While some diehard Trek fans might not like some of the changes made to the franchise, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is an entertaining thrill-ride of a film that benefits from great casting, a fast-paced plot, and some great action sequences.
The film is a solid re-launch of the franchise and a great beginning for casual fans or new ones. Directed by Abrams, the film was written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and focuses on the early days of James T. Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Starship Enterprise’s crew.
The strength of the movie (or weakness depending on whether you liked the idea of a re-launch) is in the film’s casting – which in my opinion was extremely good. No one can replace the original actors or do as good a job in the roles they created. Instead, we get a group of young actors doing their best to bring some of the original characters to the screen while getting to add enough of themselves to make something fresh and new.
The film stars Chris Pine as James T. Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Karl Urban as Leonard “Bones” McCoy, Zoë Saldana as Nyota Uhura, Simon Pegg as Montgomery Scott, John Cho as Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov. We also get performances from Eric Bana as Nero (the villain), Bruce Greenwood as Capt. Christopher Pike (the Enterprise's original captain), Ben Cross as Sarek (Spock's daddy) and Winona Ryder as Amanda Grayson (Spock's mommy), and Leonard Nimoy as Spock (older and apparently from another timeline).
The movie kicks off with a space ship (sorry I missed the name) taking on a giant mysterious ship that is captained by Nero and coming out of a strange black hole. Nero is a Romulan from an alternate future that is on a quest to capture the Spock (Nimoy) from his time to punish him for the crimes Nero believes he is responsible for committing against Nero’s planet.
The battle also just happens to be where James T. Kirk’s mother is giving birth, and where his father dies saving the lives of everyone else onboard. The movie then quickly introduces the audience to a boy Spock dealing with the problems of being half-human and a boy Kirk dealing with the troubles of growing up without his father.
Thankfully, very little time is spent on the characters as children, and the film quickly moves forward to a Kirk in his 20’s trying to pick up Uhura in a bar, and taking on half of the Starfleet cadets when he refuses to back down. Following the fight, Kirk meets Pike, and is talked into joining the Starfleet Academy.
The pace stays pretty fast throughout the film, but it never really hurts the movie. The audience gets just a taste of life at the Starfleet Academy (Kirk “cheating” on the Kobayashi Maru (which was designed to be perfect by Spock), and getting suspended while his behavior is under review. Of course, the suspension doesn’t stop him from sneaking onto the Enterprise when the cadets are scrambled to answer a distress call at Vulcan.
Once on the Enterprise, the film really kicks into overdrive as Kirk and company run into Nero, he clashes with Spock, meets the old Spock, becomes captain of the Enterprise, and has to save the day. The film also spends a great deal of time building the relationship between Kirk and Spock – which starts of rocky and ends somewhere around mutual respect.
Again, Star Trek is a film that you are going to either love or hate depending on your love for the old Star Trek franchise. There are massive changes made to the Star Trek story (these changes are made under the premise of this is an alternate timeline), but the film does manage to be entertaining.
I have always been just a quasi-fan of the franchise (I like the original movies and never really cared too much for The Next Generation films), and thought this movie was pretty fun from start to finish.
Abrams and company took the Star Trek premise (smart science fiction) and combined it with the needed summer popcorn film elements (lots of big action sequences) to create a fast moving film that doesn’t take itself too seriously while trying to show respect to the work done on the franchise before it.
All of the actors do solid work in their roles (some standing out more than others), and manage to add something new to the classic characters they are portraying.
Pine really nailed the “swagger” of Kirk while not trying to be William Shatner. Instead, his character is a younger version of Kirk that is basically a hothead who acts before he thinks. He has some of the leadership qualities fans would see in the older Kirk and all of the self-confidence.
Quinto’s Spock is similar to what Nimoy did with the character, but never really fully worked for me. Unlike Pine (who made Kirk his own), Quinto seems to be doing mostly an impersonation of Nimoy’s Spock and never really broke the character into something of his own creation. Given he is playing an emotionless Vulcan, I think Quinto did the best he could, and it will be interesting to see how he develops the character in future films.
I wish the other characters could have been fleshed out more during the film. At times, it seems Bones, Scott, Sulu, and Chekov are just there to be there. They are each given some screen time, but not enough to truly matter to the story. Hopefully, they will get bigger roles in future films. I also hope Saldana’s Uhura gets more screen time in the next film given some of the groundwork the filmmakers laid for her character in this one.
Although I enjoyed the movie, it does has some problems, but they were not enough to kill the entertainment value for me. Nero looks great as a villain, but Bana does very little with him. He spends most of the film just sitting in a chair and brooding about Spock. When we finally get a showdown between Kirk and Nero, it feels a bit empty since there is no real emotional connection to him. At times, it seemed like the filmmakers were going for a Khan like villain with Nero, but they really failed to deliver.
While I enjoyed Nimoy popping up in the film and saw the importance of his character making an appearance, I hope the filmmakers stop there. For the new franchise to work, the original actors need to not appear. You don’t see Roger Moore or Sean Connery bumping into Daniel Craig as he runs around as James Bond. The actors need to be able to make the characters their own without the audience being reminded of who played them before this film.
Paramount does an excellent job with the Blu-ray release of the film. Along with looking and sounding incredible, the discs are loaded with special features that chronicle just about every aspect of the making of the film. Trek fans are going to love the behind the scenes look at shooting the film, casting the film, and the scoring of the movie.
The real treat is found in the deleted scenes where Nero’s backstory is given more screen time (yes, the Klingons appear), and the audience gets to witness the birth of Spock. Some of the deleted scenes were cut for a reason, but others should have been in the film (such as just how Kirk cheated on that famous test with the help of a certain green-skinned female).
Whether you love it or hate it, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is a thrill ride of a movie that manages to entertain from start to finish and create a solid start to a new franchise of films.
Star Trek [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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