Well since this about the trailer...
It definitely felt Guardians of the Galaxy. I don't think that's a bad thing in and of itself, and it's certainly nothing new to the franchise to follow the leader. I would have preferred one of Giacchino's pieces to the Beastie Boys, but I think Sabotage worked well enough. In fact listening to the whole song, it's a lot more clever than it appears on first glance. "what you see you might not get" indeed!
On the whole though the structure of the trailer was pretty generic. Which I can't really blame Lin, or anyone involved for. A lot of trailers these days have been utter garbage, especially for big summer blockbusters.
Favorite part is definitely Bones and Spock. I'm really glad as it looks like the two will be paired up after the Enterprise crashes for a little bit, should be some excellent banter there.
Least favorite was Scotty slipping off the rock. Looked really cheesy, and I don't think we really needed another callback to the 'vette scene.
If I had to guess I'd say the movie goes something like this.
-Enterprise enters the system, we get some backstory on how the five year mission has gone thus far. A little bit after that the Enterprise is attacked and destroyed, and what we see her looking up at is the saucer section crashing.
-Scotty being off on his own probably runs in Sofia's alien lady first, and she shows him the ship giving him an out to not really be in the first parts of the movie while he repairs it.
-Kirk and Chekov land near each other and meet up with alien blueshirt lady and they go to the wreck of the Enterprise where our bad guys are sniffing around. I think this might be the part where we see blueshirt lady looking up as the alien's bigger bad ship than the drones shows up and she's killed. Kirk and Chekov have a little running battle through the remains of the saucer, only for Sofia's alien to rescue them. This is also probably where Kirk gets his motorcycle. It looks kinda like the one he had in the 09 movie with no rims, but it's probably not that one since he gave it away IIRC.
-Spock and Bones are wandering around the quarry set trying to stay a step ahead of the alien bad guys. Witty banter is had, but eventually they're cornered when Scotty finally gets the old ship (
Franklin from what everyone's saying) working and beams them aboard.
-Uhura and Sulu are with the rest of the Enterprise survivors who are being gathered and probably having horrible things done to them. It's interesting as it puts them into a position of having to be the leaders for the crew with the big names that we usually see Spock or Kirk being the inspiring leader ones. whereas they're usually more in the background.
-Kirk, Chekov, and Sofialien are told by Scotty that some thingamajig or another needs to be destroyed to get the crew back. They get some kind of one time beaming thing that they can use to get in and out if they're in trouble which Kirk uses to rescue Sofialien leaving Chekov alone (possibly with Sulu and Uhura) to take down the thingamajig and let the crew be rescued.
-With all the survivors aboard they takeoff in the
Franklin and head for the nearest Federation world. The scene of the
Franklin taking off might also be where see blue shirt alien lady looking up. Maybe they're thinking that the
Yorktown is nearby and obviously they need to be going somewhere with a ship and a crew that can fight back. But they're being chased by the evil alien fellas and crash into Planet Dubai.
-A big fight ensues, and the bad guys are beaten...somehow. Sofialien probably dies at some point, and I'm going to go out and a limb and say that we're not going to see a new
Enterprise at the end of the movie. I'm actually going to move further out on that limb and into absolutely nuts WILLNEVERHAPPEN territory and say that the
Yorktown without renaming will be our Nuship on the basis that it was the name for the
Enterprise for the very first draft. I really don't see them renaming the ship to
Enterprise after building a memorial to the crew (assuming that's the order it happens in obviously), it'd probably seem like a slap in the face to the survivors. Almost certainly won't happen, but where's the fun in speculating if you don't SPECULATE WILDLY?
All in all I'm pretty pumped for the movie. While the trailer didn't thrill me, nothing I've seen really worries me, and a lot of the little details really excite me.
The new uniforms seem alright, but the ones being worn by the
Yorktown people seem like the coolest. Spock's
Franklin is interesting as it looks almost like a step between ENT and TOS. I expect the
Franklin will have a very heavy TOS look to her, but I don't think she'll look like the original Connie since that would be...well awkward to have on a planet. Actually remembering some of those fan photos from Iceland like
this looked pretty awesome so forget what I just said.
I really hope planet Dubai is actually planet Dubai and not Earth. From the production stuff we've seen it looked like there were a lot of alien plants in the place, which obviously doesn't rule out Earth in the vast multi-species democracy that is the Federation, but I don't think they'd add those if they wanted us to identify the planet as the one we live on.
I really like all the scenery we've seen so far, if anything else the movie is going to look gorgeous. We only got snippets of it, but the crashed
Enterprise saucer should be amazing to see in IMAX.
As for the motorcylce...ehh. I can see where the criticism is coming from. CHRIS PRATT WAS IN GOTG AND HE RODE A MOTORCYCLE IN THAT OTHER POPULAR MOVIE. On the other hand, Kirk's had one before and honestly it's the kind of vehicle that fits with the character. I don't get the criticism of it being from the 20th/21st century at all. We had Shatner Kirk going around the bridge of the
Enterprise with reading glasses when SPACE MEDICINE should mean he doesn't need those right? In both cases they're fine as they help to establish the character. The glasses in TWOK fit with the theme of Kirk being older, and certainly not in his prime, up against a superhuman genius. Whereas the motorcycle fits with him being the youthful, still reckless, captain of TOS. The kind of guy who'll build a cannon out of some bamboo and talk computers to death. I'd prefer it if it weren't the movie at all, but it's certainly something they think is going to resonate with audiences, it fits with the character, and...well I don't really think they need more than that.
Kinda sad to see the NuConnie
Enterprise go, I love the design. Hopefully she'll get to destroy a bigger alien bad guy ship before the little ones attack her. And hopefully we'll see it again, and often.