Seen it! SPOILERS IN HERE!!!!

[Graham Kennedy]

Not long got back from the first showing. I repeat, the following is a full spoiler discussion!

Basic plot : it opens with the Kelvin in space as the Romulan ship comes out of an anomaly. The Kelvin gets wasted, but Kirk senior stays at the conn to hold them off whilst the ship's shuttles escape. His wife is on board, having his child.

Nice moment. "We could name him after your father," she says to him on the comm. "Tiberius?! You're joking!" He says. LOL moment.

It jumps around a bit... we see young Kirk steal the car. We see young Spock being picked on by older kids. We see older Spock accepted to the Vulcan science academy and then turn them down to join Starfleet. We see older Kirk have a bar fight with some cadets and then chat with Captain Pike, who dares him to join Starfleet.

And I wondered how they would do it... and what they do is show him taking off in a shuttle, then say "Three years later" and skip most all of the academy time. Kirk is taking the Kobayashi Maru test for the third time. He cheats... and rubs their faces in it to boot. Lounges around on the bridge, unconcerned, then blows all the Klingon ships up with one shot each because he's reset their shields to zero.

He's brought up on charges for this. Neat fact : Spock is an instructor at the Academy, and Spock created the Kobayashi Maru scenario. Kirk is defending his actions when an emergency situation arises - apparently a natural disaster on Vulcan. The bulk of Satarfleet is committed in some other place, so they use cadets to man what ships are on hand and send a fleet to Vulcan.

Kirk is not assigned to a ship as he's suspended pending judgement. McCoy injects him with a vaccine which has horrible side effects, thus becoming his doctor, and under regulations he can order him aboard as his patient to ensure continuity of care. Kirk overheard talk of an anomaly at Vulcan and recognises the description from what happened to his father. He warns Captain Pike, and they arrive to find the other Starfleet ships trashed by the Romulan ship. Nero demands Pike come aboard; he does, but sends Kirk, Sulu and a redshirt to attack the drill head and shut it down.

The redshirt is killed instantly (ha!), but Kirk and Sulu win out and damage the drill. Nero winds it in, they beam up and rescue some Vulcans, including Sarek. However the drill DID get to the core of the planet, and Nero drops a little spot of "red matter" into it. Red matter is literally that; a ball of red liquid that a small drop is taken from and then dropped down the hole. That creates a black hole which destroys Vulcan.

Nero heads off to Earth. Spock goes to rendezvous with the fleet, with Kirk insisting they chase Nero down. kirk gets so heated about it that Spock actually has him dumped off the ship in an escape pod onto Delta Vega, the ice planet. Kirk dodges monsters, and meets future Spock in a cave. Future Spock was marooned there by Nero so he could watch Vulcan destroyed and know Nero was going to do the same to other Federation worlds. (Delta Vega is apparently within visual range of Vulcan, strangely.)

Spock is exposition guy. In the future, a supernova was threatening to destroy the galaxy (the whole galaxy. No, I don't know how.) Spock promises to avert the disaster by using Red Matter to create a black hole that will suck up the supernova. Unfortunately he is too late to save Romulus, which is destroyed. Nero, a Romulan miner, is very peeved at this. He attacks Spock and both are thrown back in time.

They go to a Federation base on Delta Vega and meet Scotty. Using Spock's advanced knowledge they modify a transporter to do warp beaming and Scotty and Kirk beam to the Enterprise. Kirk confronts Spock and provokes him over the death of his mother on Vulcan, making him lose his cool and beat Kirk up. Coming to his senses Spock relieves himself as Captain because he is too emotionally involved to be in command, leaving Kirk in command.

They warp to one of Saturn's moons, using the magnetic field to hide their emergence from warp from Nero as he blasts Earth with his drill. Spock and McCoy beam aboard and recapture future Spock's ship; Spock escapes in it and blasts the drill to bits then runs. Nero follows, blasting away at Spock, but the Enterprise intervenes and holds him off. Spock sets the ship to a collision course and Scotty beams him and Kirk off both ships as they hit. The Red Matter makes a black hole in the collision, and Nero's ship is sucked up and destroyed.

Back to the academy. Kirk is commended and appointed as Captain of the Enterprise. Old Spock and young Spock meet; old Spock is staying on here, helping to rebuild the Vulcan race on a new planet.

That's as best as I can remember it.


Good Points : Everybody involved absolutely NAILS their respective characters. These are absolutely the same people we see in TOS. Chris Pine especially does the impossible and just becomes Kirk.

