A depressing beginning to another Star Trek series of movies

Rating: 4/10 (14 May 2009)

Nowadays, Hollywood has to be big FX and heaps of emotion, and this Star Trek delivers in spades. It was always going to be a hard task to introduce the original characters without large chunks of back story, and despite JJ's professed "It's not foot on the gas, foot on the brake, foot on the gas..." that's exactly what this film is. There are a few stunning scenes, but mostly we endure learning about who the main characters are and how they came to be aboard the Enterprise. And none more ridiculous than James T himself. He is portrayed as delinquent child, womanizing hell-raiser, insubordinate, yet academically gifted. Unbelievable. And never mind the many plot holes. Spock has more story than anyone else, and the main plot devise revolves around him. Unfortunately, it is a pretty lame devise. I expect the future films to be much more action, but this intro movie is mostly dull and I found it hard to care about many of the characters. I saw it on the big screen, but I can see why people download movies.