Abrams isn't a Trekkie, but I felt like at the bottom of it was somebody making a movie he wanted to make, that he enjoyed making, taking a few chances here and there, and making something that he thought I would like, with an on-screen ensemble with some decent charisma.
Eh. Kinda feels like how the Star Wars prequels were retrospectively 'redeemed' by how shitty the nu Wars movies were. (And the prequels weren't good movies, but the last two were a lot more entertaining than either of the JJ Treks)
JJ Abrams is a hack fraud whose undoubted talent on the small screen (he's no Vince Gilligan but Lost was good until it ran out of tantalizing mysteries and character flashbacks worth caring about) never translated to motion pictures. Star Track 2009 was a minimum viable product movie. It was reasonably entertaining content, slickly delivered for a younger and broader audience. But also dumb, generic and forgettable, like a Fast and Furious movie. Would've served as an acceptable introduction to the new franchise if a better director and writers had then taken over instead of the (awful) sequel we got. And the exact same thing happened with his Wars reboot, tho it's not his fault Rian Johnson exists.
I didn't dislike it, but there wasn't much charisma on screen and the cast weren't to blame. Pine, Sylar, Saldana, Pegg and Urban are watchable actors, but spent most of the movie running or doing big dumb EMOTIONS on each other, if you could see them at all behind the obnoxious migraine lensflares that made it look like an Eastern European techno music vid from 1999. Scotty was comic relief in the TOS movies, so they went with that approach in the JJverse. Unfortunately Pegg's Scotty was more cringe than funny- probably the script's fault, but then his wide-eyed over-caffeinated mugging hasn't been funny since Shaun of the Dead (2004). Hot Fuzz was great, but he played the straight man there.
The plot was retarded, the bad guy was boring (Eric Banana is a sleep aid pretending to be a movie star), and Real Spock showing up to deliver lame exposition and some of the dumbest science in Trek just reminded me that The Voyage Home was so much better.
But I'll agree with this: JJ didn't seem to hate the audience. He just wanted to give them a fun, Star Trek shaped pew-pew space adventure with callbacks to the original IP (Sulu's sword! The redshirt dies first!) Definitely cynical - his Trek and Wars efforts seemed like the kind of products studio bosses wanted him to make to please focus groups and sell toys, and JJ seems like the kind of guy who'll do anything for an honest paycheck without worrying about stuff like 'artistic vision', 'creativity' or 'good storytelling' - but not malicious.
