It's been years since the last good Trek film, but this one makes it worth the wait.
The action and drama, injected with familiar bits of humor and the characters' famous lines, start right at the beginning and don't let up for the film's entire two hours. Even storytelling elements are much more fast-paced here than that of the original series and movies. Kirk's back-story, featuring his parents, brings to mind the familial themes explored in Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars.
The F/X get a stylistic work-over. Phasers look similar, but flip around when switching from stun to kill. Beaming gets a make-over. The transporter envelops transportees in a cocoon-like energy wrap, with a rushing sound instead of the high-pitched choral static hum of the original series, or the lower-pitched, expanding egg super sci-fi vibration of the earlier movies.
Unlike the more recent Star Wars movies, the CGI and visual aesthetic in STAR TREK are not greatly divorced from the originals, just slightly updated (despite having occurred chronologically earlier). The Enterprise looks more like a starship than a frisbee and two paper towel rolls glued together. The phasers, communicators and tricorders maintain their retro-futuristic look. And, most importantly, Uhura looks great in her red mini-skirt.
Director J.J. Abrams worked hard to pay tribute while updating Gene Roddenbury's vision. And, thankfully, the casting is nearly flawless. After watching Zachary "Sylar" Quinto play Spock, it's hard to imagine anyone else doing justice to Leonard Nimoy's legacy. Quinto does a brilliant job of portraying a young man torn between two species and two worlds - mixed race of Vulcan dad and human mom (played by Wynona Ryder) and serving in Starfleet or the Vulcan Academy of Science.
Chris Pine's maverick Kirk expands upon William Shatner's risk-taking leader of the Enterprise; we even get a deeper look into Kirk's early years as a young man. The more you watch, the more Pine takes on some of Shatner's mannerisms, to much delight.
Simon Pegg (actually half-Scottish) flawlessly delivers Scotty's lines while fusing his own eccentricities with that of the beloved engineer. John Cho adds some serious cojones to the Sulu character when he and Kirk (Pine) skydive down through Vulcan's atmosphere to subdue Nero's world-destroying device. Zoe Saldana plays a smart, fearless, sultry Uhura, while Karl Urban portrays Bones to the hilt. Out of the major protagonists, Anton Yelchin's Chekov is the most different - thicker accent, curly hair - but his excited, nerdy antics add to the tension when saving people via transporter at the last possible second.
Absent from this installment of STAR TREK, for better or worse, is the campiness of bad acting, poorly staged fights, and inadvertently comedic lines (click here for a clip of Kirk's "I... have had ENOUGH... of YOU!" to Kruge while kicking him off the cliff in ST III). Some new story elements in this film differ radically from past episodes and movies, including romance between Spock and Uhura, and the destruction of Vulcan and Romulus. And, apparently, Abrams could not find a way to work Shatner into the film beyond a cameo. Click here to learn why.
In one scene, future Spock explains the events which lead up to why Kirk and Scotty must leave the Starfleet outpost on the ice planet to beam onto the Enterprise en warp to Vulcan. Spock tells young Kirk about Kirk's father being proud of his joining Starfleet. I was hoping the characters would restore reality, and bring back Vulcan, Romulus, Spock's mother and Kirk's father, but maybe all the death is Abrams' set up for the next movie.
As a Trek fan going on 25 years now, I walked out of the theater feeling very happy and excited, overall. I'm sure you will, too.
Photo Credits: Industrial Light and Magic
