Just seen it, and I have to say I didn't like it much. It suffers from the same problems much of the new movies, particularly the prequels/reboots/whatevers: it sacrifices substance and structure for fast paced CGI action. During the whole course of the movie, I never once had the feeling that the director had some sort of message or point to get across - the movie appears to be it's own reason for being. One could argue that it's "character-driven" - and one would be correct, up to a point; however in case of star trek XI this isn't such a good thing. The writing around this seemed particularly weak to me, much of the movie's events transparently fabricated in such a way as to put the characters in an exact sort of situation the director wants them to be in. Indeed, the entire plot seems like little more then an excuse to keep the movie rolling, getting our heroes from one incredible situation to another. One of the examples would be the way Kirk relieves Spock of command at one point - to me that was a pretty weak, predictable, hastily done plot device in order to get Kirk in the captain's chair - and unfortunately, but a drop in the ocean that was this movie's weak story.
That brings me to another point, which is that the whole movie seems to be in some sort of a hurry, as if mr. Abrams was trying to distance himself from the old Trek style by any means necessary. While some of the old Trek movies are indeed too slowly paced, especially for today's audiences, Trek XI tries too hard to go the other way, using frenetically blurry, fast-cut action scenes in which it's hard to make out what is going on, and often requires some sort of verbal explanation from one of the cast when the action sequence is over. In all that speed it also tries to sell us a lot of logical inconsistencies (for example, our heroes being the only ones able to stop the "drill" at Earth - granted, the Enterprise was the only ship able to respond, but surely it's not the only military asset Earth would have - how about local planetary defenses, ground based batteries, orbital satellites, starbases, local fighter squadrons, anything that is capable of snapping a metal cable in two..)
Art direction suffers from a similar problem, compounded with the ease CGI made it to go totally overboard with whatever we wish. At the risk of sounding like a nostalgic dinosaur - in the old days, making special effects was a much bigger problem then today, so coupled with budget and time constraints you had to really think where you'll use them and how much; this effectively made sure people thought through how will things look and feel on the screen, because compromises had to be made. Today, there's no need for that, so a careless director will completely exaggerate when it comes to CGI, designs, and sets; why concentrate on one phaser shot that makes sense, when you can have hundreds of them in a matter of seconds, zipping by, dazzling the audience - hell, you can't even make out what's a torpedo, a phaser blast, or a pulse weapon - and why care? It's all going so fast, let's disengage the brain and move on.. Why put control panels, indicator lights etc where they actually make sense, when you can have them everywhere, making the movie look like an overlit theme park? Why have a romulan mining vessel actually look like a ship designed for such tasks (or romulan) when you can make an overdesigned stack of pointy parts that has more firepower then the Death Star? (miner revolts must be a really nasty thing on Romulus..) Don't get me wrong, I love CGI when used properly - I do quite a lot of 3D work myself for a living and as a hobby when I stop "actual" work - being into movie grade CGI is only natural. I just feel that it needs to be used properly and carefully for it to work.
The only thing I did like was Karl Urban as McCoy - DeForest Kelley's character is a legend, and reinterpreting that character is no easy task, but I feel that the new one came as close to the old as possible, considering it's a different actor this time around.
I'll conclude this rant review by saying that I have nothing against the idea of remaking trek in a more up-to date context, but if someone's going to modernize trek, doesn't it need to remain trek at it's core for it to make sense? Otherwise, just make a new universe. For me, the one fundamental thing about trek was that even at it's worst, I always felt like it had something it wanted to say - some predesigned point it was trying to make, sometimes it was done good, sometimes bad, sometimes spectacularly so.. But the only message I get from this new trek is "we're desperately trying not to be old Star Trek", which, apart from it being a very weak message, is also kind of ironic if you think about it: it's defined by the very thing it's trying not to be. Just doesn't stand on it's own. Well, for me anyway.
