So I went to see this last night... Spoilers ahead.
It's not very good. There's no real plot to speak of, as it's as thin as can be. Every scene seems to either be a chance to show off some cool effects or stunts, or a vehicle to get you there while showing off some witty banter. A plot can be a vehicle for its characters, and it can be done well, but this is not how you do that.
The effects are great, if a bit overdone. The scene at the start with the
Spoiler:
destruction of the Enterprise
takes about five minutes longer than it needs to. It's impressive, sure, and they use the effects very well, but it honestly feels like it's using the effects for effects' sake. It's even more gratuitous than the constant flybys of the Enterprise during TMP.
Idris Elba, much like Cumberbatch, is wasted as a villain. He's sufficiently angry and his origin is a nice nod to
Spoiler:
Enterprise with him being a former MACO
, but that's about as decent as it gets.
but is the film enjoyable? At times, yes, and I'll tell you why: While Pegg gets simple Star Trek terminology wrong at times (which is ironic with him being an engineer in the movie), one thing he does get right several times is the dialogue when some of the characters are bantering.
You feel like McCoy and Kirk are old friends. You feel like McCoy and Spock, while adversarial most of the time, actually do respect each other.
Speaking of, Karl Urban is starting to creep me out. You go back and watch the old movies, or even the old series, and you can see that man has DeForest Kelley's mannerisms down to a ****ing T. It shows not just Urban's strength as an actor, but his reverence for the original character.
I wasn't sold on Quinto's Spock in the previous movies, but I liked him more in this one than I did in the others. He seems to finally have settled in to the role, and the more I think about it, the more I see Nimoy's influences in his performance.
Yelchin, Cho and Saldana are all solid. Yelchin especially. He's as good a Checkov as we're ever going to get, I think, and it's a damn shame he won't be around for Star Trek 4.
Pine is the weakest of the big three. He just has something missing about him, and I dare say it isn't his fault. Pine is an incredible actor, terribly underrated imo, but part of the reason the plot falls apart is that some early promise about Kirk's personal situation is forgotten for half of the movie. When it starts off, Kirk is
Spoiler:
not enjoying being out in space. He wants a change
. That is all good, but that theme disappears until the end of the movie only to be revisited in a tiny scene at the end.
If you go back and watch movies like First Contact or Khan, you can see that the main thing effecting the Captain (the Borg for Jean Luc, mortality/becoming older for Kirk) are constantly referenced, if not in dialogue, but in the themes throughout the movie. There's none of that here, and it hurts Pine, Kirk, and the plot as a whole.
And that's what really hurts the movie in general. There's no thoughtfulness. You can make the most amazing sci-fi action movie you want, but without the sci-fi, it's only half of what it could be, and this film is sorely lacking that. It's the closest we've come to the more Star Wars-like "Fantasy story in space" kind of thing, and the movie is poorer for it.
But where does it rate? Is it better than Into Darkness? In all honesty? No. It isn't. Is it more enjoyable than it, though? Yes. Why? Because the performances of the actors drag what would have been a poorer movie kicking and screaming in to some semblance of enjoyment by being more like the original characters than they've ever been. It actually makes the movie, for me, more re-watchable than the previous one, in many ways.
And **** me, that scene where young Spock opens the
Spoiler:
box with Old Spock's belongings.
Dem feels.
But yeah... I think that covers it.