11. Pointless Destiny!
During the initial attack on the Kelvin, apart from it giving us a dramatic but ultimately unnecessary birth of James T. Kirk in space, why didn't Nero just destroy the Kelvin instead of letting it be rammed into his ship. He had no problem wiping out the far more advanced ships that confronted him around Vulcan so why did this one ship cause him so many problems. Not only did he risk a very up-close-and-personal warp core explosion but he also let all the escape pods get away. Don't get me wrong, this is probably one of the best scenes in the film but again it gets ruined by incoherent planning and eagerness to be dramatic and epic when restraint can get your villain over far more effectively. Look at the way Khan is introduced in Star Trek II, Commander Kruge in Star Trek III and even V'ger in The Motion Picture. Khan had very threatening reveal in Star Trek II with the way he slowly removed his head dress and then put the eels into the ears of Chekov and Captain Terrell. Commander Kruge got the Genesis information he wanted in Star Trek III and destroyed the ship that brought him the stolen intel and in The Motion Picture, V'ger wiped out three Klingon battle cruisers with very little effort. The point is that all these antagonists are far more memorable than Nero and each one was introduced to us with enough menace to show us that they are not to be underestimated.
Nero on the other hand had to stab the Captain of the Kelvin, cripple the Kelvin and inadvertently be responsible for the death of Kirk's father. Kirk had no reason to be born in the midst of this battle, it's not like that it affected the story in any major way. Nero had many reasons to be hated with blowing up Vulcan being the primary one so also being the reason why Kirk grew up without his father was unnecessary. It was just trying to be epic for the sake of being epic, it didn't enhance Kirk or Nero in anyway, it didn't link the two characters in a unique way so it just made the whole exercise pointless. It also made you scratch your head in the climax when Nero appears to know that he killed Kirk's father during that confrontation with the Kelvin, how does he know Kirk's father was on the Kelvin? And if the purpose of this scene was so that Kirk could recognize the ''lightning storm in space'' that was the signature of Nero's ship, then you have to ask why would Kirk remember a detail like that and link it to Nero? It's not like that electrical disturbances are rare in space. And Captain Pike already told us that he was an officer on the Kelvin during the attack, so does it not make more sense that he would make the link to Nero? Weaving characters destiny's together to give a film more substance than it has, does not work. If anything it is now a cliche to employ storylines like this. One of the weakest points about Tim Burtons's Batman was the decision to have Joker kill Bruce's parents and link him to Batman, you watch that now and you wish that element was not there because it's been done so many times. To see it in Star Trek had me shaking my head, we know Kirk was born in Iowa, why couldn't they just leave it like that? Another dumb destiny moment is Kirk looking up at the Enterprise that is being built conveniently in a cornfield in Iowa that is within driving distance. Again it's Abrams, Orci & Kurtzman tieing everyting together, all relationships have to be linked by fate. CLICHE!