Story of how the main characters of the franchise got started together on the U.S.S. Enterprise, so we've got younger actors mimicking the older originals, saying their same standard expressions. It was quite enjoyable.
The special effects were impressive, especially when it involved human scale situations. Clouds of debris from giant exploding star ships don't really give me any sense of what's going on, but then if everything is blown up, I don't suppose it matters much.
The monsters on ice planet Delta Vega are great. While Kirk is running from the first monster, a second, much larger monster erupts from the ice and attacks the first monster and then starts chasing Kirk. Kirk runs into an ice cave pursued by the monster where is saved, by who? The older version of Spock. Of course the older version is sitting in an ice cave on an ice planet just waiting for Kirk to show up. Of course he is. I mean what are the odds? Never mind that, we got a full heaping of action and adventure out of that sequence.
The drill that the evil Romulan deploys to drill a hole to the center of the Earth is pretty spectacular as well. While the ship is hovering above the planet, it lowers a thin device several kilometers long toward the planet. It then emits some kind of high energy beam to do the actual drilling. Well, the Romulans are doing it, so we need to stop it, so our boys jump out of a space ship, likewise hovering above the planet at an altitude of maybe 100 miles. With parachutes. Well, Felix did it from like a two dozen miles, so sure, in a couple hundred years jumping from outer space might be feasible.
Anyway, there's three guys on this team: Kirk, Chekov (because he has combat training), and a red shirt, and you just know the red shirt is going to bite the dust, and sure enough, he comes in too hot, muffs the landing and goes sailing off into oblivion. Naturally, there are bad guys hanging out at the business end of the drill and so we have fisticuffs. What kind of combat training does Chekov have? Fencing. Of course. Chekov pulls out his magic telescoping sword, and wouldn't you know it, the bad guy has a sword as well, we are treated to a swordfight.
Another standout scene was when Kirk and McCoy (Simon Pegg) transport onto the Enterprise. They show up in the water room. Kirk is in open air, but McCoy is inside a tank full of water. He promptly gets dumped into a giant, transparent pipe, so we get to see him getting flushed through the pipe with Kirk chasing him until Kirk locates and activates the emergency exit.
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