Star Trek

Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana

JJ Abrams Director

Official Site: http://www.startrekmovie.com/

Review: Alistair Radley

This is the eleventh Star Trek movie and technically the only one not to have cast based around a TV Series. The previous franchise petered-out after the less than successful ‘Nemesis’ and the TV series ‘Enterprise’ did not create enough of a following to in turn lead to a big budget movie and the next potential spin-off stalled in production hell. Not a good look for Paramount Pictures’ most successful franchise in 40 years.

With the original stars in their 70s (William Shatner ‘Kirk’ and Leonard Nimoy ‘Spock’ are both 78), retired or dead, the franchise Executive Producer, Rick Berman, decided that a reboot was in order with a group of no-names taking up the mantle of the original cast with the time period spanning the end of ‘Enterprise’ and the start of the Enterprise’s legendary 5-year mission in ‘Star Trek’. TVs ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost’ and Mission Impossible 3 Director, JJ Abrams was eventually signed and set about assembling the ensemble. After that, the plot was left largely unknown and unhinted at until midway through last year when the first of the trailers was released on the official site along with some marketing shots of the actors. Trekkies were left twiddling their thumbs and wondering if the final movie would be a retread from which the rubber would quickly separate.

As a person who has seen all the movies on the big screen, this is probably the best since ‘Wrath of Khan’ (ST2) and for those completely unfamiliar to the franchise – as good an introduction to the mythology as you are likely to get. The writers have cunningly wrought a concept that allows both the original TV/Movie canon to sit alongside the reboot and take us back to the beginnings of the Federation and the back story of the seminal captain of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise NCC1701; James Tiberius Kirk (Pine), his first officer, Spock and the rest of the crew: Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov.

Without giving too much away in terms of spoilers, life starts poorly for Kirk with a personal tragedy intricately linked to the film’s major protagonist – Nero – a rogue Romulan out for revenge against Starfleet. Years later and we see Kirk as an angry young man whose life is rudderless until a chance fight in a bar with Starfleet cadets soon sees him enlisting. At the same time, we glimpse life for the half-breed Human/Vulcan Spock (Quinto) – caught between logic and emotion, he has to choose to honour both sides of his lineage; choices that are both painful and set him on an inevitable collision with Kirk as he too selects a career in Starfleet. The final part of the bro-mance triangle of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is ably played by NZ’s own Karl Urban; a man whose “wife took the whole planet only leaving him his bones,” who meets Kirk on the shuttle on the way to Starfleet Academy.

The rest of the ensemble cast each get their individual moment to shine, but the movie packs in so much in terms of action that there is little time allowed for them to gel as a unit. However, the script contains enough material reverentially lifted from the series to believe the replacements can fill the large shoes left by the originals while stamp their own style on the movie so that you don’t feel you are watching someone ‘playing Shatner or Nimoy playing Kirk or Spock’; which would have run the gauntlets of clich