Movie Review: Star Trek XI

“All I ask is a tall ship and a star to stear her by.” – Kirk, Star Trek V

Actually, all I wanted in this film was for the characters to be themselves. The plot can suck balls. The sets and designs can suck balls. But so long as the characters are themselves, I decided I would be happy.

Kirk is Kirk, as much as you can expect someone else to BE James Tiberius Kirk. His introduction is climatic, as it should be. His handling of the Kobayashi Maru scenario is golden, and showed that they wanted to include as many connections to past Star Trek works as possible.

Spock is Spock, but not only is he Spock, but they made sure to include a lot of the emotion/logic dynamic that is at the very core of evolution of Spock. We see Spock before the refinement that made him say “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.”

The very introduction of McCoy explains why he’s called “Bones”. I seriously don’t recall there ever being an explanation in the series. He doesn’t look like Deforest Kelley at all, but the attitude is there completely.

Sulu makes a reference to his fencing ability. Watch for his famous piloting abilities.

Chekov looks nothing like Chekov, but his accent is priceless. Not to mention his childish charm.

Scotty is Scotty, spouting off taglines that don’t feel forced nor like mockery.

Uhura is established as being gifted in xenolinguistics, however her relationships with other characters felt off. Minor complaint.

The ship interior looks nothing like the enterprise, but that’s okay. The Enterprise in the 60’s was their vision of the future. Why go retro-future when clearly the FUTURE should have at LEAST the technology we have.

To anyone that knows Star Trek, it’s clear a lot of thought went into the film. There’s numerous reference to things that “haven’t happened yet”, so to speak. Well, maybe not future-references, but more like quotes that sound like things we’ve heard before.

The plot is almost irrelevant, secondary to the character development. That’s my opinion. It serves to get the characters to different places so that they may grow. But it does make you wonder “what the hell is going on?” for most of the film. Which is okay.

This isn’t a prequel. It’s also not a reboot. But that’s okay. This isn’t the same crew that we have known since the 60’s. But it’s the same personalities we know. And to me, that’s what matters.

The openning made me tear. I thought the musical score captured our own knowledge of who these characters end up being. Though, I thought it needed more Alexander Courage-inspired music, as with Star Trek II. And given all my fears of this movie sucking salty donkey balls, those fears were not fulfilled. I’m relieved they didn’t screw it up. THEY DIDN’T SCREW IT UP. I think I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

I like being a hard movie critic. Or, at least, I try to be. That why when I say “see it”, it means something.

See this movie. It is the logical thing to do, damn it.