Paramount, you tricky, tricky people, you.

What was billed as a re-vamped screening of Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn with 10 minutes from the new Star Trek film in Austin, Texas actually ended up being a secret screening of JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek Film.

Since I’m not in Austin, let’s collect the reactions…

Quint from AICN:

Tim League took the stage, beer in hand, of course, and introduced us to Harry who then introduced us to Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof who said that the premiere in Australia was happening within hours of that moment, so JJ couldn’t be there, despite his desire to spend the night in Austin watching Khan with a room full of real Trek fans. They also talked about Khan being their main inspiration when preparing this film, hoping they made a movie half as good as that flick.

Then the movie started, James Horner’s fantastic title music played over the credits, some audience members snickering at “and introducing Kirstie Alley” (I think she’s actually really good as the Vulcan, Saavik, in Khan) and then the first scene. The print was beautiful and then lines started appearing on the print. Booooo… then cuts… then it skipped frame, running for about 10 seconds split in half… up is down, down is up and all that before locking up, the frame burning.

Tim jumped on stage to say he’s going up to fix the problem and called for Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof to kill some time. They show up, Lindelof going, “Okay… so, you wanna know what the monster is?” Clearly talking about the black smoke monster on LOST. People started shouting out LOST things (“I want to know what the statue is!” etc etc) and suddenly a man shows up on stage wearing a trench coat and a hat.

This man is holding a film can in his hand. He removes the hat and right there is Leonard Nimoy.

The audience went ballistic, standing ovation for the man, the girl behind me losing her shit. He takes a mic asking what’s going on here… why would you only show 10 minutes of the new movie? “JJ made a good movie, why only show 10 minutes of it?” Then he took a vote. Who wants to only see 10 minutes of the movie? Crickets. Who wants to see the whole thing? Thunderous applause .

And within seconds Orci, Kurtzman, Lindelof and Nimoy are off the stage (not before Nimoy could throw out one more Vulcan salute, of course) and JJ Abrams’ Star Trek plays.

To say that wasn’t a perfect segue into the movie would be a filthy, rotten lie. The audience was energetic, jittery with excitement. It’s the best one of these moments I’ve witnessed since BNAT 3 when Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and Harry premiered FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING after telling everybody they couldn’t make it happen.

From Film School Rejects:

Anyway, moving on to a little bit about this little Star Trek movie. As you may know, this reboot follows the story of the early years of James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, two men born under extreme circumstances and set on a path toward great adventure as the leaders of the USS Enterprise. Their friendship is one of legend, their adventures are iconic in so many ways, and in this episode we get to see how that friendship was forged — or at least, how the friendship will be forged in this new world of Star Trek. If there is one thing that Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have captured in their script and that J.J. Abrams seems to hold in high regard, it is the relationships that are forged between the crew of the Enterprise. The bonds between Kirk and the likes of Spock, Scotty, Sulu and most notably, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy. But we’ll talk more about Bones later, as there’s plenty to say. What I’d like to make clear is that the two writers on this project — whose work I have loved at times and hated at others — is some of the smartest work they’ve done. They get these characters and when you combine that with the visual style that J.J. Abrams has brought to the franchise, it makes for a dangerously accessible and exciting film.

From CHUD:

The problem I run into, though, is that it’s trying to do too many things. It wants to keep the hardcore fanbase happy, so we get a very laboriously explained tie into the old Trek continuity. And yet we have a new cast and a desire to get the mainstream back roped back into this universe, so the film stars off with massive explosions and a deafening sound mix. I really wish they had just started over from scratch, like a real reboot should, but surprisingly, the way they tie everything ends up working for the most part. Where it all falls down is that it takes so long to get the basic point of Bana’s villain across that the movie’s halfway through the second act before you really get a feel for what exactly his motivation is, and why we need to tie into the old Trek in the first place. It literally takes Leonard Nimoy showing up as Old Spock to get the plot to snap into making any sort of sense; instead of a tired “it’s all about REVENGE” motivation Nero could have just been a crazed Romulan looking to beat the competition (read: Vulcans/Federation) in order to show who had the bigger stick. The only thing that would’ve changed would have been Bana’s ship might not have resembled Sarrisus’ destroyer from Galaxy Quest so much, and it possibly could have given Bana something to do; the man’s trying but he’s basically roaring angrily for 80% of his screentime.

Thanks to /Film, you can read the knee-jerk Twitter buzz HERE.

Also, AICN is collecting full reviews from the Austin screening HERE.