Alright, saw it last Thursday, thought about it for a few days, and saw it again last night. I thought it was tons of fun. THIS is what the comics were preparing us for. Orci said that the comics contained a clue to the content of Into Darkness, what we didn't realize is that the comics WERE the clue. They took the classic episodes we all know, then updated them and changed them around. I have to admit, I was upset when they were setting up the Kirk/Spock glass scene till I remembered that this is what the comics were doing and I loved the comics.
Speaking of the comics/tie-ins, while a few details got shout-outs, most of it was contradictory.
"The Mudd Incident": If they are referring to the "Countdown To Darkness" series, you'd think they'd call it the "April Incident", since while the ship may have been Bajoran Chick Mudd's, the main issue was the former captian of (an) Enterprise, Robert April showing up after being presumed dead and then taking over the ship.
"How many people have I lost? NONE.": Several people die in the comics. Including Kirk's friend Gary Mitchell.
The Gorn: McCoy mentions helping a Gorn give birth to octuplets. Unfortunately, the "Gorn" are supposedly introduced in the "canon" Video Game as an alien agressor from ANOTHER GALAXY whom the crew are introduced to and wipe out during the course of the game. McCoy is indeed in sickbay ("Medbay", they call it in the Game for some reason) with Gorn, but they're all male and all trying to kill him.
NX-01: I love that Marcus has models in his office which include all of the ships from the intro to "Enterprise" including NX-01. The issue would be that we see an NX class ship in the comics, and it has nacelles more similiar to all of the others in this new universe. Not that we can trust the comics' potrayal of ships, the Mirror Universe comics have the JJ Universe crew flying around in the Enterprise Refit from the original films.
I'm not saying you shouldn't read the comics, you should, I'm just saying that they don't do very well with the very simple "canon" they've set themselves up with.
There were some things I didn't like. I didn't like the use of Spock Prime. What's humorous is that it played EXACTLY how I mocked on one of the Trek podcasts we recorded months ago. I haven't found which episode, but I remember exactly what I said:
"They can't have Spock Prime in the movie. That'd be dumb. What are they going to do, have Spock call and say 'Hey, we ran into a guy named Khan. Do you know him?' 'Yeah, he's totally evil.' 'How'd you beat him?' 'I died.'"
You could lose that scene and nothing of the main film would be different. What's really sad is Nimoy tweeted before the movie came out here in the States that he was honored to have a surprise cameo talking about Khan, which ruined two pretty big reveals.
I do kind of wish that Cumberbatch played a different Augment. Not just because he's white (at this point if you believe the universes were identical before Nero came, then you're crazy), but because a lot of the "retread" complaining would be nipped in the bud. Or have him CLAIM to be Khan, even to Marcus, then at the end when they show all of the cryotubes and it pans over to show the contents of one, it could be a CG Ricardo Maltaban (they won't go back to the well, why not?).
I'm still not sure about the revamped interior of Engineering. I just assumed they didn't show the Warp Core in 09, and that it would be the same tech from the original. Then it shows up looking like something from NASA, which I suppose is more "real"... See, I just don't know.
I do think playing with the sacrifice at the end was pretty smart. Instead of Spock sacrificing himself because it was logical and the culmination of 15 years of friendship, it was the catalyst that makes the crew an unbreakable bond. The film explores a lot of deeper elements, about emotion, war, terror, and other things. I appreciated that.
Overall, I feel that it's a fun twist on the Khan story, with twists & turns NO ONE saw coming. I would recommend it to anyone.
