Combines reverence with freshness

Rating: 9/10 (18 May 2009)

Like many people who will see and comment on this film, I grew up on Star Trek without becoming a Trekkie. The characters are old friends and form a trope of childhood and adolescence. If you enjoyed Star Trek TOS in this way, you don't need to be a convention-going Trekkie to want to see these characters and Roddenberry's legacy treated with respect. The movie accomplishes this task while also bringing freshness and new creative energy to the Trek space saga.
In fact, the new film is so character driven that we don't really care if Pine is not Shatner or Quinto not Nimoy. It doesn't matter because the script and direction imbue the new actors' interpretations with glimpses and glimmers of the old actors' creations: Pine's chomping on an apple while cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test, which references Shatner's scene in Wrath of Khan in which he reminisces on the same event; the new McCoy's slight, undefinable Southern accent as well as the more obvious references to the character's notorious irritability; Scotty's easy smile and child-like joy in the ship's abilities; even the last view of Christopher Pike in a wheelchair at the end of the film foreshadows that captain's fate in the original series. Quinto's Spock is perhaps the exception here, seeming to live outside Nimoy's creation because of a (largely implausible) backstory with Uhura but nevertheless linked to the older Spock through Nimoy's cameo. What makes these references work is that they are subtle; they are not elbow jabs in the ribs of Trekkies so they can chuckle knowingly at the insider references. They are simply there for those who can notice them, and even for veterans of the original series they may be too fleeting to be noticed immediately.
The other part is the freshness: the re-imagined Enterprise--also a trope from childhood but now with a makeover that rekindles the sense of wonder people must have felt when seeing the original series the first time. Then the utterly new: Nero's ship, surely one of the most sinister in a long line of enemy vessels designed to convey menace through architecture. It succeeds brilliantly--all sharp, jagged surfaces and uneven planes, a nightmarish mixture of M.C. Escher and Dario Argento.
There's no need to go too far into special effects or even the story. The former are overwhelmingly good, though that's simply to be expected these days. The latter is somewhat obtuse and I'm still not sure I quite get it. But the reason these things are secondary is the same reason Star Trek has always been and continues to be successful. It brings strong, well-defined characters together and lets us see how they interact in a future world brought to life with the detail and fantasy of Roddenberry's amazing imagination. Long live Star Trek.