Not Star Trek

Rating: 8/10 (16 May 2009)

After seeing this new reincarnation of the franchise I came out of the cinema feeling exhilarated by what I had just witnessed. This is what Star Trek should have done AGES ago. I'm sorry but the last two films were absolute toilet, in particular 'Nemesis'. A lot of Trekkies on here are moaning and beguiling J.Abrams about the focus and composition of this film, without really understanding his intentions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not new to the franchise and I've seen pretty much all of TOS, DS9 and Enterprise. I'm not a fan of NG or Voyager so I gave those a wide berth. How was he supposed to make the film consistent with previous series? Use NG characters? No because NG sucked. Voyager? No because the acting in that sucked too. DS9? No because how could he explain the characters from DS9 all joining up on Starship? Enterprise? No because it never gained enough fans. Finally TOS? No because the combined age of that crew would exceed the combined age of a packed cinema.
I believe that he followed the only logical conclusion which was too effectively, slightly 'dumb down' TOS characters to make it more accessible to audiences. Hollywood is all about making money, something which Nemesis failed to do, and this film is the perfect tonic. It's fast paced with strong character development, the plot is simple if a little contrived but it doesn't matter in what is, in essence, an action movie. The dialogue is strong for a film of this type. Abrams style of shooting works well too, he has an ability to create tension/excitement through clever use of lighting and angles. Eric Bana, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto all deliver great performances. The other characters are overshadowed but it's only a two hour long film, you know? As always the special FX are spectacular.
In addition I love how engineering actually looked believable. Before if something got broken on starship, Scotty or Geordy 'Stereotype' La Forge would scan pieces of glass for a couple of hours and it would be fixed but know you can see engineers actually replacing parts, wiring etc because it's all exposed.
It is not a 'classic Star Trek movie' (Thank God) but a summer blockbuster with amazing action sequences. It also reveals to us what Spock and Kirk were like when they were younger, which is intriguing. Why do Trekkies believe that Star Trek is theirs? It's not and this film is the kick up the backside that the franchise has needed ever since TOS. Of course it would have been nice to have the characters from TOS in the time of special FX but we don't live in a perfect world and Star Trek is not a perfect film..... but it's bloody good.