I decided to combine morbid curiosity about this film with the leftover MS points I had and wanting to have a look at the video rentals on the xbox 360 and so i thought I’d write up another of these stream of consciousness/abuse reviews
Fuck me there’s a size difference between SD & HD, the former is 1.6GB, the latter is over 9! Way more than is practical on a limited download connection and I’m not sure I’d get 6.5GB more value
The price for both is a bit high but not unreasonable and better than the $35 I’d probably spend to satiate my curiosity otherwise. The download speed is pretty good, should only be half an hour or so, guess I’ll watch a few eps of metalocalypse to fill in the time
Okay done and started. Ahh good old paramount logo, used to be a stamp of quality, now its usually the best of a bad bunch. Bad Robot? Funny episode title, don’t remember a robot in the previews, maybe they mean spock
Ooh the kelvin is pretty, kind of like a 2 nacelle constellation class. I might make one of those if I ever play star trek online
Hey the Kelvin has a Captain Picardalike, looks similar but clearly can’t kick arse like the real deal or the movie would be about him. Beware of cheap imitations...
Its a Khaak destroyer! Oh wait, wrong universe. Shivans? No, tentacle romulans
Ooh a cocky romulan, what a cliché!
That’s Kirk? What a pretty-boy wuss. Almost perfect shatner replacement, seems a bit of a wanker though and not in the right way
I like how the technology looks like a blend of movie era & next gen
Kirk is married? Oh and the wife is pregnant in a crisis, so inconsiderate. Are babies EVER born at convenient time?
I have a feeling his noble sacrifice won’t be the end of him. Intuition or the fact its in the first half hour of a 2 hour film. Oh, might be daddy kirk. Aha! Called it about a minute before it happened, TOTALLY saw that coming!
What the fuck? NOKIA? Product placement in star trek?? The Mac in Star Trek 4 was a bit dodgy but at least realistic to find in a factory
Shitty, shitty, shitty music. BEASTIE BOYS in star trek? Nokia doesn’t seem so bad all of a sudden
Aww no Thelma & louise moment with the kid in the car? Damnit, the annoying snot lives, must be... yup, baby kirk.
Ahh Vulcan, as hot as Australia. Wonder how baby spock will be. Show idea: star trek babies, combination of star trek & muppet babies, cute little tykes struggling to reach the controls of a starship and making first contact with baby klingons and cardassians then getting into itty bitty fights with the wee borg collective
Ooh spock violence (or spolence)! It’ll haunt him the rest of his life which is why he goes for the kohlinar and will probably wuss out to join starfleet
I like surak’s voice, very soothing
Racist vulcans, what a shock. Ooh that live long and prosper was almost sarcastic. At least he didn’t wuss out of the kohlinar (on screen anyway)
The bar music is way better than the car music
Grown up kirk is a snotty tit too. And an arrogant tit. GENIUS LEVEL? KIRK? This really IS a different show
Captain pike looks familiar, not sure what else I might have seen him in.
Ooh ship that’s probably the Enterprise being built. What, Kirk too poor for a fancy hoverbike?
There’s a paranoid guy going on about the danger of space travel, gotta be bones. Yup
3 years later and the Khaa.. romulans are back. Eric bana in a non speaking role? Perfect for his ability. Aww he opened his mouth and, as usual, mediocrity came out
Space propeller plane? Weird and very non-trek design. Kinda funky though
Kobiyashi maru time eh? Let the rewards for cheating begin. Ooh D7s, pretty. Well at least they’re not giving him a commendation and actually mentioned cheating. The inference in Star Trek II was that kirk’s reprogramming was subtle and just enough to let him win, in this he might just as well have turned the klingons into a bowl of petunias and a rather confused sperm whale before ripping off his pants to reveal a giant “I CHEATED!” tattoo on his arse cheeks as he mooned the controllers
Starfleet is so thinly spread that they’re committing cadets? Way to organise...
Was that shuttle called the Gilligan? Missions must last a maximum of 2 hours 59 minutes
Ooh purdy starbase
Why do the bussard collectors on the enterprise look like the cap from highlighter pens?
I rather like that 3 nacelle ship, would like to have a few more shots of it and indeed of the other ships but they’re not the stars so I suppose we ignore them.
Baby sulu is a bit of a n00b... and Chekov, he looks like a dork but sounds about right, overacting horribly and being too young for a Starfleet officer. He’s lost the beatles hair but I’m not sure its an improvement
Kirks puffy hands really looked like inflated gloves. Bit cheap and didn’t really add anything to the story
Kirk actually made a decent case for the ambush, I’d have believed him myself
Bit of a Wolf 359 flashback, lots of debris from the fleet
“Hi Christopher?” Bit familiar this romulan bloke, what’s next, asking how it’s hangin’?
The bridge is fronted by a giant window? Bad design there, bet it gets blown out at a critical moment and someone unimportant gets blown into space
Ooh mystery “red matter”. Blows shit up I guess, too busy being explodey to think of a decent name
Hang on, Spock is promoted to captain & kirk is xo? I predict a contrived swap. Also that everyone in a ranking position will be bitchslapped by gifted hero-only skill or die in favour of our young and spunky heroes
Why wouldn’t the rommies scan the shuttle when it launched and notice the extra lifeforms? Seems only sensible to ensure that the captain wasn’t bringing a fucking ARMY or BOMB with him!
