12. Rebel Without A Point
One of the most annoying sequences in the film is young Kirk driving over a cliff in the car. It appears that after Kirk's father was killed, his mother shacked up in Iowa with a scumbag who eventually became his stepfather. To hammer home the fact that he has a rebellious streak that may be down to his less than ideal home situation, young Kirk steals his step dads 1965 Corvette and takes it on a joyride over a cliff. The reason this scene is annoying is mainly down to two things. The first is the blatant Nokia advertising thanks to the large logo on the in-car telephone. Product placements in movies are nothing new but this one sticks out like a sore thumb. In the same way you would not expect to see ''Lockheed Martin'' on the side of the Prometheus or a Coke machine in Braveheart, you don't expect to see branded products in the Star Trek universe where we know society has moved on from Capitalism. It wasn't the only example of product placement, with Budweiser making an appearance in the scene where Uhura appears to show us that she is a binge drinker by ordering 5 drinks all for herself. There have been other product placements in Star Trek movies before, most notably for Apple and Yellow Pages in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, but in that film the crew had traveled back to the 1980's so it was a good contrast to the world they had come from, so you can understand and forgive. In J.J Abrams' Star Trek, it was just another slap in the face to show the new Star Trek is not beyond being a sparking billboard for big companies to advertise. It's hard to get absorbed in a new positive future if you are being reminded of the same overly commercialized world that you live in. The second reason this scene is annoying is due to the Beastie Boys track Sabotage that Kirk decides is the best musical accompaniment for his joyride. Just like Nokia, this also sticks out like a sore thumb. Not only because you wonder why a child in the 23rd century would choose to listen to the Beastie Boys but much like the rest of this scene, when did it seem like a good idea to include it. Some have speculated that it might be a little nod to Shatner's infamous ability to mispronounce ''Sabotage'' as ''Sabotaaage'' but I doubt that is what the writers intended. The main priority was to show us that Kirk as a child was a cocky rebel who could steel a car and drive it over a cliff while listening to rebellious hip-hop, but what sounded good to Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman around the dinner table, had many people rolling their eyes in the cinema. And Iowa is pretty much a flat farming state with no deep canyons so the writers explanation that the huge hole in the ground is in fact a quarry of some kind, just highlights how much thought the writers put into the little details that make a quality script.