Star Trek: actually good
I went in ready to hate the thing. It looked nothing like Star Trek, I hate J.J. Abrams’s mysterious shit, yadda yadda.
I also complained plenty during the movie, but when I sat and thought about it… It was actually a pretty damn good movie, and the best Star Trek movie since… First Contact? Certainly better than that Insurrection and Nemesis crap.
I had very few major complaints:
- Red Matter: Um. Red Matter? Red stuff?! Honestly. Just a little bit of technobabble won’t drive away the masses, Abrams.
- Uhura: her character only did three things: 1) avoid Kirk’s advances, 2) intercept a Klingon message (off-screen), and 3) love Spock. Not a strong female character, really.
- Lens flares: I’m told this is an Abrams thing, but I got sick of streaks of light and lens flares. The bridge was quite shiny enough, thank you.
Most of the other bits that twerked me during the movie (most of which were inconsistencies with canon) went away when I thought about the implications of the initial catalyst/conflict and the time travelly stuff. (I don’t want to give away any spoilers, for once.)
I didn’t care for McCoy’s actor. DeForest Kelley was able to pull off the role by being a laid-back man overacting as a southern bigot. Whoever this actor was was a wide-eyed lunatic overacting as a southern bigot.
…Very different feel to that. At least he delivered his trademark lines marginally better than Samuel L. Jackson did in Snakes.
Kirk and Spock’s depictions (individually) were great, although, like Elf, I missed the Trio of Kirk-Spock-McCoy. McCoy was a nothing in the movie and Kirk/Spock was fairly superficial. Too new to be remarkable.
I’ll actually probably go see it again very soon. I was distracted the first time through by all the differences from the Original Series, so I want a second time (before I forget) so that I can pick up any nuances. …If there were any.