Hmm, olsen died, well he was a redshirt, plenty more where they came from I’m sure.
Sulu has a magic foldy-outy sword? Simultaneously lame and awesome
Tee hee crispy romulan. Ooh BACKSTAB! 2x Damage! Sulu is clearly a rogue
Oh and olsen had ALL the charges, no provision for failure or the loss of a team member in a high risk insertion? Sounds like kirk era Starfleet, all eggs in one basket that’s being carried by a drunken gymnast. Lucky the armour is so thin that small arms can damage it
Cheap and somewhat out of (old) character reason to get spock off the ship. He had to be there to see his family die and be unable to save them so he’s raging with guilt and lets kirk take over I guess
Chekov is a transporter genius? Not a fan of the new transporter effect, too swirly for my taste and lacking in sparkly
Is that Vasquez rocks? At least they kept to classic locations
Awww spocks milf is dead but everyone else is okay. Sulu and kirk were plummeting towards the surface and managed to transport but she can’t step just a little closer? Lazy cow
Nice planet collapse even if the end is a bit neat, probably because it’s a wipe rather than lazy effects. Spock has a nice log entry, good dialogue
Oh so THAT’S how Uhura got good grades and nagged spock into letting her onto the enterprise, she has a taste for Vulcan sausage
Nero’s going to destroy the federation to keep Romulus safe? Were ALL the klingons killed in that earlier attack? I thought it was one planet
Ahh the FSNP! Was wondering when we’d see the magic touch of instant sleep
They marooned an insubordinate crewman in the middle of a fucking snowfield with a duffelbag and apparently no weapons? Thats just retarded, lame excuse for an action sequence. And they can’t decide which monster to use, oh well, better have both! That was briefly amusing in Phantom Menace and better because it ended the chase rather than prolonged it (shame they didn’t do the same with the fucking pod race)
Ahh real Spock just happens to be here. And DOESN’T know Kirk was coming? Okay, bullshit there. Heh wonder if someone in the scriptwriting team was thinking the same thing, Kirk’s saying “bullshit” echoes my own thoughts about the plot device.
This script must have been easy to write, every 10th line is a quote from the original series
WOOHOO! MIDGET! This movie just got much better!
This’ll be scotty, yup. Broad stereotype as expected, kind of a cross between real scotty and billy connolly. Archer’s beagle? Interesting enterprise nod, at least they aren’t from the camp that consider that star trek ended with The Undiscovered Country. Oh and he eventually invents megatransporters but needs help from real spock, I smell an ontological paradox. Still not the first time he was involved in one of those, transparent aluminium springs to mind. Aww the midget is staying behind?
Eew the enterprise water will taste all scotty. The motion as he fell looked wrong, should have had some forward momentum to it. Oh it looks like its cooling water rather than drinking but still, ick...
More emotional outbursts from spocky boy, all it takes to get to the top is to piss off the guy in charge until he runs away for a cry ONCE? Must remember that for when I get a job. Yup, as I predicted, contrived reason to swap commanders. Fuck, imagine that rule being applied to the original trek, kirk would have been relieved of duty whenever he saw a woman!
Well, they clearly paid the most attention to spock and his story, he and his attendant characters are pretty well written whilst everyone else seems like a flat caricature
Nice rising shot around Saturn, reminds me of the nebula rise of the Reliant in Wrath of Kahn (As I suspect it was supposed to)
Why didn’t kirk & spock take some redshirts to the romulan ship? There were 4 extra pads and they can’t be short of them unless olsen was the only one. Ooh the new phaser noise is annoying
Return of the space propeller with little pulsy guns doing what looks like the attack run on the core of the second death star
NO don’t ignite the red matter! Thats worse than crossing the streams or letting them eat after midnight! I thought that stuff was SUPPOSED to explode, they should be happy.
The romulan couldn’t just kick kirk off the ledge... noooo oh and now he’s paid for it by kirk being a shifty bastard and pickpocketing his gun
Enterprise to the rescue with its autofire guns shooting down every single slow moving torpedo in the nick of time, I don’t remember anyone signalling them
So it was hard to beam up sulu & kirk when they were walking or falling but at full impulse on a ramming course its easy? Must be Scotty, he’s magic!
Shouldn’t the Enterprise get the fuck away from an expanding singularity? Ahh they are but at a fairly leisurely pace, well no hurry, its not like it can crush you or anything...
Eject the core! It’s a million to one shot so it’ll happen 9 times out of 10
So Kirk gets a commendation and keeps the rank. Cadet to captain in a few days, yup, that movie logic
And here’s the hero sendoff, introducing the ‘new’ crew
Oh and the alexander courage theme at the end
.
Well I’ve seen worse movies, whilst it wasn’t brilliant, it wasn’t as bad as I feared, I may end up getting it if I see it on sale somewhere.
Quinto & Nimoy were the clear stars of the movie for me. I thought Pegg & Urban were fairly good as scotty & bones. Uhura was the token black woman who didn’t really have much to do but sit there and look pretty so I guess that role was recreated pretty well. I really wasn’t a fan of kirk though, he was an annoying pretty boy twat so that fits the character but I just didn’t like him.

