I preferred Shatner, also. Pine just didn't feel like Kirk- he felt like a teenager trying to pretend to be Kirk, and turning up the "I can buck authority" dial a bit too high- that always seemed to be a second choice for the original character- an easy second, but he had an understanding of authority that Pine seemed to lack. This guy, I just couldn't see becoming a leader in that same way. I thought most of the other characters were much more plausible. Some of them took a while for me to buy, but eventually I did (but not Amanda- that one mystified me, the woman in the movie seemed nothing like the original character, any of the times she shows up. Sarek was a hard sell, too).