BOTTOM
LINE:
J.J. Abrams has successfully
brought “Star Trek” back to life in this ambitious reboot
of the classic franchise that simultaneously manages to remind us
how great Star Trek is while making some very bold and welcome changes
the franchise desperately needed.
THE
GOOD: As a franchise,
“Star Trek” had been languishing in tired old material
and looked dead in the water, largely thanks to regurgitated story
lines and an unwillingness to take risks. Thankfully, director J.J.
Abrams takes all the right risks to inject life in to the franchise,
and from a story and execution standpoint, one cannot underestimate
how bold and ambitious the risks Abrams has taken with this film.
This film is a super-charged version of “Star Trek”;
action-packed, big visuals, dramatic story points and great character
moments. In essence, this is the first “Star Trek” film
that has been afforded the resources to be a big event film, something
which has not been attempted since the first 1979 film (which did
not take advantage of those resources). The visuals are spectacular,
the action is first rate and the world created finely detailed.
All of this would be for naught if the characters were not up to
scratch and for the most part they are. Chris Pine somehow manages
to embody Captain Kirk without being William Shatner. You see the
character in him, just as with Zachary Quinto as Spock, although
in this case, his physical resemblance is extraordinary. Karl Urban
is perhaps the most successful as Dr. McCoy, managing to create
some of the great touches that made this character so loveable by
the late DeForest Kelley. Leonard Nimoy’s inclusion as the
elder Spock was a master-stroke, allowing for a continuation from
the old series; the writers cleverly used his character in a scenario
that allows this film to serve as both a sequel and a prequel at
the same time, thereby avoiding the trap of adhering to the franchise’s
continuity (and thus potentially disappointing hardcore fans). The
one thing to appreciate the most however is that Abrams was clearly
not afraid to allow big and devastating things to occur in the story
starting with the destruction of Vulcan and its race, a pinnacle
of the original series, at the hands of bad guy Romulan Nero (a
very strong Eric Bana). In this story, anything goes, and that is
precisely what this franchise needed; a sense of urgency and a lack
of knowing what will happen to the fate of the characters and the
story. “Star Trek” is finally refreshed and revitalised
to boldly go in to the future where no franchise has gone before.
