Lisa and I saw this at the Neptune yesterday, and loved it. Great casting, nice job of giving nods to the original series without it feeling self-indulgent, and the use of a time-space anomaly to justify alterations to the canon was clever. About the only thing that fell short was Eric Bana’s evil Romulan character, who neither Lisa nor I felt was as charismatic a villain as the story deserved.
Elsewhere in the multiverse, Meghan McCarron twitters, “[C]ouldn’t they have Starbucked somebody?” I’m going to guess no, that probably goes beyond the limits of changes the Paramount suits were willing to OK—the franchise may have been moribund, but not as moribund as BSG—but if they had decided to do it, it would have been easy enough to fit into the set-up. Just kill off one of the characters and have a hitherto unmentioned sibling step into their historical role (“What if Mr. Scott had a sister…?”)
In a related note, I liked what they did with Uhura. Definitely not a match I would have predicted, but it worked.
…and as usual when I see a movie I like, I am left greedily wanting more. In this case, I found myself wishing for a reboot of that other great SF franchise of my youth. When do we get the Star Wars remake? Yeah, I know, probably not in George’s lifetime, but a fanboy can dream.