1. Time travel. It's kind of like playing the Nazi card in an argument. Once you're there, we know you got nothing left.
2. A flimsy, needlessly complicated plot that requires the Architect from The Matrix to explain in under three minutes, because if it took any longer, we'd realize it makes absolutely no sense. Plain old lazy screenwriting, if you ask me.
3. Sentimentality. How many fathers and mothers need to die before you think sheer sentimentality will distract me from the bogus time-travel plot? I know there's this "backstory" for this whole horrible "2.0 universe" that originates with this comic, forking off Star Trek Nemesis. But we Trekkies aren't allowed to judge this film in the context of the greater Star Trek universe, right? This is a reboot—an alternate reality, yeah? We have to analyze this movie without referring to a comic that nobody knows about, correct? Well apparently nobody told Abrams.
4. Do we NEED more Romulan badguys? Did Abrams even watch Star Trek Nemesis? Hello: it sucked. I'd rather watch the whale movie again.
5. A sneak-attack supernova.
6. LAME Romulan badguys. A lamer badguy than Darth Vader in the Star Wars prequels. How dare you even attempt to compare Nero to Khan! The guy looks like a Wiccan tattoo artist and his name is NERO. Of all the Roman names to choose from, Nero? Really?
7. Sensationalism. Bullshit that a film can't succeed if it has to "appease the fans." Maybe this is true financially, but we have yet to even find out. The simple fact of the matter is that every Hollywood reboot that's been put out in the past ten years (with the exception of Batman Begins and its sequel, which arguably adheres to the spirit of the Dark Knight more than it ever departed from it) is trash for the simple fact that Hollywood refuses to appease the fans. (I'm looking at you, Marvel). Of course, it's silly to bring this up because Hollywood isn't interested in making good movies, it's only interested in making cash off a sheepish, "Lost"-induced audience.
8. 

   Khan

   Forgettable dialogue. Not a single memorable line and you're working with some of the richest characters in scifi history. Too many one liners borrowed shamelessly from the classics. How dare you have Nero yell "Spooock!" in a pale imitation of Khan, who manages big screen gravitas across the ages, despite man-boobs and a Conan the Barbarian fur coat.

9. Senseless militarism. Yeah, let's shoot at Nero when he's already imploding and completely defenseless for absolutely no reason! Go peace-loving humanist Federation!
10. A sneak-attack supernova.
11. Hand-holding. How many times do we have to be reminded that Spock has emotional problems because he's half-human, and Kirk is a indefatigable jackass? And that they're destined to be bestest buddies even though they hate each other for 95% of the film? We get it already, stop TELLING and start SHOWING.
12. Canon flip-floppery. You can either jettison the canon or stick to it. There's no inbetween: if this is an alternate reality created by time travel (via the Many Worlds Theory) or traveling through a black hole into a parallel universe (whichever, because it's never made clear), then this isn't Trek anymore. It's Abrams "Trek." You can't have it both ways.
13. Uhura. McCoy. Scotty. Disgraceful caricatures of their classic counterparts. Perfect cardboard cutouts for The Next Generation of gee-whiz scifi and endless remakes.
14. Wait, did I just see a Star Trek prequel or Starship Troopers? I don't remember.
15. Sneak-attack black holes. Yes, multiple ones.
16. "Red matter" ahahaha.
17. Roller coasters. How many times is Kirk going to fall to his death or teeter on the brink of destruction? We just stop caring after awhile. He's an indestructible jackass. We get it. That's all there is to Kirk in Star Trek 2.0. Besides, there's not much time for chitchat (i.e., character development) when everything's exploding every ten seconds.
18. Insincerity. Total failure to elicit even slight nausea when Nero drops the Khan-bug into Pike's mouth. Good job completely failing there with cheap imitations of the real thing.
19. How did the aliens from the Mos Eisley Cantina find their way aboard the Enterprise?
20. Sneak attack supernovas!
21. Plot holes. Okay so why did Spock not just explain the situation to Heroes Spock in the first place? Yeah, don't try to explain it. Yoda, like Abrams, acts in mysterious ways.
22. That Hoth beast. It was designed after the muscles in a rectum. I'm not kidding, read the article in Wired. The artist actually studied assholes to design its lovely, tentacled mouth. Too bad Kirk missed Luke on the way down to Yoda/Spock's ice cave.
    

    Rectal Hoth Beast

23. Young Kirk. Kirk is just a jackass with an entitlement complex, plain and simple. We have no reason to applaud his so-called heroism, or ever take him on his word, because he never earns it. There's nothing at stake for Kirk, unlike Heroes Spock, whose parents get dangled before us every other scene.
24. Shallowness. No larger moral consequence. No spiritual underpinnings. Basic Trek essentials, blatantly lacking.
25. Thematic emptiness. Zero philosophy, zero emotional appeal. Yeah I know, this ain't Gene Roddenberry, may he Rest in Peace. Just shut up and watch the sexy explosions.

