23 May 2009

Star Trek '09


I've never been as big of a Trek fan as much as I am a Star Wars fanatic, but I have fond memories of a few episodes of the original series borrowed from our local library. They were really funny, often intelligent, and had loads of corny monsters and sentient dust-clouds in space. Spock was my hero. I can't do the eyebrow raise, but I've been able to salute in Vulcan style for a long time.

JJ Abrams seems to have been a fan of the show for quite a while, and managed to put forth a largely similar feel to the original series, if not nearly as cheesy. This is a much more polished film than any Trek previous, even the TNG movies I think. Some of those were good though, like First Contact, a favorite of mine. There are a lot of explosions and black holes and angry people; but the the humor is still a major part of it, especially around Kirk and Scotty. I can't say I was the biggest fan of the Kirk guy, but all of the other characters were fun. They did a fantastic job with Checkov especially; I really liked the computer failing to recognize his pronunciation as valid commands.

Leonard Nimoy had a much larger role than I expected, which was cool. However it's just not quite the same when he's not acting like the old Spock with all his logical detachment, which I suppose Zachary Quinto did a pretty good job of portraying. He's just a little bit too much of a pretty-boy for the role I think. Overall, pretty much everyone did a great job. It was a very fun movie.

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