Star Trek movie review
I walked out of the cinema after watching the latest Star Trek moving scratching my head. Why? I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not. Friends have asked me what I thought of it, and the best I have been able to muster is an "it was ok".
Off the bat, I'm not a Star Trek fan. I never watched the show and having seen any of the previous movies, besides three quarters of the Wrath of Khan. My Star Trek knowledge is limited to years of pop culture references. I've heard of Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, the beam me up Scotty guy and the Klingon's. I say this because walking into the cinema I had no idea of any of the main characters origin stories therefore the first half of the film was, I thought, a good introduction to them and the whole Star Trek universe.
Basically the film opens with a space battle. Two ships square off against one another, the good guys in a little ship and the bad guys, led by Eric Bana, in the bigger ship. The bad guys win, but not before Captain Kirk's dad is killed and his mother is jettisoned off in an escape ship giving birth to little Kirk in the process. Kirk is apparently a smart cookie wasting his talents on a life of delinquency. That is, until he enrolls in Star Fleet. Skip three years into the future and Kirk has finished his training, just in time to find himself on board the Enterprise as it heads to Vulcan on a rescue mission. Vulcan is being attacked by Eric Bana. It's bad. The planet is doomed.
Satisfied at the destruction of Vulcan, Eric Bana and his merry men head for earth to stage a repeat performance. Can Star Fleet stop them?
It's around this stage that things got a little weird and/or confusing for me. It was at this point that we were introduced to the 'old' Spock. It was also at this point that the film makers decided to introduce time travel and dimensional travel.
From my point of view, it seemed like this element of the story was introduced to appease hardcore Star Trekkers and provide a link between this film and all the movies and TV shows that preceded it. You can picture the script writers sitting around in a room thinking to themselves, "how can we reboot the series while still retaining some link to the original? I know... alternate timeline/dimension!". Combining the 'original' Star Trek with the 'reboot' Star Trek lost me. Perhaps the producers were trying to satisfy the die-hard fans as well as the casual movie goer? In the end though, they may have failed to satisfy either group.
Star Trek did have its good points. The special effects were impressive and the plot cracked along at a decent pace.
Some of the initial reviews I saw referred to Star Trek as re-energizing a tired franchise, but I wouldn't go that far. In the end, with time travel exposition, standard revenge driven theme and it's rather convoluted plot, Star Trek seems to go boldly where it's probably gone before.
Overall, I'd probably recommend waiting for it to hit DVD. I'd give it 2.5 out of 5
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Tags: Movie News and Reviews, Movies, Star Trek