Star Trek Review
With the baby at her grandparent’s for the weekend, my wife and I went to the movies and for some reason she actually let us go see Star Trek. Overall, the movie was pretty good, and my (non-geek)wife actually enoyed it too, though as a long time trekie, there were a few problems I had with it. So if you want to see a typical movie review and not a nerd rant, move along(but don’t worry, it’s not all rant). Also note there may(read: will) be major spoilers below. (Also, first long post from my phone, so spelling errors are a certainty.)
The biggest thing I felt uneasy about is that they did a clean reboot of the universe, meaning that all 10 previous movies and all the previous series except Enterprise(being that it is set before the fork in the timeline). Sure, this is technically just a paralell universe, but we’ll never see the old one again. Tha being said, a reboot(and a major change in this new universe) can create some interesting possibilities. Practically wiping out the Vulcans, major players in the Federation, could change every thing by the time you reach the TNG timeline. Aside from general reboot feelings overall, they did take care of setting up the alternate reality rather brilliantly. I also have to say this was one of the few time travel stories I’ve actually liked. None of that let’s go back and fix the timeline crap, instead they replaced Vulcan with a blackhole and left it that way.
Now onto the rest of the move. I found the overall story and plot fairly weak, but luckily it doesn’t matter, this trip was all about the characters. As is typical for a J.J. Abrams work, the characters are rich enough you don’t care about plot holes you can an island or starship through. While I thought all of the new characters were pretty good, not all of them were good fits for the shoes they were filling. The biggest being the new Sulu. I don’t know if it was because he’s Korean insead of Japanese, or because I kept expecting him to fly the ship to White Castle, but I didn’t buy him as Sulu. For the main trio, Kirk, Spock and Bones were all spot on. While Chris Pine’s Kirk wasn’t quite Shantner, he still conveyed the essence of a young Kirk. With Spock and McCoy, it easy to forget those weren’t younger versions of Deforest Kelly and Leonard Nimoy, even along side Nimoy’s portrayal of the older Spock. And of course as mentioned in nearly every other review, Scotty stole every scene he was in, very much embodying Jimmy Doohan’s portrayal in the movies. The weakest character was primary villan Nero. He’s definitly no Khan, more of a minor plot device if anything.
Overall I did enjoy the movie and would go so far to put it in my favorite Trek movies, behind Wrath of Khan and First Contact. While there will be debates over the little things for decades to come, I see the movie staying a favorite of hardcore Trekies. For non-trekies, it should also stand up well as a sci-fi action film with good special effects(the reimaged/original Enterprise looked great), with a lot of humor sprinkled in, and my wife liked it because she found Pine-Kirk is more pleasing on the eyes than the ageing Shatner-Kirk. If you haven’t seen the movie, do yourself a favor and go.
Posted by Wordmobi
