Okay, so this thread (and Star Trek) are sooooo last month. But I finally got to see it (we're on a tight budget, so movies are a rare luxury) and was kind of disappointed. The special fx and CGI were, of course, great and a fine showcase for the talent that's out there in the digital animation world. And the guy who played McCoy was just spot-on and a dead-ringer for DeForest Kelly's character, but better looking. And the young Spock was pretty good too.
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But the writting was totally slipshod and sloppy. And the homage paid to the original should at least have included a little homework into the old series. The writers got away with a lot by using the "Alternative Reality Due to Meddling With the Space-Time Continuum" trick, as in the original series Spock's mother (who was blonde) was alive and well long after he and Kirk ran the Enterprise, and appeared on a couple of episodes; Uhura and Spock never showed any recognition toward each other that even hinted that they ever had a relationship (Where the hell did THAT come from?! In the movie, the scene just cuts to Uhura draping herself on Spock, like they'd done it before... with no prior lead-in. Makes me wonder how many Terrabytes of movie ended up on the digital "cutting room" floor); Christopher Pike was mangled in, I think, a fire-fight explosion that left him unable to speak or communicate except by using his intent (oooh! IMA!) to make a light flash once for "yes" and two for "no," and was left in the care of telepathic aliens who gave him the illusion of normalcy and life on Earth... I could go on and on.
Another annoying bit of sloppiness was having a creature totally unsuited physically for the ice planet on which it supposedly lived to chase Kirk into "Spock Prime's" cave. What were those artists thinking, or drinking?
And one of the WORST infractions, that can't be glossed over by the "Meddling With Space-Time Continuum" trick: McCoy's nickname, "Bones," was the typical nickname given to a military doctor, I think as far back as the Civil War and possibly earlier. Back then, a battlefield or ship's doctor was often employed as a surgeon, amputating the mangled limbs of soldiers. A "saw-bones," in other words, then shortened to just "Bones." But the writers here totally missed that snippet of U.S. military history and tried to think up another origin for how Kirk came up with "Bones."
The movie also reflects the trend toward Short Attention-Span Theatre, with scenes and views cutting from one to the next in fractions of seconds before the eye and brain can fix themselves on an image. Scenes and dialogue are short and rapid, and there is just a sense that no one wants to sit and watch a story play out; it has to be wham-bam action nonstop. The story and plotline are incidental and secondary to the special fx, explosions, battles and fights.
The original series, and even its sequels, spent a lot more time on stories and characters. This prequel episode was more of a caricature touching on the basic characters of the original series, but once they neatly fell into their places the movies became just a vehicle for a lot of BOOM! and flash. That's the lazy "let's make a ton of money and blow this clambake" approach to movie-making, and Star Trek deserved better.
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To wrap up on a brighter note: The absolutely best homage paid to the original series (besides having veteran Leonard Nimoy on hand, and the voice of the late Majel; Barrett Roddenbery, who provided the computer voice on the original series and therafter) was the tip of the hat to all of the classic episodes where some unfamiliar crewman beams down to a planet with the "regulars," and we all knew who would not be living to beam back up to the Enterprise.
As soon as some unknown shmoe named "Olson" got on board with Kirk and Sulu, you just knew that Olson was gonna snuff it. But at least he got some good lines. The extras who served as sacrificial alien bait on the original Star Trek rarely had spoken lines because then Gene Roddenberry would have had to have paid them more! There was a separate union/guild for extras who have lines vs. those who are just part of the unwashed crowd.