Rather better than I had feared!

Rating: 8/10 (23 November 2009)

Soooo...They made a Star Trek movie. They made it using Kirk, McCoy and Spock et al, but not the original actors. Oooookay. Not happy about that.
This was my initial reaction to the announcement of this film.
Having seen it, I'm actually very pleased to have been proved wrong. See, I grew up with Shatner, Nimoy and the rest. So when Next Gen came out, I was disposed not to like that. It won me over (well....apart from Wesley Crusher, anyhow). Same with all the other spin-off series. But when it came to replacing those iconic first characters! How dare they! Who could step into those shoes and do a good job? Well, it appears, the cast of Star Trek have done just that. Some of them, it has to be said, are more comfortable and convincing in their roles than others. But none of them suck.
Most of the objection to this film seems to centre around either the cast being replaced, or the fact that "the timeline has been altered!" I've addressed the former, but here's some thoughts on the timeline thing.
See, I'll be the first to agree that Trek overuses time travel. It's become like the only futuristic tech thing they can come up with. It is a big yawn. But the argument here that "they've invalidated all of the rest of the Trek canon!" is really both naive and rather simplistically childish. Has no one who watched this movie not also watched any other time travel movie involving branching timelines? Alternatively, try reading any book by Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, for some ideas of what could be possible.
Anyhow, back to the film. Is it any good? Well, yes. There are plot holes in it - big ones. Holes you could fly the Enterprise through and not touch the sides. And the plot - minus the holes - is still a pretty simple save the galaxy affair. But it is enjoyable, and it is fun.
Even when the new actors utter the old classic lines of dialogue, it just raises a warm feeling inside, rather than the horrible cringing I had expected to experience.
And as for the fact that "the past has been changed" so what? All that means is a greater creative freedom to take the series in new directions. Let's face it, what else was going to happen? Another spin-off series with more of the same old, same old? Another Next Gen movie? The franchise needed a new breath of life. Hopefully this is it. Let's see what they come up with next.