Star Trek XI

So after seeing the movie a second time, I have to say I enjoyed it more. The first time, I was too distracted by the new actors and all the changes. I was watching too closely to see how they all did. So when I saw it a second time, I was able to simply enjoy the movie. And while it isn't an instant classic or anything, I enjoyed it. I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars.

But I think my original list of pros and cons still stands.

Pros:

• Bones - Karl Urban nailed it and he was my favorite part of the movie. Bones is easily my favorite character from TOS, maybe ever.
• Alternate Reality - I thought that was an awesome way to free themselves from any restrictions of the shows and movies that came before them. And it's hardly a new concept in Star Trek, so it fits with the canon.
• Kirk - He played it well without mimicking Shatner, which would have just turned into a parody.
• CG - The CG of the ships and worlds were awesome. The Enterprise coming out of the dust cloud around Saturn was sweet. All the little touches on the ship made it feel more real.
• Overall the story was good and to the point. It introduced characters but didn't dwell on origin stories, which could have really dragged.

Cons:

• They did a little of the shaky-camera action bullshit that Hollywood is addicted to. Shaking the camera does not make anything more exciting, it just annoys your audience who is trying to follow the action. Fortunately, this was limited to only a couple scenes.
  
• If you had told me yesterday that there would ever be a Beastie Boys track in a Star Trek film, I would have called you a retard.
  
• Sulu with a katana? The whole point of Sulu's character was that he was one of the first Asian guys on TV that wasn't a martial artist. Sulu was Asian, but he was just a dude, no kung-fu or samurai swords. They kind of ruined that, and I feel like Hollywood has moved backwards. It's like making Chekov a communist, or giving Uhura ghetto slang lines; "I gots kids to feeed wit yo special!".
  
• Spock's Ship broke the Star Trek feel and moved into Star Wars territory. Star Trek doesn't do one man vehicles with pointless moving parts, that's Goerge Lucas crap. I always felt like part of what kept Star Trek grounded in plausible reality was the fact that an advanced ship that travels space needs a large crew to operate and maintain it.
• Spock and Uhura? Really? The guy who came up with that should be fired.
  
• This is really nit picky, but I wish they had stuck to more of the original technology. Such as the solid beam phasers, both with the Enterprise and the hand phasers. It really made Star Trek unique in sci-fi tech and again seemed to be more plausible than most. And power requirements, such as raising shields during warp, shouldn't be possible. Power management was a big deal in TOS. It took time to raise sheilds, and you had to sacrifice engine power to do so. Again, it adds to the plausibility, but also allows for some space battle intrigue, such as when Kirk would hesitate to raise shields in a gamble, but takes a photon for it.