I can't speak for him over specific decisions he made back then but i'll submit this; Paramount signed him with a script draft (IIRC, first of three) to analyze within a few months or less.

Drop your signature to this bottom line and THEN, make it worth something within reasonable direction scopes. Multiple contracts stipulate the conditions, i too haven't read any -- but Eric Bana also signed instead of Russell Crowe, etc.

Im not offended at all.  I find it humorous you take such offense at someone changing "your" original storyline.  You didnt lose anything, as you seem to like to say.  Your original storyline and original movies are still right there.  Probably literally right next to you...in the basement...next to your Facebook friend.  No one is gonna steal your Precious.

I just wanted to point out your sense of entitlement is misplaced.  Just because you and your Facebook friend are angry they didnt make Kirk walk around shirtless sexing up green aliens...oh wait, they did do that.  Just because they didnt rehash the same old story that everyone already knew, they should "fix" it for some old Trekkies?

And I'm well aware you arent the ONLY Trekkie.  I'm sure there's tens of thousands of you everywhere.  They vary from "just-barely-a-Trekkie", the ones who own DVD remastered collections of the old show all the way to full-fledged "diehard Trekkies".  You know the ones, they live in their mom's basement watching old re-runs of Boston Legal and Priceline commercials, dreaming of Shatner with his top off, reliving the glory days of that Star Trek convention they took first and last girlfriend to before she dumped him for making her wear Vulcan ears and hoping she would let him neck pinch her later that night (which she didnt).  Fact still remains, they might tell you the movie was made for Trekkies, but it wasnt.  I just dont understand what all the fussing is about...

I saw it, and being a major trekkie myself (own and have seen all seven seasons of Next Generation, and have four of the seven seasons of Voyager and the remaining three on order, also saw a lot of DS9 while it was on and quite a few of the original series when they reran on Scifi. Do not speak to me about the Enterprise series, though.) I loved it because it was AWESOME. The special effects were top notch, that's the kind of ommph you have to see in the theaters! done by Industrial Light and Magic, too- they did their first work with Star Wars: a New Hope. Ships felt big and explosions felt powerful!

I had a female friend with me who had never seen any star trek, and she found it plenty exiting as well, even though she didn't get all the fan service bits.

So, it's accesible to the new folks, and just plain awesome because dispite the fact is majorly screws with the timeline, it explains everything with time travel and fun! A fresh new start for Star Trek, perhaps?

Oh, and plot's not too bad either. very few wince-worthy moments in the script.

EDIT: I mean, it's not the first time they've screwed with time for the sake of the series. When they needed to end Voyager, they just had SPOILER Admiral Janeway come back in time and give them Borg-proof armor. You can't tell me that's not the same thing, it's just they didn't have episodes from the original timeline to replace.

EDIT EDIT: It helps to think of everything happening in sequence. They're not wiping out the history we already know, that history simply led up to a series of events that changed the past, and where the past diverges is where the next part begins. There was the original series, the Next Generation era, then the events of the movie, and everything that comes after will be next.

You wouldn't.

Dude, I am not a star trek fan and never saw any of those movies before
and I couldnt figure out ANYTHING from this move except the cheap plot where 1 pissed off guy
that want to kill everyone with a mining space craft that strangly enough got enough weapons on it
to take down a federal battle ship (since when mining ships got weapons?). 

This movie didnt explained anything about all the wierd aliens with thair 60's haircuts
and all the cheap humor like with the voice recognition...

Plus when the sun turned into super nove, the aliens went like WTF
but my question was, how stupid they must have been for not knowing that its about to happen?
even today in 2009 we know how to predict the death of a sun... 

And with the most boring end I EVER saw, like in those books they print for kids
where everyone live happy ever after...(even the commander that was tortured was so freaking healthy
that I was like 0.o and I hoped they will show some nasty shit with this bug in his mouth...) 

Maybe, just maybe the main villian MODIFIED his mining ship to have weapons.

Knowing about something does not mean that you can do something about it.

You must have a very odd idea of what a healthy person looks like. They didn't live happily ever after. Spock lost his mum and his homeworld.

Modified his ship? he is a freaking miner, I dont think he got the knowlage... or the money...
And as far as I undarstand, he went back in time BY EXCIDENT, so how come he managed to prepare himself?
And about the super nova... *cough* mass scale evacuation? *cough* 
And the fact Spock lost his mother didnt efected me at all as the movie spent only about 5 second
showing her, and with 0 information about her, so she is just some side figure that you see once or twise
and as far as I undarstand, Spock is emotionless so what dose he care? 

omg learn to type... or at least learn English.

GTFO
English is NOT my main language
and unlile you, I know 3 freaking languages which i can speak (writing and reading is a whole other thing) 

whats up with all the nubs that think the entire world have to know how to tipe in english cottectly?
what cant you like imbrase the idea that not all of us are americans? 

