JJ Abrams Has “Given’er All She’s Got!”: Star Trek Reviewed
Let me start this review off with a bit of honesty. I’m not a Trekky. Growing up I watched a lot of TNG (The Next Generation), but as for the original series, I really only know of a few famous scenes and some minute character back stories I learned from various movies. Because of this I was a bit afraid of watching the latest Star Trek flick by JJ Abrams because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to understand and appreciate it for all that it is. Well, I was wrong; and from a non-trekky point of view, this is the best flick I’ve seen in the theaters this calendar year.
The action is amazing. We now live in an age where anything can be done through CG and green screen effects and I think JJ Abrams is one of those directors who looks at things like explosions in a script and starts to put them together in his head from a creative standpoint without focusing on how much a shot like that would cost. That being said, Star Trek’s action sequences are the anti-Michael Bay. You can actually tell what is going on from the hand to hand battles involving Sulu and Kirk to the large scale space battles between the Enterprise and Captain Nero‘s ship. The sequences are tight, easy to understand and take full advantage of the large screen.
The story line was always going to be the line that this film was going to have to balance on. With a huge devoted fan base, Abrams and co needed to make sure that these people were never abandoned; but at the same instill enough of a newbie feel to embrace new fans. Undoubtedly this has been achieved. Not only has JJ and Bad Robot created a new look for Star Trek, they’ve taken key principles of the original story telling and applied them to newer situations. The result is astounding and the flick can stand alone as one of the best Star Trek movies I’ve ever seen.
Character-wise this was also going to be a bit of a challenge for audiences to wrap their heads around. Everyone has always associated someone like Kirk to Bill Shatner; ditto for someone like Leonard Nemoy and Spock. With the new flick, Abrams knew he wasn’t going to bring back a ton of the original cast (hint – an original character can be seen), and he also knew that he had to cast actors that could pul off some of the tendencies the later actors made so famous. Again, Abrams passes with flying colors from the risky assignment of Chris Pine as Kirk to the brilliant casting of someone like Karl Urban as Bones. But the absolute best piece of casting has to be the coming out party of Zach Quinto as young Spock. Widely known as Sylar from Heroes, Quinto showed the world that he can do a lot more than slit open people’s heads and steal their abilities, with Star Trek he’s captured the mannerisms of Leonard Nemoy and brought his own, younger flavor to an already well established character.
With Star Trek now showing is pretty much every theatre in the world right now it shouldn’t too hard to get a ticket. I definitely suggest checking this out especially if you’re not a trekky. You’ll be amazed at how much you’ll start to understand why the series and franchise has been so popular for so long.
great review.
Great review Scott! I felt every actor was dead on with a new twists. Simon Pegg and the kid that played Charlie Bartlett were dead on as Scotty and Chekov.
this new Star Trek is high quality cinema indeed, except at the theater i went to the reel kept jumping and the sound went out a couple of times… why are movie theaters still using film i wonder?