sometimes you gotta take these movies as what they are, and not look for the little annoying things. If I looked for the little annoying things in every movie, I'd never find one I liked.
I agree with you there, (and about
Princess Bride 
), but these were NOT "little things".
I can't overlook Kirk using his Chevy Stingray's
TM built-in Nokia HUD
TM especially because the Nokia logo start-up screen was roughly 3/4 the size of the theater screen! There aren't enough hot, green women in the Alpha Quadrant, Neutral Zone, and beyond the Great Barrier to make me feel okay about that! (However, just one hot, green woman would be nice change of pace in
Loveshack's Love LifeTM, so if you know one, send her my way.) But I digress, I
realize that
Star Trek is a commercial entity in and of itself, but the society depicted within the franchise is shown have grown beyond these things, and furthermore those alien races on that show that haven't yet developed to that point, (the ferengis, various space pirates), are played for comic relief at best and at worst as contemptible villains. So to me, it wrecks the vibe of the franchise to have blatant product placement.
I know that's how Hollywood makes money, but it doesn't feel natural in a
Star Trek movie! If it makes sense for a character to grab a pair of shoes that just happen to be Nikes, or be drinking a soda that just happens to be a Coke, fine, but when the movie is really obvious about it, it's not effective marketing, it just inspires a collective
from the audience. (See the infamous "Converse, vintage 2004" scene in
I, Robot.) Not to mention, it takes the viewers completely out of the story like Chewbacca's Tarzan yell and a flying R2-D2 did for me with the
Star Wars movies. They are essentially ripping the viewer out of the world they paid good money to briefly inhabit, and plunking them back into a dark theater with the jerk who won't stop coughing, the idiot newlyweds who brought their shrieking mutant child to the theater with them, and the violent gangbanger who won't quit yelling advice to the characters onscreen. Not only do the ad companies try to make you buy products you don't want or need to condescendingly transparent methods, but they also vicariously rob you of your movie going experience and therefore rob you of the eight or ten dollars you paid to get into the movie in the first place!
I can't speak for the rest of the movie-going public, but when I see something so blatantly obvious shoehorned into a film, I am personally insulted that the advertising industry thinks so little of me as a consumer that they honestly expect me to be swayed by such thoughtless, blatant, and poorly-contrived advertising. It makes me want to go out of my way to not buy their products because I don't want to give money to people who have essentially called me a slack-jawed hick by way of the methods they use to try to entice me. I really feel bad for anyone who watched that movie and sincerely thought to themselves, "I want that there tell-O-phone like that one that there Cap'n Kirk feller' used! H'yuk!"
It was like the THX sound system promo kicked on in the middle of the film, but it wasn't THX; it was Nokia!
