I just saw the new Star Trek movie, and I was expecting it to be kind of like “Cloverfield,” which was a total crappy monster movie. Now, I’m a major nitpicker with all things Trek, I prefer them to stick with the canon, so, even though I watched all 5 series and 10 movies, I was expecting this to be like most other re-boots, a total disaster. It wasn’t, it was kind of like Batmans’ reboot, a pleasant surprise. The alternate universe idea was done right, in my opinion.

First off my nitpicks. I’d say the first fifteen minutes of the movie(I checked my watch) after the prologue, I was disappointed or annoyed with, because it just made no sense to me that anyone would have a Corvette 200+ years after it was made; but, if we’re supposed to see that Kirk is a rebel even as a kid, well I guess it makes some sense. What’s up with the cop robot by the way? The whole bar scene thing, well, it reminded me of Star Wars a little bit. Plus, aren’t Orion slave girls supposed to be just that, Orion Slave Girls? Why is one in the Academy? Plus, they never explained why a starship was being built on Earth in Iowa, what happened to Utopia Planitia? In the books and in the original series, wasn’t the Enterprise something like 15 years old by the time Kirk took command? Isn’t there supposed to be at least one or two starships or some kind of fighter craft protecting Earth and Vulcan? What about those space stations? Isn’t the universe supposed to explode when young Spock meets old Spock? At least that’s what Doc Brown always said!

Now, what I liked. This movie had all sorts of references to TOS, TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, and a couple of the movies. Scotty said something about Admiral Archer when he was younger(wouldn’t he have been way too old by then?), the scorpion thingee reminded me a lot of the Wrath of Khan, but this time you just assumed Captain Pike told them everything. Then, when Nero yelled “Spooock!!!” it flashed me back to “Khaaannn!!” The whole time travel revenge thing kind of reminded me of the Voyager episode “Year of Hell” where the scientist kept making changes to history and kept ruining it and taking it further and further from where it was originally. Too bad destroying the Romulan ship didn’t reset history. When Kirk first meets older Spock, I thought it was cool when he told Kirk that he would always be his friend, referencing Trek 2 and 3. I found it funny when they explained away Chekov being there by having him be 17 years old, which would make him at least 4 or 5 years younger than everyone else. At the end, when Leonard Nimoy as Spock spoke the “These are the missions of the starship Enterprise…” plus the TOS music, that was awesome!

I thought everyone had their characters down pat. I thought I would see Sylar instead of Spock, but he was close to mirroring Nimoy almost exactly. Chris Pine, I thought, is a good replacement for Shatner, the guy playing Scotty was funny, the new guy playing Chekov had a little too thick of a Russian accent though, Sulu was good, and Uhura seemed more like a copy of Lieutenant Hoshi from Enterprise than the original. Even the guy who played Sarek reminded me a lot of Mark Lenards’ Sarek.

Overall, I thought this was a good movie and I hope J.J. Abrams doesn’t disappoint in the future. As long as one person is the director instead of more than one for a movie series, then it should do really well. Live Long and Prosper, Star Trek.