Seen it! SPOILERS IN HERE!!!!

[Tsukiyumi]

I'm wondering if this is an effects error:

In the opening scene with the Kelvin, when Kirk Sr. is about to ram the Narada, the ship goes in full impulse and the camera zooms in on the secondary hull instead of the the red strip which I thought was the impulse engines.

Aren't the red strips the impulse engines?

Isn't the white fire area on the nacelle analogous to the blue strips in Trek Prime; i.e., plasma exhaust, not engine thrust?

Yes, the red sections are the impulse exhausts. No, it's not an FX error; the cameraman missed the filming mark because the Kelvin accelerated too fast to follow with the camera.

[stitch626]

I thought of that as him using the warp engines to provide extra thrust (we saw it before in a TNG ep, I think).

[IanKennedy]

I took that extra glow on the nacelle to be simple lens flare due to the change in position of the ship relative to the camera. It's not as though the lens flare is particularly well controlled in this film

[stitch626]

I took that extra glow on the nacelle to be simple lens flare due to the change in position of the ship relative to the camera. It's not as though the lens flare is particularly well controlled in this film

That was another thing that bugged me. The overuse of lens flare.

[IanKennedy]

Hated that part. It's going to be a pig to get snaps from this film.

[Tsukiyumi]

I like the realistic approach, personally.

[Sionnach Glic]

I like those sort of realistic effects when done well.

In this case, they were done terribly.

[IanKennedy]

There's nothing realistic about lens flare and shaky cam, people do not suffer from these things. If you where stood there watching things from the location of the camera you would not suffer these problems. Steady cam was worked on because if you, a human, runs you do not see things shaking around, you see things steady.

[Graham Kennedy]

The nacelle thing was strange to me, too.

They really don't seem to have put too much thought into the ships and how they function in this movie. From the scaling oddities through to the wrong engines going, odd travel times, etc. Can't say it is a major gripe for me, really - would far rather they got the characters spot on and the ships a bit askew, which they did. But it's a shame.

[Reliant121]

Well I have only just seen it today so i thought i;d give down my thoughts. Sorry for the threadjack, Graham.

Good: I think the best bit for me was the characters. McCoy, Spock and even the almost inreplicatable Kirk were done to perfection. McCoy had at least one of each of his trademark comments (Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a physicist!). Scotty, who I was really rather unsure about but...it works? It worked really well in fact. Plus there was the trademark "I'm given her all she's got" in there somewhere. The only one i wasn't so sure about was Chekov, personally the Russian accent was just a bit over the top. Then again, he was only 17 meaning he had only been speaking english for a short period of time (Comparative to native russian).

Humourous little moments in there were great. Even Nimoy at the end with his Good luck instead of Live Long and Prosper was good. There were dozens of little points throughout the film that made both me and dad giggle ourselves silly, much to the amusement of the kids behind us.

Design: I am a big fan of the new look design features on the Enterprise, and of the new fleet. There were a couple that I werent that enamoured with, but I ADORED the new TOS type Miranda we saw when the fleet left for Vulcan. I quite like the iPod like interior as well, but thats just my personal taste.

Bad: Narada - I hated the hell of this thing. A mining barge that looks like a kilometre + uber-pine cone. It doesnt have anything even remotely romulan about them (something I will come to later). It just seemed far to uber for a Romulan mining ship. Plus the interior was completely idiotic with the way the deck was layed out. as in...there wasn't one. It was like a rocky world from DS9: The Fallen the game or something.

Romulans: hate hate hate this desicration of my favourite race. There is virtually no similarity between these romulans and the ones i know and love apart from pointed ears and good way of talking. The design was wrong, the looks were wrong, the attitude was wrong. Just all wrong.

Some of the battle scenes were really disorientating as well, so much all happening at once and because of my shitty colour perception, telling the difference between a missile engine trail and the Kelvin's phasers were difficult.

Finally, engineering. I mean, what the hell?! This is a starship, not K-19! An advanced warp capable warship, not a faulty Russian submarine. It just felt so out of place compared to the rest of the ship.

[Tsukiyumi]

...Romulans: hate hate hate this desicration of my favourite race. There is virtually no similarity between these romulans and the ones i know and love apart from pointed ears and good way of talking. The design was wrong, the looks were wrong, the attitude was wrong. Just all wrong...

You know I love the Romulans as much as you do, but I thought it was an interesting insight into the rest of their culture.

No more monoculture! In past Trek, we've seen the Romulans who served in the military, we've seen the ones who live on the homeworld, but we've never seen the Romulans who toiled to produce those warships, or the neat upholstered uniforms.

I'm thinking of the vast difference in culture here in the Houston area; If you visit clubs downtown, go to the Galleria, or eat at a nice restaurant, you'll see lots of cosmopolitan people, in nice expensive clothing with Blackberrys and trendy accessories. If you go about 20 miles north of the city, you get towns like Plantersville (where Uzume currently lives): a bunch of run down buildings, old vehicles, farmers and industrial workers. Not the same people at all.

The Narada's crew seemed to me like a bunch of religious (the tattooing ritual) hard-working rural folks out for revenge because of a perceived wrong. Very well done, IMO.

[Reliant121]

it wasn't so much that, i was talking more on the lack of biological similarity. I mean, where's the ridges, the ridiculous hairstyles, the cut shoulders. I'm all in favour of seeing labour classes, but I'd like to see them as romulans.

[Lazar]

Myself, I loved the fact that they got rid of the cranial ridges. They were ridgeless in TOS (and the TOS movies), and after all, they've only been a distinct breeding population for a couple thousand years.

[Tsukiyumi]

...where's the ridges,

Maybe I was just imagining things, but they seemed to be slightly ridged. Maybe that's not prevalent on all Romulans (Balance of Terror, Enterprise Incident); it may be similar to the difference in eye structure between Europeans and Asians.

...the ridiculous hairstyles,

Shaving their heads was part of the grieving ritual.

...the cut shoulders.

Which were on the military uniforms, and civvie clothes on Romulus.

I'm all in favour of seeing labour classes, but I'd like to see them as romulans.

They were Romulans.

[Reliant121]

I dunno...it just doesnt...feel. Call me a sentimental purist, call me a lunatic, but it just...wasn't right for me.