You know, if you don’t like the movie, that’s one thing.
Resenting elements of a movie suggests, um… well, a degree of emotional investment that exceeds moderation, to say the least.
I mean, you do have the choice of not watching it again, and not watching the sequels.
I res…er, am nervous about replies that contain “um”.
Actually I thought that was a rather mild way to express it. I wish Scotty had been more of the character he was in, for example, * Friday’s Child* I wish they weren’t children. I might go back on a matinee to see the tail number on that shuttle where Spock and Spock Prime are speaking. 
It was better than Spock’s Brain and not as enjoyable as The Wrath of Kahn.
Um…how’s that?
As a summer blockbuster, it was pretty good, but otherwise…meh. It looks great and has some nice nods to the source material, but it was too much of a Bruckheimer/Bay thing for my tastes. Who knew it was so noisy in deep space?
God help mankind if we’re still drinking Bud in 2387! 
Saw this earlier today. I should note up front so everyone knows where I am coming from that I haven’t seen any of the movies with the original crew in their entirety, and when I did see them I was probably 8 years old or so. I’ve only seen maybe four episodes of TOS. I watched DS9 every week during its run, and First Contact is in my opinion a freaking awesome movie. I’ve never seen any Voyager, Enterprise, and only spotty episodes of TNG. Without reading the rest of the thread:
It was terrible. Not because it was a terrible movie per-se, but because all of the advertising and reviews I had seen hyped it as being something it wasn’t: a prequel. I went in expecting to see the beginnings of the Enterprise crew. Instead, I was treated to the second most annoying plot device used in all of Star Trek: alternate time lines (Holodeck Gone Wild! being the first most annoying).
I just couldn’t force myself to care what happened to these characters, because they aren’t the ‘real’ crew. The real crew is happily plodding along in a parallel timeline where Vulcan still exists and Kirk grew up with his father. These knuckleheads are off forging their own timeline. Ok, fine, but I don’t care about their timeline any more than I care about that crazy timeline in which everyone calls Chief O’Brian ‘Smiley’ and Kira works with the Cardassians.
Another beef I had was with the casting of Spock. The actor didn’t do a bad job per se, but I spent the entire movie picturing him as Sylar from Heroes, and it really pulled me out of the mood. It might be just me, but for epic movies like this one I really need a fresh cast.
Anywho, the plot made no sense and I’m still confused as to why a simple Romulan mining ship is able to wipe out the entire Starfleet armada. I’ll leave it at that, I’m getting angry again.
Why were Pike and Uhura and McCoy in Iowa in the first place, anyway?
I was annoyed by the fact that the writers obviously knew nothing about the military, hadn’t bothered to learn anything about the military, and in fact seemed determined to publicly announce their utter disinterest in the military. Frankly, when Pike made Kirk the XO, I flashed on that Simpsons episode where the sub captain picks Homer as his stand-in. It works for comedy, not drama. And Kirk goes from third-year cadet, skips six ranks to become captain? Well, I guess I can’t be too surprised. These are the same guys who thought Wesley Crusher (with no Academy training) was qualified to steer the Enterprise-D. And Kirk almost blew the whole thing by shooting at a ship that already being pulled into a black hole instead of, duh, getting the heck outta there.
And, for that matter, Scotty’s been stuck on some outpost for six months, gets to the Enterprise, and immediately takes over as chief engineer? WTF?
I’m disappointed, for reasons that have nothing to to do with any particular loyalty for pre-reboot Trek. The Spock/Uhura thing was an interesting and unexpected development, I admit, though it undercuts Spock’s surprise at his father hooking up with an Earth woman when Spock himself had obviously done the same (missed opportunity - Uhura, trying to console Spock, could have said “Let me help,” or maybe she did and I missed it).
Spock has a moment of justifiable anger and then resigns? What the hell, dude? Take two minutes, calm down, and get back to work! I find it mind-boggling that anyone who witnessed Kirk’s obvious baiting would meekly follow his orders after that, especially since Kirk’s brilliant plan of action is to just charge in like an idiot agasint a far superior ship.
I did’t know beforehand Nimoy was in this movie (or at most, I think I heard he had a minor role) but the figure waving the torch at the big bug was so obviously him that I called it easily before he turned around. And where is this ice planet relative to Vulcan? It has to be close enough that Vulcan’s desctruction can be seen with the naked eye, so is it a moon of Vulcan? And why is Spock even on the ice planet? Wouldn’t the bad guy want to gloat? Why go to all the trouble to catch the guy and then just dump him somewhere?
It’s unclear where the final battle takes place, but my girlfriend had the impression that a black hole had just been created in the vicinity of Saturn, which would certainly screw up the solar system and possibly doom life on Earth even without the “red matter”. And about that, seriously, one drop is enough to waste a whole planet?
