Star Trek

After reading many good reviews about Star Trek, such as those by the Acrobatic Flea and Frank, and seeing that Rotten Tomatoes is giving it such a good score, I thought I'd best go and see this latest Star Trek movie. And, last night, I finally saw it.

It was... good. But not brilliant.

Certainly it was an enjoyable and fun film and superior to many others out there. Though, I must admit, I thought Watchmen was better. But it was flawed. And not just in the science, though for a Star Trek film that was quite good. Other blogs - such as those by Snell and Siskoid - have indicated the various problems and their concerns with this film. I won't echo too much what they've said but will just list my top three what-where-why 'problems':

1. What was Nero doing for 25 years? He went through the black hole ahead of Spock Prime so he probably wasn't even sure Spock was coming through afterwards. And, after waiting a few hours, a few days or a few weeks, you'd think he'd assume Spock wasn't coming and therefore head off (perhaps to warn the Romulans or attack Vulcan). Wouldn't his crew be getting hungry? The only reason I can see for heading back 25 years before Spock arrived was so that he could affect Kirk's birth.

2. Where the hell was Starfleet? When Earth was being attacked by Nero, why didn't lots of ships come and take out Nero's weirdly-shaped mining ship? The Enterprise was supposed to go and meet up with the rest of the fleet but what the heck were they doing that was so important that they'd leave Earth to be destroyed?

3. Why did Kirk and the other cadets get high-ranking positions on the Enterprise? I can understand them running the ship during most of the movie (mainly due to a lack of higher-ranking officers) but why once the dust had settled? One or two might get positions on the ship but all of them? And Kirk gets to be captain?

Okay, I guess the last one isn’t that great a problem and was done because they wanted to get everyone settled into their roles on the Enterprise ready for the next movie. It still seemed a bit forced. Surely there was a better way of doing it, like fast forwarding a couple of years maybe?

Anyway, faults aside, I did enjoy it. It was certainly exhilarating. Two hours never went by so quickly! So, a directing great job by Abrams. The acting and casting were also very good. Pine played a great Kirk whilst keeping the Shatnerisms to a minimum. Quinto was okay as Spock (although I associate him too much with Sylar on Heroes). Urban as McCoy was definitely very good. And I rather liked Chekov. Character that worked the least for me was Simon Pegg's Scotty. I like Pegg but his Scotty was just too different. And his accent was all over the place. Still, even he wasn't bad - just my least favourite.

Overall, a good and exciting film and well worth going to see. It was certainly a successful reboot of the franchise whilst still remaining faithful to the old series. I'll be more than happy to see any sequels. Hopefully, in the second outing, there won't be quite so many holes in the story though.

Grade: Very Fine.