Star Trek!!!

OK, so I'm getting away from Lost again... but once you see the new Star Trek film, you'll see it's not THAT far from our favourite ABC show.

This is a review without any major spoilers, so feel free to read ahead. I have to admit off the top, I wouldn't consider myself a Trekkie. I feel that Trekkies (and by the way, I do NOT see that as a derogatory nickname, being the insano Lostie that I am) know a billion things about the series, and where I'm just following Lost, they can tell you minutiae about TOS, TNG, Voyager, DSN, and Enterprise. And all of the movies. I've seen most of the movies, all of TOS and TNG, some of DSN, maybe an episode or two of Voyager, and the pilot ep of Enterprise. My husband, on the other hand, Mr. Snicker on the nights of Lost ("GEEZ how you do you remember all that useless information about this show?!") has seen pretty much every episode of every incarnation and every movie at least a half dozen times, at least once in the theatre. And despite most critics denigrating the last few movies, hubby thought they weren't as bad as some people thought.

So halfway through this movie, I was thinking, "Wow, he must be SO freakin' excited right now!!!" I know I was. In a word, it's stunning. The look of it is amazing, the sound is incredible, the acting is great, the storyline is at times hilarious, at times touching, and I was captivated the entire time.

Did it have its flaws? Of course. There's one relationship in there that some of you may have heard of that had me going, "Wait, what?? Why?" But I chose to just ignore it. I hope they drop it in sequels, because it did nothing for the storyline, as far as I'm concerned. The casting, though (for the most part) was inspired. The actor who does a younger Chekhov had his ridiculous accent down pat ("We will be arrivink at Wulcan werry quickly"), and was very entertaining. Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) plays Scotty, and is HILARIOUS. Every time he opened his mouth, people in the audience were giggling. Karl Urban (who will forever be Cupid from Xena to me, even though I adored him in LOTR as Eomer) is pretty amazing as Bones. At first I thought he was doing a bit of a caricature of him, but then I realized the character was always played very over the top in a wonderful way by Deforest Kelley, and the only way to pull that off is to be equally so. Chris Pine was really good as Kirk, even if they maybe went a little bit too far in the whole, "ooh, look what a rebel he is" thing. But frankly, he rejuvenated a character that has long been staid for me. Zoe Saldana and John Cho are good as Uhura and Sulu respectively, though this new Uhura is very different than the one we previously saw (in my opinion; maybe really diehard Trekkies would totally disagree with me on that one). The real tour de force, though, is Zachary Quinto. Oh, how you have been wasted on that piece of crap we call Heroes. This is what he was born to do. He is BRILLIANT.

Of course, there were some casting moments in there that made me go, "HUH?!" When Spock's mother meets him in a hallway and talks to him in a fake gravelly voice that's far too wretched for her years, I thought, "Man, this is as bad as that horrid old woman voice Winona Ryder did in Edward Scissorhands and ZOMG, wait, that IS Winona Ryder. Wait, what??" And then Kirk must stand before the Starfleet Academy to answer for something he's done, and I'm watching and thinking, "I know that guy from somewhere... the dude who's talking. Wait, is... um... is that guy... Tyler Perry?!" It was.

So those were a little odd, but they didn't really take away from the film. Lost fans will find much to rejoice over in this. Damon as executive producer; JJ as director; Orci and Kurtzman as writers; Burk as exec producer; Giacchino as music composer... not to mention that if, like me, you actually read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking in season 3, you will be able to follow this SO much better. Be prepared for talk of space-time and black holes and time travel and EEEEE!!!!! SO. HAPPY.

And somehow in the first 15 minutes of the film my eyes were welling with tears over people I barely knew. How does a movie pull THAT off? Nice.

And as I think EVERYONE knows by now, Leonard Nimoy appears in the movie, and he's great. William Shatner apparently blithered on in the press about how upset and boo-hooey he was about not being in it, but there was absolutely no place for him. Nimoy was it. He was perfect.

We emerged from the theatre and I was shocked to discover that my husband had lots to gripe about. That relationship I mentioned bothered him way more than it did me, and the flaws I've mentioned really bothered him, too. I said, "But after the last 5 films have put me to sleep, and you said they weren't that bad, how could you say this didn't basically light a fire under a dying franchise?" He just shrugged and said there were several superfluous moments. Yes, there were a few, but hopefully JJ is taking them somewhere (oh yes, sequels are already in the works). He includes nods to the fans in there (how I loved that Captain Pike was so prominent in it!) but allows you to watch this with fresh eyes if you don't know Spock from a spork.

But without giving anything away, JJ includes a plotline in there that now allows him to go wherever he wants with this franchise. Hell, he can kill off Sulu in the next movie when Sulu is 23 and it wouldn't actually be inconsistent with the other films, believe it or not. I think that alone was worth the price of admission. Watching JJ Abrams take something as sacred as Star Trek and make it his own, taking it out of the hands of everyone who went before him while simultaneously paying homage to them?? That is the mark of an auteur.

I now give permission for people to spoil away on the comments boards if they've already seen the film. If you haven't seen it, please avoid the comments until you have! I want to know what you thought. Did you like it? Do you think JJ revived the thing or did he wreak havoc on something you think he shouldn't have touched?

UPDATE: To make this a little more Lostish, I meant to post Jorge Garcia's brief review of the film (worth checking out for his funny pics at the end!) :)