Star Trek is back, and I am thrilled.
I give this movie two super-deformed, allergic-reaction- swollen thumbs up (that’s a spoiler by the way). I can’t wait for the DVD and look forward to a whole series of new movies.
I grew up on Star Trek. My grandpa and I used to watch it back when it first went into reruns. I watched it faithfully every weekend on WAVE TV, obvlivious to the crappy special effects. When I got older, I really liked the first couple of movies. In fact, I had my dad drop me off at the theater at 8AM for Star Trek III so I could be the first person in line. I was actually the fifth.
When Star Trek the Next Generation came out, it caught me by surprise. I was at the home of this girl I was dating and we were flipping through the channels. I couldn’t believe Star Trek was back, and that I hadn’t heard a peep about it. My devotion to the show far outlasted that particular girl, despite Jean-Luc Picard's annoying insistence on taking a conference every time someone sneezed.
Deep Space 9 was the beginning of the end for me. By this time the nerds at Paramount had taken over the franchise and Star Trek was less "Wagon Train in space" (Roddenberry’s original idea) and more "As the Galaxy Turns"; a show full of talking, talking and yes, more talking.
When I was in the USAF, Star Trek Voyager came out. They insisted on calling the girl captain "Sir". Great, feminazis in space. I was not amused, and enacted a boycott of the show that still stands today.
When George Lucas came out with "The Phantom Menace" my Star Trek roots were thoroughly cut. I switched to the Dark side, and became a raging Star Wars fan. But I still thought back fondly on those heady days of William Shatner, techno babble and plastic space ships getting blown up.
I am happy to report, that I am now fully back onboard- no transporter needed.
First off, the actors reprising the famous Trek characters did awesome jobs with the personalities created by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForrest Kelley and James Doohan. We’ve seen it done with 007, who changes actors every few years, but here we got to see it done with multiple characters, and much better; each Bond may bring his particular flavor to 007, but the core Enterprise crew, except perhaps Sulu, were spot-on. Maybe the revelation in the past few years as to why Sulu was so flamboyant had something to do with that?
The story? Well, it’s pure genius. In any franchise, there’s always canon to worry about. Fans are unforgiving when writers forget some obscure fact that fans have memorized. The solution in this film was to have a Terminator-esque storyline, involving a villain from the future who irrevocably changes history. Which is doubly brilliant, because all the classic Trek fans can still be happy, appeased by the knowledge their timeline is still intact, and this new film franchise is an alternate universe (see, I really did watch a lot of Trek).
But let’s say you aren’t a Trekkie/Trekker/Nerd/whatever. Will you like Star Trek? Do you like fighting? Do you like action? Spaceships? Big-ass explosions? Hot chicks? If you answered "yes" then you’ll like this film.
If you’re a fan of a limp-wristed, ergonomic, pansy vision of the future where humans have conferences and worship cultural diversity- this ain’t the film for you. Star Trek has gone back to it’s roots. It’s fun again, without being preachy or desperately trying to justify made-up, impossible science. I imagine Gene Roddenberry has stopped spinning at warp speed in his grave.
Go see Star Trek- it's a whole new movie, the start of a whole-new franchise. And this time, it's done right.