Just got back from the movie. Overall, quite enjoyable. Happy, Kotow?
Some mild spoilers ahead or whatever.
First I'll get the bad out of the way-
The bad guy was generic garbage again. His motivation was "the Federation couldn't find me after my ship crashed, so everyone in the Federation must obviously die." And the concept of him staying alive was too close to a shitty episode of Sliders for me to take seriously.
They still have little concept of physics.
Still a lot of mindless action and stunts and things flying around. The bike was actually not quite as stupid as it appears in the trailer, but still a pretty weak excuse to get a bike stunt in there. I don't agree with them giving this Enterprise saucer separation either, but the crash scene was given a good amount of time.
The humour was very hit and miss. The opening scene in particular was a bad start for me.
Now for the pros-
The character moments were good, and there were a decent amount of them. A lot of moments between the main trio, and Spock/Uhura are broken up, and it's only dealt with as far as it helps the story. Every character got a more even amount of screen time, and was useful. Felt like more of an ensemble than either of the previous movies.
While some of the callbacks were a bit blunt and even perhaps insulting, there were several less obvious callbacks that I appreciated. The USS Franklin was well integrated into the story. Not sure it quite works out, with them claiming it was the first warp 4 vessel, from 2160, with a high registry number. I would assume it's meant to be post Enterprise, with an incorrect warp speed given, but generally it tied in well to Enterprise.
Nimoy's absence was handled nicely.
Any complaints about whether or not they should have made Sulu gay aside, it was a non event, and nothing to complain about. It actually also remains consistent with him having a daughter according to Generations too. If anything, they could have used it more given the danger at the end.
Quite a bit of technobabble, although some of it comes back to my hinky science criticism. But a lot of it fitted with what's been established in Trek.
Aside from my criticisms of the bad guy, the story was solid. Not particularly fresh or original, but no major plotholes that took me out of it.
As expected, we see a new Enterprise at the end. There wasn't a lot of time to analyze it, but it looks generally like the old one, but with some notable changes. They've widened the nacelles to match the width of the ship, which I noticed because that was my biggest gripe with the old design. The nacelles appeared to be the same. I think they may have also fixed the weird swept forward secondary hull. There's also more detail on the neck. Didn't have time to confirm much else, but it appears it might take a few cues from the refit, but at the very least it fixes up my major problems with the reboot design from what I can tell.
Miles better than Into Darkness (this shouldn't surprise anyone), perhaps better than ST'09, although with the same general flaws. For now I'll tentatively give it a solid 7/10 while I let it sink in. At the very least, it felt like they took some time to read memory alpha while writing this one, rather than watching Star Wars.