As a fan of Star Trek, I didn't even want them to return to TOS in the first place. Or TNG. Or  I wanted them to do something different. I just didn't want them to do something different and the same at the same time- like a prequel/overwrite story. I personally feel that TNG in some terms was a reboot. But it worked because it didn't overwrite anything, it just expanded. ENT was another attempt at this, and it was not so successful.

And the movie wasn't made for Trekkies, so I'm not sure why you are pretending people are saying it is (other than other Trekkies, for instance). Whoever made the point that they (Paramount) know Trekkies will probably go see the movie anyway are correct.

btw, the bit with the mining ship having weapons etc.

apparantly the back-story is explained in a small comicbook-series (somehow it merged with something the borg did or something like that) as well as how that supernova apparantly threatened the whole galaxy (wtf) and so on

you didnt undarstand right - (geek talk:) vulcans do have emotions but they mastered surpressing them (because a long time ago they all aparantly were in some state of roidrage and nearly killed each other) and now rely only on their logic. spock though is only half vulcan (and half human), so he has a much tougher time supressing them and is always in kind of a struggle.

well he had 25 years of waiting to do, i imagine there is at least something you can do in the meantime (but that's void anyway, since there is apparantly an explanation, it's simply not included in the movie)

wat?

thx for reminding me how bad voyager was...

Oops you made a mistake. English, Spanish, German, Mandarin. Yeah, that is more than you. And I don't go posting in languages I do not have a firm grasp on.

The problem is, is that I can not tell if you are being serious or are just joking around with us. Realize that many childish noob posters on forums write that way because they think they are cool. It is not, it is just hard to read; like brushing my teeth with a metal file. And before you go off and get upset again, why not just turn spell check on in your browser?

Man you guys are all very emotional about your Trek.

I'm 35 years old. I've been watching Trek as far as I can remember. I just love my History of Star trek. The best movie ever for me is Kahn and then it's Star trek 6. My best series is TNG. My very best captain id Picard.

Knowing all this I still liked the new movie. I am still struggling into accepting the new time line. But this is the only trek that's available to us and we should still find a way to enjoy it because frankly we won't get anything else.

We humans have always resisted change, well change is upon us right now... What we all knew of trek is now gone. Who is to say that in 10 years from now after 3 other movies we won't be putting some of these movies in our top 5 list of Trek. All I am saying is even if you are mad about how things turn out, give it a chance I would rather have a new timeline and new Star trek then only having my dvd collection with nothing new.

It's not so bad, and some of the things they put up in the movie was way cool. I just love how badass and intelligent Kirk is. To me he ressembles what he became. I hate having lost Vulcan though but hey...  such is life.

Just my opinion....

How do you know that he didn't have the money or know-how? Surely he had engineers on board his ship. He also had 25 years do make these modifications. Or maybe he got it modified on the black market.

The radiation from a single supernova can outshine an entire galaxy of 100 billion stars.  Mass scale evacuation can't do much against that. The evacuation ships would be destroyed. That supernova threatened the entire galaxy.

About these nitty-gritty details: who knows? who cares? its just a movie. You seem to take entertainment way too seriously.

If I really wanted to, I could bitch and moan about how poorly designed the red ice monster was to borrowing thorough ice. It wasn't camouflaged, but maybe its prey is blind. I don't really care about little things like these.

Dude, an advice, next time before you start fighting on "who got it bigger" and offending people
with your selfish words, try to look at yourself first, what did you get from this? ill tell you what:

1. You are an asshole
2. you just found yourself yet another enemy on those forums, mainly because you are a jerk
3. learn to respect others, even if they are not americans
4. if i wanted to use spell checker, i would of done so, but i dont want to
and no matter how much it bothers you, i will not do it, just because i dont want to

adivce for life: LEARN TO RESPECT OTHERS NO MATTER HOW STUPID THEY MAY BE OR UGLY 

They pretty much have to. They can't maintain continuity with an old series with actors being old or dead. They're not having much success creating a new series.

Here are basically their choices:

1. Try to start a new series. They haven't had that much luck with that recently.
2. Kill Star Trek permanently. They've gotten very close to this, but so many people like Star Trek that it makes sense to try to continue it.
   
3. Try to resurrect an old series by performing a reboot.
4. Make more movies.

Option #4 they tried, but they're running out of ways to make movies:

• Making a movie out of TOS is out of the question. Some of the actors are dead, and most are way too old. Leonard can't even play Spock anymore - he has to play his father or older version of himself.
• TNG has some of the same issues. The actors are still alive, but most are getting way too old, especially Brent Spiner, who has to portray android that doesn't age. I'm surprised he allowed them to bring in B4 in the last movie.
• The other series just don't look like they'd make good movies, and don't have quite the fanbase of the first two series.

They basically chose option #3, and they chose to reboot TOS. Only time will tell if they're just gonna make more movies (I hope not) or make a TV series out of it.

Maybe TNG would have been a better choice to reboot? Perhaps. But I guess they made their decision.

