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Attached to two equally uncharismatic leads.

But this isn't simply one instance of bad writing; it's a side effect created by the "soft reboot" trend, which is when a movie somehow resets the storyline of a franchise while still trying to remain in the same timeline. It's a cute little trick used with time travel in the new Star Trek, X-Men, and Terminator franchises ... but the problem is that the writers now have to think up entirely new ways for the same characters to meet. There's no good reason for Kirk to meet Spock in a timeline in which Kirk is a ruffian Earth pervert who cheated his way through Starfleet Academy and Spock is a respected officer. (The only reason Kirk and Spock become friends in the new movies is because Future Spock tells Kirk that they are friends.) Likewise, Wolverine has no reason to meet William Stryker and get his adamantium claws if he's already working with the X-Men in the 1970s.

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So instead of finding a clever way to work over these hurdles, writers have started introducing the idea that these characters were destined to cross paths. This is usually done with a throwaway line, like Beast pondering whether Mystique is fated to kill Trask in Days Of Future Past or John Connor saying that Reese is doomed to die like he's the goddamn Oracle. Or, if the writers are feeling feisty, they opt to just plunge a throbbing middle finger straight up the audience's buttholes:

Paramount Pictures

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"I do it 'Vulcan salute'-style. Two holes at once; more efficient."

What are the goddamned odds that Kirk would be ejected from the Enterprise on the same planet containing both the time-stranded Future Spock and a stationed Scotty? That's statistically bonkers, and the film completely dismisses it as some kind of mystic happening. In a cut scene, Spock even addresses this head-on by claiming that the universe was balancing itself out. Because as any fan will tell you, Star Trek has always been about invisible space magic binding the universe together.