I was far more impressed by Kurtwood Smith’s turn as the captain of a time-travelling ship trying to fix things in a two-episode Voyager arc. The revenge motive of the Bana character makes no sense and is, I note, contrived in such a way that the bad guy seeks revenge for something the good guy had control over (“it’s your fault because you didn’t get there fast enough!” - what are you, six, and whining because mommy wasn’t there? How do you sustain such idiocy for 25 years?)
There was just way too much stupidity and ignorance in this movie, and its all about writing, character motivation, plot holes, and clichés like Kirk’s bad-boy rebel that plays by his own rules.
The shipyards are there. And it’s where the cadet shuttles took off from. Obviously there is a Star Fleet training center there.
All of that was dealt with in the film’s plot. Pike felt Kirk had the gravitas necessary to command.
You must have missed this, Chief Engineer Olson ended up being reduced to a rapidly expanding cloud of high energy plasma on the drill platform. Doesn’t it make sense to shift the skilled engineer to that position for the duration of the emergency? The crew was full of cadets, they specifically mentioned that they couldn’t do past Warp 3 without a chief engineer.
Spock is half human. It wouldn’t be beyond him to assume that he could be attracted to a human while his father might have coldly chosen his mother as a political ploy.
He was strangling someone. Also he realized that he was unbalanced, as elder Spock suggested.
The other option was allowing Earth to be destroyed.
Well duh.
I assume it is a moon.
He wanted Spock to live and know how he felt when his world was destroyed. Not killing him is kind of the point.
Spock jumped his small ship to warp and Nero followed after.
He assumed that Spock let Romulus die, since he dropped the black hole *after *Romulus was shattered. He also felt that Romulus should have been able to save itself, but instead they needed to rely on Spock to save it for them. By destroying the Federation there would be no check on the Romulan Empire and it would be strong and advanced enough to take care of themselves.
There are plot holes, but you have managed to miss them all.
[Fanboy shields down]
(This took so long that it’s already been done. But I think I make some legitimate points, so I’ll go ahead and post)
Well, it looked to me like a standard recruitment drive. And Pike was especially fond of Kirk, anyways. McCoy was running away from his wife, so he had to be where the recruitment was.
This makes sense, as Star Trek has went to great lengths to indicate that Starfleet is not military. They may use military names, but they are supposed to primarily be explorers.
Blame Pike. I guess he thought he was the best captain material of all the cadets onboard. (Remember, only Spock wasn’t a cadet.)
Nope. Not the same people at all. This Star Trek is “captained” by a completely different crew. And, anyways, piloting a ship isn’t really that hard in that time period. You type in a course heading, set a speed, and push a button.
Well, the ship had survived a black hole before. They wanted to make sure it was destroyed this time, and not sent back to an even earlier past.
Blame Spock Prime. He basically told Kirk he was the best engineer ever. So, of course, as soon as Kirk becomes Acting Captain, he puts Scotty in charge of that section.
Spock is surprised because he doesn’t think his father would ever do anything emotional. He sees his father as this impossibly great Vulcan. And Spock never actively pursues Uhura anyways. (And, yes, you missed it.)
Spock has always followed all regulations to a T. It’s not until Kirk makes him blow his top that Spock realizes that his grief is actually affecting his ability to command. It’s perfectly consistent with Spock’s character for him to bow out at that point.
Good for you. I was surprised, and I knew Nimoy was in the movie.
Nero dumped him there so he would have to watch the destruction of his home planet, without being able to do anything about it. If he’d kept him onboard, he would have had a chance to escape. Kind of the same reason why Spock booted Kirk off the ship.
Nope. They warp away from Saturn. It’s a preplanned ambush, so it likely took place somewhere where no one else could get hurt.
Why not? An omega particle (since you seem to know Voyager), is only a single molecule, and can take out an entire star cluster, if not a whole quadrant.
There’s no accounting for taste. Most Star Trek fans hated all of Voyager, including the episode you seem to like. (Granted, I like the episode you mentioned. But I like every episode.)
Already asked up thread. But it’s nice to see a legitimate point. I think they should have made it clear that the ship didn’t wait the entire 25 years. That’s the only way the lightning makes sense.
But Kirk has always been that. Sure, they overdo that aspect in the movie, but it makes sense that a younger Kirk would have been that way. Especially in the new timeline where he is raised without a father. His father followed the rules, and it got him killed.
Honestly, I didn’t set out to do a step by step rebuttal of Bryan Ekers’s post, but I did notice that at least some of the criticisms seemed uninformed at best. And once I got started, I couldn’t find a good place to snip, so I just went all the way.
