The latest Star Trek film is good and I did enjoy it, but it left me with an empty feeling at the end.
I am not a crazy Trekker, but I do have particular fondness for the Original Series. I had to think about why this movie just did not do it for me. Here is what I came up with:
1. The plot was pretty standard Sci Fi plot. A crazy bad guy gets himself a powerful weapon and wants to destroy a planet or two. This is pretty much the plot for any two penny action/cgi driven schlock now-a-days. Not that every single episode in the TOS (the Original Series) was good, but the ones I remember had very bizarre twists and plots. Like the time the Enterprise is stuck in a mirror or when Spock mindmelts with a rock. A good ST plot engages the mind and confounds and surprises the viewer.
2. Spock and Kirk are good friends and are not afraid to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but to me that is not why they are cool. The essence of this characters, what makes they appealing to me, is that Kirk can talk his way out of anything and Spock can think his way out of anything. Kirk crashed a homicidal robot by telling him a fallacy. Spock is essentially a scientific detective. He observes the situation and solves puzzles.