Review Time. I'll do my best to keep spoilers inside tags. I'll also note that I'm somewhat of a die-hard TOS fan (TOS = The Original Series for all you Trek n00bs. I.e. the series from the 1960s that originally featured Kirk, Spock, etc.)

General Feeling: I enjoyed watching it but it wasn't Star Trek - it was an action Sci-Fi movie. Effects were great, there was a decent story to tell, and it was just plain fun. That said, there were things that got under my skin.

Things I liked:

(1) Small quirks and phrases from the original series that were recognizable. I.e. Kirk's posture in his chair, some of McCoy's phrases, etc. I didn't feel like these were shoe-horned in or overdone, more like tributes to the characters.

(2) Pretty decent story being told here. Could have been tighter in places but it never felt slow and it did have some characterization instead of just SFX and action. To summarize,

Spoiler

Romulus gets blown up in the future. Spock tried but failed to stop this. Pissed Romulans and Spock end up in past due to special circumstances surrounding the explosion. Romulans want revenge so they blow up Vulcan to hurt Spock, then head for Earth. Kirk & co. stop them blowing up Earth.

Things I didn't like:

(1) One very specific, and somewhat important, aspect of the plot regarding what happens after the movie. Putting up a spoiler for this, might be a bit of a ramble.

Spoiler

I don't really like that the events of the movie create an alternate dimension separate from the one we know from the TV series and other movies and everything else. It seems to me like it would have been pretty damned easy to just have the "Spock and Romulans from future" event be what happened to begin with, and therefore those events had to occur to lead us into the rest of the movies/series/etc.

Have the death of his father jumpstart Kirk into Starfleet instead of the other way around. He gets in early and since he's so badass, he moves up rank fairly quickly. Conjure up some reason for him to be on Earth when the shit hits the fan, but as a Lieutenant or some fucking reasonable rank (see next thing I didn't like below), and then let things play out more or less like they did except they could actually manage to stop Vulcan being blown up, then events play out and lead into the Star Trek we are familiar with.

I don't like the idea of having them simply play out events as seen in the movie, and then "fixing" the timeline so that none of it happened. I hate it when that happens. But geez, I don't get why they couldn't have just made it so that the movie led into the events that we think of as following.

(2) Ranks and Promotions and who is in charge at any given time is all kinds of screwed up in this movie.

Spoiler

Kirk is a damned CADET who sneaks onto the Enterprise when he's not supposed to be there, and next thing you know he's been made First Officer. Despite the fact that we know there were actual, you know, OFFICERS on board the fucking ship other than just Captain Pike and Commander Spock. Like Ensign Chekov, or the Lieutenant that Uhura was told to relieve. It makes no bloody sense to have Kirk as second in command in this situation. That's why I said they should have just added one more flashback or something where we see Kirk as Lt. Kirk or something.

I get that the movie had him starting in Starfleet late, which explains why he is a cadet and how Spock got so far ahead of him, but I don't get why they decided to do it that way.

Some of this stuff is reasonable. They had to man the ship with cadets because of some damn reason, and when a lot of the officers died they had to replace them with cadets. McCoy inheriting CMO makes sense -- he was already a doctor, he was just at the academy for the Starfleet aspect of things. Scotty also makes sense once he shows up.

But here's the real catch, at the end... Kirk gets promoted to Captain of the Enterprise. He goes from a cadet in the academy, to captain of the fleet's Flagship, in like... a week? I mean, come on, WTF? I call BS.

(3) There was a pairing that came out of effing nowhere, and served no discernable purpose except to make me go WTF... here it is, that's right, it's

Spoiler

Spock/Uhura?! Where the hell did that come from? I mean, Uhura followed Spock onto the lift, stopped it from going down, then just started putting her hands all over him, hugging him, and then kissing him. Brain disco'd there for a minute. W.E.I.R.D.

On a completely different note... well, somewhat... we have another new Star Trek movie coming out within the week! Did you all know about it? That's right, it's the new Star Trek Porn movie! Looks like it's going to be released on May 12th 2009 to somewhat coincide with JJ Abrams movie! OMGYAY (/sarcasm & /lulz). Here's a link, and yes, it does have a trailer preview: http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/05/07/lol-hustler-to-release-star-trek-porn/

No thanks ;P

 

Ok, I guess I can buy this as a valid reason/explanation and something I didn't think about. I'd still have preferred that they had it a bit closer to the original timeline (like you said,

Spoiler

Vulcan being destroyed is a pretty damn big change

) so that I could have my cake and eat it too, but yeah. You make a good point, even if I don't like it.

Thanks :awesome

 

Fuck Yeah :awesome

I always preferred Picard over Kirk, but that movie kicks ass. Black Holes and time travel, and the improved space battles ... I actually didn't mind the older, slower ones, but meh, the FX was pretty. I don't care so much about it; what's important is the plot. In that regard, it didn't quite reach my favourite (First Contact), but it was very much enjoyable (it might even get better when I watch it in German, since I might've missed things in English).

How they picked up the known crew members along the way seemed to be a bit of a stretch, too many lucky circumstances, but that's because you're looking at it in hindsight, I guess. If you forget that, it works -- for example, someone had to be at that base, and his name was Scotty.

That. I always thought there'd be

Spoiler

Uhura/Kirk

, since they had that tension thing going from the very start, and then suddenly she ... does that? @_@ That came totally out of the blue. I just stared.


Still, now I very badly want moar Star Trek and especially with MOAR Borg

So go watch it, fags >_> Any figures on how successful it is yet? Edit: Yeah, $24 million on the first day. Well, doesn't that look good.


Edit 2: Oh, I forgot. What I loved especially were the developement of the Kirk/Spock thing. Their interactions were great; it was a really important bit, and it worked very well.