Star Trek Movie Review: Bringing Sexy Back to Star Trek

I did yesterday something I almost never do at the movies. I stood in a long, irritating line with lots of other fans, waiting for the opening of the new Star Trek movie. I hate movie lines, but I was willing to face a little irritation for the chance to see this new franchise interpretation of the show I've been following since I was a kid, and especially to see it in IMAX format.

The Star Trek movie is worth the wait, y'all. And more.

The new Star Trek movie is a sort of prequel to the TV series. It was directed by J.J. Abrams and stars a new, younger cast. Chris Pine plays Captain Kirk as a directionless young man from Iowa, daring and reckless even as a child. His performance is strong and confident, and he brings just enough of the old Captain Kirk from the show to slip right into his shoes with ease and grace, without becoming a caricature.

Spock is played by Zachary Quinto. He doesn't bring anything new to the table, but he does stay faithful to Leonard Nimoy's basic interpretation. Karl Urban plays Dr. McCoy (we learn how he got his nickname 'Bones') with great paranoid humor. Zoe Saldana makes a terrific Uhura, and a sort of beginning love triangle emerges between Uhura, Kirk and Spock. Fans have been speculating about the possibility of such things for years, so it's really fun to see such a possibility begin in the Star Trek movie.

Hikaru Sulu (played by John Cho) has a really great fight scene. Pavel Chekhov (played by Anton Yelchin) is how he was on the Star Trek TV show - young, earnest and adorable. Later in the movie, we come across a young engineering student named Montgomery Scott (Scotty to those who know and love him), wasting away on a remote outpost, who is swept into the Star Trek story when he finds his future suddenly catching up with him.

Kirk's Star Trek destiny begins one night in a local Iowa bar. He comes on to a beautiful Star Fleet cadet (who will only give him her last name - Uhura), and ends up in a terrible fight with some other cadets. The fight gets broken up by Captain Christopher Pike, who talks with Kirk afterwards and encourages him to join Starfleet. Pike knew Kirk's father, who gave his life to save eight hundred others, and he challenges him to do the same.

For those not Star Trek-savvy enough to know who Christopher Pike is, his name has great significance in the original Star Trek series. He was the first Captain of the Enterprise, who appears in the pilot episode of the TV show, and also in one other episode where he is elderly and catatonic in a wheelchair. At that point, Pike could only communicate through blinking lights. The Star Trek movie explains how Pike became wheelchair-bound.

For the older generation that actually watched the original shows or found them later, everything you've come to expect from Star Trek is there. The actors do an excellent job of portraying the characters. All the gimmicks you love about Star Trek are there. Spock struggles with his emotions. There's weird aliens, some semi-humanoid aliens, the crewman who dies a horrible death (and whose death you can see coming a mile away because he's the only crew member on the away team who isn't a Star Trek regular). There's the Vulcan neck pinch, and the Vulcan mind meld, which has got to be the world's coolest means of expressing the exposition in a story. Kirk shows he can take a vicious beating...over and over and over again, and keep coming back. In IMAX digital surround sound, the blows that Kirk takes in fights sound like they would turn his bones to powder.

For younger fans or people just coming to the show for the first time, the movie CGI effects are seamless and spectacular. The cast is young and attractive, witty and charming. The acting is not stilted or stylized. The story line is tight and compelling, and doesn't feel like a recycled Star Trek episode.

The only part of the new Star Trek movie that might come across as weak is the villain. A Romulan renegade named Nero, played by Eric Bana, does a sort of Captain Ahab-like obsessive revenge turn to right the perceived wrongs that had been done to him. Eric Bana's performance is menacing, but his character could probably have been rounded out a little more than it was.

Despite this potential weakness, the sheer mountain of what is otherwise great in this film completely overcomes the bad. Star Trek fans are, by nature, a very tolerant group. They've survived several movies, and multiple extensions of their favorite show, and have accepted them all with loving obsession. This movie will be welcomed by faithful Trekkies, and bring younger fans into the Star Trek universe who may not have understood the appeal before. It is my hope that this new Star Trek franchise will "live long and prosper."