I liked that newest Star Trek movie as well, and now that I think about it, I enjoyed the fact that the actors were relative unknowns. It was a little more interesting because I couldn't exactly predict how they were going to play each scene. Talking about remakes, if movie budgets weren't so ridiculously high, maybe Hollywood could take a few more chances on interesting original scripts. With so much reliance on special effects and star power, it seems like all that gets done are remakes and comic book adaptations etc (many of which I enjoy, but come on, is that all there is?)
Take the film Avatar. Hardly a name in that save Weaver. Seems like science fiction can pull off making a story interesting enough w/o names because, for those of us who are fans of science anyway, the story carries it for us and we want to see what kind of philosophically realted ideas get laid out for us to eat up. I wasn't that crazy about Avatar but visually it was pretty good and that it outsold everything all time says something about the potential of some untilled writers of science fiction with some incredible stories to offer. Wiki Greg Egan.