So. Star Trek.

[emmagrant01]

Well... I liked it, of course, but I didn't love it. And I expected to, so...  Hmmm.

Bits I really liked:

The first 15 minutes. That was the best part of the movie, frankly.

Spock's emotional journey, from his little selfish/generous moment of mind-melding* with Pike right before he died to his tears at Jim's "death". I just love Spock being humanized a bit, apparently. (*Isn't it canon that Vulcans mind-meld with dying friends/relatives to comfort them in their last moments? Or did I read that in a fic?)

The K/S. OMG the Kay fucking Ess. It shipped itself, I swear. Spock's suspicion/jealousy of Carol was particularly lovely.

It's cheesy and cliched, but I will never tire of Bones saying, "I'm a doctor, not a ______." Ever.

"The Mudd Incident."

Sassy!Spock and all his attitudes. :-D

Simon Pegg. Whenever he was on the screen, I was smiling. And watching him run down that hangar made me laugh and think of his story about puking after filming it!

Benedict Cumberbatch. I don't think his role was terribly well-written, but that man can work magic with even the clumsiest dialogue. (Just like Harrison Ford.) And he looked so good in this film. SO GOOD.

Bits I didn't like:

There were just some writing issues that bugged me. I went into it unspoiled but frankly found it easy to work out the entire plot as I watched. I expected to be surprised and I wasn't, and I think that's the reason I left the cinema feeling a little disappointed.

John Harrison/Khan wasn't quite as malevolent as I'd expected - which frankly could be a result of my love for BC. The cast had said so many times in the media junket interviews and appearances that BC's character was playing mindgames and pitting them against each other, but... he didn't? I mean, not really. I was expecting something on the level of Moriarty-style mindgames, I guess.

The real bad guy was easy to spot early on. Over-the-top American military guy = evil these days, amirite?

Was there any reason Alice Eve had to take her clothes off in that one scene? No, I didn't think so. If we'd gotten some shirtless BC or CP**, I'd be able to overlook it, but seriously? Clearly I wasn't the intended audience. :-/ (**There was that little scene where Kirk was shirtless in bed with the two tailed-women, but I'm not counting that because he wasn't intended to be an object of sexual gaze there.)

The reversal of the death scene from ST II was interesting and a nice tip of the hat to the alternate universe, but... Spock yelling "KHAAAAANNN!!11!" Shatner-style threw me out of the moment. I get that they needed him to get mad and have a reason to go after Khan, so they could get the blood sample (saw that coming from the first scene - oh, Khan's magic blood can revive a dying child? Someone important is going to die and need resuscitating! And hey, let's hammer it in with this revived Tribble!) but it seemed like a gratuitous fight scene at that point. A point in the "like" column for Uhura beaming down to save Spock's ass, though.

...

Yeah. I need to process for a bit. I'll definitely go see it again, but I think my expectations were too high and probably weren't going to be met. Four years is a long time to wait, you know?

OTOH, I think the writing here could have been better. A lot better. And that’s what I keep coming back to. I walked out of the first film blown away, totally sucked back into the fandom after a good decade, and dying to write fanfic. I fully expected to come out of this one feeling the same way, and I didn't. :-/

Cross-posted to my Tumblr

Comments

[sorion.livejournal.com]

I loved it :) I thought the writing was quite layered and interesting; more so than I'd expected. I was surprised at how they incorporated the military paranoia that would have surfaced after the incident with Nero, and how it changed the waking of Khan.

I don't think the audience was supposed to hate Khan. He's the monster in the story, as opposed to Marcus, who was the villain. Everyone hated Marcus... (I was briefly disappointed that I no longer have to write papers for uni, this semester XD I would have loved to work with the monster/villain theme in this film.)

And the dialogues were brilliant :D (My favourite scene was Khan and Spock negotiating XD So much fun to watch two geniuses outsmart each other :3)