Just go freaking see it. Now. You *cannot* set your expectations high enough.

We had to wait until this morning, but saw it at 11:30 in IMAX.

I am still in complete awe of the fabulous delicate balance - it's all the same old same old stuff, every bit of it... but it's all genuinely new and fresh and a whole new road lies ahead. Everything you know is right... but you'll be surprised and delighted to relearn it.

I have often admired how John D. MacDonald could tell you a character's whole life in a paragraph. The job this film did with Leonard McCoy would have had him in awe. In about six wrenching sentences someone who had never heard of Star Trek would know the character, why he carries so much inner pain, why he's in Starfleet despite loathing space travel... and why he's nicknamed "Bones." And the funny thing is, it's all new and fresh to someone who *does* know the canon.

The opening, pretitle sequence alone is worth the price of admission. JMS once said that the greatest human story is Horatius, and it's why we tell it again and again. This ten minutes stands as a monument to that thought.

One ST movie had a great villain who quoted Shakespeare. This one has a great villain Bill the Bard would have been proud to have written.

My god, what a movie. I think it's headed for a Rotten Tomatoes record - the first large-scale movie to sustain a 100 rating. Even Wall-E only managed 97.

As good a place as any to slide in my "Star Trek in one sentence" maxim, which the new movie does nothing to refute.

"For god's sake, she's dead, Jim!"

At some point, you have to judge each movie on its own merits and within its own constraints. Star Trek has huge, ungainly, muddy boots to fill. I don't think that expecting it to get realistic or serious about military command and discipline, or the Meaning of Manned Spaceflight, or Man's Place in the Universe, or any such things at this very late date is appropriate.

The movie had to (1) appeal to the audience of 2009, and as big a one as possible, but (2) without honking off forty years of fanatic fandom. It also had to do the biggest reboot of a franchise since Tim Burton's Batman, but with an ensemble cast instead of one character. That meant it had to stay within certain limits - not good limits, in the most case, but necessary ones.

It also had to fit Hollywood's rules, meaning that a three-hour run time was out, and that it had this single shot to build the foundation for the new franchise (no one would have stood for part one of the origin story; get back to us in May '11 for the thrilling conclusion!)

So is it continuity-challenged? Yes. Are there absurdities in the logic of the cadets assuming command of the newest flagship in the fleet? Of course. (Um... see any of several Heinlein juveniles.) Is the film's notion of military proprieties a bit wonky? Sure... but it always has been. (Even B5 had some absolutely eye-rolling moments in this respect... JMS sometimes did not seem to understand ANYTHING about the military. And B5 was a Marine training film compared to ST.)

So is it fair to judge it on outside terms... or do we suspend belief to tell a good, thrashing tale and lay the groundwork for the next one, unencumbered by the dreary realities of how a crew would be selected and assigned and trained, knowing that we had to end up with the crew and assignments necessary to continue the Star Trek universe's story line? So we skipped to the good part... who and what loses, there?

Do we alla-sudden start complaining about the lack of proper military behavior, or do we accept that Starfleet is a pretty poorly run "military" and always has been?

Do we hold the most famous member of Starfleet, a man who wrote his own rules and then broke them at his leisure for forty years of galaxy-saving, to the mundane jots and tittles of finishing his academy papers and learning to salute up the ranks... when he's just saved Earth yet again?

I think you're both applying far too strict a standard to this big-fun, old-school, reboot. I think it achieved exactly what it had to achieve, could not have been made in any significantly different way and been successful... and, with all necessary limitations carefully held in mind, was one helluva movie.

Yes, it's Star Trek. It's space opera. Glad to see the original franchise reborn, complete with Trekkies in full regalia among the audience. There were several scenes when the entire audience broke out in applause. Most enjoyable movie I've seen in years.

I don't really have trouble with the reboot aspect of it. The Trek universe is not sacrosanct, and the science was mostly babble to start with.

What I do have trouble with is how very crap-bad the storytelling was -- no regard for internal consistency of story or for internal consistency of characters (that bit about dropping Kirk off th ship is the worst idiot-plotism in the story. Technically, Kirk was not even a stowaway; he's supercargo assigned to the medical department; he should have been brigged at the very most.