Well, if I wanted to gloat at an enemy stranded within visual range of his (soon to be destroyed) home planet, I’d just carve my taunt into the planet’s crust with the mining laser. Nero just lacks imagination.
There were non-cadets aboard, in fact I recall shots of various extras who looked in their thirties and forties. And it’s not like this was a training cruise suddenly called on in a crisis (as in Star Trek II), it was a serious enough emergency that multiple starships were deployed from Earth. There were no experienced officers available - just Pike and Spock?
And “gravitas” minus experience gets people killed, unless the situation is so stacked in your favour that it looks like the exact opposite of the Kobayashi simulation. Kirk succeeds not with a bold plan, but with dumb luck by running into Spock-prime and Scotty and a crew made of jellyfish.
And what was the deal with that “drill”? It’s clearly not immune to energy weapons, so when the thing hovers over San Fransisco and starts blasting (letting the producers re-use all the cadet-costumed extras, whereas any other location would require different costumes) why doesn’t the future equivalent of a fighter plane take off and fry the stupid thing? Heck, why doesn’t someone break out the future equivalent of a .50 cal sniper rifle and just shoot it? Were the codes extracted from Pike some kind of “make Earth roll over and play dead” command?
Anyway, I wasn’t suggesting the Nero kill Spock, just keep him on Nero’s ship tied up facing a viewscreen to watch Vulcan go blooey. Why dump him on the ice planet where he could freeze or get eaten by Starship Troopers leftovers and you can’t even enjoy watching his reaction?
There was so much potential in this, but the more I think about it, the more the plot holes annoy me.
Sure, explorers… that hold battle simulations and have ranks and courts of inquiry and ships bristling with weapons. If these guys are not the military, then where is the military?
I stand by all my criticisms.
The chief engineer and chief medical officer died. Only cadets were left to choose from for 1st officer. Pike obviously really thought Kirk had the minerals.
He won because he teleported to Nero’s ship and got Spock aboard the Red Matter Warp Ship.
They chose SF because it’s the Federation’s headquarters. As for destroying the drill, I assume they suppressed defenses with their amazing blasty torpedos.
They gave him a parka and a torch. 
Pew Pew Pew lasers instead of continuous beams!
Yeah, and that makes no sense whatsoever. This Enterprise was supposed to be brand new (though calling it a “flagship” annoys me for the same reason it did when the Enterprise-D was called a flagship - clearly by people who don’t know what a flagship is) so where are all the officers waiting to get assigned to it? Pike’s “staff” consisted of… Spock? He hadn’t already picked department heads and whatnot?
And that’s only possible because he conveniently ran into Spock-prime who knew about “transwarp beaming” which, like red matter, was conjured out of nowhere for this movie.
I dind’t see any indication of that, nor any reason why it should be important.
Well, at this point you start delving into the realm of magic. V’Ger and the whale probe, both products of mind-bogglingly advanced alien supertech, similarly knocked down Earth’s defenses, somehow. A Romulan mining ship, albeit one of 121 years in the future, can do the same? Impressive.
Sopeaking of which, I have to admit that once the time-travel aspect of the plot was introduced, I started thinking the movie would end with a big “reset”. So much so, in fact, that the loss of Vulcan didn’t really matter to me because I figured they’d just bring it back anyway. I give the writers some respect for letting that stick (assuming it does through the next few movies).
Heck, why not throw in Mariette Hartley while you’re at it?
Yeah, I feel the same way… even if you can patch over the plot holes and the shitty writing with enough effort, that means it’s still shitty writing with plot holes.
I thought they picked San Francisco because it was A) Star Fleet HQ and B) it’s where the 4th movie was shot.
Another homage, albeit a geographical one.
Well, Nero was pulled into a black hole once before and that didn’t work out so well for the Federation, did it?
[Flight attendant’s voice]
“The captain has turned on the ‘roll over and play dead’ sign. Please do not do anything to the big scary beam drilling its way to the core of the Earth. However, running outside and gawking at it is permitted. You are all doomed. Have a nice day.”
[/Flight attendant’s voice]
Well, then, the Enterprise had the duty to chase him into the black hole and stop him before he wreaks havoc on the unsuspecting universe of the late 21st century.
I can live with the plot holes and the inconsistencies. What made the movie almost unwatchable for me was the quick cut editing. After 10 minutes I felt like Bart watching Battling Seizure Robots. I saw it last night and my brain still hurts this morning.
Why? He’d still be risking the ship and it probably wouldn’t work. Spock went into a black hole shortly after Nero and came out 25 years later than him. You really seem to be straining to find flaws in the movie when there are so many that are ripe for the picking.
You really seem to not know the definition of “straining”.