- No central arc at all. The stakes in the movie fluctuate, roughly, every fifteen minutes completely destroying any cohesion, and not building any tension for anything happening. The first film had the Romulans as a central threat, with dramatic buildup, and ultimately a climax. Here you get allusions to a major threat that is totally dropped (Klingons), and about twenty smaller threats that are addressed almost as quickly as they're introduced. CHECK OUT THIS NEW SHIP THATS TOTALLY GOING TO KICK YOUR SHIPS ASS OH WAIT YOU JUST BLEW ME UP
- Kahn is shoehorned in. Why the fuck does it matter that he's Kahn? They do literally nothing with this other than the trite "oh shit" moment. The entire film is resting on this referential pull (and it's only a reference because it's his name), and considering the first film was supposed to be for those not super familiar with Star Trek, that's quite the shift. Fuck, as far as they went with it, it might not even be the Kahn, just some other dude named Kahn.
- Kirk's arc from the first film is recreated, hastily, in the first twenty minutes of this film. YOURE A REBEL YOU WILL NEVER CAPTAIN A SHIP OH SHIT I GOT CAPTURED OR KILLED HERE CAPTAIN THIS SHIP
- No emotional stakes. Any character who dies, save for the captain toward the beginning of the film (and really this could even be argued for him), is made clear to be a villain and totally unlikable. Kirk should have just died. What the fuck was old Spock's line even supposed to allude to? "At great cost"? Well, I guess the new Star Trek dudes are totally way fucking better at their jobs than the old versions of them because it didn't cost them dick to kick Kahn's pasty ass.
- It's as though Lindelof never actually watched any of the Star Trek things he referenced in the movie. He saw a top ten best moments of Star Trek on VH1 or something, and just shoved all of that in there without narrative justification or context. THOSE FUZZY THINGS ARE IN A CLASSIC EPISODE PUT IT IN THE MOVIE
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