The effects are great.

They leave it wide open for sequels.

Lots of good little moments. We know why Kirk's middle name is Tiberius now. Want to know how McCoy got his nickname? You will. Want to know why McCoy joined Starfleet when he hates space travel? You will. We see Kirk take the Kobayashi Maru test. We see the Enterprise being built (but we don't see her launched, alas).

Nyota is now canonically Uhura's first name.

Bad Points : The tech side is kind of strange. A supernova threatens the galaxy. Delta Vega is within sight of Vulcan... and close enough that Vulcan is BIG in the sky. Red Matter is a droplet of actual liquid that... makes black holes. Somehow.

Travel times also seem rather short. The trip from Earth to Vulcan seemingly takes minutes. Perhaps it's just editing, but... al the trips feel like that. Minutes, hours at the most.

The space battles are a bit hectic and confusing. These aren't even really battles as such... there are no tactics, no maneuvering. It's just ships unloading at one another and one getting trashed. What we do see of space battles tends to be short, too. This is nothing like the ST II battle... it's very much flash-bang-wallop and over.

Final thoughts : To answer the big question, the bulk of this movie takes place in a new timeline created when Nero goes into the past. They even have a scene where they explicitly state "Nero has changed things, whatever we were in his past, we are now in a different sequence of events" - actually said out loud in almost those exact words. This IS a reboot of the franchise, and they could go in whatever direction they like for the future.

And those are my opening thoughts.

[Lazar]

I've already had it about 80% spoiled through my own curiosity, but nonetheless I'm covering my face right know and refusing to read your review.

[Aaron]

*sigh* I knew they'd wind up having Kirk as CO Enterprise long before he should have been, that aside I look forward to it's Blu-Ray release.

[LaughingCheese]

Didn't read the whole thing, but it does annoy me that there won't be a launch seen.

Although, in my gut I think I would have expected this.

This isn't Apollo 13 or something.

[Nickswitz]

I just saw it as well, and I believe this was one of the best Trek movies of the franchise, if not the best. One of my favorite parts is when sulu tells kirk his training is in fencing, and then he kicks nero's henchmens butts. And then there was him stealing the guys weapon and shooting him with it. It was funny. But also one thing that was interesting was the fact that they rebooted the kirk character. He now gets his butt kicked reasonably. He didn't really win a single fight without outwitting the bad guy, which is an interesting paradox being that it is now brains over brawn rather than brawn over brain. The new Spock character was quite interesting as well. Instead of his father getting upset about spock's emotions he tells him to embrace them.

I believe the line abut it threatening to destroy the galaxy was due to the fact that it was close enough to other stars that would nova after that causing a chain reaction. But that's a guess, not based on the movie at all.

[Angharrad]

I have a crush on the new Spock.

And I agree with Graham on this point.

Everybody involved absolutely NAILS their respective characters. These are absolutely the same people we see in TOS. Chris Pine especially does the impossible and just becomes Kirk.

I felt that way about the new Spock also.
Thought, if the relationship with Spock and Uhura continues, when Nurse Chapel comes on board, assuming that happens, there's going to be a cat fight.

[LaughingCheese]

And those are my opening thoughts.

Wait, there's more?!?

[Tyyr]

So would this be premature?

[stitch626]

I loved it!

Yes there were the bits that Graham mentioned, but the throwbacks to TOS were amazing.

I wonder who my favorite character is now...


And Nero was semi sympathetic. Unlike another villein we know.

[Coalition]

Just saw it, my thoughts:

Apparently Vulcan does not have a liquid mantle/core, which explains how the energy drill was able to penetrate to the core, without the liquid rock filling in the hole within seconds.

Enterprise can be launched from a planet, as we saw it being built there.

If you are heading towards a planet that is logically under attack, you do not have to exit at the original destination. Drop out a fraction of a second early, and you can see what you are about to get into. Also, if the enemy is jamming you (either on purpose, or as a side effect) launch a shuttle with a full data copy of what is going on, with continuous updates.

Speaking of which,those evac'd shuttles from the beginning should have had as much data copied to them about the encounter as possible, and the conditions of the encounter. This way, when it happens again, Captains will know what is potentially going on, or at least a file will pop up on Starfleet command, or the ship, so they can read what happened.

When beaming aboard an enemy ship, bring redshirts. If nothing else, Cupcake and friends could have been beamed aboard along with Kirk and Spock.

