Star Trek

J.J. Abrams continues his rise to power with this rebooting of Star Trek that will leave most Trekkies with big goofy grins on their faces. This film goes right back to the beginning, to the very birth of James Tiberius Kirk in order to lay out the groundwork for any future sequels, and does it pretty darn well.

Firstly, the positives: Characterisation. Writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have truly done justice to the core crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. At the forefront are of course Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), and every second they spend together in this film is perfect. Constantly at loggerheads, their differing viewpoints are conceptualised perfectly and their rivalry is what makes this film so enjoyable. I’ve seen all the Star Trek films (though little of the original series to be honest), and it’s only now that I get Kirk. He’s brash and foolhardy and thinks way too highly of himself, but that’s why we like him. Being such a ‘Green Lantern’ fan, I was also a little concerned that his character was a little too similar to that of Hal Jordan in the upcoming comic adaptation, but I have way too many anxieties over that film’s potential to be adding another into the mix.

As the film progresses, we pick up all the main characters one after the other. Sulu (John Cho) and Chekhov (Anton Yelchin) are perfect, and Simon Pegg does a decent job as Scotty though it’s hard to forget he’s Simon Pegg. I couldn’t decide whether Karl Urban’s version of Dr Leonard McCoy is good or bad – at first he is hilarious, then just bad, but then becomes so terrible that he’s funny again. Eric Bana is almost unrecognisable as Romulan Nero, and this is where we get…

The bad: the central plot. It’s awful, makes very little sense, relying on coincidence and shady motives, and more importantly involves time travel. I’ve always found that Star Trek writers slip into time travel mode when they’re feeling lazy. It’s uninteresting and feels like a cheat. Moreover, it’s incredibly confusing in this film – not in an “oooh-it’s-screwing-with-my-head Primer” kind of way, but in a – “huh… this makes no sense whatsoever” way.

The special effects are passable. Nothing looks very real, but that’s likely to occur when everything onscreen is CGI – bring back miniatures, I say… Trekkies will notice the uniforms, spaceships etcetera honour the old ones but with small changes here and there. The action (as well as the bare flesh) has been turned up a notch, though they take the transporting to such extremes it’s hard to understand where they could go in future instalments.

The film can’t help but seem like a pilot episode for a television show, but that’s probably cos of the nature of the franchise, and the fact that the sequel has been greenlit already. The depth of character on show is the most impressive aspect of Star Trek – almost up there with Batman Begins, it’s just such a pity the main narrative is both unnecessarily confusing and totally uninteresting. Overall it’s profoundly entertaining, and will probably reel in a whole new audience unacquainted with the Star Trek phenomenon.