"The Future Begins". Again.

picture to follow.

I'm nuts about science fiction, and I have a lot of fond memories of Star Trek's original series, aswell as the movies. Well, the first two. While I'm one to bemoan the lack of new ideas in Hollywood, I do actually like some attempts to revisit an intellectual property(IP). Especially when, like Star Trek, the IP has been revisited a lot of times already. The animated series, the videogames, The Next Generation, Next Generation movies, DS9, Voyager and countless books.

The thing is, going into this film as someone who has watched Star Trek his entire life, I felt like watching this movie was like taking a test I was over-prepared for. It really did start from "the beginning", as we were present for not only Jim Kirk taking his first command, but the natal birth of him, not just his birth as the starship commander we know about. You come to the story as though the old Star Trek never happened, or you're being treated to a refresher course in something lost. And that's the theme, and overall thread to the film. The birth of the new.

The other side of that thread, and an inevitability to the birth of the new, is the death of the old. Or most of it. While it remains to be seen that this continuity/alternate reality version of Star Trek will continue, or be as long-lasting as the previous reality, the 2009, J.J. Abrams version does it's best to put the old one to bed. You'll probably know already that this film has time-travel in it, and if you didn't then it won't come as a surprise. J.J. Abrams has become well versed in things like time-travel, via his experiences on Lost, or more recently Fringe. Not to mention the ill-advised, fourth-wall breaking finale of Felicity, where the cast found a time-machine, which sent them thirty years into OUR past, to organise the rebellion ahead of Judgement Day.

Without spoiling it, the time-travel here is used, as it has been since Terminator, to be a preventative measure of sorts; "fixing" things by altering history. Although maybe not as benevolently as when Sam Beckett did the same.

As a fan, it worked a treat for me. The metaphor of birth from death made it altogether easy for me to segue into this re-invention of a world-wide phenomenon, which I'd say is by far the greatest, but maybe not the most obvious achievement of this film.

The film itself, was fine. Chris Pine did a great job as a conduit for a sort of "meta-Kirk", almost as impressively as Karl Urban did a number on the role of Bones McCoy. The effects were excellent, especially the H.A.L.O. jump sequence(Although I think an extended, POV inside a helmet shot would have been better for part of that scene), and I really loved that the ships were treat like submarines, the original inspiration for ships like the Enterprise, even if the majority of lower decks felt more like "Red Dwarf" than "Star Trek" at times.

Granted, I had my head in my hand when the main characters had to explain "like an alternate reality?"(Why not have a character called "Ensign Exposition III" to read those awful lines), I didn't think "warp speed" should be controlled by a chrome lever, and I could have cracked something over the kid playing Chekov for the way he played him like an elderly dork from "Fiddler on the Roof". But these were very small things in a film I liked a lot. I'd have enjoyed it more, but I felt a little detached from the experience, because I kept thinking;

"It's obviously not intended for me"

Again, I really did like the film, but because of the nature of it - killing the old so that the new may live - meant I felt a little spurned, as though in mourning. Not a lot, but enough for me to not enjoy it as much as I felt I should have - But I imagine that most people will not suffer the same as me.

All in all, it's a very good film, and unless Up is as good as I've heard, this may be the best of the blockbuster releases this year, and I say that while refusing to see Terminator 4 - "The Franchise Goes To Hell" - on the basis that the whole thing was re-written to manage Christian Bale's ego. So yeah, it's good, great maybe, and don't let the little things I didn't like put you off. Partly because I'm an unbearable snobby nerd, and partly because they really don't matter.