J. J. Abram's Enterprise

I have been a geek and a Trekkie for a very long time so I peed a little when I heard about the new film. At the same time I recognize that, to the uninitiated, Star Trek movies generally make no sense and are boring as hell. For that I would hope the franchise, thus far, would offer absolutely no apologies. The new Trek however promised to appeal to a more general audience by being fun. I was curious to see if and how they would achieve that. It turns out that Star Trek is actually fun. It moves fast, the visuals are stunning, the characters are young and sexy and the sound track is ok. They abandoned the semi-intellectual plot lines and the underlying societal commentaries and replaced them with explosions and green boobs. Trek sold out and it’s fantastic!

I don’t mean this to sound as though its a bad thing. I personally hope to sell out as soon as possible. No, it’s not a bad thing at all. In fact, I think a film with a wider appeal was necessary to keep Star Trek alive. After Voyager and Nemesis, Trek took a turn for the worst and it looked as if the days of boldly going where no man has gone before could be coming to an end. Personally, I think that if offending a few fanboys saves Trek it’s worth it.

In their defense, the creators of the new film were really pretty respectful, I mean after they changed most of the story and re-wrote 50 years of Star Trek history, they were pretty respectful. I really did like the folks they got to play these parts, especially Chris Pine who seems to have actually taken something away form film school. All of the actors brought something new to the characters they were playing but, at the same time, stayed remarkably true to the originals. Again, most notably Pine who, at times, was truly a spitting image of Shatner.

Over all Star Trek is a fun time and an impressively well made film even though it seems that J. J. Abrams couldn’t help but include the damn clover field monster. (You saw it too, you know what that is) Best part is you can see it with more then just you pasty, basement dwelling, Trek friends, you could even take a date. From what I’ve heard this is the first installment in what will be a trilogy so hopefully they don’t fuck it up.

Cheers.