Star Trek Review

This weekend I saw "Star Trek" the way God intended on the big screen. And by big screen I mean a really big screen, as in the IMAX experience.

Normally I end with a bottom line statement about the movie in question. But at this moment at time I feel like it deserves to be at the beginning of the post.

Bottom Line: Go see this movie while it's still out at theaters. It is Star Trek at it's best.

This my friends is how you do a prequel. Normally prequels are more boring and predictable then whatever story comes after them. For goodness sakes just look at the monstrosity that was Star Wars Episodes 1-3. You knew what was going to happen, you know who was going to live and die, so there was never any real anxiety. Not to mention you also had worse acting and dialogue. All the flashy new effects just weren't enough to make you ok with Hayden Christensen's unforgivable lack of acting skills, and a whole lot of other problems.

"Star Trek" is the anti-Phantom Menace. It takes place in an alternate reality where someone traveled back in time and has changed the course of events for characters, so you don't know who how things are going to turn out. The acting is infinitely superior to that or the origional Star Trek, and the writing is also very good.

Allow me to nerd out for a minute here. For Star Trek fans there has always been one crucial question: Who is better Kirk or Picard. Many fans side with Picard simply because Patrick Stewart is a much better actor then William Shatner. Now I know that the following statement will probably piss off a lot of Star Trek fans, but in my own humble opinion Chris Pine finally played Kirk the way he was meant to be played. He played a real character that was in many ways larger then life, but he never went too over the top with it. I had always leaned more to the side of being a Picard fan, but this movie made me love Kirk from the moment he stole his step dads car and started blaring the Beastie Boys. While Picards wisdom is something I have a lot of reverence for, I think this new movie converted me to liking Kirk's wild and unconventional style was more badass.

Overall the casting in this movie was fantastic. Literally the casting agent deserves a hug because there was not a single character that I thought could have been cast better. The actors managed to breathe new life into old characters and even managed to keep up accents like the origional cast. I have to say Carl Urban did a great job, I am so happy that after being in so many crappy movies after his success in Lord of The Rings (Pathfinder, Chronicles of Riddick) he finally gets to show that he can in fact act. I also want to say that Zachary Quinto did a great job. As a huge Heroes fan I was a bit concerned that Mr Quinto would be creepy, but have no fear there is not a single hint of Syler in this performance.

The special effects were great, and for once I was actually excited to see the battles in space. In most sci-fi films a scene with space ships fighting is just an excuse to have a pretty light show with lots of special effects. In "Star Trek" these space battles had actual strategy behind them and made sense within the plot.

A big part of my philosophy for writing reviews is that you have to judge a movie for what it is and for what it is trying to be. For a big budget sci-fi prequel this movie literally could not have been any better. I'm not comparing this to "Citizen Cane" or anything, but this movie delivers everything that you want from this type of genre. The alternate reality setting allows for some changes and updates to be done in ways that won't piss of fans from the origional.

All and all I loved it and had no complaints. And for the record that doesn't happen too often with me.

Again I say go see this movie, it is one of those things that was made to be seen on the big screen.