Star Trek

I just saw the new Star Trek movie, and really enjoyed myself. Movie snob that I am, there was plenty of Hollywood hackery that I could dismissively sneer at, but I also thought that the movie did exactly what it set out to do, and in many ways I was very impressed. I'll try to avoid putting any spoilers in here, but I thought firstly that they did a good job at setting up the movie as something more than a prequel, and I appreciated the inventive way that they chose to set up their story as quite literally an alternate-universe Star Trek.

And secondly, I'm enough of a Star Trek nerd to have picked up on (at least many of) the references which were thrown into the movie for hardcore fans, and I thought they pulled it off remarkably seamlessly. A few examples:

1. The first away team scene made hilarious use of the convention of a man in a red suit getting killed off immediately.

2. We got to witness the famous moment in which Captain Kirk became the only man to ever beat a certain Star Fleet Academy battle simulation by reprogramming the computer--and the scene was weaved effectively into the plot to move the story forward.

3. Several elements of the Captain Pike subplot were callbacks to earlier Treks, such as having him appear in a wheelchair near the end, which I have to believe must have been a reference to the fate of the original Captain Pike, just thrown in for superfans to enjoy.

Maybe I'm just a big enough Star Trek nerd that I was able to enjoy the silly ride of this movie for what it was, in a way that I'm usually not able to do with superhero movies and the like. I approve!