Star Trek

So last Friday, Jenny and I went to see Star Trek, and I think overall we enjoyed it. There were some minor gripes, (and one major one), but we both felt it was worth seeing. Unfortunately, I can't really analyze with any depth without going into spoiler territory, so if you don't want to know what happens, stop reading after this paragraph.

First off, the good stuff: The ship-to-ship combat was visceral and exciting, the ship designs kept the classic look with some new trappings. The feeling of the movie was pretty fun overall, lots of action and some good laughs, (mostly from Scotty). I think the casting was done well, everyone seemed to fit their role, and the acting was pretty believable. The new, updated versions of the characters seem to have some new depth to them (with the exception of Chekov, who is still just a one-joke character). They really play up Spock's trouble with his half-human ancestry, which was interesting, and overall I think he was probably my favorite character. They lay on the whole "Kirk is a rebel, a loose cannon" a little heavy, and that brings me into the parts that I didn't care for.

There is a completely unnecessary scene with a horrible young version of Kirk (featured in one particular trailer for the movie). I suppose that showing the differing childhood experiences of Spock and Kirk was a good idea, but I feel in the car chase scene it was handled poorly. I thought that the enemy ship looked very specifically designed to be an "evil" ship, all grasping tines and organic shapes. The villian Nero mentions that it was a mining vessel before the catastrophic events that form his backstory, but it's hard to believe. The number one complaint both of us had coming out was the inclusion of Old Spock. For a complete series reboot, I don't want to see any of the original cast members in anything other than a cameo role, and even then as a different character, just a wink and nod to "hey there's so and so in the background". I understand what their intentions were with Nimoy, it was to explain to all the trekkies how we can have this new crew go on to do things non-canonical, ("it's an alternate timeline", again heavy-handed delivery there), since Old Spock is the reason things are different now. But I really wish we could do without time travel. It's been done, I wanted an all new crew in an all new universe. Which it seems like we'll get now, I am actually really excited to see where it goes from here, now that we've got the origin of everyone out of the way.

Anyway, to wrap it up, I could write more but I'm out of time, I'd say 4 stars out of 5.