This is one-from-column-a-two-from-column-b filmmaking, written without regard for the sensibility of the viewer.

This is really weird - it feels like we're not quite talking about the same film.

You say you don't hold movies to any standard higher than entertaining you, but then you're saying the movie completely failed on that count because it did not meet certain standards of realism and behavior that no Star Trek before it ever did.

You're also twisting my comments into a new space-time continuum. I pointed out that the first pilot sucked so badly the series almost didn't happen; the second pilot (nearly all guns'n'guts) sold it. The first movie was a huge letdown; the second one was probably the best of the whole set. None of this has anything to do with later episodes being exceptional even though they were intellectually driven. Of course Star Trek (every iteration) had some fine brainy episodes, and cerebral elements all throughout. None of that has anything much to do with what I've said. I was, and am, talking about the extremely complex needs of THIS film - the first to completely break with forty heavy years of preceding history, burdened with being a success in its own right and also successfully restarting an immensely complex franchise.

The producers looked at that sucky first pilot, and the dismal first movie, and said something like "If we're going to do a reboot, we can't do a slow, brainy, cerebral script that will appeal ONLY to a subset of prior fans. We need to please the biggest subset of prior fans AND rope in a whole new generation of admirers, too." And they did, by making an action-driven romp that wasn't exactly devoid of brainy spots.

I still read it that you are holding ST2009 to unreasonable standards. One is a standard that no prior ST ever met - portraying a sensible military structure and behavior. Another is a standard that only select episodes met: a truly brainy story about the big questions that didn't drag like a freshman philosophy lecture (or the first pilot and movie).

I'll concede, if it makes you happy, that the sequence of ejecting Kirk from the ship was almost nonsensical. But it worked on this level: Spock had NO command experience and made a very poor decision; he saw Kirk as a cancer that would continue to eat at his tenuous command even from the brig (from which he would escape in minutes anyway); and the film HAD to get Kirk into contact with Spock Prime quickly, without a lot of dissipated story time. Yes, it's absurd - but I don't think it's a disbelief breaker when accepted within the wonky ST story world and the limitations this film had to bear. (My big "huh?" - that warp travel now seems to put planets just minutes apart.)

It's just Star Trek. I didn't go see it with the slightest expectation of having my consciousness raised, my philosophizer exercised or my interest in manned exploration of the universe recharged. By expecting nothing more than a damned good slam-bang summer film, I got that plus the bonus of some very good parts, like a very complex and nuanced villain, some truly fun plot twists... and, yes, some additional charge in how much fun it will be if we get our encounter-suited butts out there in the void again soon.

If you and Bill went expecting something of so high an order, something that no ST film or 99% of the episodes ever delivered - that none of the episodes ever delivered without flaws - then of course you were disappointed. It's too bad; you missed a helluva movie. I suppose you both grump through Citizen Kane, too, because no one could have heard Kane say, "Rosebud."

I'm with Jim on this one; I loved it. I thought the casting was wonderful, and for me it had just the right amount of homage to the original series. It had some terrific lines, and the Silicon Valley audience I was part of also applauded several of them.

I say this as someone who was never a serious Trekker. I've seen only a fraction of the episodes of the original series and never got into any of the follow-ups, beyond understandable fantasies of an hour on the Holodeck with Seven of Nine. I saw all the previous movies, though, and, for me, this one outstrips them all. *My* biggest problem with suspension of disbelief was spending 2/3 of the movie trying to remember where I'd seen Anton Yelchin (Chekov) before (he played the son in Huff).

I'm looking forward to seeing this one again, and have high hopes for the rebirth of the franchise.

Dan

Here's a perceptive review that I think nails why the movie works in spite of its flaws... and may hit the bullseye on why the storyline is so wonky:

http://chud.com/articles/articles/19369 ... Page1.html

CHUD is not terribly safe for work, BTW.

Actually, I think Bill is missing his intended target (some sort of extra-cargo personage) but hitting another correct one.

Besides its primary meaning as "master of the cargo," it can mean any generally empowered officer not a regular member of the crew. That's precisely where James T. ends up - as designated XO and chief PITA, having not even supposed to have been aboard in the first place.

