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We’re in a country adding 11 thousand foodstamp recipients a day. We’re no where near solving poverty. There’s still plenty of China that is a dirt-poor cesspool, and other parts that are just a cesspool.

"Poverty" in this country includes owning a car, a color tv, having enough to eat to bring on obesity, and generally not suffering.

The last time I looked, China was no longer having famines involving the death of millions, and many millions of Chinese are living lives their grandparents would not recognize. The rural Chinese want their share.

In the end it’s entertainment. Movies are there to entertain the masses. JJ-ST entertained the masses, and scored a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. It did the job. And here you are still complaining about it years later, so much for the being forgotten part.

Perhaps you are comfortable with allowing other people to tell you what is worthy and admirable.

I have always thought for myself.

I'm not a fraction of the "masses".

But they deified Roddenberry

Anybody who read sf prior to exposure to Star Trek understands that Star Trek is 1930s style space opera, and that Roddenberry's chief innovation was the optimism of the series. He was NOT a sf genius.

Neither Star Trek nor Star Wars are cutting edge sf. They are antique space opera. They were old fashioned when they were new.

Gene L Coon was not a sf guy, either.

And homelessness. Not all the poverty in this country is the talking point kind, quite a bit is people really honestly being poor with lack of housing and food.

And the Chinese in Beijing get no air to breath. And a lot of their “fix” for poverty was making the army the number 1 employer in the nation.

Just pointing out simple reality. You’re on the outside. I know JJ-ST is good without the reviewers, but it’s interesting to note that in spite of all the whining by the cultists it’s only the 3rd Trek movie to score better than 90 at rotten. Then there’s the more money than any 2 other Trek movies. It impressed everybody except a handful of people who take great pride in how unimpressed they are. That’s not actually thinking for yourself, that’s pretending that contrarianism has meaning.

The problem with Roddenberry’s optimism is that left unchecked it’s boring. That “no conflict” problem in TNG came straight from him, and drove the writers room insane, because without conflict there’s no drama. Optimism is nice, but to turn it into drama it has to be tempered. JJ-ST is strong in the tempering, yeah things are good, but not perfect, because perfect is boring. Unchecked Roddenberry optimism gives you Encounter at Far Point, leaving the conflict give you WOK.