Boldly Going Where No Trek Had Gone Before

2009 wasn't actually such a great year for summer movies.  After all, the year before, when most of those films were in production, there was a bitter writers' strike in Hollywood, and the writing in many of those films suffered as a result.  However, the summer of 2009 also saw three decades-old film series (43 years as a franchise, first as a television series) release its finest chapter to date, in a bold and stunning "reboot".
STAR TREK was J.J. Abrams' second film as a director, but after creating three extremely successful television series (Felicity, Alias and Lost) and a warmly-received feature film directorial debut with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III in 2006, Abrams was a big name in Hollywood, with a reputation for high-octane, interesting and "cool" output.
But "cool" isn't (or wasn't) a characteristic of the iconic Star Trek franchise, but that was precisely the problem.  The last Star Trek film, STAR TREK: NEMESIS, had been released seven years before STAR TREK in 2002, and had received mixed reviews and crashed hard at the box office, grossing a pitiful international box office of $67 million from a $60 million production budget, not including marketing and other expenses.  For a franchise, Star Trek had become too exclusive, so only devoted fanboys had an interest in the films, and they didn't amount to nearly enough to support the series.  A "reboot", a relatively new phenomenon, was ordered with the intention of broadening appeal of the franchise to include the "uninitiated".
The concept of "re-booting" a film property is a 21st century invention, although there are loose arguments that could be applied for certain 20th century cases.  Regardless, it was 2005's BATMAN BEGINS which turned it into a mainstream concept, after 1998's BATMAN & ROBIN decimated a formerly lucrative film property and perverted it into lampoonery.  The reboot is a result of the post-STAR WARS blockbuster Hollywood, where single stand-alone films rarely carry the same promise of a big budget series based on an established character/story property.  Once a consistent interpretation of one of these franchises can no longer be sustained, no studio wants to stand by and wait, especially when the film rights to an adapted property may revert to a previous owner due to disuse.  However, you can't exactly "remake" a series either; you add on to a series for ever how long, but you don't just redo a particular chapter.  Instead, they re-approach the material as new, as a completely different interpretation, and it paid off handsomely for BATMAN BEGINS.  But rebooting had been practiced in the comic book industry for a long time by then, and it translated smoothly enough for a comic book adaptation, but Star Trek had been one sustained timeline, simply creating new characters as original characters fell out, and the storyline canon was important to the already established fanbase which Paramount hoped to maintain even as they hoped to add new fans.
To address this dilemma, the script written by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman utilizes a time travel plot device, thus providing for itself an "alternate timeline" and with it, a great deal of creative leeway.  Typically, this would be a bad thing; time travel has an ignominious reputation as a plot device in film, not including comedies like BACK TO THE FUTURE and BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, or adaptations of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine of course, but for instance, in SUPERMAN, to reverse the death and destruction in the film's climax or in HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (albeit, blameable on the book source), to rescue a deceased character and a condemned man; both of which were cases of stories that wandered themselves into corners and then used time travel as a cheap cop out.  In the case of STAR TREK though, it does help that the presence of time travel in the series had already been established in previous chapters, but more importantly, time travel is the source of the plot conflict, instead of the solution.

"Token villains" are extremely rare for blockbusters.