Military ships no longer tend to have cargo - stores not quite being cargo - so the correct form of the term may well be obsolete in modern usage. I've seen it used to refer to a bunch of freeloaders (deadheaders, trainees, temporary reassignments) onboard more than once.

I thought this was quite good. Someone earlier pointed out that Star Trek is basically a TV comic book, and I can't dispute that. But people who found meaning in the earlier incarnations should like this one. I posted a review at my blog:

ok folks, tonight I'm taking my daughter to wee ST (at her insistance not mine)- while I was a fan of the origianl series, I've been hesitant to partake of "another" ST flick because other than (IMHO) The Wrath of Khan, the remainder were, well, just expanded versions of the tv show. They frittered away the opportunity to give depth to the ST story and it's charactors. It was said that the tv shows were just comic book stories. I remain hopeful however that this movie will strive to be a bit more.

So after reading all your reviews, off I go where many men have gone before ! Where's the popcorn? damn the lady with the beehive hair and the guy with the sombrerro (again)

Ok just lost a half hour's writing and editing here- will try to recapture what I had said. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...........................

Ok Jim WTF? I lost another long post by typing into the suggested box and hitting the submit button- this is frustrating to say the least

so why will this program allow me to post after this loss without re-entering it? my daughter suggests i compose in word and then copy and paste it here- grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..................

Ok, three times is the charm right? One last attempt to relay my Star Trek experience to you and my observations of it ! What I found in this movie was a very mixed bag. Much to like and some things which make me crazy.

I’ll start with the things which I found lacking. While my daughter mentioned she thought that the producers and director were trying to broach ST to entirely new generation, I feel that they missed the mark in several areas. First off was the character of Kirk. The beginning of this flick shows his father fending off the villains attack whilst his wife is delivering little James Tiberius aboard a fleeing shuttle. They then flash forward to little Jimmy racing his step-father’s vintage corvette towards and off a humongous canyon (in Iowa?) and then to a bar full of Star Fleet Cadets where he hits on Uhuru. Nowhere do they explain why James Kirk might be a juvenile delinquent nor why he’s both a foolish, drunken lout and a womanizer. He just is. By including a couple interim family scenes they could have provided substance to the character.

Secondly, when Pike meets Kirk there, he gives him an invitation to board the shuttle bound for the academy. What did he see in him beyond the obvious fool ! There had to be something right? You’re expected to make a giant leap in assuming he truly belongs there for unobvious reasons. During his tenure at the Academy, we witness James chasing tail, and finally cheating an all important exam. This in itself was grounds for dismissal.

As the cadre and students are bolting to join the fleet, which is under attack by our villainous villain, James is ordered to remain ashore. He defies this order and becomes basically a stow away aboard a vessel headed into war. Upon his discovery aboard by Captain Pike ( before Pike shuttles to the villain’s ship) he’s appointed First Officer? Get a grip you dreaming director. Sure they needed to put Kirk in a position to assume command but in reality Kirk would’ve been court-martialed for both defying a direct order and stowing away on the Enterprise!! He was guilty of each under whatever form of military justice prevailed in this era. Simply violating a direct order in time of war is grounds for execution under the UCMJ (uniform code of military justice) not a promotion from cadet to first officer!!!! Kirk was not super cargo nor a supernumery, he was a criminal.

I also think the movie missed the mark by not developing some of the other essential albeit subsidiary members of the Star Trek crew. Sulu was throwing an action scene skydiving onto the villain’s drilling platform and then nothing else. Chekov was portrayed as a annoying little geek. Both were left paper thin as characters.

Somebody making this film was in love with Uhuru however. She was featured as Jim’s love interest early on and them evolved into a gal in love with Spock. Surely she provided an easy way to play upon Spock’s human emotions but then she was essentially ignored the rest of the way.

Now for the parts I enjoyed and feel where they “got it right”. At this point it would appear that I hated the flick. Far from it for I feel they got much more right than wrong here.

The young Spock character as portrayed was outstanding and his character largely allowed to grow. We’re shown his struggles as a half breed upon Vulcan and how, when he was awarded entrance into the elite Vulcan academy, he made the illogical choice of enlisting in Star Fleet. Although the Elders believed he had overcome a handicap (being half human), Spock himself felt repelled by their observation. He loved and valued his human mother as well as his Vulcan father (who later admits he married her for an illogical reason such as Love).

