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torquillNo spoilers here.
I saw it last night... all in all, I liked it. I thought the plot and tone did a good job of capturing the classic movie feel, along the lines of "The Undiscovered Country". It was a little fragmented at first, with all the exposition, but it did pull together well.
They re-thought a bunch of the special effects, but unlike the older movies and Next Gen, I found them much more believable now. Engaging the warp drive makes ships disappear like taut rubber bands, *ping*. That's what I'd expect from an inertial dampener system. Ships maneuver in three dimensions (not just as an exception, as in the famous shot in "The Wrath of Khan".) There was a sonic boom upon falling into atmosphere. Little things, but it was nice to see them.
Kirk is a cocksure bastard, so that works for me. Casting and writing for McCoy was inspired. Uhura definitely fit. Sulu is kind of nondescript, but he was a bit part here; same for Chekhov, but this guy managed the lingustics rather better than Walter Koenig (I love Koenig, but he's definitely not of Slavic upbringing). Chekhov here was young, but I liked the way they handled that.
I wish we could have seen more of Simon Pegg as Scotty. Utterly inspired. Doohan's Scotty was a bit mischievous at times, mostly off-duty, but Pegg really makes me think that he could be a loose cannon of sorts. Genius, yes, able to push the hardware beyond what its designers ever imagined, but also apt to take apart something essential without bothering to mention it to anyone, just because some pinging noise or other was not quite right. His gleeful excitement at witnessing a fistfight was great.
Spock was the heart and soul of the old series, and I found the new version to be a mixed bag. The writers were on top of it -- at one point he was so sarcastically Spock that I laughed until I cried -- but Zachary Quinto couldn't seem to sell it to me. His looks don't fit what I feel is the essential Spock; he's long and thin, but the fact that his jawline totally lacks definition bugged me continuously. Leonard Nimoy fell into it as effortlessly as always in his cameo, but it felt like the new actor didn't have that aura of powerful dynamic forces in balance that Nimoy managed. The new Sarek was much better in contrast, though no one will ever be up to Mark Lenard.
I can see why Nimoy objected to the new Spock's, hmm, accessibility to a particular member of the crew, but I guess they're shifting the character toward a bit more of acceptance of his human side than the original. Nimoy's character was constantly fighting his human half, denying it, stuffing it deep down where it couldn't bother him (at least until he was much older and more comfortable with himself); Quinto's appears to be trying to find some balance or harmony between his human and Vulcan parts. It's just odd to watch.
I'm not a rabid Star Trek fan (I save that for Blake's Seven and Doctor Who), but there was enough fanservice in there to make me happy. I bet Simon Pegg has been dying to say "Dilithium crystals at maximum, sir" his whole life.* The movie is worth seeing, as long as you accept that this is acknowledged in the movie itself as an alternate timeline, and don't adhere to older canon too literally.
*I note that Firefox's spell-checker recognizes "dilithium".
I saw it last night... all in all, I liked it. I thought the plot and tone did a good job of capturing the classic movie feel, along the lines of "The Undiscovered Country". It was a little fragmented at first, with all the exposition, but it did pull together well.
They re-thought a bunch of the special effects, but unlike the older movies and Next Gen, I found them much more believable now. Engaging the warp drive makes ships disappear like taut rubber bands, *ping*. That's what I'd expect from an inertial dampener system. Ships maneuver in three dimensions (not just as an exception, as in the famous shot in "The Wrath of Khan".) There was a sonic boom upon falling into atmosphere. Little things, but it was nice to see them.
Kirk is a cocksure bastard, so that works for me. Casting and writing for McCoy was inspired. Uhura definitely fit. Sulu is kind of nondescript, but he was a bit part here; same for Chekhov, but this guy managed the lingustics rather better than Walter Koenig (I love Koenig, but he's definitely not of Slavic upbringing). Chekhov here was young, but I liked the way they handled that.
I wish we could have seen more of Simon Pegg as Scotty. Utterly inspired. Doohan's Scotty was a bit mischievous at times, mostly off-duty, but Pegg really makes me think that he could be a loose cannon of sorts. Genius, yes, able to push the hardware beyond what its designers ever imagined, but also apt to take apart something essential without bothering to mention it to anyone, just because some pinging noise or other was not quite right. His gleeful excitement at witnessing a fistfight was great.
Spock was the heart and soul of the old series, and I found the new version to be a mixed bag. The writers were on top of it -- at one point he was so sarcastically Spock that I laughed until I cried -- but Zachary Quinto couldn't seem to sell it to me. His looks don't fit what I feel is the essential Spock; he's long and thin, but the fact that his jawline totally lacks definition bugged me continuously. Leonard Nimoy fell into it as effortlessly as always in his cameo, but it felt like the new actor didn't have that aura of powerful dynamic forces in balance that Nimoy managed. The new Sarek was much better in contrast, though no one will ever be up to Mark Lenard.
I can see why Nimoy objected to the new Spock's, hmm, accessibility to a particular member of the crew, but I guess they're shifting the character toward a bit more of acceptance of his human side than the original. Nimoy's character was constantly fighting his human half, denying it, stuffing it deep down where it couldn't bother him (at least until he was much older and more comfortable with himself); Quinto's appears to be trying to find some balance or harmony between his human and Vulcan parts. It's just odd to watch.
I'm not a rabid Star Trek fan (I save that for Blake's Seven and Doctor Who), but there was enough fanservice in there to make me happy. I bet Simon Pegg has been dying to say "Dilithium crystals at maximum, sir" his whole life.* The movie is worth seeing, as long as you accept that this is acknowledged in the movie itself as an alternate timeline, and don't adhere to older canon too literally.
*I note that Firefox's spell-checker recognizes "dilithium".
