Film Review: Star Trek

Director: J.J. Abrams

The eleventh film based on the Star Trek franchise with a new cast and production team as the series is rebooted with the last film before this one being in 2002. Renowned Sci-Fi director J.J. Abrams was on board early in the project.The story takes place in an alternate reality due to time travel by both Nero and the original Spock (Leonard Nimoy). The alternate timeline was created in an effort to free the film and the franchise from established continuity constraints while simultaneously preserving original story elements.

The film works in the back-story of Captain James Kirk (Chris Pine) whilst the crew finally work into their final positions and ranks on board the ship as they fight against the Romulans who are lead by Nero (Eric Bana). I very rarely watched the TV series and haven't seen most of the older movies that were made so it's hard for me gauge the accuracy of this version of the franchise, from reviews elsewhere it seems they tried to stay faithful to the originals which considering the popularity of the show makes perfect sense.

Some of the crew of The Enterprise

The overall back-story was mixed, Chris Pine was arrogantly annoying as Captain Kirk and a bit cliché in the way he finally worked his way up from wayward maverick to Captain but the story behind Spock, played by Zachary Quinto, was a lot more interesting and well developed. Although the relationship between Quinto and Pine on-screen is one of the films strong points as they move from stubborn adversaries to respected friends.

Parts of the plot did have a feel of having been there before in terms of what happened in characters back story and the film seemed to deal more with action packed set-pieces rather than scientific or philosophical question like its predecessors. But the film is still entertaining as an overall picture and sets itself up nicely for the sequel that is released later this year.

2/4 Entertaining yet formulaic sci-fi thriller