Review: Star Trek (yes, the movie)

I'm not going to do a major in-depth review or anything, but these are my thoughts on the new Star Trek movie. But first, some background - I've been a Trekker all my life, starting back in the days when I was younger and they used to run marathons of the original Star Trek on New Year's Eve. My dad would let us stay up late that one night while we were in elementary school, and we'd watch the original Trek for hours on end. Once The Next Generation hit, I was a full blown fan of the entire franchise, and that only continued into Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It only started waning when Enterprise came around, and the disappointment that came with that series. So yeah, I'm pretty knowledgeable about the whole franchise and a lore junkie.

By "lore junkie", I mean that I respect the lore, but don't mind minor lore disruptions for the sake of making good television or movies. I'm not unreasonable. Keep that in mind when you read my cons below.

WARNING: THERE ARE MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS BELOW - IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, DON'T READ ON UNTIL YOU HAVE!!!




We'll start with the good things:

• It was incredibly entertaining.
• The visual effects were outstanding.
• The general plot was intriguing.
• The acting was awesome, as were the actors/actresses involved.
• I like J.J. Abrams.
• I loved all the in-jokes: Star Trek homages and in-jokes form the cast and crew's past projects abound.
• The Romulans look awesome - in fact, they should have looked more sinister, like in this movie, all along. Who says the Klingons alone can have that honor?
• Leonard Nimoy. 'Nuff said.
  

Now, onto the bad (brace yourselves):

• Who the hell puts product placement in a Star Trek movie? Nokia and Budweiser - seriously?
• Yes, we know Spock was half human and that he has wrestled with those emotions in various episodes and movies throughout the last 40 years - but this thing with Uhura that he has going on in this movie is, from my viewpoint, an unacceptable, out of character use of those stray emotions form his human side.
• They blew up Vulcan - one of the most well known, iconic, beloved planets in the Star Trek universe. What. The. Hell.
• The time travel gimmick has been used to a nauseating amount in the last 40 years of Star Trek, not to mention the rest of sci-fi. This isn't a problem, if its done well. But, you don't use it to change the last 40 years of Star Trek. What was Paramount thinking by allowing that to happen?

I'm quite aware this is supposed to be a "reboot" of the franchise, and I will even agree that it was needed, but there are some lines you just do not cross. Changing small bits of lore here and there is fine, if the end result is a better movie. Changing huge chunks of the lore just for a "reboot" screams to me that the writers, producers and whoever at Paramount was involved in this just don't care about or respect the last 40 years of Star Trek. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't move Starfleet HQ to New York City and power the Enterprise's warp engine with butter instead of dilithium crystals.

In fact, I think what they did to Star Trek lore would be what The Lord of the Rings would be if someone did a movie and changed it so that Frodo died half way to Mount Doom, the ring was secured by Sauron and the entirety of Middle Earth was turned into a Mordor-like furnace.

Now that I got all of that out of my system, if you take the movie on its own merits and, god forbid, completely wipe everything you know about Star Trek out of your mind and pretend like you're starting fresh, this is a great, entertaining, funny, action-packed movie that I think you should go see just once, especially if you're not a Star Trek fan. If you are...I'm sorry.