New fans will flock!

Rating: 9/10 (6 May 2009)

So up front, I'm NOT a Trekkie from way back. I've seen a couple of the big screen films, I've seen a few old eps, but my Trek time has mostly been Next Gen, and not for a fair while. My Trek knowledge is rusty, and maybe the premiere was wasted upon me, but Trekkie or not, I enjoyed the HECK out of this!
I do have concerns that I liked it so much BECAUSE I don't have preconceived ideas of what character and story *should* do in this film. The reasons I loved it might turn out to be the reasons fans of old Trek hate it with a blinding passion. I can't know. But I thought it was a great flick, I thought it was cleverly done, well executed, and I really enjoyed the actors. Not been completely familiar with the old characters, I'm not 100% sure, but I think they did a pretty good job of matching up the youngsters, and the youngsters executed their roles pretty well, in my opinion. I'm really interested to see what old school Trekkies think!
I don't *think* you can spoiler a prequel, but having said that, the premise they've based this film on might negate that statement. So I'm going to put some *possible* spoilers out of order at the end under a cut - if someone tells me that they're not spoilers, I'll remove the cut! :)
We were bag-checked and electronics scanned on the way into the cinema, but if I'd had my phone, and could have microblogged it, this is what I would have said! (Transcribed from notes written in the dark...)
* Starts out with a bang!
* Wha? Who is Nemo?
* emotional ping early on...
* Li'l Spock and Li'l Kirk are cute!
* Silar rocks as Spock!
* Should I know who Spock's mum is? What's with that bosom?!
* Cute cuts between glimpses of Kirk and Spock growing up...
* WTF is Leonard McCoy?
* Ohhhh, Bones, right...
* Aw man! I wanted to see some training!
* Oh! Bana! That's who! Duh.
* Why the short skirts? Surely by the whatever the heck century it is we can have equal opportunity uniforms! Really, did they need to stick to canon like that?
* Some dorky funny stuff - giggles from the crowd.
* Music a bit obvious...
* Awesome cool fight scenes.
* Kinda lost a little suspense as we all know who lives ... or do we?
* Kirk's kinda insane, right?
* Eric Bana has rockin' tatts!
* Nimoy cool! Much cooler than I thought he'd be!
* Teenage baby Enterprise crew - too cool! It's like a YA flick!
* Whole new gen of fans from this flick I reckon.
* Now I *wanna* watch original Trek!
Right - I'm not sure if what lies beneath are spoilerish. I'm very wary of doing the wrong thing on this one, but I'd love for someone who knows old Trek and would care if they got a *possible* spoil to tell me if it is or not!
* Were Spock and Uhura canon? V. sweet and just a little sexy.
* I LOVE the idea that we now have an alternate universe - is this likely to be worked on for future films? A new TV series? It's such a clever idea, and set up to work really well! Explicitly well. But only if the fact that Kirk's dad really didn't die in original Trek. Otherwise, old Spock was just blowing smoke in my ear! Crafty old bastard :)
Final verdict? LOVE! I really really enjoyed this. I sat forward in my seat a lot, I laughed when I was supposed to, I think, and I was pretty impressed. I think this has been marketed exactly right - I'm not certain hard core fans will love it, but I think it will appeal to a whole new generation. And that rocks.