A film of its era

Rating: 7/10 (4 June 2009)

This new Star Trek film uses a fast pace and dense cinematography to keep the viewer from realizing that there are several plot-holes that crop up throughout the story. The creators clearly hoped that by keeping things moving fast enough and constantly engaging the viewer's emotions, the viewer would not have the luxury of figuring out that the actual story doesn't work. In this, it is a product of the dominant film-making school of this era. Suitably, that is also one of the main themes driving the film: Emotion is good, as Spock's father tells Spock at the end. Unless the emotion belongs to someone who destroys planets out of revenge, of course. So the film is not very interesting, unfortunately, on the intellectual front, in contrast to the series.
But it does succeed on a number of other levels. The actors generally did a good job - I have few complaints there. I think that Chekov's Russian accent might have been a bit overdone.
Here are the flaws in the story that I noticed:
1) Two ships and a supernova get sucked into a black hole. One ship comes out in the past, the other comes out 25 years later. Where the enormous supernova goes is left unanswered. Somehow a black hole distinguishes the matter of the two ships from the matter of the supernova? One ship decides to wait 25 years for the other ship to come out; how its crew knows WHEN the other ship will come out or if it will come out at all is left unanswered.
2) The planet-drilling needles can be destroyed just by firing a few laser beams from a small ship, yet none of the planets under attack do anything about them except panic.
3) Kirk becomes captain after provoking Spock to an extreme emotional response, which disqualifies Spock from being captain. However, in the ensuing fight, and in his conduct before that, Kirk is shown to be far more emotional and violent. Yet he takes over the captain's chair, and nobody objects. After what had just happened, the whole crew and Spock had a very good reason to dislike him, yet they all become pals a short time later.
4) The monster chase on the ice planet strains all credibility. Just everything about it.
On the whole, it was an okay experience. It's not a badly-made film at all, but it aims at mainstream sensibilities. I always thought that the low budget of the Star Trek TV series forced it to be interesting from a story point of view. With a high-budget blockbuster movie, there is a shift of priorities towards eye candy and action. There is enough of the core spirit left for it to be called "Star Trek", but I'd rather watch the TV episodes.