Star Trek: 2009

Initial release date: April 6, 2009

Director: J.J. Abrams

DVD release date: November 17, 2009

Prequel: Star Trek Nemesis

Sequel: Star Trek 2

   What can you say about Star Trek?  Well, it's a mixed opinion kind of thing.  Some people like it, and others...not so much.  In my opinion, the show was corny, but I still enjoyed it.  I liked the premise of the show, which is explained in its introduction.  "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."  This was what Star Trek would be based around in every episode.  The characters would come across a planet, or an object, or another ship, and they would either explore, research, defend, or attack it.  It made for a lot of situations this crew could be pitted against.  And leading this ongoing struggle for discovery, was Captain James Tiberius Kirk.  Played by William Shatner, Captain Kirk has become classic within the science fiction genre.  However, in the year of 2009, Kirk and his crew would receive a face-lift by J.J Abrams and revive a classic science fiction show, in the form of a film.  This is my review of "Star Trek."

   "Star Trek", despite its late release, has some connection to the films that came before it. This star trek film fits in between Star Trek Nemesis, one of the next generation films, and Star Trek 2.  However, the film doesn't try to force its place in the timeline, and try to explain its position within it.  This is one of the reasons why J.J Abrams' Star Trek pleases audiences from both sides of the spectrum.  The Trekkie's and the...not Trekkie's.  This film follows James Kirk's and Spock's lives, tuning in on their origin, and the events leading up to, and following their acceptance into Star Fleet.  Our villains are Romulains, and their leader Nero, who while time jumping to and fro between several realities witnesses the destruction of his planet.  For this he blames Spock and has set out to avenge his kind.  

   I am very glad that J.J Abrams waited the amount of time that he did to make a star trek film, because of the many technological advances made in the last five years have been tremendous.  Normally I don't enjoy CG in films, because often times the director may overuse it (ahem* the star wars prequels).  But I loved every second of the CG in this movie.  I mean it, everything was spot on, and I honestly have no complaints whatsoever. The chaotic lighting darting blindly across space, the creaking hull of the ship's exterior as it avoids suspended rubble, the lighting fast decent onto the planet Vulcan as three vessels are airdropped from several hundred thousand kilometers above ground.  The kind of CG in this film was what the original Star Trek needed, but could not yet attain.  J.J Abrams, created the modern equivalent of the show in a nutshell (updated to 2009 standards), but it may have disappointed fans who enjoyed the cheesiness of the show.  Then again, how well do you think the film would have done if he had directed Star Trek by that standard?  Not too well I should think.

   I have a gripe with this film as well, and it's the villain.  Nero, our Romulan antagonist, is bent on destroying Spock.  And I didn't really want to go into the whole history of Romulus, but...I did a little research.  If you don't care for explanation like this, skip past the italic text.  Okay, so Romulus was created by people who were once Vulcan, but not anymore because they rebelled, and so now these people have created a separate race of Vulcan who are now evil, and so this is why Nero, the Villain we're focusing on in this film, wants Spock dead and anyone else related to him because he's the other kind of Vulcan and the remainder of a dying race, because Nero destroyed his planet so that he could show Spock what it was like to live alone, but this was happening in two different alternate realities; one where Nero marooned the old Spock on a different planet to witness the destruction of his planet by Nero, and the other; where young Spock goes down to his planet when it's being destroyed to save his culture, only in the reality with old Spock, Nero's planet had already been destroyed and he thought that it was old Spock's fault because he failed to absorb the black hole that caused the destruction of his planet with red matter, and all the while Nero continues to jump in and out of the black hole into alternate realities, where sometimes Kirk grows up with his dad and sometimes he doesn't, because the black hole appeared and destroyed the S.S Kelvin, the ship that Kirk's father piloted for ten minutes and died in!   But you don't have to read all that if you don't want to.  Although Nero had enough back stories, and enough of a reason to want to kill Spock, he just turned out to be a very weak character.  But I can't blame J.J Abrams for that, because it's natural consensus that Kahn is by far the greatest Star Trek villain of all time (or at least I think so).  But Abrams knew that he couldn't use this villain, because the timeline wouldn't fit in, and it would be very predictable.  The director went out on a limb, but at least it was to try something new.  Not the best villain, but it doesn't take away too much from the film.

   Holy hot @#!*%!  This was a good movie.  J.J Abrams not only brought our attention back to a franchise that had grown bigger than life itself, but introduced it to brand new audiences successfully.  Now that takes some skills to pull off!  It might have updated it today's standards of film action-wise, but it might as well, seeing as we haven't yet witnessed a Star Trek film with this high caliber of CG action.  It was exciting!  And all that coupled with an amazing cast, attention to detail, and nostalgic value, I'd watch this baby any day.

8.3/10

 Next Review:  Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948