Jeff Bond's review of the Star Trek movie:

Nitpickers will have a field day with some of the movie’s science, tech and logic issues. Questions such as ‘Is Delta Vega a moon or a planet’ and ‘is there anything a transporter can’t do’ will be clogging message boards for the next few years, and fans already resistant to the reboot may also wince at the amount of coincidence that drives the plot. You can make a strong case that this is intentional—that it’s the universe attempting to right itself and undo the damage Nero has done to the time stream. There’s a fascinating bridge scene with Spock theorizing about the effect of Nero’s actions on destiny itself, but just a little more lip service to the idea would help make Kirk’s rise from lowly (but promising) cadet to starship captain easier to swallow.

While many superhero films (and I’m convinced the currently popular superhero genre was an inspiration for the new Trek) make the mistake of focusing too much on their villains, Star Trek’s Nero is clearly a device to propel the plot and turn Trek’s universe upside down. And for those hardened dead-enders holding out the hope that the magic Star Trek Reset Button will erase this movie’s profound changes to canon, well—spoiler alert!—you’re out of luck. You’ll have to get used to Star Trek’s new canvas, but the changes made aren’t arbitrary ones—they deepen the characters, making them not only instantly relatable to Trek neophytes but, in my opinion, that much more fascinating if you’ve been absorbing the series from the beginning. The reboot removes the biggest curse of “prequilitis”—the total lack of suspense derived from knowing how history unfolds in these TV and movie franchises. That safety net is gone now and future Treks can use the familiarity and baggage of a whole universe of familiar characters but tell new and unpredictable stories about them.

So... in effect one film geek was able to get fan fiction turned into an official movie. And now they can do whatever they want with the characters. That's not spposed to be a reboot?

Not that the original "story" (the amalgamation of all that was canonical) did much more than to put into audiovisual form the secular humanist ideas of the creator and scriptwriters. (One could rgue as to how much unity there is to the "story.")

The universe is working to elevate Jim Kirk? There isn't a God, but there is an impersonal force...

Mr. Bond makes a point that I alluded to in this post, for the lack of the TOS movie franchise's success:

I’m old enough to remember the thrill of rushing out to see Star Trek – The Motion Picture in 1979 after years of anticipation—and coming away from it crushingly disappointed. Since then Star Trek films have been hit and miss, but even as I’ve enjoyed some of them there’s an acknowledgment that I have never gotten what I’ve wanted from these movies—because what I’ve wanted is to re-experience the thrill I got out of watching the wonderful character moments in episodes like “Journey to Babel” and “Amok Time”—while seeing the Trek characters in a MOVIE with the kind of scope, action and drama I was used to seeing from the post-Star Wars era. And as heretical as it is to say this, that was never possible while watching the original cast do their Trek movies. As much as I loved those people, as good as they still were at what they did, it required a frustrating act of faith to watch old men and women trying their best to fit into the uniforms and chairs they inhabited decades earlier. The movie series had to jump through hoops to keep poor Sulu sitting at the helm as an old man while Spock—a Vulcan with a lifespan of hundreds of years—looked 20 years older than everyone around him, his father included. Gallivanting around the universe is a game for the young, and what I wanted was to see those heroes again in their prime. That’s what struck me when I was watching this movie—that I was finally seeing what I wanted a Star Trek movie to be. This is the most emotionally involving Star Trek film in at least twenty years, and the first in an equally long time to leave you breathlessly anticipating the next chapter. I can’t wait to see where these characters boldly go, and I can only hope Abrams returns to direct. His work here is a quantum leap above his filmmaking in Mission Impossible III and shows him capable of handling epic scope, high-octane action, and humor all while pulling very strong performances out of his cast.

Living vicariously through fictional characters... instead of living life. The epic stories of old were meant to inspire and bind. But now we are just passive consumers, eager viewers of drama because our lives have no depth.

But: Is this also a problem with serial novels, like the Maturin-Aubrey series? Possibly. Can we not enjoy a story just as a story, as an escape from reality. We then come to the question of which is better--reading or viewing a movie or television show. Certainly, I think the reading of novels should be done in moderation as well, even if it is a better way to spend leisure than watching TV or movies. Other sorts of books are more important than recent fiction (for example, spiritual reading). Otherwise, too much reading of fiction can become a part of the consumerist mindset and reinforce isolation from one's neighbors, no?

(A shorter version of this post appears at Starstruck.)