Gerard's bumper Star Trek movie review

I was never a Star Trek nerd. Couldn't get into it. The problem is these huge Sci-Fi shows is that there's so much background to catch up on if you arrive late to the party. Imagine trying to catch up with the original series, the next generation and all the other generations. Imagine trying to hold a conversation with a Trekkie, fluent in Klingon and hallowing every word of dialogue from the series. Yikes.

So, the idea of rebooting the series seemed great - let's level the playing field for people like me. It's like missing the first train, but being able to catch the next one to come along.

And that's where I intend to start my review of the new Star Trek movie: not only does it give us an origin to sink our teeth into (the crew of the Enterprise, how they met, etc), but it was done in such a way that they created an alternative timeline, which kind of frees the writers from having to follow the original series too closely. Great news when you've got countless Trekkies waiting for you to trip up.

The Plot

The basic story follows a wayward, youthful Kirk on Earth, getting in brawls and stealing his step father's car, etc. He picks a fight with some Starfleet trainees, and is encouraged to join up. Which he promptly does. He clashes almost instantly with Zachary Quinto's Spock, which is a satisfying battle between brains and brawn.

Elsewhere though, a Romulan hell-bent on revenge is burning wormholes in space and time-travelling through to settle a score with Spock. In the opening scene of the movie, we see Kirk's father going down with the ship in an early battle with Captain Nero. Kirk's knowledge of this event (it happened while he was being born) helps him identify the reappearance of the Romulan ship.

Naturally, the best bits are in the details, especially the appearance of Leonard Nimoy taking the role of an aged Spock who'd travelled through time to thwart Nero. A clever bluff convinces Kirk not to tell the younger Spock of his presence, but later the older Spock talks to his young counterpart, proving that the universe wouldn't explode due to the paradox. The later destruction of Vulcan by Nero and the death of Spock's mother were sad and touching moments, all leading to Spock's ultimate decision to join Starfleet.

One moment that stuck in my head was the first meeting of Kirk and McCoy. I don't know what their relationship was in the original series, but the dynamic between Chris Pine and Karl Urban was warm and funny, and one of my favourite parts of the movie.

I had a slight problem with Pine's portrayal of Kirk. He certainly got the action hero bit nailed, but I couldn't help imagining Shia LaBeouf doing a fairly similar job. Don't know what that means - could he have played the role more distinctively, less cookie-cutter action hero?

Pine's performance can be given a bit of grace though - Kirk's mannerisms wouldn't work especially well for modern audiences, so some reinvention was needed.

On the whole, though, the Star Trek reboot worked fantastically well. Despite being a relatively long movie, the pacing was brilliant and the story straddled the origins of the Enterprise crew with an engaging tale of revenge gone intergalactic - I mean, who travels space and time looking for retribution? Romulans, apparently.

And now that I feel au fait with this new universe, I'm looking forward to whatever sequels the future may hold.