Exactly right. If the point of this film was to brag it was a Khan remake, but you have to keep it secret that it was — what's the point? I think they were so embarrassed at their inability to generate a new idea they hid from the fans they were recycling content.

Personally — there's nothing more frustrating than waiting all these years to get some 'new' Trek only to be delivered a strained remake. It was entertaining, yes, but the surprise could have been much BIGGER and much BETTER.

If I may suggest one such story.

Suppose the trailers plainly revealed a Montelbanesque Khan. And you saw Elder Spock warning he's the most dangerous adversary they'd ever met. So the preview would pitch remake. They'd even show Spock scream 'Khan!!!!" in the preview.

Right off the bat — my expectations would have been lowered. Oh, I see… yet another Khan like story (WRATH OF KHAN, NEMESIS, STAR TREK 2009). So I'd hear it was full of action and fun and surprises — so disappointed me would go just for fun.

When I get to the cinema, sure enough, there's Khan wreaking havoc. But he's not so evil in this universe. As Abrams demonstrated, he's just pissed at being doublecrossed/used by Peter Weller. And so Khan would help end Weller/Dreadnought and we'd fell — wow — this is a different universe. Khan might even suggest there's a place for him in humanity now.

We Roddenberry types would be all hopeful. Until someone drops Khan within the first 45 minutes. But who? It's at this point you reveal that one (or more) of the other cryogenic types have already awakened. That Khan has a wife or sister. And whoever SHE is —

— she's a serious bitch. Her name is Kane Noonien-Singh. (In the preview, when Spock screams 'Khan!!!!'… he's really scream 'Kane!!!!' from later within this story.)

Pardon me if this comes off as misogynesitc. Not like me at all. What I'm doing is breaking the 'male' bad guy role and hopefully making the story NEW. And perhaps Kane is deceitful about her aspirations at first. Perhaps Kane could have been a love interest for Kirk. Winning him over the way Khan won them over… only to flip. In fact maybe the audience thinks she's way nicer than Khan and so it utterly flabbergasted when she turns out to be evil. Kane could have also been planted to come back a few features later.

This type of idea would have been fresh. Fresher would have been abandoning any sense of Khan altogether. But that seems beyond Abrams and pals.

I wish it wasn't.

The new Spock is the only good character in the movie. He could have been the original Spock's son and Kirk could have been a clone of the original Kirk (Shatner). The other "stars" of the Enterprise crew are just plain hard to watch. you didn't have to change the timeline to get a new doctor, engineer, communications officer, etc. They could have been their own personalities instead of trying to be characters Star Trek fans have grown to love since the 1960s.
The tech in this movie is the most advanced of any and therefore the story should have taken place after "The Next Generation" series. At least then you could bring in Picard and Riker in flashbacks along with Nimoy. tying everything together and making this a must see for Trekkies. Instead this speaks to a totally new generation that has no link to the past.

A new timeline established in 2009 should've just meant to go as "wild" as they could with decades of OTHER, less iconic, stories in the pantheon. Geez, I'd been more impressed if HARRISON said "My name isssss PICARD." That would be a WTF moment. But to weigh this sci-fi-grafted action flick to TWOK was brain-dead.

While I can't pretend that I liked Orci & Kurtzman's PEOPLE LIKE US – it read with much more weight than it shot – at least they had and did a project that required no VFX or tentpole marketing. Some straight-forward family drama that required some character depth and motivation.

This is a dream, of course, but JJA shouldn't wait until he's in his 60s to do something relatively small – maybe even quiet – with more realism and less lens flares.

Nail on head. These "mysteries" become the focal point of the marketing, thus building the suspense to heights that the "reveal" can't possibly live up to.

A real surprise would have been to, you know, come up with a compelling *new* villain.

I honestly doubt I'd pay a dime to see another movie with Lindelof attached. As a DIS shareholder, I'm pretty bummed about Abrams directing the new Star Wars. I have no doubt he'll start with a "Luke, I'm your father" reveal and surround it with a bunch of exposition to drive whatever over-the-top action scenes he dreams up (his action scenes don't seem to have much weight beyond the exposition spouted by a character moments before).