To boldly go

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2012)

What can one add to a review corpus consisting of more than 1,400 reviews and over a quarter million votes??
I grew up on this show. These characters, these actors, are a part of my life. Since the series was released in the late 1960s, not only have I seen all the episodes, I've seen each episode multiple times. I'm not an intense fan or anything, but the show was just constantly in rerun and I always enjoyed watching it. It's been part of my life for over 40 years. Even today I have an image of Spock hanging on the bulletin board in my office. This show fed my childhood imagination. You have to really wonder at the burst of creativity that produced the show in the first place and brought those particular actors together.
I haven't seen a TOS rerun on Dutch television for quite some time (perhaps ten years or more?) Nor is it shown on the international cable channels. Even the Syfy channel doesn't show them. I think most young Europeans have never seen a TOS episode. And if they have, perhaps it was just a few. I'm sure the more alert ones are aware of the TOS as a cultural phenomenon, but they may not understand the true extent of it.
When I saw this movie for the first time, it was in a Dutch theatre filled with people in their late teens and early 20s. How many of them really understood the references to Star Trek TOS? It's amusing to me to think of all those moviegoers watching this movie for its own sake, and enjoying it, but not really understanding this entire rich layer underneath.
It's clear that the director and writers went to some trouble to recreate the look and dynamics of the actors from 40 years ago, but imagined about ten years younger than in TOS. I must say that they succeeded spectacularly. For me, this is what the movie was all about. Abrams, Orbi and Kurtzman, and the various actors involved, are not even old enough to have seen the series from the beginning. They must be geniuses.
I like the fact that the individual actors each added something different to their characters. Of course, it doesn't have to be (and cannot be) exactly the same. Perhaps it's impossible to recreate Star Trek TOS as it was. It's a new age. Indeed, many doors slide open now. We all have communicators now. Movie-making has changed too.
The plot was rather complicated, as you can see from the length of the synopsis. I cannot say that the plot itself was that original or amazing. This was not the strength of the movie.
Also, the film was rather too filled with ponderous space scenes showing the time gate and the various ships. Now that they've revived the original characters, I hope they are able to return the movie franchise to concept-based themes and the wry dialogue of TOS. TOS was ultimately a drawing-room drama with ensemble acting, not a Star-Wars thriller. One of the strengths of the show was occasionally using the future to cause the viewer to reflect on present day issues. The last thing this should develop into is a series of huge Avenger-style action movies. TOS blew us away for different reasons.
It was really great that they were able to integrate the older Spock character into the movie. (Neither the new Spock nor the old Spock were exactly unemotional though, were they? We all know the Vulcans still have repressed emotions, but that's not what they are all about. It's always disturbing when a director decides to show us how emotional Vulcans really are.)
Eric Bana played a different sort of role for him: a crazy, tattooed yahoo thug in control of a monstrous spaceship and with a grudge strong enough to last a lifetime. I thought it was great, and the look really suits him.
They weren't gentle with the franchise. They've created a different time line, so not everything is the same as in TOS. And my god — they destroyed Vulcan! Six billion Vulcans dead in the blink of an eye. We'll have to wait until 2013 to see where it goes.