He did not make the second movie, just fyi.
I wasn't talking about the second movie.
In
A New Hope, Han Solo literally lectures Luke about how
"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?". He gives this lecture while under fire, because hyperspace is just that risky. And in
Return of the Jedi, the entire plot is about taking out the shields covering the Death Star.
In
The Force Awakens, Han Solo jumps to lightspeed
blind out of a hanger for no real reason. Then, later in the movie, they use lightspeed to bypass the shields on Starkiller Base, something they couldn't do in Return of the Jedi.
In
Star Trek: Into Darkness, meanwhile, J.J. Abrams has the Enterprise go to the Klingon Homeworld (Qo'nos) and bomb it and then go back to Earth in, like, five minutes flat, completely undetected. To a Star Trek fan, this is like seeing James Bond jump in to the Pacific Ocean and swim up to London in the next scene. Literally the entire plot of the original series involves a Cold War-esque standoff with the Klingons with a large neutral zone patrolled by both sides. Heck, half the plot of Star Trek 6 occurs during the
long several-day journey between Earth and the Klingon homeworld. Abrams just either redrew the Star Trek map or boosted the speed of war drive by a factor of 100.
Abrams
constantly throws in-universe rules out the window for dramatic effect, and this is just the example that pops in to my head first.
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Star Trek: The Motionless Picture was not the best start, but it had some of the same “because we can” errors. Remember the scene where Kirk flies around the Enterprise for 5+ minutes? The long, drawn out scenes of the ship flying through V’ger? About the only good contribution that movie brought us was the theme song for TNG and the idea that space travel movies could be a thing.
I think some of the problem with rehashing ST and SW today is that the wonder of space travel isn’t what it used to be. Back then, we were amazed that they could merely tell such tales about life in outer space. Now any movie of this genre has to have so much action and flashing lights that story and character development really struggle. Just watch The ST reboot, then watch ST: Motion Picture to see how far Sci-Fi has changed.
To be fair, ST: The Motion Picture isn't considered one of the good Star Trek movies. Only the even numbered ones are held up as examples:
* Wrath of Khan
* Voyage Home
* Undiscovered Country
* First Contact
Of these, "First Contact" is the only real action movie. To me, personally, The Undiscovered Country is peak Star Trek; they rarely make movies like that anymore, and Star Trek certainly doesn't. It's slow, intelligent, the main characters have flaws that the story revolves around (in this case,
Kirk is dealing with racism despite his ideals), and the story has a moral backbone. Lots of scenes are just characters talking and development.
However, if we look at, for example, The Final Frontier...okay, sure, by that standard, J. J. Abrams' movies aren't that bad, but The Final Frontier was so bad Gene Roddenberry basically disavowed it.
