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.
