Review, or, Hell YEAH I just saw Star Trek!
Important factoids first:
1) Yes, it was awesome.
2) Sadly, no, there was no Kirk/Spock slash.
Whimper.
Commentary is post-cut. Warning: it uses absa-fucking-lutely necessary profanity.
So I had my doubts about this puppy. First I read the Countdown prequel comics which I thought were excessive in mythology, as they have Spock, Picard, Geordi, Data, Worf, and hella-references. And so I thought: movies that involve four issue prequels sometimes have problems. Secondly, Abrams loves blowing shit up. He really really does. And he blows shit up here too--multiple ships, two planets, and craploads in between.
So.
The good, and by good I mean awesome:
*The characterizations of the main cast are dead on. Absolutely fucking perfect every damn time. Which when you think about it, is pretty fucking incredible.
*Young Spock. Young Spock beating the bejeezus out of a kid who mocks his parentage. Older Spock basically telling the Vulcan Council to eat it. Hell yes.
*The continuity. Pike. The reference to Scotty's unfortunate past with "one of Admiral Archer's prized beagles." Gorgeous.
*Using the continuity to make a reboot: Props there, guys. Props.
*Kirk beating the Kobayashi Maru.
*The gratuitous and necessary red-shirt biting it in a brutal, subtle-ish, and hilarious fashion.
*Sulu bringing a katana to a fist fight.
*Chekov having issues with "V" sounds.
*Leonard Fucking Nimoy. Hell yeah, dude.
The meh:
*Abrams stole lots of stuff from Firefly and BSG. From Firefly/Serenity: Sound disappears in vacuums a couple of times. Long tracking shots through the ship. A climactic fistfight on a weird rotating thingie over a void thingie. Also, Kirk and Pike liberate some Romulan guns that look damn close to six-shooters. From BSG: they stole the warping effects and sound effects. I would be less bugged by these things if they had put some quiet references to the source material.
*Similarly, the first ten minutes were so damn melodramatic I thought he'd start stealing from Superman Returns and have someone being all "The Father becomes the Son, and the Son becomes the Father," blah blah blah.
*Speaking of: So Kirk has Daddy issues and Spock has Mommy issues? Pfft.
*Spock and Uhura? Man, Nurse Chapel's in for a helluva surprise isn't she? Also, doesn't this mean Spock is dating a student? Isn't that uncool?
The bad:
*Eric Bana is wasted. It's like they told him every damn scene, "now crouch here and growl some." Nero has a tragic past and stuff--you can tell because he keeps a holograph of his dead pregnant wife in the background while interrogating Pike. I think we should be feeling all Magneto-ey for this guy, we can kinda emphasize with him even though we really want him to stop blowing shit up. But no. And then there's the aforementioned crouching. Sigh.
*Nope, still no gays. Kirk is such an uber-horndog as a young guy, a bi reference would have been beautiful. But no, and no one else either. Argh.
*Spock's parents. In TOS, Spock had the awesomest, cutest parents. These people--nuh uh. Wynona Fucking Ryder?? Shee-it. Can't we just like reuse archival footage and make it blend?
*Abrams blowing up so much shit and using so much flashy hand-held camera that all the fight and action scenes are blurs. Sulu brought a fucking katana to a fistfight, and I saw next to NONE of that. Utter waste.
Verdict:
I am quite pleased, to say the least. If they do an honest-to-gods reboot and start up a new series or movie franchise, I'm so friggin' in.
1) Yes, it was awesome.
2) Sadly, no, there was no Kirk/Spock slash.
Whimper.
Commentary is post-cut. Warning: it uses absa-fucking-lutely necessary profanity.
So I had my doubts about this puppy. First I read the Countdown prequel comics which I thought were excessive in mythology, as they have Spock, Picard, Geordi, Data, Worf, and hella-references. And so I thought: movies that involve four issue prequels sometimes have problems. Secondly, Abrams loves blowing shit up. He really really does. And he blows shit up here too--multiple ships, two planets, and craploads in between.
So.
The good, and by good I mean awesome:
*The characterizations of the main cast are dead on. Absolutely fucking perfect every damn time. Which when you think about it, is pretty fucking incredible.
*Young Spock. Young Spock beating the bejeezus out of a kid who mocks his parentage. Older Spock basically telling the Vulcan Council to eat it. Hell yes.
*The continuity. Pike. The reference to Scotty's unfortunate past with "one of Admiral Archer's prized beagles." Gorgeous.
*Using the continuity to make a reboot: Props there, guys. Props.
*Kirk beating the Kobayashi Maru.
*The gratuitous and necessary red-shirt biting it in a brutal, subtle-ish, and hilarious fashion.
*Sulu bringing a katana to a fist fight.
*Chekov having issues with "V" sounds.
*Leonard Fucking Nimoy. Hell yeah, dude.
The meh:
*Abrams stole lots of stuff from Firefly and BSG. From Firefly/Serenity: Sound disappears in vacuums a couple of times. Long tracking shots through the ship. A climactic fistfight on a weird rotating thingie over a void thingie. Also, Kirk and Pike liberate some Romulan guns that look damn close to six-shooters. From BSG: they stole the warping effects and sound effects. I would be less bugged by these things if they had put some quiet references to the source material.
*Similarly, the first ten minutes were so damn melodramatic I thought he'd start stealing from Superman Returns and have someone being all "The Father becomes the Son, and the Son becomes the Father," blah blah blah.
*Speaking of: So Kirk has Daddy issues and Spock has Mommy issues? Pfft.
*Spock and Uhura? Man, Nurse Chapel's in for a helluva surprise isn't she? Also, doesn't this mean Spock is dating a student? Isn't that uncool?
The bad:
*Eric Bana is wasted. It's like they told him every damn scene, "now crouch here and growl some." Nero has a tragic past and stuff--you can tell because he keeps a holograph of his dead pregnant wife in the background while interrogating Pike. I think we should be feeling all Magneto-ey for this guy, we can kinda emphasize with him even though we really want him to stop blowing shit up. But no. And then there's the aforementioned crouching. Sigh.
*Nope, still no gays. Kirk is such an uber-horndog as a young guy, a bi reference would have been beautiful. But no, and no one else either. Argh.
*Spock's parents. In TOS, Spock had the awesomest, cutest parents. These people--nuh uh. Wynona Fucking Ryder?? Shee-it. Can't we just like reuse archival footage and make it blend?
*Abrams blowing up so much shit and using so much flashy hand-held camera that all the fight and action scenes are blurs. Sulu brought a fucking katana to a fistfight, and I saw next to NONE of that. Utter waste.
Verdict:
I am quite pleased, to say the least. If they do an honest-to-gods reboot and start up a new series or movie franchise, I'm so friggin' in.