Space combat occurs at distances so close to each other, you can run into the debris from other ships.


Overall, 3/5 good action, spefcial effects, interesting beginning, but there was a lot of stupid present.

[Nickswitz]

Plus, Nemoy already said that there should be another one coming out in Jan. 2011.

In this movie I almost felt sorry for Nero, he lost his family, but then he went about avenging it the completely wrong way. If he had decided to side with kirk in the end, I would have felt a lot more sorry for him. I love spock's chat with kirk about allowing Nero to surrender. Haha.

[LaughingCheese]

Plus, Nemoy already said that there should be another one coming out in Jan. 2011.

Just one year until we're all doomed!!! THIS WILL BE THE LAST TREK EVERZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lazar]

Those damn Mayans!

[DBS]

I did enjoy myself at the movie. There were some things that I liked, some things I disliked.

Good:
I agree that the characters were handled VERY well. Especially Bones. Effects were awesome (as were the aliens and creatures - a nice improvement for the series), and the dialog moments were pretty well done. (I am relieved... ). As a reboot, it works well. There will be plenty of room for sequels!

The producers did a great job of giving us technologies and "new science" without too much technobabble. Now, I like technobabble as much as the next nerd, but minimizing it certainly helped the movie flow well.

Pacing was also excellent. It was a straight action-adventure, and appropriately fast-paced. Other Trek movies (especially Nemesis) tried to mix Star Trek plot-heaviness with Fast Paced Action, and the result was that the pace detracted from the more leisurely and cerebral plot the movie should have had, not to mention cut many otherwise lovely moments. The new movie is crisp without detracting from the extras, partly because we have fewer dangling plotlines writers are tempted to take up, but mostly just good editing.

Bad:
I do NOT like the starship designs at all, except for the future ones. The Narada was very cool and industrial-looking - (fun stat comparison that a post-Nemesis MINING platform ship is a match for a whole bunch of starships in the TOS era). Also Spock Prime's ship was interesting, I like how they brought the idea of the rings back from ENT. HOWEVER - the Federation designs just ended up looking weird somehow. A lot looked kind of like an original series ship, but too bulge-y and curvy. (almost like they were made in a SPORE creator...they just look too "cute"). After seeing the Enterprise - E, I wondered if warp nacelles could ever look too big. Well, my friends, they just did! I'm not a fan of the 'i-Bridge', either.

I was just not convinced by the weapon special effects. The battles were almost too fast to follow. I "felt" the strength of the future weapons (but I didn't see any actually connect - did they do some sort of multiple-warhead or cluster bomb thing? I can't remember, but I don't think the "missiles" every directly hit - do correct me if I'm wrong). But I felt that they were powerful. Federation and Vulcan weapons just didn't feel right for me. I know they were supposed to feel weak in comparison, but they just seemed like a lot of sparkly-showy-off-y without any substance. The more I read this, the more I feel it sounds crazy, but any other thoughts?

Questions:
The movie obviously treats time travel differently than much of the series - the idea being that this is now a parallel reality for cool new fans to play in while letting the old fans enjoy what they had. Officially, the "prime" timeline still exists (thanks to the multiple universe aspects of quantum physics, or some such); but it seems unlikely it will ever receive any more attention or development from studios - outside of fan projects, of course. However, there are very interesting things going on through the novels, so seeing the franchise continue in two directions in various media will be interesting.

They had to fudge a lot of enlistment dates to get everyone together so early! How would all of those birthdates be affected by time-travel, and if they were, could the supporting cast really be the same people? Again, I thought the cast was excellent, and I'd hate this nagging question to take away from that. But an interesting discussion!

Where does the timeline diverge? I suppose it is just barely possible that the events occur in a similar timeline that includes these changes permanently. at least that would get rid of the changed (albeit supposedly more accurate) depiction of time travel. It might also explain the different technology and designs, which should theoretically be EXACTLY the same as the original timeline up until Nero shows up. (I would have liked to have seen the Kelvin look more like ships from ENT - design problems there aside, the ships could diverge more radically from the "prime" as the new timeline progresses). So even counting this as a "new Timeline", we will have to count the Kelvin's technology - and styling - as "prime" timeline canon, unless we buy into this idea that the timelines were different and parallel from the beginning, and the new one just happens to be very similar to the "prime".

[Bryan Moore]

Saw it twice. Will post thoughts tomorrow. Lots of little nits, lots of little quirky things for fans to pick up on.