I was born ready. I’m JJ F***ing Abrams

I've got to be honest, I have astigmatism and didn't notice the lens flairs at first because I get those IRL.

I heard his wife finally told him to tone it down.
- Was that before or after he ~~ruined star wars~~ did TFA?

At some point there was an explanation that the lens flares were supposed to be subtext, a visual representation of the old phrase “bright future” and for a microsecond it almost made sense…until you realized how stupid that sounded and unbelievably annoying it was on screen.
- Ah yes, the bright future of a movie that uh, is primarily focused on a planetary genocide by someone who's not too smart but very angry.

The lens flares aren’t enough to make me hate Star Trek 2009.
But… there’s one frame I accidentally paused on that’s at the very end of the movie when Kirk is looking around the bridge. And there’s a mirror reflection of an off-camera crewmember looking back at Kirk.
Except it’s not a real reflection. In addition all the optically-damaging direct lighting on the set, Abrams felt the need to add more in post processing. And not just more lens flares, an actual optical wipe that flashes the image of someone sitting somewhere else on the bridge across the frame while the camera (which never stops moving) circles Kirk. With all the glass and reflective surfaces on the bridge, your brain thinks it’s a real reflection. But if you pause at that exact moment, it’s clearly just digitally inserted. It’s hovering over a white backboard of a standing console, in fact it’s partially overlapping another crewmember who is in the frame!
Like… image flares or something. I have never seen anything like that before and I cannot understand what it adds to the scene other than visual noise.

Aw, I dig the lens flares. Abrams may be a pretty lousy storyteller at times, but he always gets points from me for style.

Everybody talks about the lens flares, but what about the chromatic aberrations? The spacial distortions? The vignetting? There's so many other things that lenses can do wrong!