The character of Captain Kirk reduced to a juvenile delinquent or 'Fast and Furious' redone with Starships.

Rating: 2/10 (8 May 2009)

I was eagerly anticipating this release for the last few weeks and went to see it opening weekend. The first scene started out with a well done space battle but things immediately started to deteriorate when the battle turned out to be the birth scene of James T. Kirk, an unnecessarily overly dramatic writing of Kirk's birth. Things didn't improve when we next met the orphaned Kirk racing around Iowa and recklessly destroying his uncles antique Corvette. Very out of character for the command officer James T. Kirk we know from the series. As a matter of fact I doubt that those familiar with the series are the intended audience of this film as the aforementioned scene seemed merely and excuse to throw in a classic muscle car and a song by AC-DC.
Throughout the movie James Kirk behaves like a wild undisciplined punk nothing at all like anyone who would ever be able to function in a military environment. The writers took some character nuances of Kirk and totally overdid it. A good example of professional military officers who also like to joke around and enjoy the ladies is found in The Right Stuff. Yes they break the rules now and then but nowhere in that movie did you doubt the Mercury 7 were professional military officers responsible for advanced aerospace technology. Spock was right in his decision to throw Kirk off the ship after his near mutiny in time of war by a starfleet cadet. Most of the rest of the familiar crew members are caricatures of themselves delivering clichés of the shows dialog as if this is a Saturday Night Live skit. Bruce Greenwood was good as Captain Pike, but he got fairly little screen time. Zachary Quinto was OK as Spock, though he had to work through a few ridiculous love scenes with Uhuru thrown in senselessly by the writers.
Here we encounter another common movie-making flaw, Too Many Cooincidences. Turns out Kirk, Bones, Uhuru, all went to starfleet academy together. There is little indication on the show that the Enterprise bridge crew all had deep relationships with each other predating their assignment to the Enterprise, and such a situation would be highly unlikely in the real world. Kirk was known as being quite young for a captain, but he was always insinuated as being senior to his bridge crew with the exception of the Dr. and Chief Engineer.
But most egregious is once again another grandiose time travel plot, this time with a Romulan (well played by Eric Bana) coming back from the future to destroy the federation. The whole bit about Romulus being destroyed in a supernova is preposterous to anyone with an astronomical background as Stars that go supernova are too short lived to develop habitable planets, and they are also unstable for thousands of years before they go boom which would have caused anyone living nearby to have abandoned their planets as the star went red giant and threw off shell after shell of gas. There is way too much time travel in sci fi these days. In a comedy like Star Trek 4 it works because the movie is never too serious in tone, but time travel leaves too many logical conundrums to make good sci fi.(i.e why don't the Klingons just go back and destroy Earth in the past) Time travel is something that most probably is impossible.
Worst of all is the writers "re-imagining" Star Trek by destroying the Planet Vulcan in the new Star Trek universe. I had expected that Kirk and Spock would restore the time-line at the end, but no they let this travesty stand. The re-imagined Battlestar Gallactica was a much more thought out improvement over the original despite some annoying feminist overtones. This re-imagining was essentially 'Fast and Furious' redone with Starships. On the positive side the action and special effects are spectacular in this film, but aren't they in most all films these days. In summary if you are unfamiliar with the Star Trek franchise you will enjoy the fast paced action effects sequences which are quite enjoyable. But if you are a fan of the original you will detest the slaughtering of the characters.