Oh boy.

Rating: 6/10 (13 November 2013)

This is a hard film to review. I still don't know exactly how I feel about it. I understand how this is a film so many have problems with and yet so many love it.
I was never a die hard Trekkie, but I did enjoy much of the series (original and NG) and some of the movies. I kind of liked the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie. I gave it an 8, mostly because I liked the casting and it was good to see a Trek movie again. This, however, seems to be harder to swallow. The same things that make it good for some, make it worse for others. Two sides of the coin.
These are the things I like:
1) The cast is still very solid, and adding the characters of Benedict Cumberbatch along with Peter Weller just screams casting quality.
2) It's not boring, not for a second. It's paced like many films nowadays: plenty of action, humor and grand happenings.
3) It looks really good.
4) The overall story is good enough if you don't stop to think about it too much.
--------------- These are the things I didn't like (the other side of the coin):
1) Casting aside, the main characters are written as simplified versions of the originals and to act a little out of character at times. This wouldn't bother me so much, if much of it wouldn't be cliché-ridden filler. It is true that the 2009 movie had simplified characters as well, but it's harder to forgive second time around.
2) Even though the film isn't boring, it feels like it just pushes forward with haste, not giving the story/characters enough room to breathe and taking away from the dramatic potential the story had. Sometimes I felt I was watching a modern action-packed computer game. All of this takes away from the deeper layers of the story and there's really some stupid stuff crammed into the movie - "just because".
3) While the movie looks good, I couldn't get over the lens flares. They're everywhere. Almost in every scene, tons of them. I don't even feel like I'm nitpicking, since this was clearly deliberate. Enough is enough.
4) While the story is decent, there's a lot of stuff that's ripping off "Wrath of Khan". We already knew that, and it probably wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the story wouldn't feel lazy and cheap, much of which is recycled from the 2009 movie too. When you really think about the main plot and motivations/actions of certain characters, it stops making much sense. Lazy writing for a SciFi movie, decent writing for an action movie.
That's it. I did somewhat enjoy the experience and I'll rate this a 6/10, but I also feel the waste of potential. The first movie surprised me 4 years ago. This on the other hand...while it's not bad, it feels disappointing, recycled, unintelligent and more of an action film where details do not matter than a movie worthy of the title "Star Trek". This is an action movie that happens to take place in space, not a SciFi movie at its heart.
I don't consider myself to be a fanboy and I can often forgive many flaws in a movie (I gave "Prometheus" an 8), but when the "flaws" are products of deliberate choices from the production team and a side effect of modernizing every franchise into the same kind of pretty, expensive and easy mess, I'm certainly going to cry about it on the internet like a fanboy. Just like now!