Later, as Spock is forced to admit logic alone can not defeat an insurmountable foe, he comes to the realization that human illogic might be the answer to this dilemma. This bolt of lightning allows him to step aside and allow Kirk to ascend to the captaincy of the Enterprise even though he seems ill-prepared and ill-suited for the position. I see him fighting his diametrically opposed selves- one as a calm cool calculating Vulcan and the other as a irrational emotional human. This internal war allows him to let James T. Kirk assume captaincy of the Enterprise although he, Spock, is eminently more qualified for command.

The addition of Leonard Nimoy in this movie had a profound impact to it’s success. First off he provided the last link in the chain of Spock the child, to Spock the career Star Fleet officer in his prime (read tv series), to who Spock finally becomes. We see his growth into an Elder who’s wisdom transcends these younger characters. The character becomes complete.

For once I was able to find a movie villain believable. The planet devouring antagonist was given a reason for his actions which were realistic. He had witnessed the destruction of his own planet and the end of all he knew and loved. His anger was allowed to smolder for 25 years as he plotted revenge upon those (Spock and the Federation) responsible. He wanted them to feel his pain. Not your usual shallow evil doer was he?

Lastly, I felt the intros and characterizations of both Bones and Scotty were spot on. They were even given lines which tied them to future/past characters and made them genuinely “human”.

The special effects were nothing short of fantastic ! When the Enterprise re-joined the ruined fleet and flew through the debris field, well it felt like you were there. Yep, in reality it would’ve been more dispersed but I can allow for a suspension of disbelief here. It was carnage. Add in the skydiving onto the drilling platform I mentioned earlier, well, it put me on edge. This was probably due to my own fear of heights but it had impact and placed the Kirk Sulu combo in dire jeopardy.

The views offered of the Enterprise’s bridge and control area was absolutely believable. Gone were the amateurish depiction of the TV series and instead we could be impressed by the complexity of what was needed to pilot and control a Star Fleet warship.

Ok, I digress as usual here. I’ll leave this as it is for the moment and allow others to profer their comments on the movie

I would grade this movie at least a B+ and arguably an “A”

Nick

ok in my rush i left out a qualifying word

where i refered to the movie villain it should read "a believable movie villain" not "a believable movie"

my regrets

Nick

you can tell i don't post all that often here- i found the edit button !!

A friend passed along this review of ST I thought too cute to pass up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02LgdXVkXgM&feature=dir

Ha! and Ha! I say!

You probably know about the R2-D2 embed in the film - if you spotted it and sent email to Paramount, correct guesses would go into a drawing for an on-screen prop.

When I saw the film the second time, I was doing what I usually do in such re-watches, watching everything BUT the main action. I saw four candidates and on thinking about it for a minute, decided the real one was... no spoiler here, Paramount has announced it... a spinning bit of debris just as they enter the fleet destruction scene. It's dark but the outline is unmistakable and it's there for perhaps two seconds, long enough to be a fair chance. (Many of the other guesses I saw, and there was about one per frame, as nearly as I can tell, were for fleeting or indistinct images, and I felt that Abrams wouldn't be that unfair about it.) So I discarded two very brief possibles and weighed what seemed to be Artoo in the San Francisco city skyline (during the attack sequence)... and went with the debris.

I wuz rite.

Now all I have to do is win the drawing of the correct answers and get my very own... bit of plastic junk. To go with my other (B5) bits of plastic junk.

I love how we can just resurrect threads that are 4 years old... take that, Facebook.

So I just saw STID, and I enjoyed it rather more than the first one; might be lowered expectations but I do think they did a few things better. Let me see if I can unpack why. Karl Urban and Chris Pine appear to be trying to get as close as they humanly can to Deforrest Kelley and Shatner. At times both of their voices were spot on reproductions, and their mannerisms appeared to be studied impressions as well. But that's incidental.

If what Star Trek meant to you was a buddy/gang frolic, then I think this scratches that itch. If you were taken by the interplay between the characters, then sure. Where STID falls down is where its predecessor did: (1) Sense of wonder; (2) depiction of command authority. This is a bit repetitious, but it's been 3+ years, so here goes.