It's not great, but I like it for some reason. It does many of the things that I would find unacceptable in most movies... but it doesn't bother me here.

One point that it seems everyone forgets when comparing this movie to any previous Trek: it is a completely alternate timeline. The moment the Romulan ship destroyed Kirk's father's ship, everything that was the previous Trek history was thrown out the window, which is why "real Spock" had no idea what was happening; it wasn't his timeline anymore (never mind the massive paradox his continued existence from that point on would cause).
Originally, Kirk was inspired by his father's long service in Starfleet to join Starfleet himself at a young age. His father lived to see his son graduate from the academy and go on to have a great career of his own. That never happened in this Trek. Instead, Kirk grew up fatherless and rebellious to a fault, hence the differences in his manner and his bluntness with the Kobayashi Maru cheat. The same kind of personal history differences occurred with all the main characters; Scotty's banishment to the ass-end of Starfleet, Bones' marriage and divorce, Uhura and Spock's "thing"... all that occurred because the lines of their personal journeys intertwined in a manner that was different from the old Trek.
The one consequence of this that angers Trek nerds the most is that their beloved "Trek Canon" has been wiped clean, all except the events in Enterprise. How's that for a kick in the balls. :p

In fairness they already explained how someone could survive a paradox in the Trek universe thanks to Chronoton Bollocks in First Contact.
As a film it's pretty good but like you said many Trekkies have bemoaned the need to wipe the slate completely clean.

It does not 'wipe clean canon'. The two universes can function along side one another, with the only potentially disturbing contamination being the persistence of Spock Prime in the non-Prime universe. The events in the Prime universe still occured, and will continue to occur (albeit not necessarily in another movie/series).
Moreover, the media has been highly mistaken in its simplification of the distress of some fans (although I suspect many fans, in their anger, have not been too clear about the reasons for their disatisfaction), and I shall attempt to elaborate in bullet point form what I see as the primary cause of our/disatisfied trek fans concern below:
1) The new movie is not in the spirit of the first, at least in the sense of Gene Robbenberry's utopian ideology (that admittedly was more manifest in the TNG era than TOS/TAS/TMP)
2) The morality of the story is lost, as is the emphasis on discovery, the overruling importance of intellectual and mental personal development (the passion for knowledge and understanding above vulgar, 'uncivilised' tastes) as opposed to transitory pleasures (se x, bar fighting etc.)
3) The filming style and dialogue is far too action oriented with a weak/contrived plot (especially when it comes to Nero, whose background and character are extremely shallow, unexplained and one-dimensional) and none of the more strategic (naval style) and philosophical flairs Star Trek was so loved for.
That said, there are clearly some qualities to the new movie, although I would be tempted to treat it more as a 'generic science fiction' that 'star trek' as the franchise was originally conceived. No doubt this has earned Trek a larger fan-base, but at a cost to its identity.
-Thought Experiment- (exercise in simple logical coherency):
Notation: Given statements listed (i) i = 1,2,3... ; (r) denotes the physical object society typically associates with the the word prior to (r) (e.g. apple(r)). (n) denotes only the name prior to (n) (e.g. apple(n) which is actually orange (r))
(1) I enjoy eating apples(r)
(2) I do not enjoy eating oranges (r)
(3) I possess an orange (r)
(4) I rename the orange (r) with the name: apple (n)
(5) I rename the apple (r) with the name: orange(n)
This is necessarily logically coherent with:
'I do not enjoy eating apples (n)'
Question: Have I now changed my tastes so that I enjoy eating apples, whereas before I did not?
Answer: The name 'apple' may experience continuity, but the properties and qualities that constitute what can be named an 'apple' has changed. If you apply this to the Star Trek movie: even if the new movie is called 'Star Trek', it has lost the original essence of 'Star Trek', and can be distinguished as a seperate entity. We might as well call it by another name e.g. 'Quinto, Pine & co.'.

