Review: Star Trek (2009) - J. J. Abrams

A legend is retold and improved.

"Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's and yours. I dare you to do better."

          I'm ashamed to admit that last night was my first time seeing this movie, as a huge Sci-Fi fan I've been meaning to check it out for ages but kept putting it off. I should also let you know I am not a Star Trek fan, not because I don't like the series, I just never got drawn it to it, but I will be the first to admit that this film was amazing. As a Star Wars fan I'm extremely jealous that this was the reboot to your series and how it kept the humour and feel of the original TV and Film series. The catalyst for finally watching this movie was the fantastic trailer for the sequel to this film Star Trek: Into Darkness, which looks amazing so I knew I had to see this film and it's a great jumping on point for anyone who doesn't want to track down and go through the original film and TV series, but still wants to see what the big fuss is with Star Trek and unlike most reboots it doesn't completely throw away the history long time fans have come to know.

          Well to get on with the review proper. The plot of this film is basically a retelling of the origin story of the original (USS) Enterprise crew and how them meet and their interactions with each other and how they rise to their positions, the but that makes this unique though is that this is an alternative reality caused by time travelling Romulan's hell bent on exacting their revenge on Vulcan for the loss of their homeworld by the actions of Spock in the original series timeline/reality. It's not as confusing as it sounds, but like I said it allows everything that happened before to be canon and yet still allow the creative crew behind the film to take liberties and change certain events for the purpose of their story and to surprise both Trekkies and new fans alike. The film opens with the USS Kelvin being attacked by the time-travelling Romulan ship, with the unborn (Captain) James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) on board and the death of his father George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) as he rams the Romulan ship with the USS Kelvin, in order to allow the escape shuttles to get away.

          Twenty five years later we then see the cocky James Kirk training with the rest of the Enterprise crew, some of whom don't get on with him especially Spock (Zachary Quinto). A similar electrical storm in space takes place where the USS Kelvin was attacked and then Vulcan, Spock's home-planet is attacked by the time-travelling Romulan ship, which wasn't seen since the original attack. The cadets are mobilised to help the Vulcan homeworld, the ships are overwhelmed by the advanced Romulan ship which is drilling into the core of the plan to create a blackhole in the centre of the planet and destroy it. The crew are too late to stop the destruction of the planet but do manage to rescue the Vulcan high council. Spock was promoted to captain and orders that they return back to earth and regroup with the rest of Starfleet, Kirk disagrees and is ejected onto a near by planet, where he meets the original or older Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Old Spock tells Kirk about there friendship and how he was too late to save the Romulan homeworld and how this is an alternate reality to the one he had come from originally, they also come up with a plan to get (young) Spock to show his emotions and therefore have to resign as captain so as Kirk can become captain of the USS Enterprise and basically save the day. Scotty and Kirk beam to the ship and then as Captain, Kirk stops the Romulan's destroying Earth and destroys their ship in a blackhole, and returns to earth where he is promoted to Captain of the Enterprise and starts to become friends with Spock.

          What can I say about this film? Visually it's stunning, the cast are amazing and the story is simple and yet effective. I highly recommend this film if you love good action and sci-fi movies and for me anyway it's a 9/10. Well worth checking out especially if the trailer for the sequel excites you.

Opinions: Star Wars VII and beyond

          When I first heard the news that Disney had bought Lucasfilm (and associated properties and films) and planned on releasing a 7^th Star Wars film by 2015, I was shocked and to be honest angry. As a fan of the original trilogy I thought back to the dark days of the prequel trilogy and the nasty after taste it left on my favourite film franchise. But the more I read about it and then digested the information my opinion has changed to a shyly optimistic one. The main problem with the prequel trilogy (in my opinion) was George Lucas had complete control and no one challenged him, which can work wonderfully with certain projects but didn’t in this case. I will admit though that Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) is my favourite of the prequels and my 3^rd favourite over all behind, Episode IV (A New Hope) my No. 2, Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back), my No 1. And in case you’re wondering Episode VI (Return of the Jedi) is my No. 4, Episode II (Attack of the Clones) is my No. 5 and you guessed it Episode 1 (The Phantom Menace).

Lil Orphan Annie

          Now you might see that I wasn’t a huge fan of the newer Star Wars films and while that’s true to a degree its not the whole truth. As a fan I was unbelievably excited when I heard of the Prequel trilogy and as most fans did it gave us hope that we would get to see more of the franchise we loved, what we got in The Phantom Menace though was a film we had to force ourselves to love, kind of like when you open a present you don’t really want but have to be nice and appreciate it as say thank you (admit it we all do it), its only now when we reflect on it we can admit its faults and downfalls. But we had two more films shot in the same manner and written in the same vein as the first to come so we had to love it, but luckily not all fans accepted the film just because it was a new Star Wars film and took to the internet (yes it existed back in 1999) to express their dissatisfaction with what they saw namely certain characters (Jar Jar), lack of character development (Qui Gon Jinn and Darth Maul), wooden dialogue (everyone’s guilty of this), convoluted over indulgent plot and Annie (ooh Jake Llyod you were better than this). And for the most part these issues were ignored (well except Jar Jar he was cut quicker than the 1^st blonde chick in a slasher film), but they were improved, the producers challenged George more on the 2^nd and 3^rd films after giving him free reign on the 1^st prequel and the result is they are much better films.

          Ok I could go on about the past but now to look to the future, or why I think Episode VII will be good. The 1^st reason is it’ll have a new director, one that isn’t George Lucas and when this happened before it resulted in the best Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back which is also widely regarded as one of, if not the best sequels ever. So that’s a plus.

Secondly George Lucas won’t have complete control over it as we saw when he is in charge on his own the ship veers towards the rocks (Episode I and II) but when he is challenged and put under pressure he does an amazing job (Episodes III to VI), so him suggesting certain plot points and picking certain creatures will ensure the newest film will match the tone and feel of the ones that have gone before.
And lastly why I think this will be good in general it opens up the franchise to more people and opens the opportunities’ to future Star Wars films set in the expanded universe to be made or completely new original ones that we could never imagine or get with George Lucas at the helm.

          Anyway that’s my two cents on the matter I hope you can see how passionate I am on the matter and try and see things from my point of view and please feel free to disagree with me if you want.