Today I got to see the new Star Trek film. It's the 11th film in the franchise. Now, let me be clear here - I'm a relatively hardcore Star Trek fan! If I was to list the franchise in order of favourite to least favourite series, it would go something like this: The Next Generation, The Original Series, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Yes, I didn't include Enterprise - that's because it's so pants that I refuse to believe it even existed in the first place, like Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3 and Terminator 3.
You get my drift, non? So my review doesn't really go as a cinema goer, or as someone new to the franchise. Nope, this is someone who's pretty familiar with the series...and yes I have seen the rare pilot episode where it's Captain Pike not Captain Kirk and THAT'S the episode that features the green chick!!! So here's my take on it and no, I'm not gonna spoil it for you...
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| 3..2..1...cue deep, broody stares! |
This is allegedly the first film in the franchise to be classified as 12A here. When Wrath of Khan came out in the UK, it was given a 15 but it's now classified as a 12A. If you've ever seen WoK, you'd know that, at the time, the 15 rating was reasonable. I found some part quite distressing when I saw it as a young girl. The new film deserves its 12A rating too. This is one action packed film. Seriously, I think J.J Abrams has been taking cue from Michael Bay. If you're a frequent toilet visitor when it come to films, you might want to skip liquid consumption entirely beforehand as this is definitely a "blink and you'll miss it!" type of film. It's definitely one for the IMAX! Not only are there some spaceship fights (you know, phasers and photon torpedos) but there are some damn good old school punch up scenes and even a swordfight...kinda!
This film is not entirely canon with the franchise and to be honest, I didn't expect it to be and I'm glad it's not. To start from scratch all over again was a good idea, especially after First Contact, the films in the series had gotten really stale. Doing this gave the writers/director some leway that they were definetely in need of. Some of the changes I liked, some were a bit weird and some seemed worse in comparison to the orginal series (e.g. the characteristics and behaviour of the Romulans) - but I'm willing to overlook some of the changes over due to its non-canonicity (FYI - no I don't think thats a word but I'm finding today and terrible day to articulate myself).
Plotwise, I think it starts of reltively easy but almost halfway to two-thirds of the way through, it gets a bit tricky. I get what happened, but at some points the dialogue is so quick and the jargon is just, well...jargony that it made some points of the plot line a bit hard to piece together. It's parts that relate to the incident on Romulas and Nero, in particular, the timeline of events. Since I'm probably going to end up seeing it a few times with various trekkies/geeks/film lovers, I'm sure I'll piece it together. I may be alone on the plot trickiness due to the fact that I had a headache from dehydration (kidney bloody stone!), but if you're not to fussed about technicalities then I don't think it's going to be a problem.
The effects are top quality undoubtedly. It's a Star Trek film, it relies a big deal on this. This set design was also pretty damn good, it wasn't too modern so that it alienated the original layout but at the same time it kept to the 60s style without looking kitsch. I have to say that both Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban looked almost identical to the actors who played their previous roles (Leonard Nimoy DeForest Kelley respectively), Quinto especially so! Really, he might as well be Nimoy's long lost son!
All in all, I think it's a damn good film and I definitely recommend it. My only real quip with the film was that I felt that Nero's character need a bit more story to it, I felt that J.J. Abrams kind of dishonoured Bana by making him seem, in my mind, some what of a one dimensional character. However if you love action films, then you'll definitely love this. If you're a geek (but not familiar with Star Trek), I'm sure you'll love this. The real test is with the Star Trek fans. For some it'll sit in the middle, for other's it'll be a complete miss but for other it'll be an absolute hit!
I'm definitely thinking it's the latter :D
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