The BeaverMoose's Dam: Movie Journal Entry #4: Star Trek (2009)

Star Trek: Going boldly where Star Wars has gone before.
[Spoilers for Star Trek movie]
The Star Trek franchise has always been more a cult TV show. Even when it was more or less popular during the original series run and later with "The Next Generation" Star Trek never managed to push itself far enough into the mainstream to make any of the big bucks as other Sci-Fi series managed to. Its tagline "To boldly go where no man had gone before!" says a whole lot about the series. Star Trek was never simply about fighting aliens and giant space battles, it was about exploring new planets and galaxies discovering new cultures. Although there were some alien battles... they never really stood up to anything from Star Wars for example.
For reference see this epic scene from the TV series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1eFdUSnaQM
The Star Trek fans (Trekkie's) have always represented the epitome of geekiness. So much so that even a video game playing, comic book reading, obsessive Movie and TV show watching geek like myself felt intimidated by this group of Uber-geeks.
I wonder why?...

I'm not gonna hate on the Trekkies though. As someone who gets dressed in drag every Halloween to go see the Rocky Horror Picture Show I know how much fun being part of these cult followings can be. Anyway back to the new movie.

Summer blockbuster season is officially in business. With a big bang, and few black holes to spare, the new Star Trek movie has successfully managed to bring some big explosions, ray guns, alien battles and all the fun and excitement you'd expect from a Sci-Fi epic into this old franchise! There is no exploring and discovering new planets and races in this movie, most likely to the dismay of original Trek fans. This can be forgiven however, at least for now, because this movie is pretty much an origin story, we are introduced to the crew and the characters and made familiar with the world of the new "Trek-verse". It's only at the end of the movie that we are in fact promised to "go where no man has gone before".

The movie starts out with the evil Captain Nero (played by the unrecognizable Eric Bana) and his giant mining ship arriving from the future through a black hole. He encounters and is intercepted by a nearby Federation Starship. As the Starship captain goes to talk with Nero George Kirk is appointed Captain. Nero attacks the Starship and the newly appointed Captain Kirk must sacrifice himself so that his wife and child may escape and survive. 20 seconds before Captain Kirk crashes his ship into Nero's humongous mining vessel they decide on a name for their child: Jim Kirk! I was slightly bothered by the fact that the father crashed the Starship into Nero's ship and it did absolutely no damage to the ship itself. I guess the point wasn't to destroy the enemy but to distract them long enough for the others to escape. As I learned throughout the movie, nothing distracts an audience better than really bright lights and reflections.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAaX8Aq6smQ

Anyway a few slo-mo explosions later we are introduced to Spock, a troubled young Vulcan who is harassed by his peers for being half-human, and James Kirk a rebellious child driving who drives an old 60's Corvette of a cliff. From what I've read this is most likely a message the director J.J. Abrams was trying to give. "I just threw a car from the 60's off a cliff, this isn't Star Trek from the 60's it's the new Star Trek."
We skip a few years into the future and a now 20-something year old captain Kirk is at bar hitting on the sexy Uhura (apparently pronounced A-Whore-A). Some guys tell Kirk to leave the lady alone and the movie finally starts getting interesting. They couldn't have chosen a better choice for Kirk, Chris Pine channels Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and Han Solo like none other. He nails the incredibly cocky and rebellious attitude that made those characters so likable. He gets into a bar fight against four other guys knowing full well that he'll lose, but it doesn't matter because he proves that he has the balls to take on anything. This is the new Star Trek, with really big balls! After being introduced to a few more characters and having gone through starfleet Kirk finally arrives aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, where we are introduced to Mr. Sulu and Mr. Chekov, who's seemingly forced accent was really quite hilarious. The Enterprise is the Millennium Falcon of the Star Trek Universe, its as much a part of the series as any one of the original characters and even more so as it follows through into "The Next Generation". This new version of the Enterprise is simply amazing. The ships bridge, with its similar design is a bigger brighter and better version of the original and is really a treat to look at.
Unfortunately everytime I saw or heard the word Enterprise all I could think of was this:
http://picard.ytmnd.com/

Kirk having gotten on the ship without permission, in a very funny way I might add, gets into an argument with the ship's commander Mr. Spock. Spock, played by Zachary Quinto, is flawless! Quinto portrays Spock with such certainty that despite having recently watched the entire volume 4 of Heroes, I never felt like I was simply watching Sylar with a bowl cut and pointy ears.
From this point on we are treated to eye candy like you've never seen. This movie knows how to use its 150 million$ budget and I'm so glad it does. A super dive from space leading to a battle against some Romulans on top of a giant drill, a planet being sucked into a black hole from the inside and a pretty convincing giant bug creature are just a small part of the amazing visuals we are treated to in the latter half of this movie. The funny Simon Pegg also appears later as Montgomery Scott who perfects the "Beam teleportation" technology used throughtout the Star Trek series. The movie wraps up with some simple messages about friendship and trust and the final crew of the Enterprise finally take off to "Go boldly, where no man has gone before!"

The new Star Trek movie doesn't reinvent the Sci-Fi genre in any way neither does it bring anything new to the table. In fact it steals pretty much every single one of its plot points from the "Book of overused generic plot points".
However the numerous references and nods to the original series proves that these filmmakers have respect for the fans of the original series, a Vulcan Nerve Pinch and an old familiar face can go a long way in appeasing the fans. The high production values, amazing visuals and good use of CGI, its simple yet effective humor and the very convincing acting, especially from the main 2 characters, are what give this movie its charm and put it a slight step ahead of the competition.
Had this movie been in 3D might head might have exploded with awesomeness. (Only 7 months until James Cameron's Avatar!!!!)
After last weeks disappointing Wolverine, I'm happy to see an origin story done right.

Eric Bana WTF?