Star Trek

[Mike]

Star Trek is a 'prequel' type film that occurs before the first Star Trek series and motion picture. This review contains spoilers so if you are likely to see the film then skip the following and just take advantage of the or rating that I give the film. Lets be honest we needed this film to be BIG, LOUD and STUPID with explosive special effects. The exposions seemed rather mutted although the special effects were very slick.

The film seemed rather slow to start, overly complicated explaination for an otherwise simple plotline and in part far fetched! Lets be honest for a Star Trek film to be far fetched it must have been pushing the boundaries.

At the start the USS Delvin with First Officer George Kirk is attacked by a technologicially superior vessel. They quickly loose their Captain, shields and weapons and evacuate the ship with Mrs Kirk giving birth to James T Kirk seconds before the brave George flys his vessel into the attacking vessel to try and gain time for the shuttles to escape. He becomes a Hero after being captain for slightly more than 12 minutes!

10 Years later is some boring rubbish about the tear away Kirk being a rebal in Iowa and Spock becoming 'enraged' at his class mates taunting thus showing his vunerablibity and love for his mother.

25 Years later they both join Starfleet train for 3 years before recieving a strange distress call is recieved from Vulcan. The Federation Fleet is busy (with god knows what) so they send 7 ships out to investigate and assist. The USS Enterprise (a new flagship) is included in the mission and is staffed with young officers and trainees. The newly qualified helmsman forgets to disengage the safety on the warp drive delaying their departure from earth whic ironically saves their lives! The other 6 ships were destroyed immediately upon arrival by the same vessel that attacked the Delvin. The ship was identified as Romulan by an annoyed (and infected) Kirk who had been snuck on board by a rather irritable Dr Mcoy.

After this the film gets better in terms of special effects if not plan as they loose their captain, find an older Spock, discover the reason for the attacks and stop the baddies. As you can tell I have run out of time now and need to start working!

[mr_e]

I'd like to think the use of time-travel as a major plot device was setting us up for a complete reworking of the franchise. As an action movie I think it delivers, nice big set-piece battles etc etc. In a way I find what Mike said adds to the charm: there are no super-good good guys, with Spock being more emotionally vulnerable and Kirk an arrogant risk-taker.

I'm a bit undecided on the final rating, but let's say:
with a slight dip to 3.5 in places.

[stimpsonslostson]

I'll post my 5words in the usual thread, but think I should post slightly more here...

To start- I've NEVER seen ANY star trek before sitting in the cinema yesterday. Bex spent the half hour afterwards explaining what the hell a vulcan, romulan, klingon etc are

I REALLY enjoyed it. As a big loud action flick I felt it was MUCH better than many similar films.
I DID get slightly confused as to who the hell folk were- as you are expected to know about Scotty, Kirk, Spock, Uhura(?), and I assume Asian guy and Russian bloke there was precious little intro as to who they were- the knowing pause as they were each introduced gave a BIG hint that they may be significant.

The battles and action were good and the plot hung together ok. Performances were generally good and a quick google search indicates that they got pretty good likenesses of virtually everyone. (Kirk did remind me of a young Brad Pitt tho). There was considerable humour throughout, overall an enjoyable blockbuster which didn't really feel 2hrs long.
So .5 from me. (Not really tempted to check out the rest of the series tho, just dont really fancy it.)

There were a couple of unintentionally funny moments tho. Meeting Spock in a cave... two people stranded on a barren planet just happen to arrive in the same cave at the same time and KNOW each other!

Special mention for "Disposable Crew Member number 62" the second him kirk and asian dude jumped you KNEW he wasn't coming back! Galaxy quest anyone?