Star Trek

Reviewed by Mike

"Space... the final frontier. These are the voyages of the star-ship 'Enterprise'. Her on-going mission: to explore strange, new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

I was going to watch Jackie Chan's First Strike tonight, but I only got through the first 15 minutes before I realized I didn't know what the fuck was going on. The dubbing wasn't what threw me off- I truly had no clue what was happening. It wasn't until later that I found out (thanks, Wikipedia) that this flick is the fourth installment in Chan's police story series. I'll pass on this one for now...

I decided to hop on Netflix and see what I could find- it came down to Sphere (Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone) and the latest Star Trek film. While Sphere is a great movie, I've seen it too many times to count. I passed on the new Star Trek when it hit theaters, but I've heard good things; the choice was obvious.

I'm a Star Wars fan through and through (the original trilogy, at least), but I do enjoy Star Trek. I've seen all the previous Star Trek films and a few episodes of the show when it airs now and again on SyFy, but that's mostly it. So when I watched the latest installment in the film series, I was going on word-of-mouth more than anything. Here's what I thought...

This movie was fucking awesome.

The beginning was everything that I enjoyed from previous films in the series: explosions and an epic space battle. We start off with a ship, the USS Kelvin, that is under attack from an unknown, gigantic space cruiser that appears to be half hidden by a God damn lightning storm. After the attacking vessel demands to see the captain of the USS Kelvin, some random guy gets put in command. That random guy? George Kirk, James T. Kirk's father.

We see the previous captain head over to the enemy ship and get questioned about some guy named Spock- here we get a few hints that this ship is from the future. The captain of the enemy ship pulls out a ridiculous looking trident weapon (Poseidon would get a chubb if he saw this thing) and skewer the captain with it. Meanwhile back on the USS Kelvin, Kirk (Chris Hemsworth, who we'll soon see play mother fucking Thor) is busy evacuating the ship and saving everyone's life- he's a bit late on the whole evacuation though, and a ton of people bite the dust by way of laser beams and getting sucked into the void of space via holes in the ships hull.

Two of the people that make it out of the doomed ship are a pregnant Wionna Kirk (Jennifer Morrison) and her child, Jim. She gives birth to JTK on the escape shuttle and so a legend is born.

This time around, Kirk isn't played by the man we all know and love, Canadian-born actor of stage and screen William Shatner. Chris Pine is brought in for the portrayal as the younger version of the soon to be spaceship captain- a man who, in this flick, is young, reckless and, well, pretty bad-ass (he's all about bar fights, grabbing the titties and hardcore boozing).

After a great scene filled with bar fights, titty grabbing and boozing (it's his M.O.), Kirk has an eye-opening conversation with Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who persuades him to do something with his life and join the Starfleet Academy. To be honest, this seems like a drunken whim that Kirk will regret once he sobers up (Lord knows I've done this more than I can remember), but he agrees to it and heads to the dock the next morning for "boot camp". We are then introduced to Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban), a nervous nelly who is worried about everything from his blood boiling to his eye's bleeding.

Fast-forward three years to Krik banging a green chick. In the coming scenes, we see that he and McCoy have become friends and Kirk confides in his best buddy that he is up to take the Kobayashi Maru test for a third time. The test, which was created to test the mettle of any possible star-ship captains or crew members,  is pretty much impassable. Kirk is ousted as a cheat by the creator of the test, Spock (Zachary Quinto), and is forced to explain himself in front of the academic board at the Starfleet Academy.

Before anything can be determined, a distress call comes in from Planet Vulcan and all the cadets are sent to the ship bay to get sent out to help the cause. Spock, McCoy, and Kirk all board a ship, which turns out to be the newly built USS Enterprise. There we meet back up with Captain Pike, the black girl from the bar fight scene (who turns out to be Uhura, played by Zoe Saldana), Hikaru Sulu (John Cho) and Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin). When they arrive at Vulcan, shit is popping OFF. Everything is blown up and all communication with the planet is being blocked by the same lightning storm/ship from the beginning of the film.

It turns out the Romulans are behind it all and, once again, demand to see the ships captain... sorry Capt. Pike, hope you like tridents to the gut. Meanwhile, Spock is in charge of the ship and Sulu, Kirk and some jackass named Olsen get sent to unblock whatever it is that is messing with the transmission between planet and space. Olsen gets killed in a pretty ridiculous way, which any Star Trek fan could have seen coming: dangerous mission and two main characters and a random dude get sent in- we all know who isn't walking away from this one...

The blocker, which turns out to be a giant drill, gets disabled, Kirk and Sulu get beamed back to the Enterprise in the nick of time, and Vulcan is demolished thanks to a bomb that gets sent to the center of the planet via the giant hole the drill dug. The bomb is full of red matter, which creates a black hole upon detonation (it turns out that the lightning we've been seeing are actually these black holes).

Spock tried to save his family from the ensuing crisis by leaving the ship, but he's only able to save a handful of people, including his father (sorry momma Spock, you're done!). Out of 6 billion people on Vulcan, only about ten thousand have made it; Spock is fucking mad.

Next we see Captain Pike get questioned by the same mad captain from earlier, Captain Nero (Eric Bana), and, while he's spared the trident, he is force-fed a bug that while latch onto his brain stem and make him give up Federation secrets- give me the trident any day.

We find out here that Nero has a vendetta against Spock and the Federation, whom he blames for the destruction of his planet, Romulan. Kirk is sent to a random snow planet after he gets into a fight with acting captain Spock. We also learn (from Spock Prime played by none other than Leonard Nimoy) that an older Spock promised to save Romulan after a star exploded by making a black hole using the red matter. Unfortunately, Spock Prime is unable to fulfill his promise and Nero decides that he is going to capture him, send him to the planet with the best view of Vulcan, and destroy that shit. Take that, Spock Prime.

Kirk, still on the random snow planet, runs into Scotty (Simon Pegg) who helps Kirk and himself beam back to the Enterprise. There, Kirk gets Spock to give up his captain-ship by making him mad, thus "compromising his ability to command." The rest of the flick is basically Kirk taking command and saving the fucking day, per usual.

I really enjoyed this film and I regret not seeing it in theaters. The special effects were fantastic. There is also plenty to go around for Star Trek nerds, from hints to the old films and television series, to the music in the credits (it's the theme from the series). It's also chock full of the lines everyone knows from the show, like "Live long and prosper" to "Dammit, man... I'm a doctor not a physicist!" We even get to see the Vulcan nerve pinch.

I'd have to go back and watch the previous ten films, but I must say this has been my favorite one in the series. I thought Chris Pine did an awesome job portraying a younger, rougher Kirk. The cast was fantastic, the special effects were top notch, the storyline, while confusing in some parts, was interesting and full of action. I, along with the rest of Star Trek Nation, am really hoping for another film with this cast.


4 out of 5