One of the many cinematic sins that George Lucas should probably be held accountable for is the rash of “prequels” that infested the moviegoing landscape once Phantom Menace hit the scene. Oh sure, the idea was nothing new, from “origin story” comic books to the occasional movie like Butch and Sundance: The Early Years. Yet had Lucas not gone to the Star Wars well one- OK, three- more times a decade ago, I doubt we’d be seeing this rather feeble reboot of the Star Trek franchise nowadays, in which fanboy fave J.J. Abrams has gotten Paramount to bankroll something that’s essentially a bit of fanfiction. Now, I’ve got nothing against movies that are unapologetically geeks. I suppose that what bugs me most about this isn’t so much that the characters we grew up on are being played by a cast of new and largely clean-scrubbed actors, as that I honestly don’t feel like it’s necessary for a movie to exists that explains away the younger days of the old Trek gang. I mean, gee, who would have guessed that the young Kirk was a rebellious little punk (if this movie shows him reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru scenario, I’ll throw something at the screen)? Really, isn’t enough that we glean their natures from the way they behave in the original movies rather than seeing how they got there?