Critical Hit - Star Trek
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J.J. Abrams delivers! I’ve been on the fence with this guy for a bit now. I love some of the stuff he has done and yet other stuff doesn’t work. Star Trek was the final decision for me. As a an avid Trekkie, I wasn’t about to forgive Abrams for ruining the best sci-fi franchise ever created BUT thankfully, he pulled a gem out of his hat and Star Trek was everything the hype says it is…and more.
I’ll start with the plot and explain as much as I can without giving out any spoilers. First, let me say that if you didn’t read my post about the Star Trek Online game I highly suggest you do. If you don’t want to read all the info that was given there I suggest you at least read this The Path to 2387. Its a summary of what happens in the Star Trek universe in the year 2387, 7 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. In there it explains what the premise of the new Star Trek movie is all about.
So, young Kirk is a trouble maker and one day he goes to a bar and gets in a fight with some Starfleet Academy Cadets. Capt. Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) breaks up the fight and informs Kirk that he’s too smart to not be in Starfleet so he dares him to join and become a better Captain of a ship than his father was. Kirk joins and meets Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (Karl Urban) and they become friends. Meanwhile, Spock (Zachary Quinto) too joins Starfleet. Three years later, the USS Enterprise is done and the cadets are thrown into action as Nero (Eric Bana) is attacking Spock’s homeworld of Vulcan. From there the story gets awesome and events set up our classic crew of the Enterprise who boldly go where no one has gone before. I’ll say no more on the plot as I want everyone who reads this to go see it for themselves.
I want to pay a lot of attention to the acting in Star Trek. I have no choice as it was so great. I’ll start with Karl Urban as Bones. Before you even see Bones in the film, you hear him and you know exactly who it is. I’m pretty sure Urban studied DeForest Kelley big time because not only did he sound like Bones but he has the same mannerisms and inflections on words! He was my favorite as Bones was always my favorite Original Series character. Zachary Quinto was spot on as Spock. These two guys are probably the most recognizable faces and yet they were the best. Quinto plays Sylar on Heroes but after the first scene with his mother, you forget about Sylar and only see Spock. Having Leonard Nimoy around to help was probably nice. Speaking of Nimoy, he returns as an older version of Spock (does that give away the plot to anyone?) and while he doesn’t have a lot of screen time, its enough to make my inner Trekkie geek out. Chris Pine plays James T. Kirk and while the movie centers around his character it doesn’t feel like it. Pine did a great job of capturing the spirit of the young, rebellious Kirk while not just being a carbon copy of 
William Shatner’s Kirk. Pine too captured a lot of Shatner’s mannerisms around the chair and such which made the character really believeable. Simon Pegg played Scotty and while Scotty was usually a lesser character, he still didn’t get much screen time. The little time that he did get was pretty fantastic. He was a little more hyper than Scotty but it worked out really well and I can’t wait for more screen time for Pegg as a fan of his work. John Cho as Hikaru Sulu was good but nothing special as his character wasn’t that important. Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura was good but Uhura’s character was never a spectacular one. She had a fairly large roll in the film and did a fine job with it making Uhura a more important character than she normally was. Anton Yelchin played Pavel Chekov and could not pull off a Russian accent to save his life. I’m sure that this movie would be a 100% instead of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes if Yelchin could of sounded Russian. Eric Bana also did a fine job as the evil Romulan Nero.
So what does all of this mean for the Star Trek franchise? Its been reborn in a way that people across the spectrum can enjoy it. I, as a proud Trekkie, loved this film and want more. People who had never seen Star Trek before loved the movie too. The writers sat down and wrote a script that they all loved and that group had a Trekkie and a guy who’d never seen anything Star Trek before plus everything in between. So the bottom line is that if you are a Trekkie or totally new to Star Trek, you’ll love this film!
Until next time, get down from there and watch out for those Critical Hits!
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