Okay, but very overrated.

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2015)

I'll clear up the all important question of Star Trek knowledge now and confess that this is the only Star Trek anything I've ever absorbed. So I apologize if I get some facts heinously wrong or lack appreciation for this reboot. I do know that it has parallels to the old Wrath of Kahn, and I like the idea of Spock sacrificing himself at the end rather than Kirk, not because I'd rather have Spock die but because it involves true loss for Kirk. In this movie, he sacrifices himself, but gets lucky: Yet Again. Despite that, I thought the scene was well put together. If you are familiar with Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, but aren't familiar with ST, Jim Kirk is basically Roran with two times the luck and arrogance and half the leadership skills (I know that sounds biased, but I think it's accurate).
If you love predicting how a movie will turn out as your watching it, you'll likely be disappointed here. There are some dramatic turns, but you can't really predict them because the turns don't draw on anything from prior information. The plot is of minor importance and involves a number of technicalities about tensions with the Klingons and stuff like that. After Kirk captures John Harrison/Kahn, it becomes very character driven. This is usually a plus, but I felt like it detracted because some characters motives didn't really fit with their personalities.
The two main examples of this were Jim Kirk and Carol Marcus. Captain Kirk has a very headstrong personality (along with an arsenal of good luck charms it seems) and puts the safety of his crew as a top priority. However, many of the gambles he takes put his crew in serious danger, which is why I don't really buy that he cares about them. Carol Marcus has a different problem because she has very little personality but very strong views. So whenever she takes a stand of some kind, it comes out of nowhere. Kahn comes off pretty well and makes a good antagonistic force especially because he has a cause that is worthy of some degree of sympathy. Spock has next to no personality, as expected, but they somehow manage to give him depth. Dr. Bones serves as a secondary adviser to Kirk, but usually ends up getting shown up by Kirk's audacity. Uhura gets minimal screen time, and the majority of it involves her relationship with Spock. Scotty plays the typical Simon Pegg comic relief role, and ends up having some pertinence to the plot. Admiral Marcus becomes the main antagonist in his desire to wage war on the Klingons. His actions are a little ironic because they are really a microcosm to the whole premise of Star Trek. The main duty of the Enterprise and all of Starfleet is to be explorers, but they always seem to end up in a battle zone, and Admiral Marcus ends up providing exactly that. The rest of the characters consist of Pike and the minor Enterprise crew members, most notably Sulu.
The spfx are very prominent in almost every second of the movie from the queer space creatures to the outer space settings to the high-tech environment of the Enterprise and Vengeance. The acting was pretty solid, something you wouldn't necessarily expect from an action flick. Benedict Cumberpatch had what I felt was the best performance as the cold and menacing Kahn. I wasn't too fond of the script, though. Most of it was incredibly generic for a sci-fi movie, where the lower-ranking people have that very official tone even when they're in an extremely dangerous situation. The lines that were supposed to be funny really killed it for me. They all came off as annoying, even the Simon Pegg material. And now that Interstellar has shown us that it is possible to have comic relief in a space setting without being annoying, I have only a little tolerance for it.
It's possible to understand the movie without any prior knowledge, but I would recommend watching the trailer first. There aren't too many foreign terms like some sci-fi universes. If you can, watch it in a quiet environment. My final recommendation is to lower your expectations. The high ratings are kind of misleading. Not to say that it's poorly done, but there's nothing about it apart from the huge fanbase that should give it as high a rating as it has. Overall Rating: 7.2/10.