So, I saw the new movie today. I’m gonna be honest, I went into it thinking I’d hate it–no wanting to hate it. But I’ve gotta say, I really liked it. I actually *liked* the alternate universe premise, though to be honest since the characters have completely different backstories and personalities as a result and everything aside from the very basic outlines…. I almost don’t see the point in using the TOS crew at all aside for “name cred.”

See, the thing that isn’t totally apparent upon just hearing about the lol, timewarp so that TOS and everything after it didn’t really happen premise is that, well it’s not exactly like that. Rather the going-back-in-time thing spawns an alternate universe (i.e. the ‘proper’ cannon is still intact and everything that happens in the alternate universe doesn’t interact aside from proper Spock now being in the alternate timeline). So, seeing how it actually ended up playing out, I do agree that it was a better choice on some level than trying to make something fit into the proper cannon. But on the other hand, the characters are so different I’d almost have preferred completely new people (new Kirk’s backstory is suspiciously similar to Picard’s–i.e. he’s a total douchebag in the academy and basically gets the asshole beaten out of him by the end of the movie).

Of course there are some nerdrage points in terms of LOL TECHNOLOGY and whatnot that bothered me a bit but I dunno, I just kind of ignored it because it’s already pretty bastardized so whatever. It’s really not that bad unless you’re the type to write disscertations on transporters.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty solid movie. Lense flare was a bit much at times and the whole Spock and Uhura thing was… creepy (they seem to imply that they’ve been an item for a while and they spend a decent chunk of the movie sucking face which is just creepy imho). Also, the movie really could have used a Shatner cameo, I think it’d be awesome if one of the dvd extras was Shatner-commentary, but it probably won’t happen.

Anyway, I’d reccomend if you’re thinking about seeing it that you do and you go into it expecting that you’ll hate it because I have the feeling that if your expectations are higher than OH GOD THIS IS GONNA BE THE WORST THING EVER, JJ ABRAMS IS GONNA KILL MY CHILDHOOD HEROES it might be dissapointing.