Eeh. Most of the complaints I see in this thread about Trek 2009 would apply as well to TWoK if people were being even handed. It's a pew pew action film. There are no deep philosophical questions being tackled. It's not utopian -- Starfleet is portrayed as a straight forward space navy that works with real scientists only begrudgingly.

There's kick ass high drama and a decent character study of an ageing Kirk, but the character work on Kirk and Spock in 2009 wasn't all that bad, either.