Hopefully there won't be a sequel, but see you next time in case there is.

For you troglodytes who haven’t crawled the messageboards since July, the movie’s trailer previewed before Transformers, leaving viewers with scant details to Google afterwards: the release date of January 18, 2008, the Bad Robot Productions company logo, and meager credits noting the film’s director and producer. The actual content of the trailer—the partying yuppies, the explosion, the frenzy of fireballs and the Statue of Liberty’s head hurdling over Manhattan—are irrelevant. I suspect J. J. Abrams could have shot five minutes of a toilet flushing backwards on the big screen and we’d all be buzzing like flies over you-know-what.

If you don’t believe me, check out the video of the blonde chit-chatting about her yeast infection on JamieAndTeddy.com; this website appeared as a link on one of seven MySpace pages that were ostensibly launched by the film’s pre-existent characters. And LiveJournal users have already begun syndicating XML feeds of the updates. Don’t ask me for sources—the only website we “know” associated with Paramount is 1-18-08.com, a clever Flash that features choice photographs (some are stills from the trailer) and the roar of a monster about six minutes in.

In alternate reality games (ARGs), every source is speculative at best. For example, the folks at Wikipedia’s discussion forum are in a bind over whether to add the website Tagruato.jp to the “Cloverfield” Wiki page. Advocates of “common-sense” argue that the logic connecting Tagruato.jp to its alleged subsidiary, Slusho.jp, is sound. Naysayers invoke Wikipedia’s "Verifiability" and "Original Research" policies. I’ll explain the conundrum: “Tagruato” is a phony off-shore drilling company, linked to “Cloverfield” via its mention on that pink menagerie known as the Slusho.jp website. Slusho.jp purports to be peddling a Japanese soft drink (“You Can’t Drink Just Six!”) that contains a secret ingredient mined from the bottom of the ocean. In our reality, Slusho! alludes to the drink characters enjoyed on the show Alias, which was written and directed by Abrams. Supposedly, Slusho.jp is linked to “Cloverfield” because one of the characters in the trailer wears a Slusho! T-shirt; in turn, JamieAndTeddy.com is linked to Slusho.jp because the girl with the yeast infection mentions the word “Cornbread” during her video, and the phrase “I am Cornbread” appears somewhere on Slusho.jp.

How exactly this all reconnects with “Cloverfield” is not important, unless you genuinely enjoy participating in ARGs. Until Paramount releases the movie, we can infer nothing valid about the movie’s content from these connections, especially given that the purpose of Paramount’s ARG—or any ARG, for that matter—is to promote a form of innocent self-deception. The key to this scheme is that we have become invested in the game, even if only peripherally. Abrams has infected our minds with the “Cloverfield” virus, so that when the movie hits the box office, curiosity will be ravening for the weakest among us.

As internet zombies, we are more like the fast-moving, rage-infested maniacs from the film 28 Days Later. Consider the extensive WHOIS searches countless internet sleuths have conducted on Tagruato.jp, Slusho.jpg and 1-18-08.com—fanatics called telephone numbers, cross-referenced fictional addresses and even uncovered that 1-18-08.com was briefly registered to a long-dead Freemason. Despite these efforts, however, websites EthanHaasWasRight.com (EHWR) and EthanHaasWasWrong.blogspot.com (via Blogger) defied verifiability. Apparently, Mind Storm Labs, the gaming company behind the new Alpha Omega tabletop role-playing game, hired RED Interactive, an online marketing agency, to produce an ARG that, fortunately for them, was mistakenly associated with Abram’s ARG. EHWR created a Flash puzzle that was mysterious enough to dupe “Cloverfield” addicts into believing it was part of Abram’s ARG. Then, the EHWR counterpart on Blogger posed as Ethan Haas’ detractors, but only blogged in shoddy Arabic. (Readers promptly translated all the posts.) No doubt, the tabletop is selling splendidly now, considering that the Blogger site, at the height of the conspiracy, received 2,616 comments from visitors in a single post.

Ethan Haas Puzzle, Confused with Cloverfield

How does the involvement of these websites with the “Untitled J.J. Abrams Project” affect our wired culture? For one, trickle-down economics apply to viral marketing, because the little guy can cash in on the big guy’s hype. More clicks mean more exposure, and more exposure means ad revenue and sales. Granted, ARGs as marketing strategies aren’t new, even with movies. Semi-reputable rags like The Washington Post point out Spielberg’s “Beast” for AI, Halo 2’s “I Love Bees” and the “Lost Experience.” The Post’s Zumbrun describes “Cloverfield” as a “rabbithole” for the indefatigable amateur investigator, that innocuous Alice in all of us eager to plumb the depths of human depravity. But I prefer to think of “Cloverfield” as a meticulously designed mousetrap: J.J. Abrams and Co. deposit the “Cheese,” we leave behind the cash.