FYI, piece of trivia: The computer's voice is played by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, and she's played a role in every Star Trek series and most of the movies, including playing the computer's voice in the new movie. Unfortunately, she's gone now, so somebody else has to play the computer's voice in any new Star Trek stuff.

1 And proud of it.
2 I don't care.
3 It has little to do with anyone being American or not, you brought that up, not me. I will not respect people that do not deserve it.
4 Your loss.

Take your advice and tell a stupid, ugly person. Thanks.

=========================================

I watched the movie again. I think I liked it more the second time. I would support this new effort.

After this little but weird flow interruption caused by CocaColaAddict & EviliroN, let me return us all to the topic at hands.

When Spock and Kirk battle it out on the bridge for control, there's a key characterization moment that clearly defines how the newly self-assigned Captain autority comes into play;

- Insults that any good officer "still" in training must cope with in order to support his theories (as it pertains to the fact that not even young Spock is aware of Kirk already met with Ambassador Spock) but without over juggling with the personal ambition aims.

- Swift decisions by both taken on the spot to increase surviving odds on Vulcan. (In fact, maybe the Vulcan planet we've always seen for decades was the second Homeworld founded by a race nearing extinction.)

I think this is the exact scene that defines the film. But instead of having been inserted at mid-point (screenwriters' talky gimmick), they delayed it slightly to create a pace rarely seen in Action types.

Asynchronous plotting without flashbacks.

Here's my issue with what they did.

They could have created a reboot without erasing any continuity, without needing any alternate universe explanation (it might mess with 'Future Trek' scenes but that would be it) if they placed it in the 25th century. They could have had a brand new ship, a brand new crew, a brand new idea (exploring another galaxy, [insert power here] becoming friendly (like XI), etc.)... They would only have to keep a few things constant: the overall setting and theme.

They kept the setting the same (at least, they didn't do anything overtly changing it). Whether they kept the theme the same is subject to debate in this thread. I don't think they did a good job of it if they tried.

But instead, they chose to do a prequel story. They tried to keep the theme, setting, and characters the same. And I don't think they kept the characters the same well either. (Despite Abrams words that the movie is 'about characters', I agree with people who say these aren't the TOS characters.)

But again, why is this necessary? If Abrams truly wanted to put a new face on Star Trek, why do what he did? Why not start all over again, like TNG? Granted, TNG was done by the same people who produced the last TOS movies. But they recognized Kirk and co. were getting old and so went ahead into the Trek universe, exploring more of it via a 100 year jump into the future.

What I'm getting at is that they could have made the movie a reboot and a starting point for a new series and not mess with continuity any more than any other movie did and keep the plot the same. Spock and Nero could have travelled to the future instead of the past. They could have done the exact same plotline, just with a different crew and ship in the future.

Both came from the future and as a result, altered the timeline & reality for Kirk & co (to use your perception of the past).

For an allllllmmmmmoooosssssttttt exact explanation, i'd have to recommend you (at a minimum) Voyager's episodes Year of Hell or Relativity.

I'll leave the remaining reveals to Star Trek XII (as announced by Paramount)... if only to please the continuity proponents.

@minor race: so you mean a setting after/during tng/voy/ds9? that would harldy be a reboot, actually it wouldnt be a reboot at all, it would just be a continuation of things already done. tng wasnt a reboot, tng was successor of tos, because it simply followed an already laid down path (it's called reboot for a reason)

imagine if the movie would have been set during the tng-era and suddenly everyone has new costumes etc, a comepletely new and young crew (which wouldnt fit normal trek at all), much more flashy effects ("wat? where are my phaserstrips and my red torpedos") hardcore fans would cry havoc and complain about continuity-issues. at the same time it would seem to everyone else that this is the usual star trek, not very appealling to mainstream crowd.

i think, to reboot the franchise they've chosen the most logical point, the point where it all started - tos.

couldnt be the case, because in the original timeline these events never happened (apart from romulus being blown up and spock gone missing)

also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02LgdXVkXgM

Isn't year of hell the one where they encounter that big history-erasing ship? That keeps erasing civilizations to try to restore the one it came from to its glory years, only voyager gets caught in the middle and discovers some sort of temporal sheilding allowing them to stick around after each change, only it's too late because they've been seriously screwed up by that point so the crew has to abandon ship leaving only the command crew who lead an attack on the time device, then shutting down their temporal sheilds before the weapon erases itself and history becomes all dandy again, with voyager never going through any of that?

That one was messed up. I had to rewatch it twice to understand everything. Not really a good similie, though, because they changed their own past without traveling back and interacting with themselves, so they never knew what happened. The changing of the past was all done in the present, as it were.

Lets not forget about the "time authority agency" that was active via ST:V. That came back 500 years to set the timeline right again. That sub arc really irked me. It was like the episode in B5 where they show the earth one million years in the future just before the sun goes poof. Yet there were Rangers there. Consequently one infers that all should be good in the universe.

oh man would that have been a disaster if the opposite actually occurred

you think so? i actually think it wouldnt have mattered at all because nero was really a weak villain, script-wise (he had very very little screen time)