It was okay. I enjoyed it. It was a fun film to watch.



I thought the film was alright.

I did rather wish that there had been more than three female characters with speaking parts though. I didn't expect them to pull a Battlestar and genderswap any of the main characters, but there really was room in the film for more minor female characters who were neither love interests for the main boys nor mothers to them. That racist Vulcan Science Academy chap near the beginning could have been a woman, any of the mean Vulcan kiddies who picked on Spock could have been female, the supervisor at the Kobayashi Maru simulation test could have been a woman, Nero or any of the baddie Romulans could easily have been women etc. The underuse of female characters in the original series was a product of its time, and really doesn't need to get replicated into the new film.

Also, I didn't understand why the Romulans were designed like that. The ship looked nothing like a Romulan ship, inside or out, and the Romulans were all tattooed up and bald-headed. Okay, I'll admit that I don't know what a Romulan mining ship looks like- maybe they do look all black and spiky like Babylon 5 Shadows. I also admit that I don't know what Romulan miners look like- maybe it's a subculture thing, and all miners shave their heads and tattoo themselves while the rest of the Romulans have their usual nerdy bowl-cuts and pointy evil shoulder-pads. However, I would cynically guess that it's more a case of either:
1) Starting with Romulan baddies, and then someone says that they don't look scary badass enough and gets them to redesign the species.
2) Starting with bald, tattooed baddies and someone says that it would be better if they were a species with a famous name, so they stuck the Romulan label on them.
It really annoys me a lot more than it ought to. And the design of the interior of the mining ship was retarded for any species that isn't capable of flight or levitation. Jeez.

I didn't really like the way Kirk's massive jumpstep field promotion was made permanent. I mean, it does cheapen the rank of Captain somewhat. I gather that Kirk is an extraordinary individual, and he did tons of cool action hero stunts, but to go from straight from Cadet to Captain is frankly ridiculous. He didn't even graduate properly from the Academy. I suppose that he has an experienced First Officer with him who probably has the whole manual memorized so it won't matter so much that he is incredibly lacking in experience. Spock will probably handle a lot of the admin and report-writing too. Bah.

I could have done without the fat hands allergic reaction bit too.

Other than that, I liked it. McCoy was good, and Sylock was good. Uhura was alright, and she was of course really extremely easy on the eye. Old Spock was great, but of course he would have been great. Scotty was alright, though getting beamed into the pipe was a bit silly. The design of the little future ship with the rotating thingy was LOVELY! The ice planet beasties were also LOVELY. It was an enjoyable couple of hours.

And I was immensely, irrationally glad that Pike wasn't all beep-beepbeep-beep at the end. It was just nice that didn't happen, though I was certain it would when the baddies were putting the brain worm thingy in him.

Tags: complaining petulantly, film