Wow Kara's, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on our opinion of Star Trek. I enjoyed the reselling of the origin and once I got past them basically putting an Air Craft craftier under the command of  Luietenant jg it had the space operatic whimsy of the classic trek. What IS out there doesn't matter as long as the people IN HERE have your back. And with Quinto's erie comparison to Nimoy and the best Captain Doctor banter we've seen since the original, I was entertained.

I've seen the original Motion picture. You felt THAT was better than Abram's? I would not put it anywhere near the grand scale set by Wrath of Khan but it got the ball rolling for a new heh generation. Let's see where they journey next!

Fenngibbon wrote: "And Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Better than Temple of Doom."

Meh. Temple of Doom was decently scripted and generally coherent. I grant you that KCS provided some nice character development and ToD treated Indy more as a cardboard adventurer. I also grant you that ToD had Willie and Short Round, which DOES very nearly derail most of my statement here, especially in the case of Willie. But overall, there is something more frenetic and exotic about ToD that makes it more entertaining and exciting to me than KCS.

 Sorry Karas, while I agree the film isn't what the franchise has been made out to be the idea of what exactly the franchise is that has become rooted in Star Trek fans minds isn't reality either. While at times the series had complex (well, for TV purposes anyway) stories it also had more than its share of drek and things thrown in to try to either try to get in a broader audience (which is how TV shows survive) or just crap out an episode of the week and hope for better luck next time.

And I say this from the standpoint of someone who ownes hundreds of Star Trek books as wll  has Star Trek ships hanging from the ceiling among assorted other stuff from the show. While I like some of what the show brought it isn't like there was always some grander scheme a foot or some idealistic pure motives driving everyone (IDIC for example was created as a money scheme by Roddenberry). Pretending one flick is so much worse than some of the other stuff that happened in the series (space hippies, the animated series Roddenberry later decried, Shattner allowed to write a movie, Voyager) is kind of putting Star Trek on a pedestal it can't possibly live up to.

But no film is going to live up to a standard that the series never set but which has become kind of a mantra among fans about how incredible the series was in its ideas. Go watch the first 3 seasons of Next Gen (and I'd argue all 7 actually) or the original series with a critical eye and notice just how much of those series doesn't actually live up to the standard you are judging the film by because they have been built op over time to be something they are not. 

That doesn't make the film any better mind you but it is still light years ahead of Spock's Brain or space hippies.

Again, I won't take the excuse "But it was better than that other movie/TV episode" as an excuse for a bad film.  Yes, Spock's Brain was laughably bad.  Get over it.  Every TV show has a bad episode somewhere.  There were 79 episodes of ST:TOS.  You expected them all to be 10s?

Instead of whining "Well, it was better than Spock's Brain."  Why not ask, "Why wasn't it as good as City on the Edge of Forever?"  Why not ask "Why wasn't it as signifigant as Let That Be Your Last Battlefield or Devil in the Dark?"  Why not ask why Spock spent the whole movie acting like an overly emotional idiot or why Uhura spent the entire movie manipulating him by waiving her tail in his face, something neither characcter would ever do in TOS.  They both had more dignity.

Why not ask why the movie valued FX over scientific acuracy or included stupid pratfalls like Scotty being sucked through a tube in the engine room or Kirk having an allergic reaction and waving his swollen hands around like a Three Stooges movie.

Star Trek in all it's forms had a few bad episodes, I freely admit that.  But mostly it was thoughtful and reasonably scientificly accurate as the science was understood at the time the episodes were made (there have been a lot of advances in astronomy since 1969).

If what you wanted to see was a brainless action flick then Abrams' ST was sure to please.  The actors were good (with the script they were given) and the production values were off the charts.  But the script was nonsensical trash and if you wanted more than pretty explosions and sexy actors you were SOL.