First of all there are two movie franchises that I think owe their very existence to Christopher Nolan and his Batman Begins: one is Casino Royale and the other is this movie. Nolan laid the ground work for how you reboot a stale, old story, and make it new and refreshing and his way is that you focus on characters, then build the story line around them. Because without interesting characters, the movie will be reduced to the churned out assembly line movies Hollywood continues to produce.
Abrams takes everything from the original Star Trek and shakes it up with the things that will make it better. The end result is a very good action/sci-fi movie that is focused on characters, namely Kirk and Spock, as the beginning of the movie give a solid foundation of the pasts of these that follows them, and sticks in the mind of the viewer, throughout the movie. This focus on characters has to be looked at because in not only sci-fi movies, but also sci-fi books, there is way too much attention focused on the setting, technology, space, or alienness of the story that the characters get lost in everything going on. This is not how to tell a good story. The characters must be focused on because they are who the viewer is going to see the story through. If they aren't interesting or believable how is what's happening around them going to interest or be believable to the viewer? Abrams bravely focuses on the characters in this movie so much so that all the glossy (and it really is glossy), slick (and it really is slick), and awesome (and it really is awesome) technology becomes a side note as the movie bounces along.
I thought the opening scene really set the new shift of focus through making the audience believe THE Kirk was there (being played by an extremely good Chris Hemsworth [Thor] who makes a lot of the short scene he's given, so much so that his presence is felt throughout the movie, a feat that a lesser actor would have ruined) only to find out that it's Kirk's dad and the REAL Kirk is being born as his dad sacrifices himself to save lives. The birth scene really seems to emphasize that Abrams himself is birthing something new with this Star Trek amid the ruins left from the old Trek.
This new shift to character over technology only becomes more apparent as the movie focuses its attention to the parallel lives Kirk and Spock as they grow from kids to adults. This done through some clever editing. Abrams really makes these characters breath with life, he gives the viewer something to ground these two characters together: rebellion. Because rebellion is the main thread through the scenes, both as kids and adults, so that later on when they meet we know they have a common ground to meet at. That rebellion also gives the viewer a common place to meet and understand the characters, because what viewer hasn't experienced a little rebellion in their lives.
Another thing that sets Abrams characters apart from the original Trek is fact that when these characters get into a fight they still have cuts, bruises and blood on them which is a far cry pristine clean uniforms of Rodenberry's Trek who seemed constantly bathed in soap every second.
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