Star Trek (review)

Rating: 5/5 Must see (4/5 if you absolutely hate sci-fi)

"I get the joy of rediscovering you." - Journey (from the song "Faithfully")

This quote sums up my feelings about the new Star Trek better than anything else. It's like you've been away from the love of your life for longer than you would have liked, but you see them again and they are more beautiful than you remember and you fall in love all over again.

J.J. Abrams (Lost creator and Cloverfield producer) claims he was never a fan of Star Trek. Maybe he's lying or maybe that's what makes this movie so wonderful. This movie is everything that makes the Star Trek franchise great, but through brand new eyes. He makes us see it through new eyes as well by creating a well designed alternate reality (one of the perks of sci-fi) that is the same, yet allows him to have a bit more freedom and, theoretically, helps get the uber-geeks off his back. Also a younger fresh perspective allows this movie to reach out to new audiences both young and old who are just looking to enjoy a good sci-fi movie.

I will admit I had my doubts. I was a Next Gen kid who was never a fan of Kirk. So, why would I care about watching him grow up? Also, there's an intellectualism that I liked about Star Trek that I was worried would be lost in a reboot.

The film opens with a Romulan ship coming through a black hole to attack the U.S.S. Kelvin on the day of James T. Kirk's birth. Within minutes you are thrust into the struggles of a family and a ships crew trying to survive this attack. This human struggle for survival is shown through Kirk's father assuming control of the ship and making sure that his wife and kid (along with as many crew members as he could evacuate) are away from danger. By the time the opening credits roll with the Star Trek logo my eyes are wet with tears for the joy of Kirk's birth, and the emotion in those first few minutes. From that moment on I am captivated as we watch the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise assume old roles and some new. So much for doubt number one.

The main characters - Chris Pine as Kirk, and Zachary Quinto as Spock - are very reminiscent of the actors who defined these roles (Shatner, and Nimoy respectively). Yet the young actors manage to make the roles their own. The rest of the crew is filled out by Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and Karl Urban as McCoy. All of the roles follow the lead of those playing Kirk and Spock nailing the mannerisms of those who made the characters famous while giving the characters new life. Eric Bana plays the role of the Romulan Captain from the future who comes to destroy Starfleet because the Starfleet of the future couldn't save his home.

All of the characters are distinctly human (even the Romulan enemy) and written with such depth that you connect and care for them. It wasn't till I was driving home that I realized this was the answer to my second doubt. We Trekkies like to over-romanticize this idea that it was the intellectual level of Star Trek that was it's soul and what made it stand out from other sci-fi. That was never it at all. The soul of Star Trek is that it has soul. It's a universe filled with characters we can connect with and care for. A universe of different cultures trying to understand each other just like the world we live on. It's this connection that allowed us to draw our intellectual and philosophical meanings from this and without this connection life and Star Trek would be without meaning.

I'm sure there will be Trekkies and non-Trekkies who will dislike it for nitpick reasons (ex: why build a starship on earth when you would then have to lift it out of earth's gravity), there always are, but for every one of those there will be a handful of new Trekkies born from this movie. You can't please everybody but J.J. Abrams you pleased the heck out of me. I don't know that I've gotten that much enjoyment out of a movie since I was a kid. It reminds us what movies are for; to make us dream, make us feel, and maybe make us think a bit. I got the joy of rediscovering a part of my adolescence and learning that just cause I'm an adult doesn't mean I can't have flutters of geek-ecstasy when I see the Enterprise in action.

I hope the whole cast and crew live long and that the new Star Trek prospers. <-- Too geeky. I know. I can't help it. It has revived my inner geek and my love of this franchise.


Star Trek (2009) at IMDB
126 minutes
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence, and brief sexual content.

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