I hated it.

Just kidding, I loved it! SPOILERS FOLLOW.

I loved all the visual inside jokes and doo-dads. How the phasers turn blue when they’re set to stun. The red-shirted dude who died inauspiciously and gloriously. That rocky mountain outside of Winona Ryder’s house that is the same rocky mountain where Kirk fought the Gorn. This is all great stuff. If there’s something I know a lot about, it’s Star Trek. And apparently the people who put this thing together did their homework — check the list of references to previous Trek here.

This movie was also a fun ride. TNG made Trek intellectual, academic. Made every story a moral issue. That was good, but fun rides are also good.

THIS MOVIE HAD A GREEN CHICK IN IT. There was a little dude who kept climbing on things and refusing to get down! He got sad when Scotty left him behind! Also Scotty was played by Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead! I had no problem with any of this.

There are some things I wonder about though. For instance: The Engineering section on the Enterprise looks just like the Burlingame Water Treatment Plant?? [Note: The actual location they used was the Budweiser beer plant in Van Nuys.] And I can understand there being giant cooling pipes in there, but why are they transparent? So that you can see if people happen to be trapped inside? I guess a lot of people get accidentally beamed into the pipes and you’ve gotta have a way to get them out.

Also, why does the emergency release on the fluid-filled pipe empty directly onto the floor? Wouldn’t it better if it emptied into a drain? BAH.

I thought the cast was great. The Kirk/Spock relationship was fun to watch. Karl Urban as McCoy was really fun too. All of them were fun. That green chick was hot.

I liked the idea of everything — space, control panels, hallways, etc.. — being “busier”, more full of stuff. Things were less sterile and clean and more grimy. I like this.

But I think the best part of this particular reboot is that, due to the “alternate timeline” factor, none of us have any idea where this new Trek is going to go. And for something that is so familiar and dear to me, that’s really exciting.