Besides JJ cannot kill Star Trek. Star Trek already died with Enterprise and Nemesis and has only been kept alive by the fans who go to the conventions and read the novels.
A band put out an album called "its dead jim". JJ is trying to Rebirth Trek at least as a viable film series again.
So Trek has died many deaths before and risen from the Ashes like the phoenix of mythology.
Star Trek lives in the hearts and minds of millions of people. It won't die if this film is sucessful or if it bombs only as far as the suits pulling the purse strings at the studio are concerned. Star Trek like Star Wars is a part of American mythology and the names of its Characters are household names. Even people who have never seen star trek have probably heard the line beam me up scotty, or know who kirk is or spock is.
Star Wars and Star Trek are incredibly seperated franchises one is science Fiction and the other space opera.
One is set in our own imagined future and another a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
Still i like both, not equally mind you Trek tos was my dads franchise. I like Star Wars better. I used to like Next Generation better, until i liked films 1-6 and watched the re-runs. I Still loved the original series as a kid i just thought the effects were cheesy after seeing Star Wars, though the effects on the slow and boring motion picture blew me away. Spocks death in Trek II as a child nearly brought me to tears, yeah i was one of those people who cried when Optimus Prime died in the Transformers movie too.
The stealing of the enterprise in part 3 was awesome. It still gives me chills every time i watch it.
I don't even care that that scene may have been stolen from a Space Battleship Yamato film, or it could be a co-incidance as i believe it to be. Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato was made before star trek III.
People get to the point where they are so confortable with the fictional characters in Star Trek or Star Wars, that they almost become their friends in adventure. Like the screen heroes of old. When kids wanted to be Like Stewart Granger, Eroll Flynn, Sinbad, or Zorro. The viewer or the reader pretty much goes on the journey the hero does, at least in a sucessful film or novel.
First you need a character you are sympathetic to, an everyman Like Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins.
Lucas failed with Anakin Skywalker as nobody cared for his journey or felt sympathetic to him as a work of fiction. It was like Trying to make the Devil a Sympathetic character which Milton could do in Paradise Lost but Lucas is no Milton,lol.
James Kirk as originally created and as played by Shatner was not an everyman. He was the top of his class, and a pile of books with legs. Shatner's inspiration was Alexander the great i believe as a stageplay he was in. The JJ kirk is either a new creation or an composite of the character created by Roddenberry, added to by Nick Meyer etc.
Hopefully they don't steal the Enterprise as cadets in this movie i Seriously laughed out loud when shatner did that in his novel the academy. Still that book had Kirk steal a federation vehicle and Spock was at a brothel to investigate art theft,lol. Not too much a surprise since Shatner's Young Kirk has already been done under the Name of Jim Endicott, and they are almost the same character.
I think JJ is a talented guy but he has a lot to prove as this is only his second film he is directing, He still has to overcome those who say he is only a tv director. This being his sophmore effort, since he declined to direct cloverfield because he needed the time to work on this movie. MI3 was quite good if it was a tv episode it kind of even reminded me of the old 60's show in that light. But as a movie the scale was not big enough or broad enough an idea or execution. After MI2 which was a huge expensive blockbuster. I wonder if JJ understands that movies are supposed to have a large epic scale.
The one thing MI3 did that the first 2 films did not do was focus on the characters not just on the visual effects and stunts.
Still the guys who wrote this New Trek wrote Bay's Transformers also and that had bad jokes and cringeworthy dialogue lots of sexual innuendo and explosions. The Trailer for trek gives me the Transformers feeling. and as that movie made tons of money that seems to be the direction they are aiming for.