Star Trek (2009, USA)

I must admit that while I’m not a huge Trek fangirl, I do love pretty much anything Shatner-related, and I did watch a hell of a lot of TNG when I was young. So the idea of a J.J. Abram’s restart interested me a lot – I wasn’t particularly worried about the uber-franchise being ruined (more on that below), because I’m not terribly invested in it, and I thought that it might make for one of the better summer blockbusters, if handled well.

I’m so happy when I’m right. The Star Trek reboot is pretty damn rad. Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are respectful of the mythology without being slaves to it, and the result is a well-thought-out origin story that might end up having legs of its own as a spin-off franchise. The casting is generally very good – Chris Pine impressed me by playing Kirk as Kirk, not as Shatner playing Kirk, and Zachary Quinto (in his very first film role) makes for a solid Spock. Less impressive was Karl Urban’s McCoy, who must have attended the Jack Nicholson School for Elocution, though the line readings seemed to smooth out as the movie got moving. Simon Pegg is a particular coup as Scotty, and I liked the beefing up of Zoe Saldana’s Uhura character, though I thought John Cho’s Sulu was given short shift. (Lots of Chekov, though. I liked Anton Yelchin, but wouldn’t it have been a bit more inspired to spin things completely around and make him Arab, or something? Just kidding.)

Less impressive was the big baddie – Eric Bana was almost completely lost in make-up, and his dialog was generally weak. He seemed created to serve the plot and to do little else. Also, I’ll be interested to see if there will be a J.J. Abrams project in the near future that doesn’t deal with A) time travel, or B) daddy issues. Quibbling aside, Trek is fun, gorgeous (all that money certainly ended up on the screen – dig the huge angry metal jellyfish!), blows things up real good without getting carried away, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. An excellent kickoff to the summer of 2009, and hopefully to a few more well-made movies.

Speaking of taking yourself way too seriously, about an hour into my screening, right after a pretty big plot point unfolds, a middle-aged woman in the row ahead of us started speaking in her outside voice about how the movie had just ruined the whole Trek universe, that things weren’t as they were in the original arc, blah, blah, blah. Annoyingness aside, I thought to myself – who cares? If a few things need to get rearranged or rethought in order to create interesting, propulsive filmmaking, well – I really doubt Roddenberry would care. The spirit of the series is intact, so what’s the point in getting bent out of shape over how things get from point A to point B? (However, I did like it how the film essentially told her to shut her trap a half hour later. Oh, J.J. – you and your space-time continuum wackiness.)