10 Huge Movie Moments That Didn't Matter At All

Following his compound fracturing of Starfleet’s Prime Directive in the first ten minutes of the movie, Jim Kirk falsifies his report to hide his actions but is dobbed in by Spock’s inability to tell a lie. Found guilty by a closed tribunal of several orders of gross misconduct, he’s stripped of his rank and his ship and barely escapes being booted back to the Academy.

The consequences of his actions are dramatically rammed home by Admiral Pike, Kirk’s commanding officer and de facto father figure. Pike tears strips off him for being unable to adhere to basic rules, for lying to cover his own back and for being unfit to sit in the captain’s chair. Pike tells him he simply wasn’t ready for command.

All of this lands with Kirk and with the audience because it’s got the ring of truth: this Kirk, a fatherless loose cannon with a chip on his shoulder who was promoted early, is a maverick action hero, not the commanding officer that William Shatner’s Kirk was.

It’s a gut punch… that the movie then entirely takes back literally fifteen minutes later when Admiral Marcus reinstates Kirk, a man who never graduated Starfleet Academy, to the captain’s chair of the Enterprise.

The reason - Marcus is going to use Kirk as a patsy to start a war with the Klingons - barely matters. Once again Kirk has suffered no consequences to his actions, and that great speech of Pike’s was utterly wasted.