Star Trek

Star Trek

This was one of the coolest movies I have seen in a while hands down. I have not seen anything that visually cool in the past couple years. I have never felt that spaced looked so real and tangible before. The only thing that would have made this movie cooler was if it was in 3-D. Overall, plot was interesting, and the visual effects were off the hook spectacular.
Directed by J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Mission Impossible 3) and staring Chris Pine (Princess Diaries 2) as Cpt. James Kirk, Zachary Quinto (Heroes, 24) as the young Spock, Leonard Nimoy as Future Spock, Eric Bana (Munich, Troy, Hulk) as the evil Cpt. Nero, John Cho (Harold and Kumar) as Sulu and Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) as Scotty. As you can tell, it’s a great cast that has a lot to offer. Pretty boys, bad asses and nerds.

This movie had a lot of hype about it before it came out. It also had some bad press as well. People were unsure on how it was going to be. J.J. Abrams has openly admitted he is more of a Star Wars fan, so Treky fans were a bit special on him directing it. They were afraid he was going to make it more of an action space movie, instead of a true Star Trek movie. Most of the Treky’s were right. This isn’t a typical Star Trek movie. You can have not seen one Star Trek episode and could have completely understood this movie. It takes you all the way back to the beginning of Star Trek and you can’t start any earlier than that. It was a lot more action than I had anticipated, and the effects and cinematography blew me away.

The Plot: The film opens with the Federation starship USS Kelvin investigating a "lightning storm" in space. It turns out to be a black hole, and the Narada, a Romulan mining vessel, emerges from it and attacks. The Kelvin's captain, Richard Robau (Faran Tahir) is captured and killed by the Romulan captain Nero (Eric Bana). First officer George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) takes command and sacrifices himself and the Kelvin by ramming it into the Romulan ship in order to allow the rest of the crew to escape. During the escape, George's wife Winona (Jennifer Morrison) gives birth to a son: James Tiberius Kirk.

About 22 years later, Kirk (Chris Pine) grows into an intelligent but reckless young man. He meets Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) in a bar in Iowa, where Pike convinces Kirk to enlist in Starfleet Academy and follow in his father's footsteps. During his eventful education on Earth, he is suspended for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru designed by the half-Vulcan, half-human Spock (Zachary Quinto). Despite this, Kirk is smuggled onboard the USS Enterprise by his friend, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban), as it is sent on its first mission to investigate a distress signal originating from the planet Vulcan; Captain Pike commands the ship, with Spock as his first officer, and Uhura is also assigned to the ship. En-route, Kirk realizes that the situation is similar to the one 25 years ago when his father died and, with the help of Uhura and McCoy, manages to convince Pike and Spock that the Enterprise is heading into a trap. If I tell you anymore, I will simply be spoiling the movie for you. But that’s the basis, or at least what you need to know.

Now this movie wasn’t all perfect. I have to admit that it had some flaws. Some of the acting was way cheesy. I couldn’t stand Spock, I seriously wanted to kill him. He was pretty annoying in it. Kirk was a pretty boy, and acted like one. There were some pretty cheesy lines as well. But I have no complaints with the amount of action it had and the visual effects.
Can I just go off for a little bit on how amazing the visual effects were? They were amazing. I have never been so blown away by visual effects. The first five minutes was incredible. It goes right into some amazing action. And the shots of the galaxy were unbelievable. So SO SO So So So good. I wonder if the next Star Trek could ever top this one.

I was impressed with the fighting scenes. There were some pretty good ones. I really enjoyed watching Sulu sword fight some bad guys, and seeing Kirk pretty much fight everyone that annoyed him. I would have wanted a little more blood and guts, but it was PG-13 so they had to monitor that a little bit. But the movie wasn’t boring one bit. I was constantly on the edge of my seat trying to figure out the plot and just engaged on the background and scenery of the movie. The plot is confusing.

All in all, it was a good movie. I don’t want to give it a perfect score, but I have to say it was more entertaining visually than Wolverine, and the most impressive special effects I’ve seen of 2009 so far. We still have the new Terminator and Transformers to compete with visual effects. But this isn’t a waste of your time or money in my opinion. I want to see it again so badly. One funny thing I thought was that a lot of the shots in the movie almost reminded me of space tours. You’ll see what I am talking about once you see the movie. So I say go see it. Its clean, fun, awesome, cheesy acting, visually entertaining, a confusing plot that will have you talking at the end of the movie but also understanding more and more as you discuss it, and did I mention how cool the shots of the galaxy where?

So yeah it isn’t perfect in plot or acting, but still, it was pretty entertaining.