuity errors and all around stupid crap began to surface. The major thing that stood out for me being the main villain, Nero, who is a Romulan...in a film dealing with young Kirk...when any Trek fan knows the Romulans made their first appearance in the episode "Balance of Terror." Why is the villain a Romulan when the film takes place many years before Starfleet encounters the freaking Romulans?! Did they do any research? Has Abrams even seen Star Trek?
As it turns out, no, he never really did watch the series. He even went on record saying, "I've never really been a fan of Star Trek." He wanted to make it more like Star Wars, more like something he'd like. I'd like to run him over with some sort of large construction vehicle. If more true fans were making these movies (i.e. Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings), then maybe we'd be seeing better movies.
But I'm getting off subject. In regards to continuity with the series, it was revealed that Star Trek takes place after Star Trek: Nemesis. Nero travels back in time (to where the bulk of the film takes place) and has somehow altered time by doing so. The above trailer had a revealing line of dialogue from Nero: "James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life." Ahhhh, so to cover your tracks, time has been altered and this Captain Kirk is not THE Captain Kirk, thus, this isn't really Star Trek.
I'm oddly okay with that. It's a bit of an easy out, but I prefer it to simply disregarding 40 years worth of Star Trek mythos. The bridge looks like an Apple store and the crew are a bunch of annoying twenty-somethings, but I can let out a sigh of relief. If it sucks, which is very likely, I can pretend it doesn't exist. After all, it's not really Star Trek.
