Lesson 3: Respect established canon
Reason: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Retroactive continuity (retcon) is something typically reserved for comic books. No matter what happens in a comic, there's always a chance that a character could come back regardless of how little sense it actually makes in the context of the story. The Search for Spock heavily capitalizes on retcons, as the film desperately tries to write its way out of Spock's death at the end of Wrath of Khan. How they do makes it worse: when Spock's makeshift casket crash lands on the planet created by the Genesis device, he becomes reborn as a small amnesiatic child that ages sixty years in couple of day, and then gets his Spock memories back after mind melding with Dr. McCoy in a dangerous Vulcan ritual. End of movie, roll credits, kill yourself.

With Star Trek going back to a time when Kirk and his crew were younger and better looking, potential for massive retcons loomed over the entire project. When faced with the challenge of rebooting a franchise with 40 years worth of established story, Abrams solved this simply: when you want to see what happened in the past, write a time travel story. Problem solved, no retcon required.

Click here for the next page >>>