Hi again, its been a while, so I figured I would come back on a high note.
When I herd that J.J. Abrams was doing a prequel for the Star Trek franchise, I was skeptical. When I foud out that it involved time travel, I sword off ever seeing the damned thing. I mean, come on!
Here, lets see. Time travel, we've seen that before how many times?
Star Trek: The Voyage Home AND Star Trek: First Contact were both time travel based. And lets not forget how many times they used that gimmick in the original series. It was handled a little more logically by the time they did The Next Generation series. But, as if they couldn't get enough of it, half of the series Enterprise series included “ The Temporal Cold War”.
Seriously, time travel is so over used in Star Trek, and misused at the same time, that I was seriously thinking that this would be another glorious flop. (Click on the link, I dare you!)
Well, my wife went to see it, and came back raving. Two of my friends had even more high praise for it, so finally, I broke down and decided to see what it had to offer.
Much to my astonishment, this movie captured what I felt was the best of Star Trek in a way that none of the other movies ever did. Personally, my favorite was Generations, and my second favorite was Wrath of Khan. I liked the intellectual and emotional elements of Generations, and the raw action of Khan was just flat entertaining, need I say more?
Surprisingly, the newest movie manages to capture both the intellectual side of the trek story, and the heart stopping action that was always the hallmark of the series for me. As someone who truly is a character centered person, I was worried that some of the characters, being portrayed in their mid twenties, wouldn't be true to their original depictions. But quite to the contrary, each and every character nailed the personality and attitude of the original cast.
I particularly liked Karl Urban's portrayal of Bones. As a man who grew up watching start Trek, I thought the acting for my favorite doctor was spot on; the voice, the mannerisms, the speech patterns, you name it! Well done all around!
None of the crew were left lacking in this one, everyone got their moment in the spotlight, and since all of them are college kids, or there abouts, we get to see the youthful energy that hasn't been seen since the first season of the original series. And a lot of the classic lines that made the characters so memorable.
Something I was also struck by. In the original series, at least according to popular lore, the women on the set, lead in part by Nichelle Nichols ( Lt. Uhura) demanded of Gene Roddenberry the ability to ware the now classic short skirts and go-go boots that helped make the women of the original series so eye catching, despite being in uniform.
Well, the new Uhura is played by Zoe Saldana, and in this film, you see a relatively long shot of her talking with her roommate, and both of them are effectively nothing but their underwear. While hardly a controversial image in today's movie culture, I felt it was a fitting nod to Trek's role in letting women express themselves.
In any event, Trek fan or not, I highly recommend seeing this film.