(1) The essence of the original series, to me, was encapsulated in the credit voiceover. It was about exploring a universe that was full of amazing wonders, and it was done by a humanity that had surmounted its failings, come together, and was deserving of survival. Those failings were then principally: The Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction; and bigotry. We've made huge strides in the latter category, and the former has been replaced by an arrogant imperialism where America decides it can violate its own principles like torture when it's extremely convenient.

Well, this movie did nothing to depict a future that was mind-stretchingly different from today's culture. It transplanted those same failings. Kirk doesn't just go along with the idea of taking out Khan, he originates it. And a senior officer is the one who wants to start a war so he can be in charge. Decent flick, but is it Star Trek?

And this was yet another movie set around Earth. The original series episodes that went there were - with the exception of The City on the Edge of Forever - the weakest. We didn't go all the way out past the frontier to slink back home.

(2) They did mature Kirk slightly. I can but hope that they're on a path to do more of that in the future. But still, this was a character that no one in their right mind should want in charge of anything grander than a Boy Scout troop. The original Kirk was a man fully in command of his crew and himself, and projected the calm assurance that marks a real leader. Pine is still a brat. Now, granted, he just got out of the academy, so maybe we can cut him some slack in that department since the original Kirk was at least ten years past that point. But by the same token, we know that the original Kirk wasn't given command immediately, and this one shouldn't have been either. I should have twigged that there was something rotten about Marcus when he didn't kick Kirk out of his office for requesting command back.

The action moves so fast that there isn't much time to register the numerous plot holes. But it's enjoyable enough to not matter, particularly through spotting the many nods to the original series and movies and how creatively they incorporated and (ahem) warped them.

So, overall an enjoyable flick - gorgeous visuals - but I don't think it's Star Trek. And ultimately that may be what deprives these reboots of staying power. If I want mindblowing CGI, nonstop action, and ever-escalating shootouts, I know where to find 'em - everywhere. This movie does nothing to differentiate itself from every other blockbuster these days and therefore consigns itself to being judged on the same playing field. Roddenberry created a series that broke several of those molds and elevated itself beyond the mediocrity of sameness.

Yes. I saw it elsewhere that by canon, Kirk was the youngest captain in Starfleet history... after 14 years.

It all seems to boil down to some kind of hyper-compression of time for the modern audience. The Enterprise getting to another world in a few days isn't exhilarating enough; Vulcan is now ten warp minutes away. The "transwarp beaming" is already what Roddenberry worked so hard to keep transporting from becoming in the original, a magic get-outta-jail gambit.

Frankly, if they can transport anywhere in the near galaxy, what's the point of starships? I predict transwarp beaming will either get 'broken' before installment 3, or become the downfall of the series.

I saw STID on Sunday. The makers go to great lengths to recapture the original Roddenberry vibe, and Chris Pine does his very best to channel his inner Shatner. It was so derivative as to be slightly (very slightly) insulting to us old ST hands; however, I found it very, very enjoyable.

It is probably perilously close to blasphemy, but I have long since been burnt-out on the ST/ST-TNG/ST-V movies, and don't even watch the old ones when they show up on TV. I haven't seen any of the "new cast" entries in the world of ST. I can't explain it, but none of those piqued my interest enough to get off my duff, and part with the $10 [?] and 2-3 hours required to see it.

Seconded. The newest movie flattens out a bit, IMHO, but the first one manages to evoke a fresh and fun take on everything that made old ST so great in its day. Manages to preserve all that's good and bring in new slants on things that were getting weak.

on the third season of the original series perfectly reflects my own opinions about how the characters should be mature, capable, adults... unlike the spoiled hyperactive brats they turned them into.

In a distinct minority, I actually liked Enterprise (the series), at least until they got into an ongoing arc with something called The Expanse or whatever it was. I thought it was the best series since TNG. One episode, Twilight, was better than many TNG episodes. My comment above was of course referring to the reboot movies... which should be given the reboot.

Doesn't help that the scriptwriter took to either.

Ah, I'm not the only one:

And could that list possibly presage anything for the Star Wars sequels? Only if you think rationally.