Star Trek (2009)

Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including yours. I dare you to do better. Enlist in Starfleet.

— Christopher Pike

I’m geeking out right now. Happy, happy, joy, joy. I was eagerly anticipating JJ Abrams’ Star Trek for some time now. When Paramount announced that the movie was going to be pushed back from December of last year to May of this year, I was afraid. Usually when a movie is pushed back, that means it is awful and in need of some changes. I was hesitant to see this movie.

Seeing the positive responses popping up. This film has a a Metacritic score of 83. That’s pretty good and it is currently by this post at #59 of Top 250 of All Time of IMDB. Being a Trekkies myself, I enjoyed myself with this movie.

Abrams does not waste any time. He gets right to the nitty-gritty with non stop action when the crew of the USS Kelvin is attacked by a Romulan vessel lead by Capt. Nero (Eric Bana), who is from the future.

The crew is evacuated when the Capt. Richard Robau (Faran Tahir) is killed and acting captain George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) orders everyone off the ship including his pregnant wife, Winona (Jennifer Morrison) that is giving birth to James. The ship is destroyed.

A quarter of a century later, we are introduced to the cocky and rebellious Kirk (Chris Pine) and emotionally suppressed Spock (Zachary Quinto). Kirk tries to pick up Uhura (Zoe Saldana) is a Starfleet bar when he gets into a fight with other Starfleet members.

With a bloody nose, Capt. Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) urges Kirk to enlist in Starfleet to carry on the family name.

During his training at Starfleet, he meets the hypocondriac Bones (Karl Urban). They become friends.

On a simualtion, Kirk and Spock meet and a heated exchange. News comes that the planet Vulcan is under attack by Capt. Nero.

The action focuses on the crew of Enterprise that also includes; Mr. Sulu (John Cho), Chekov (Anton Yelchin).

I can’t reveal what happens after that, but it was a fun ride while it lasted.

I did have some problems with the movie.

• It is mainly the lens flares. There must be five of them a minute. Sometimes the screen would be completely bright. It was so distracting.
• I know that this is a re-imagining of the series, but Spock and Uhura hooking up? Fellow Trekkies help me out here.
• I did not understand what the hell Chekov was saying half the time.
• Some of the special were a little dodgy to me.
• What it me or do the mention of Klingon anything raise a red flag to you?
• The adolescent Kirk and Spock scenes did not work for me.
• When we meet Sulu, he doesn’t know how to go into warp speed, but he could go to low impulse in the outer ring of a planet. Huh?
• Lastly, the allegorical undertones that made the series was absent here. There was no subtext to the actions of Nero.

It was a solid movie overall. I was shocked when Winona Ryder came onscreen to play Spock’s human mother, Amanda Grayson or Tyler Perry being on of the council members of Starfleet. Also, Amanda Foreman that was on Abrams’ show Felicity played one of the crew members. The shout outs to the original series that got me gitty.

Judgment: If you want to have a total nerd-gasm in your seat, watch this movie.

Rating: ****