So I saw it tonight.
I have never liked a movie while simultaneously rolling my eyes at it as much as this one.
Initially I was pleased with the feel of the movie, but then the way they took away the Enterprise from Kirk just to kill Pike so he could have it back and give him a motive for revenge seemed really forced.
The big grandiose close up of Harrison when he meets Mickey is so awkward. It's like that Abrams thinks he is continuing on from TOS like the original movies did with the same actors. There was no power to the closeup zoom in and and scary music because you have no fucking clue who this guy is. It's like, "Hey, I can save your clearly terminally ill child" CUE VILLAINOUS CUES!!! Like, what?
IF these movies had a TV show backing them up and we already knew who Kahn was it would have been a cool reveal moment. As it was, it just says here is the villain because of evil look and villainous music.
It was nice to see Spock do Spocky Vulcan things that they always just talked about in other movies.
Speaking of Spock... what the hell was the point of having Nimoy cameo? He does absolutely zero to help the plot, story or characters out. I think he was honestly put in just to make the silly faces when Spock asks him about Kahn.
The relationship between Spock and Uhura is nice as are the moments between Spock and Kirk. You can see the growth of their friendship as well as the characters, which in a 4 hour setting is a good accomplishment considering the original pair had 79 episodes.
Unfortunately none of the other characters have experienced any growth. McCoy, Scott, Chekov and Sulu are pretty much the exact same characters as the last movie and actually, Kirk and Uhura pretty much are as well. Only Spock seems to have experienced any emotional changes and character growth. Again though, 4 hours Vs 79+.
I really liked what they did with the Klingons on the individual level right up until the one guy took his helmet off. I just don't like the character/species design. I dug the Predator vibe they had though. They still had the batleths but the way they used them in conjunction with their disruptors in CQB was cool.
Big picture, the Klingons didn't make much sense. An Empire capable of fighting and defeating the Federation and Starfleet and the Enterprise can get within viewscreen distance of their home world? So much for needing to cheat on the Kobayashi-Maru test since you can just fly a ship right down into Klingon homeworld airspace without so much as a hail. Clearly the solution was just "be sneaky".
Keeping on with the "doesn't make sense" theme... New Vulcan? Awfully sentimental for a race that cherishes logic and lack of emotion above all else.
Chekov could miraculously lock onto moving targets for transport and now he can't. Maybe it only works vertically?
Hey Scotty, did Starfleet take the transwarp equation from your head too? Not that it was technically yours since you got it from Spock, but gosh if you can lock onto Harrison to shoot fucking stealth torpedoes at him and send him a pinpoint accurate transmission that no one else could pick up, why exactly couldn't they just lock the transporter onto him with Scotty's forgotten transwarp equation?
Why couldn't they just literally drop the fucking ice bomb in the volcano?
As to what did make sense, Starfleet finding Kahn actually had a plausible explanation.
The militaristic slant that Starfleet seemed to take after the Kelvin and Vulcan.
Kirk getting the boot for violating the Prime Directive, although it never happened in TOS, TNG, DS9 or Voyager.
One thing I think they are going to regret is making distances so short/warp so fast.
Anyway, despite all that, I liked the movie. Quinto is excellent as Spock. (Nimoy from TOS isn't nearly as bad as people seem to remember) Pine seemed to lose some of the Shatnerness of Kirk this time around which I actually didn't like, but he was still pretty good. The characters are what is driving the goodness of the rebbot for me and I am pleased.