I would have preferred it if they had completely wiped the slate clean, and avoided the time-travel aspect.
Other than that, generally a very enjoyable film, and I await the sequel(s)...

I can understand that the new movie is more appealing to popular society now, but while I don't think I can declare it high/low quality theatre purely on the basis of its being so very different, I do feel a sense of loss and disappointment that in order to survive Star Trek has had to become... almost the antithesis of what it stood for. Now it is 'just another science fiction romp', and nothing more (to me).
I also don't appreciate caricatures of star trek fans who dislike the movie as being incalcitrant and unreasonably conservatives (which is sort of why I posted here to begin with). We have our reasons, and while not every one of us may be able to control themselves sufficiently to say so, I certainly respect the opinion of those who enjoy the film, since we are (after all) judging it from a different perspective (my value being placed in the continuation of the original philosophy).
As I see it, wiping the slate clean would have been a little insulting for those who have developed attachment to the characters and events established by the series and the past movies. Even if new fans do not enjoy or appreciate Star Trek's past, it does not mean they should spoil it for those of us who do. I say let the new movies go as they are (as a spin-off, not a continuation), and let the old movies rest in peace and past glory.
To quote a good Lady: you must think me behind the age. I am. I should be very sorry to be on the same level as an age like this.
(that's Oscar Wilde, not Star Trek, just to show that a deviant culture does not obviate a sophisticated one)

And they're already talking Khan for the "sequel" :-\
"Bad Robot" is Abram's (mis)production company, but I'm guessing that was sarcasm at the start, eh? :P
I thought it was an OK film : Certainly better than anything after "Voyage Home", probably better than any 2 or 3 put together, but it just wasn't Trek for me.
While the Bridge of the "new" enterprise was blindingly white and pristine, the rest of the sets were.....industrial...and just didn't fit.
Can't say I really liked the "projectile weapon"-esque phasers either. They're energy weapons, not bloody machine guns!
The characters were...if not badly portrayed by the actors, mediocrity shone brightly. McCoy was just about the only character that got the original almost to a T. What they did to the Uhura character should get them 20 years in a hard-labour prison.
I spent my money on it at the cinema, and was entertained by it. I'll probably end up getting the DVD too. I hope they do better with the "second" film.
But I ain't holding mah breath! :-\

Sod the fans, what about the people who MADE it over the last 43 years? Thats who I feel are getting the most disrespect from a clean slate thing. The thing that gets me is that if they dropped the hot spock on spock subplot, they could have set it aboard any starfleet ship with different characters and told the same story without alienating the fanbase. I doubt people would be so uncaring if casablanca or godfather was 'rebooted' in such a way
Didn't like spock?
Mining dilithium under the whips of klingons

OK, agree somewhat here, but the fact that the fellows behind the new movie have been quite strong on the '2 universe' point means it isn't technically a 'clean slate'. I do think however that the rejection of the original philosophy would go somewhat in the face of the original devotees (fan, writer and producers for the last 43 years). Even if the new film was based in the Prime universe (with a different crew), I wonder if such a deviation from the 'Star Trek' ethic would be properly accepted.
Shame they blew up (well.. imploded) Romulus in the Prime universe. It all seems too damn similar to the Praxis affair. Also, the traditional trilateral tensions between Federation/Klingon/Romulan 'Empires' has been severly undermined. The Romulans were hardly 'evil folk', and it was always comforting to feel they possessed a substantial and long-lived culture behind them... what are they now? space nomads without a home? Trek has seen too many of those (and they were all quickly forgotten).
Klingon pain-sticks probably. I'm sure there are fellows out there who would quite like to see JJ's head explode. The Ferengi were fond of whips though, and might make more ironic justice given Paramount's succumbing to the populist market in the name of making big money (although it's unfair to blame them since that's what businesses do - it's just a shame in this case).

I watched the commentary version of the movie as well, there's a lot of missing story they had to cut out in regards to the romulans, especially what happened during the time between the original attack and Vulcan. Basically, after the Kelvin rammed them, they were damaged near Klingon space and were eventually capture by the Klingons. Apparently they spent some 20 odd years in captivity and then escaped, blowing up a crap load of Klingon ships in the process. However, if this was true, I would assume the Klingons would have a VAST technological advantage from studying the ship, which, although logical, I assume the writers/directors are going to completely ignore going forward in the other movies.

