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Director: J.J. Abrams

Release Date: 8 May 2009

Tagline: The future begins.

Main Cast:

Chris Pine … James T. Kirk

Zachary Quinto … Spock

Karl Urban … Leonard “Bones” McCoy

Leonard Nimoy … Spock Prime

Eric Bana … Nero

I’m not a Trekker. I think that people who have learned to speak Klingon need to get out more. I don’t like the numerous spin-offs and the feature films (bar one or two) have been rather tedious. I do, however, like the original series, and was excited at the prospect of Star Trek re-imagined with all of the original characters.

It has a wonderful feel to it. The actors have really researched their parts well and the casting (especially Pine, Quinto and Bones) is excellent. I remain undecided about Simon Pegg (Scotty) though. His Scottish accent was, at times, somewhat dodgy to say the least.

So, they get a 10/10 for the look and feel of the film, but it has its faults.

This is very much a prequel to the original series. It deals with character introduction not only to us, but to each other as well. It therefore has to spend considerable time in scene setting (as did Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace). I really enjoyed this section of the film as I think that introduction to the characters is an extremely important part. If you don’t care for the characters (be it in film, book or TV series) then it won’t work.

With regards to the plot, I liked that they didn’t leap to the obvious enemy and went with the slightly lesser known Romulans (the Klingons will require more screen time and it was a wise decision to leave them until, at least, the next instalment). I did find myself a bit confused in one or two places, and I found that I lost concentration at one point in trying to work out what the Hell was going on, which was a bit of a shame. I would have preferred something other than the inevitably messy time travelling story. There are always so many loopholes when time travel is involved, and I’m really not a big fan of it. When you throw in a parallel universe too, it gets even messier.

So, despite its faults, now that the crew of the Enterprise has been established I expect the next one to have a much better story with more heart and depth to it.

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