Star Trek: The Fan Backlash To The J.J. Abrams Films Explained
When a franchise has been going for a long time, it is bound to fall into certain patterns and clichés. Star Trek is no exception. The program set a precedent for the space-faring science fiction genre (in all forms of media), but it also has a very distinctive style. Each show and movie always offered something new and different, a new take on the same old show.
However, a lot of the themes were still there, making it distinctively Trek. This is why it has maintained an almost cult-like following of Trekkies who love it. Then came along the big budget J.J. Abrams Star Trek films, which received a tremendous amount of pre-existing fan backlash. But why?
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The crux of the issue is that, for many Trekkies, these films were not Star Trek movies. Rather, they were science fiction action flicks with pre-existing characters and universe mythology thrown in. A lot of Star Trek might fall into this genre bracket, as the franchise is not afraid of fights, action, drama (physical and emotional) and the like. But at its core, Star Trek was always meant to be what became known as «big idea» science fiction.
Rather than it being all about the fight between good and evil, all out warfare and fancy battles, Star Trek primarily used science fiction as a tool to explore and examine important, and often uncomfortable, concepts. Looking over the J.J. Abrams films, it would be easy to switch out the names of characters, ships, and races, for new ones. And it would have been a fairly generic sci-fi action thriller, with no connection to the originals, the very essence of Star Trek missing.
The biggest element that really rubbed fans the wrong way was that Abrams was never a Star
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