I'm in the same boat about Vulcan as MizKit. I didn't expect big emotional impact, nor did it have a huge impact on me, because I'm used to Star Trek's reasserting the status quo at the end of a story. I didn't read the film as a reset until the end, and that was when I had my delayed 'holy shit' response. Ultimately, I'm glad they went this way, because the fixing things method feels like cheating; it negates the impact and value of everything you've just been through, because ultimately it doesn't matter.

Although, interestingly enough, I deal with just that sort of thing at the end of Dragons of Heaven, and Jian has a very sharp argument against my take on the subject. Writers = functional MPD's.