Star Trek Review

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I spent all of 30 seconds deciding on the headline for this blog post. Sometimes I try to come up with something clever but in this case I took the decision to apply the Ronseal approach ‘it say’s what it does on the tin‘.

I go to see a lot of films, I’m a big cinema fan and to be honest always have been. Testament to that is probably the fact that the last post was about the theatre of cinema and I’ve written regularly on the subject.

This is going to be the first actual film review I’ve posted to the blog – so please go easy on me. I’m more experienced at audio reviews on the radio – and for that reason I’ve included the review I did for BBC Radio Jersey on Star Trek.

My Star Trek review on BBC Radio Jersey

And I’m not going to break my tradition of avoiding writing down my thoughts in review form by explaining how I came to the thoughts I expressed in the audio above and repeating a few of those thoughts in text format.

So I guess the first step is to tell you that I would give this 5 stars, but I don’t like the idea of giving stars it is FAR TOO LIMITED a rating model. Lets give it 97% out of 100%.

I think the headline of my review was really that this is a Star Trek film that transcends the Star Trek universe and opens the franchise up to not only a new generation but also to people that wouldn’t normally consider SciFi.

Enjoy that? Yeah well you’ll enjoy the whole movie a lot more – I’m a big Star Trek fan, have watched all the movies and have them on DVD – but this is by a LONG WAY the best Star Trek movie I have ever seen.

This film transcends Star Trek and even to a certain extent SciFi – the film creates that ever needed entry point into the wider Star Trek universe for people that never got into the series before.

It takes that wonderful concept the Gene Roddenberry created all those years ago and then updates it for the modern cinema going era – with speed, polish and humour.

In fact one of the most wonderfully surprising aspects of this film was the comic lines – they were brilliant, perfectly timed and well delivered – the other is how effortlessly I found it to believe in the new cast as the characters I know of old.

In my radio review I compared this re imagining of Star Trek to the re-launch of Doctor Who on the BBC – keeping the basic essense of what makes it special but making it for a more cine and SciFi literate 21st Century Audience – or as Mark Kermode said: “Star Trek the Smallville years.”

Starfleet Command symbol.
Image via Wikipedia

If I can convince her to go I’m 90% certain that my SciFi hating wife will love this movie – taking the aliens, epic space battles and jumping from a space shuttle through the atmosphere on to a floating drilling platform out of the equation – this is part buddy movie, part coming of age movie and part comedy.

It’s amazing to witness the growth of both Spock and Kirk from their teenage selves into the future standard bearers of Starfleet – to watch as the crew of the Enterprise (that we know) come together for the first time and find their friendship and how, as I’ve already mentioned – funny the film is.

At the very start the movie set itself as, although part of the bigger franchise, although a prequel to the Star Trek series we know – something different.

It involves time travel and alternative time lines – it allows for the series to continue with the new cast and to do things that might not be ‘cannon’ and get away with it – a very clever move.

There is a LOT more I could say about it that I can’t think of words for right now – a lot more about the actual film, an analysis of the whole thing but that will have to wait until I know more people have seen it.

I loved every minute of it and can’t wait to see it again.

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