Star Trek (J.J. Abrams) 2009

I don’t want to give too much away for the plot so as to spoil anything.  I will say this is not a reboot of the series and was SUPPOSED to be designed to fit with other Trek continuity.  This plot involves time travel and we have a younger version of the crew which has to deal with a new deadly threat.

Star Trek I believe is this year’s Iron Man.  It is a movie that came in with a lot of people unsure of where their expectations should be and ends up being a funny charming and entertaining movie that surprises a lot of people.  Oh sure, Trek fans might have been salivating over it but everyone else wasn’t really that enthusiastic about the minimalist previews.

The new cast for the most part does a good job of taking familiar characters and doing their own things.  Pine and Quinto do a good job in their respective roles as Kirk and Spock and I think they will really grow into their roles in later movies.  The real BIG BIG surprise for me was Karl Urban as Leonard McCoy.  I had written off Urban as a beyond wooden pretty boy but he gives a wonderful Bones impression and I would love to see more of his character in other installments.  Keep Pine and Urban above everyone else.

The plot has a few problems in they try to rush to reboot the series and the time travel element does not cover up all the plot holes.  Like can we really believe that CADET Kirk could so quickly come to become the captain of the Federation’s flag ship?  Hell no.  And I’m sure Trek fans (as already evidenced by a thread that just came up) will think it blasphemy to mess with the characters.  But all these holes are so we can dispense with the formalities and get to all the action which this movie delivers.  The Onion actually did a funny skit where Trek fans bashed the new movie for being exciting and fun for everyone.  They cited criticisms like the new Trek movie didn’t have extended scenes of characters around tables debating the morality of assisting the Andorians and was not cornball enough.  Its brutal but kind of true.  Trek had become too bogged down in its cannon, too obsessed with gadgets and technobable instead of actual characters solving problems with their own wits, and too preachy in its messages.  Abrams does a good job in starting from scratch with the characters we all know and love and putting them in a fun action movie.

This is not a revival of the Trek tv series.  Lets get that over with right now.  Let the damn TV series rest for God’s sake.  Star Trek is a very entertaining and fun action movie and will be one of my favorite summer blockbusters of this year for sure.  I also will be anticipating eventual sequels with this new crew.  But I only want this to be a continuing movie series and not a new TV series.  But yeah, this is a great movie that I recommend even the non-Trek fans to see.