Star Trek: The Wrath of the Lens Flare

Just finally got round to watching JJ Abrams Star Trek. The visual effects were stunning, the story was as good as that kind of formulaic American blockbuster can be, the sound was amazing (especially the first space battle with Kirk's dad, the subjective sound focusing in on the baby crying over all the battle going on in the background) and even the performances were pretty decent considering the cliched characters the actors had to work with. But the lens flares. What the hell was going on?

Every single shot had an excessive amount of lens flare action going down. I liked them some of the time, they gave a really futuristic look to the scenes in space and inside the ship but when they're on alien planets and on earth and its still happening it just whitewashes the entire film making scenes less distinguishable from each other. Used sparingly, they would have been great but this was ridiculous. Apparently they were all done on set according to Abrams, using a very powerful flash light most of the time. But there presence on CGI sequences and the fact that Andrew Kramer (who did the title sequence to the film) released an After Effects plugin for creating lens flares not long after the films release, makes me curious as to what percentage were really added in post. Anyway, the films worth a watch so check it out.