Before I go back and read the whitefont, I think that Star Trek should have been named Star Trek: Lens Flare! or possibly Star Trek: It's All About the Coat.

Now to read the whitefont.

Oh, but I did keep muttering "Not the face! Not the face!"

Okay, whitefont has been read. Yes, I laughed out loud when Khan grabbed the coat as he was hauling ass through San Francisco, and it just happened to fit. CUE DRAMATIC COAT MOMENT!

I think that flipping the Wrath of Khan death scene was a calculated risk that didn't work for me. It was like killing Buffy -- obviously Kirk was going to be brought back. If you introduce a Tribble in act 1, it has to go off in act 3. (Okay, so that's not a perfect comparison, since the acts are off, but you get the idea.)

Also, having Spock bellow "KHAAAAAAAAAAN" just made me laugh, and I know it wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to be all teary and moved, but putting that moment in was a HUGE risk, and maybe it's just the people I'm friends with, but that particular bellowed name gets invoked as a joke too much for that scene to work in the movie.

Benedict Cumberbatch still looks like a Siamese cat. And he officially is a creepy motherfucker. But I could eat his voice with a spoon.

Karl Urban is damn fine. As is Chris Pine.

I assume there is a metric crapload of Kirk/Spock/Uhura fanfic out there.

Worldbuilding minutia that I loved: seeing St. Paul's Cathedral in the London scenes and the Golden Gate Bridge in the San Francisco scenes. Especially St. Paul's -- I just love the idea that, a couple-few hundred years in the future, St. Paul's is still hanging about, because that's just what it does. That tickled me.

t edit I'm glad I wasn't spoiled that Cumberbatch was Khan -- I remember the speculation when he was first cast, but then the "John Harrison" character name was released, and I figured, hey, he's still Benedict Cumberbatch, so I'll see it. And yet, when he was revealed to really be Khan, I wasn't surprised. Except for how the character is -- I think -- a Sikh, but clearly Ricardo Montalban isn't, and clearly Cumberbatch isn't, either. So lots of handwaving there.

At least they put makeup on Montalban to make his skin darker in TOS, and back then a non-Caucasian superman was pretty damn progressive even if they didn't actually get an actor of the right ethnic background. In 2013 when Naveen Andrews is a household name that's worked for Abrams, there's just no excuse

Yeah, that makes me pretty angry.

So, they tried to cast Benicio Del Toro in the role and he pulled out. I forgot who replaced him, who also pulled out. So at that point, I think they were just hoping to get a name star who could do it. Not an excuse, but how I remember casting at the time.

I have read hte whitefont for Into Darkness, and I'm glad I didn't plan to watch the movie in the first place. Well, I'll probably sepnd a dollar on it later in the summer. I am annoyed that they've co-opted Khan, becasue that whole storyline in the original movies was a gutpunch of a payoff from the original series, and it felt earned. You knew why Khan was pissed, and you had the weight of actual years--for the Trekkies, at least--between the stories to imagine how Khan felt at being abandoned.

Seeing this now, it feel likes Abrams was going through the story closet and going "Oh, this looks pretty, let's add that to the outfit."

One of the reasons it didn't feel like a Star Trek movie is that the alien worlds actually look alien more than artificial. Okay, as well at. And I do also get the feeling that land, at least, extends further than I can see it, where as on TV, it mostly feels no more than one meter wider than the widest pan--it would have been a dream for some pretty funky matte paintings even back in the day, but normally it feels more like a spaceship show than a space exploration show.

If you could inject a sense of scale into the terrestrial encounters on TV, well, it would be over budget before you've signed a single actor.

As far as the yell of Khaaaaaan--they got all the required lines, right? No matter who said them.

It was fun, there were a few bits of "oh, so that's how that's going to be addressed in the third act" which really make me impatient, as well as deflating the emotion.

Mah emotion point was Hobbity--when Chekov popped (weird to talk about "Chekov's [insert apropos device here]" when Chekov's on board) did his day-saving bit in Engineering and appearing from nowhwere with his pre-teen face and everything..

Some shots reminded me of shots in Inception, but less cool. Way less cool. I got more of a sense of continual destruction than I did of lives lost in any battle--ratings, maybe?

I've seen every Trek episode other than Enterprise, but most of the things I like, the executions I like, are TNG and later.

It's unfortunate, PR-wise that Gene Roddenberry said his epitome of humanity would not be a white guy.

Hmmph. I fairly well enjoyed it, definitely worth the price of admission. My largest issue of the move was the screaming. Not the unintentionally funny yell of a word by Spock, but both Uhura and the other chick scream a couple times. Can we do that less?

Yeah, I don't think the required line was necessary at all. But I don't think the scene in which that yell occur should have occurred at all.

I've seen every Trek episode other than Enterprise, but most of the things I like, the executions I like, are TNG and later.

Me too, ita.

The funniest thing at our showing happened while the credits were rolling. An older American woman in the row behind us said, "Am I supposed to know who Benedict Cumberbatch is?" She pronounced "-batch" really weirdly, sort of like "baaahtch". She said it again. "Am I supposed to know who Benedict Cumberbaahtch is?!".

I briefly considered turning around and saying, "So, don't watch much British TV, do you?", but I was suppressing laughter too hard so I let her be. I do hope she's IMDb'd by now.

I loved the Trekkiness of the new movie and most of the execution (particularly liked the scenes where Khan and Spock are running through SF). The relentless lens flare and the martial nature of the film bothered me a bit; one sodding action sequence after another. OK! I get it already! I really really do hope they go more explore-y for the next one. Though with Abrams moving to Star Wars, who knows when a next one will be? I expect somebody else will direct it.

I do think the tying in of the new Trekverse to the old and filling the movies with in-jokes for the oldies and other stuff for the newbies is one of the new franchises' strengths. My favourite was: Kirk: "Go put on a red shirt". Chekov: gulps .

An older American woman in the row behind us said, "Am I supposed to know who Benedict Cumberbatch is?"

In the grand scheme of things, madame, no not really. He's just an actor. It's not all that important, when you really think about it. Supposed to know how to go about your daily business, take care of yourself, do your job, or what to do in case of fire? Probably yes. Supposed to know who Benedict Cumberbatch is? A matter of priority and personal preference, I guess. But this conversation has gotten awfully weighty for apres-cinema discussion, wouldn't you say?