At first, like the 09 film, I thought this would be 'ok'. Great sci-fi, a good film, but nothing that really cements in my memory.
I read a few, short reviews and became more ambivalent to it, and then came on here for some of the full-length ones by our members. After being baited long enough by such positivity about it, I went to see it this morning.
Holy crap am I glad I did.
This is my favourite iteration of Star Trek - others may disagree: 'older series was better', 'Wrath of Khan rocked!', etc. I won't go into a huge review, others have already done a longer, better job such as Sweeps.
But I also have to agree with something else I read, that is Cumberbatch stole the film from the other actors.
Mother of god he did. In his role, with the excellent writing and acting Cumberbatch redefined what it meant to be a villain. Should we even use that term anymore? Or even 'antagonist'? Because those terms bring to mind a lazy, moustache-twidling black hat. A Disney villain. A bad real-world dictator anology or rip-off. Cumberbatch's character was a character, and just that, a character we could feel sympathy for, root for, enjoy his bone-crunching combat, lose ourselves in his story and cry alongside with him over his plight. He is simply the best 'villain'(?) I think I've ever seen.
Similarly his interactions with other characters really upped the emotional scale of the film fantastically, and brought it into the status of an instant classic of its genre.
