History YMMV / StarTrek2009

* WTHCastingAgency: Many people's first reaction when the cast was first announced.
** Creator/WinonaRyder, in particular, became this in the editing room. They cast her as Spock's mother because there was originally supposed to be a brief prologue scene where we would have seen Spock's birth, with a much younger Amanda Grayson celebrating the birth of her son alongside her husband. When that scene was cut, many people in the audience were left wondering why a well-known actress who could easily pass for 30 had been put in unconvincing age-effect makeup in order to play such a small role.
** As a Korean-American, Creator/JohnCho as Sulu attracted controversy with fans until Creator/GeorgeTakei, the original Sulu, explained that Sulu is a pan-Asian character, meant to represent all Asian nationalities. Also, the original Sulu was canonically born in San Francisco (which has a sizable and diverse Asian population), and thus there was no basis for assuming that he would be of a single nationality any more than this would be true of a European, Latino, or African character. There is a bit of socieital bias in play here, as people only marrying members of their own national[=/=]ethnic group is in decline even in the present-day real world, and there is no reason to imagine that 300 years from now such a push for ethnic purity would reassert itself, especially when you have InterspeciesRomance going on!
** ''Creator/TylerPerry'' as the head of Starfleet?[[note]]He's there because he happens to be a big ''Star Trek'' fan himself and requested a role in the movie[[/note]]

** Sarek of all people takes this from some parts of the fandom who find his open admission of love for Amanda and the fact that he is finally portrayed as a good but flawed father had won him many fans, especially after discovery, which many claims assassinated his character.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Is Nero an angry and vengeful man blinded by rage at the people who could have saved his home planet, or is he simply ''insane'' and driven off the deep end by grief and rage? A lot depends on whether you see his mission (killing Spock and destroying the Federation [[FishOutOfTemporalWater in the past]] to take revenge on them for failing to save Romulus in the future) as an act of righteous anger or just the irrational death throes of a broken man with nothing left to live for. A common observation about the story is that Nero could've warned his people about their planet's destruction if he ''really'' wanted to save it; depending on how you interpret his actions, either he didn't do that because [[CassandraTruth he didn't think anyone would believe him]], because [[RevengeBeforeReason he cared more about punishing the people he held responsible]], or because [[AxCrazy his traumatic experiences drove him crazy]].

** There's also the matter of Creator/ChrisPine's performance as Kirk. Creator/WilliamShatner has made a nice career out of AdamWesting his most famous role, and the film's creators and Pine himself were aware it would be a bit of a challenge to portray Kirk as true-to-character without devolving into a parody of impression of Shatner. It's debated if Pine pulled it off or not.

* MoralEventHorizon: Nero [[spoiler:destroying Vulcan and most of its 6 billion inhabitants to avenge the death of his own planet. The death of Spock's mother Amanda as he helplessly reaches out for her just heightens the tragedy. What makes it worse is that Nero is getting revenge for something that 1) hasn't actually happened in the Kelvin Timeline and 2) wasn't Spock's fault in the first place; Spock Prime did nothing to harm Romulus and simply arrived too late to save it, and worse yet, Kelvin Timeline Spock has done ''nothing'' pertaining to the incident at all. Nero's pretty clearly off the deep end.]]

** Sarek of all people takes this from some parts of the fandom who find his addition of love for Amanda and the fact that he is finally portrayed as a good but flawed father had won him many fans, especially after discovery, wich many claims assassinated his character.

** Creator/LeonardNimoy reprising the role of Spock to [[PassingTheTorch pass the torch]] to the new cast is incredibly heartwarming since he was the next TOS castmember to pass on in 2015.

* SeriesContinuityError: If the USS Kelvin was designed prior to the Kelvin Timeline divergence, then the ship itself would not [[WritersCannotDoMath be able to hold enough people to have approximately 800 survivors and the people who were killed in the attack (nor would the amount of shuttlecraft escaping it be able to hold that many people)]]. For reference, the Original Series Constitution Class USS Enterprise only had around 430 crew, The Next Generation Galaxy Class USS Enterprise in the episode "Remember Me" had according to Picard a crew size of 1,014; both ships are bigger than the USS Kelvin.

** There's also the matter of Creator/ChrisPine's performance as Kirk. Creator/WilliamShatner has made a nice career out of AdamWesting his most famous role, so the film's creators and Pine himself were aware they had to balance writing Kirk true-to-character without him just devolving into a parody or impression of Shatner. Whether Pine pulled it off or not is debated.

** [[Creator/ZoeSaldana Uhura]]'s roommate is a GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe who'd been getting on her nerves for bringing guys (including Kirk) into their room. Fast forward to ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy''...

** [[Creator/KarlUrban McCoy]] is Skurge in ''Film/ThorRagnarok'', [[Creator/ZoeSaldana Uhura]] is Gamora, one of the Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy, and after ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'', [[Creator/BenedictCumberbatch Khan]] is Film/{{Doctor Strange|2016}}.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The main theme, known as "Enterprising Young Men", especially in the opening credits. Something about that crystalline, somber yet uplifting horn solo sends chills down your spine every time. Especially the brief variation that plays on the drill platform when Sulu whips out his folding katana, throws off his helmet, and looks ready to rumble. And, of course, its bold usage accompanying TheReveal of the alt-universe USS ''Enterprise''.

** ''Creator/TylerPerry'' as the head of Starfleet?