The prologue sequence pulls me in as a viewer from the start and threatens to overshadow the entirety of the film to follow, but remarkably, the film manages to sustain an incredible energy throughout, with well-spaced easing points and a pre-third act conflict respite, and there is an abundance of visual splendor, riotous humor and honestly come by emotion.  The prologue depicts the arrival of the film's main antagonist, Nero, a Romulan whose grotesque space vessel emerges from black hole (the typical science fiction device of natural time travel) and mysterious origins, then unleashes a hail of deadly fire on the less-advanced, but definitely more handsome, Starfleet U.S.S. Kelvin, where Mr. Kirk is newly promoted to Captain.  We soon learn though, that this is not James Kirk; it is his father (played by Chris Hemsworth, who became a star two years later as the title character in THOR), and his mother is going in labor as she's being transferred to the an escape transport.  Yes, these coincidences could be called "contrived", but screw you, because it's awesome.  The ship is bombarded with pyrotechnic projectiles, and shown from inside, a piece of the ship is torn off, sucking a crew member into the silent vacuum of space; Michael Giacchino's excellent musical score accents terror, thrills and heartbreak; then, the autopilot fails, and to prevent Nero's ship from destroying the the evacuee transport, Cpt. Kirk must fly kamikaze into the aggressor ship while speaking a farewell to his wife and newborn son.  After this awesome frenzy and ruthless emotional bombardment, the titles appear with Giacchino's stunning rendition his main theme in soaring accompaniment.  Like I said, it's just awesome.
I'm not a Trekkie; I've seen a handful of other Star Trek films, including the two previous favorites, STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN and STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME, but I didn't care for either.  While there are obviously many for whom such things have an appeal, I've often felt that the Star Trek adventures were too distant, dry, and to get a bit nerdy about it, a bit much like their own character, Mr. Spock, full of emotionless, cold calculations.  While I love J.J. Abrams' reboot wholeheartedly though, it alienated many Trekkies, seemingly the way the previous films which they loved did for me.  Mainstream science fiction is usually narrowed down to two categories: Star Wars and Star Trek.  I do enjoy the Star Wars films, although with some reservations, and certainly moreso than I do the pre-2009 Trek films, so Abrams' preference for Star Wars probably has some connection to my preference for his interpretation of Trek.  Handing the Star Trek franchise over to a Star Wars fan bordered on blasphemy for Trekkies, thanks to a legendary rivalry, but in spite of what some had argued, I see no significant similarity between STAR TREK and the Star Wars films, at least, outside of genre and pacing.  STAR TREK is a little grittier, a lot sexier and more grounded than the Star Wars films.

Can you believe they actually got away with that?

Although many reboots have a tendency to lean gritty and contemporary in comparison to their previous interpretations, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, STAR TREK isn't actually significantly grittier than previous films in the series.  It's gritty enough, but it never strives to be particularly dark, hard-edged, cynical or even all that violent.  It's happy, sci-fi adventure pulp, self-aware and self-embracing.
The cast is fabulously assembled without notable flaws, and the film never falls into that ever-present threat to ensemble cast films of over or under using characters.  Everyone gets their moments to shine, and usually with great moments of humor, especially Simon Pegg as Scotty and Anton Yelchin as Lt. Chekov.  The main players though are Chris Pine as Cpt. James Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Commander Spock.  Pine's Kirk is a slightly more unscrupulous take on the Han Solo scoundrel, fast with a quip and brash in a fight, and Spock is the by-the-book man of logic.  Putting the two together naturally results in buddy cop film-esque conflict, though sometimes with higher tensions, but by the film's climax, they've united into something of a Butch & Sundance team (Kirk is Butch).  Spock, in particular, is evolved into a more complex, more emotional and more satisfying character in the reboot, and the story has a strong emphasis on his inner conflict based in his logic-driven Vulcan and emotionally-driven human heritages.
There is some ground to all the complaining about the "solar flares", which Abrams, as a devoted student of Steven Spielberg (who uses "beams of light"), uses as a sort of visual calling card, and Abrams acknowledges that it's ultimately excessive in the home release commentary.  I don't believe, however, that it acts as a significant hindrance to the film's quality.

THE DYNAMIC DUO: IN SPACE

The science fiction genre has become the mainstream film industry's bread-and-butter ever since STAR WARS in 1977 (which, I might point out, is more accurately categorized as "fantasy"), but SPIDER-MAN resulted in a major shift to superhero-centric sci-fi in 2002.  With the superhero film properties still performing strong, Abrams' STAR TREK is a unique presence, at least until the Abrams-directed STAR WARS EPISODE VII comes out in 2015 (see: Signs That the Universe is Imploding).  If Abrams wants to be the new Spielberg/Lucas, that's just fine, because he's pretty darn good at it.

STAR TREK (May 8, 2009)
4 out of 4 stars
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban
PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence, and brief sexual content.