Once again - this is full of spoilers. Beware!
CHARACTERS
Spock rocked. I think his character was far more the driver than Kirk's, and he got balls. Literally. I LOVE that he's Uhura's lover. His 'mother' moments were ehh, but overall the character who did the most growth and was generally the most compelling.
Kirk was fine. The role was pretty amusingly written, and the kid did fine at it. He was way more bloody than the original - that's the Dark Knight phenomenon - and I swear, he was hanging by the edge of a cliff so many times it's a motif. And if it's a homage to Kirk's kid hanging by the edge, or the I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU it wasn't that good. I thought he was too much of a horndog, but he was compelling a lot of times, looked amusing a lot of times, fit the role pretty well. I thought it was kinda lame to have him be in black the whole movie, basically. "It's like Kirk, but with a dark edgy edge!" "How we gonna do that?" "He'll wear... black!"
Uhura rocked. Hot, strong, making out with the Vulcan. Skilled. I might have missed something in the role, but I don't think it was misogynistic. I kind of think it was too bad they gave her long straight hair - like the recent post at Racialicous on Storm in the X-Men not being really black. There was a woman with the afro on the ship - they panned past her during combat; she had a command yellow uniform on. But the character was cool. I do wish she'd given the last punch at the bar fight scene when she and Kirk met.
Bones was bearable. He'd been written out of the canonical triumvirate in favor of Uhura, so he didn't get the same character development treatment and that was too bad. His delivery of the "I'm a Doctor, not a..." line was stilted, and when you make a movie, you can re-shoot the stilted lines until they get them right. The diseases stuff that got Kirk onto the Enterprise was funny, and he has a certain amount of hearty southern character.
Sulu for the win. The initial 'oops' moment was not so great, but the fencing was awesome. He wasn't Takei but he was Sulu, just as well as the new Spock was Spock. (A different Spock, however.)
Scotty? Well, he seemed way more Irish than Scottish to my ear, but that could have been because I don't know what lowland Scots sounds like. But I really liked this character A LOT. Like Spock, he'd been ret-conned, so he's not the very military engineer that James Doohan was. But cool. The 'you're a brilliant scientist' thing was awesome. BUT
The one amazing loser was the fucking midget. I apologize to midgets, and I liked the short nonverbal alien when the actor was acting the new Oompa Lumpas. BUT cute little characters like that are anathema. The "Beedee beedee" robot wasn't in Star Trek, he was in what - Buck Rodgers? This is the Ewok, this is the Jar-Jar. This is the marketable stuffed animal character so the under-six set has something to franchise to. That character alone was worth dropping to an A from an A+. (Or actually from an A- to a B+, because anything with a character like that won't be starting from an A+, because characters like that indicate an fundamental poor grasp on reality that would show in other areas as well.)
Whew.
Who am I missing? Chekov. My sweetie didn't remember Chekov from the original show, and this ret-con didn't work nearly as well. "We'll make him an idiot savant, brilliant kid, who's like a Russian chess genius. And he'll talk in an accent." OK - do you do any backstory on this? No - one is left to fill in the blanks. The scene where the voice recognition can't understand him was lame - see continuity errors.
Sarek: Very good. Of course, all you have to do is be stoic for a Vulcan, but you can do it with dynamism or not. Dynamic Sarek.
Spock's Mom: Uhhh - nice tit shelf? Sorry, the tit shelf really distracts. I guess she was Winona Ryder, whatever. Did a 1.5 dimensional job of playing her 1.5 dimensional character.
Captain Pike - good! As someone said - he looks like he should, from the Menagerie. And he gets old. And the final handshake has him in vintage old-skool Federation arm sleeve rank stuff. Except the fan service with the 'creeeeture in his boooody' was lame, and he spent the last chunk all tied up. That he's in the show, however, and does a decent job makes him a plus overall in the 'respect the source material' category.
Romulans: Fail. Sorry, just that. Fail. Orc ears, orc tattoos, orc tech, scary alien orc ship (how that was a practical mining ship is beyond me) and Nero? Good ranting, you're no Khan, it's not your fault they made you the Space Orcs.
More: Plot and stuff. Including list of stupid things.
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