STAR TREK Review

At The Movies: Star Trek - Of all the movies that could go horribly, HORRIBLY wrong this summer, this is The One. Mess with a franchise like this, and you can really crash and burn...

But not this time.

Over the last few years, there's been talk of Star Trek needing to undergo some kind of revitalisation to stand a chance of competing in the current SF/Fantasy market, but only now has someone truly dived straight in and taken a chance. JJ Abrams, take a bow...

The film does, and there's no denying it, take a liberty or two with existing Trek history, with potentially wide-ranging consequences for future stories on this particular time-line, but the foundation is a strong one. A BIG risk was taking young actors and letting them loose on the much-loved characters of The Original Series, but it works, in particular Zachary "Sylar" Quinto as Spock, and Karl Urban as McCoy. Chris Pine takes on the Kirk role, and maybe the next movie will see him fully grow into the role, but he does a decent job as the troubled Captain-to-be - it was fun watching the famous/infamous Kirk "Kobayashi Maru Test".

Effects-wise, there's nothing to fault. The opening sequence is pretty intense, but once the Enterprise makes her appearance, she doesn't steal the show - but you do miss the feeling that she's a member of the cast, especially when she's depicted as a whole bunch of industrial tubes and stuff. A small thing, but it's noticeable for the fan in me - not noticeable enough to detract too much from the movie as a whole.

The plunge taken, the dice rolled, this is a pretty solid effort, getting a strong rating for its content and the pure brazen gall of taking the shot. This WORKS - but you're going to have to follow up on this movie, and pretty soon, and that is where the real graft comes in. Looking forward to it already...

The Verdict... TREK LIVES. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Gonna be quite a challenge to beat this to Movie Of The Summer 9/10.

Project Update... The next story posting will be tomorrow, once I've recovered. TDD-603 is, however, heading with some decent momentum into the final chapter of Part 2.

And Finally... Hmph - did Firefox eat a posting last night? Thought I reported on TDD-603 getting past Chapter 5 already...

Oh, and the £110 million Euro-Millions lottery was a total, and I mean TOTAL blow-out. Typical.