Well done J J Adams and crew!

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2010)

Blimey, this was good. On the strength of this film I consider it a pity that J J Abrams wasn't given The Lord of the Rings to bring to the screen. I've been with Star Trek from the beginning, through all its incarnations, and can only rejoice in what's been done in this movie. After the terrible let-down that was Brian Jackson's interpretation of Tolkien's much loved trilogy (and here let me say that I love most of his other work), I was expecting the worst from a re-worked Star Trek, especially since I have been supremely unimpressed by Abrams' other work. Quite simply, I was blown away by this film. Chris Pine is incredibly accurate in his portrayal of a James T Kirk who came through a different, obviously more troubled, childhood and adolescence, from the Kirk portrayed by William Shatner. Zachary Quinto is almost more like Spock than Spock himself. McCoy took a few scenes to convince me, as did Chekov and Sulu, but having reviewed the original series, I'm completely won over by their portrayals; the actors picked out characteristics that were there all the time in the original, but that I'd overlooked. The only disappointment for me was Simon Pegg's Scotty. I thought at first I didn't take to him because he didn't live up to the expectation generated by early reviewers, who rated him the best thing in the movie. But, having watched it several more times, I still cannot see why people rate his portrayal so highly. I find it somewhat light-weight, and not that amusing. The new Uhura is interesting – different from the original, but probably necessarily so, given that the way women and their roles are viewed has evolved considerably since the sixties. It's a nice tweak to have Spock in a romantic relationship; in the original series several women fell for him, but rarely did he respond in kind, and only under some outside influence. One review I read on here despaired that the new Spock lost control when taunted. In the original series, given the right circumstances, he certainly became violent on occasion, and it was Kirk who knew which buttons to press. In addition, in this movie it is the elder Spock himself who points out how to provoke his younger self. In my humble opinion this is a great movie. Can't wait for the sequel.