I think the problems with this Star Trek domestic box office performance not being as “stratospherically” high In the US as hoped could be due to a few different factors. Still, as its been said it is now the “biggest” of the series and still doing well around the world outside the US homelands.
I don’t think the “terrorists” plot line played well with the home crowd and it certainly doesn’t seem to have been widely accepted most of the ardent Trek fans. Why? I guess a lot of people like to go and see a film to get a break from the real world and unfortunately I think timing wise, this kind of storyline cut a little to close to events and politics in real time, coming so close on heels of the Boston bombing. So subconsciously perhaps or not , maybe the trailer, the terrorist angle, and the darker “realistic” tone of the film may have hurt it ,particularly with the wider public who may just have wanted a more pure escapist and positive story timing wise.
Secondly, the story didn’t seem to significantly move the New Trek universe forward enough for a lot of people. In fact, rather than taking a risk most seem to think its deferential nods to “old” storylines probably did it more of a disservice than any brand new story attempt, as with the first one. More than a few decades have passed since the original Khan in the series and WOK in the cinema and the Harrison “reveal” really didn’t have any relevance for a lot of people.
Like a lot of others I suspect they would have been far better off doing the “five year” mission version THEN coming back to revisit alternatives of the “older” storylines later. Personally I thought the playfully inventive daftness of the opening sequence should have been the way the rest of the film carried on. Compared to the rest of the film, this seems to have been the preferred “remembered” segment with most people, and I certainly enjoyed hugely, as controversial as the Undersea Enterprise was with some fans. None trekkies are fine with it. But hey, considering the Enterprise escaped from the gravitation pull of a Black hole by riding the wave of a cataclysmic anti matter explosion , whats a little Earth gravity and sea water going to do?
I still rate this as a great, great Trek though, and the only one I ever actually went to see twice, although second time around the spectacle some of the weaknesses of the story were more telling. I really do hope they do a third