I watched it a few weeks back. Considering all the great reviews it got I was a little confused by how sucky it was. Maybe the SFX on the big screen made up for it (i heard they were amazing, but didn't notice anything special).
I think my main problems were that Kirk was an idiot, and i kept wanting him to die. And that the whole thing made no sense, and was full of stupid Deus Ex machina and contrived coincidences, and that the basic plot premise felt like a small-time episode of the tv series, or any other un-inventive made-for-tv sci-fi.
It wasn't Transformers-horrible, but it didn't seem to have many redeeming features. A good way to waste a few hours I guess.

Yes, they were imprisoned on Rura Penthe, which the design team had altered aesthetically such to be far less memorable than the fantastic white wastes, crowds and frozen bodies shown in STVI, and closer to the generic dull and dingy. The reason for the technological difference between Alt-universe and Prime-universe original series era ships was from data scanned from the Narada by the Kelvin just prior to its destruction, so presumably both Klingon and Federation designs will be able to use this excuse to change a whole matter of aesthetic and technological things. You may be right, that the Klingons (with longer time to study the Narada) should have an even greater advantage, but the producers may rely on the poor quality and interest of Klingon science as an equiliser.
Not the Star Trek tv-series surely. Episodes had a lot more meaning back then.. (give or take a few TOS episodes, which though less cerebral, still had a more civilised sense of friendship)
Does anyone here think it will be at all possible to return to the old pillars of Star Trek (not necessarily as a sequel to the newest movie, based in either universe, with any crew)? exploration, and the immaterial pursuit of knowledge and understanding in themselves? It is a shame that this is so unpopular and difficult to do in Hollywood. The values of liberal education instilled by the Victorians seem long lost today.

I don't see why not.
This film was a war movie, it's true. But, presumably, now that the immediate threat posed by Nero and his crew of revenge-bent Romulan miners is out of the picture, it's possible that there'd be a lull during which the Federation in the movieverse would be able to go back and do some of what it had been once before: an organization dedication to exploring the universe, and not just military defense of the Federation and its citizens.
Again, while this particular film may have been more about just shooting everything in sight than exploration or diplomacy, I don't think that means some of the core principles that were the hallmark of the original series and its spinoffs have been forgotten. I just think Trek in general has been changing slowly as its gone on, and this is just another one of those changes.
Original Series was what it was... Next Gen took it a little further, but kept most of the same themes. But then you had a radical departure with DS9, and there was plenty of fan outcry then, because people were raging to the heavens that how could it be a show about space exploration when it was set on a space station? And not only that, the main story arc for most of the show's run was a war? But it worked. (I say this with plenty of bias, however, as DS9 is my favorite of the Trek series)
Voyager (Which I think is crap) tried to return to the roots, by doing the "explorer" thing, but then they just didn't realize it properly, and ditto with Enterprise which again suffered from poor execution. But again, with Enterprise, they tried something different... and one of the underlying story pillars was... yes, another major war brewing in the background. There's always been these underlying conflicts that come to a head somewhere here or there... some kind of boogeyman. For the original series, it was the Klingons. Next Gen had the Borg. DS9 had the Dominion. The movieverse will have... whoever. I don't worry, necessarily, that there'll be able to balance the idea of "big ships with big guns" with that whole sense of "We're exploring the universe, and wow, ain't it pretty?" They're off to a pretty decent start already, in my opinion.

OK, perhaps I was a little too dire in my predictions or expectations of the 'new' Star Trek or present society. But exploration has always been only a manifestation for the search for knowledge and understanding, so I think this was preserved in DS9. Similarly, war was something forced upon the Federation, and Star Trek has been about preserving high intellectual principles in the face of such vicissidutes and emotional diversions (symbolised by the perpetual vulcan-human / android-human conflict).
As for gradual evolution - yes, Star Trek has changed gradually, with additions some conservatives welcome (as an expansion on original concepts) or reject (as an afront to them). TNG/TMP eras followed by TOS have been my favourites and will remain so, but I still see a strong-ish underlying connection with their ethics and those in DS9 and VOY (that VOY was poorly executed I cannot disagree), despite the poorer integrity and susceptibility of DS9 characters to 'human vice'.
Perhaps I put too much emphasis on 'exploration' in my post. It's the intellectual importance that is primary here, and I barely see anything beyond a superficial connection to this in the new movie: but don't get me wrong, I hope it will return in the future.